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RP: So you went, when you came back from Utah you started high school or were you still, still in grammar school, junior high school?
MW: No, I was still in the fourth grade when I came back here. I was in the fourth/fifth grade, right. So, I, and it was predominately Latinos and a spattering of Jewish kids and Armenian and Japanese when I came back. But it was like night and day for me, just absolutely night and day. And so, like I said, 'course I, being so many Latinos, I did pick up all the bad words in Spanish. [Laughs] And it was just nice to come back. But Manzanar will, as I put in my thesis that we should never forget Manzanar, never ever, because it shouldn't happen, it shouldn't happen ever.
RP: And so you graduated from Roosevelt High School?
MW: Yes.
RP: And then what did you go onto? Did you, did you raise a family or career, or what came next?
MW: What came next? I went to, there's a college here, it's, it's no longer there. Anyway, I went there and then I went to Cal State L.A. And after that, you know, for my bachelors and I went to Pacific Oaks. I don't know if you of Pacific Oaks in, right here in Pasadena. And that's where I got my masters.
RP: In what field?
MW: Human development, which is psychology, psychology.
RP: So that initial interest that you had in psychology early on as a kid followed, followed through all the way to...
MW: Right. And, and really, like I say, but of course then you had to go into like a internship to go to into the field. It takes so many hours and hours without pay. But I wanted to go into the field of geriatrics 'cause I was old and I would understand the older people. But then, in the meantime, my brother had terminal cancer and my sister had a stroke. So I would rather have been with them so I was with them. And I'd pick them up and we'd go out to lunch or whatever. So I did get my degree in human development, but I never went into it as a profession. But my profession, but I had a profession before that.
<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.