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JA: Just for the record, tell me your name and where you're from.

JW: My name is Jane Wehrey and I live in Hacienda Heights, California. I was born in Lone Pine, California, which is just south of the Manzanar Historic Site, and I grew up partially in the Owens Valley and partially in Los Angeles.

[Interruption]

JA: Just tell me, from what you know of it and what you hear from your parents, what kind of a place, what are the towns of Lone Pine... what is Lone Pine? Just tell me about Lone Pine.

JW: Lone Pine is the southernmost town of the four in the Owens Valley. It's really a commercial town, it has a lot of hotels and motels. And in the 1940s, it was starting to be the first stopping-off place where people would get gas and eat when they were coming off the desert and going north to the fishing and camping places. It was also very heavily used by movie companies from Los Angeles who would come up and stay at the Dow Hotel and a couple of the other smaller ones and just take over the town for two or three weeks at a time. So, it was a, it was a town of commerce and there was a fairly large Mexican American population. It was also... there was still the railroad coming up to Lone Pine station. I'm not quite sure of the schedule but I think in the '40s it was coming pretty much every day, maybe twice a day with passengers and, you know, freight. And so it was a pretty, it was a pretty active place. There was a lot of cattle ranching going on around there, so it was a very mixed population that was... but commerce mostly.

JA: Were there any Japanese or Japanese Americans living there at that time?

JW: No, no. I believe there was a Chinese or a half Chinese woman living there and there had been Chinese people in that area working on the railroads and in the mines. So, people had seen Chinese populations previously. But, at that time I don't believe there were any Asian, there was any Asian population in that area.

JA: Well, from what you know of your family at least, what would have been their reaction when hearing about Pearl Harbor?

JW: My father's reaction was that, of course, they were shocked, and he, he told me that he just immediately wanted to go and join up. I don't know if it was the Army or the Navy, but he was really ready to go. He tried to get into the, I guess it was the Navy Seabees, finally, and I'm not quite sure why he couldn't, but he, well, he's very tall for one thing and he's also quite color blind. But he also was an engineer up in Independence at that time for the City of Los Angeles and he, everybody else left to go and he got, I guess what's called an occupational deferment. And so they needed him to stay there and keep an eye on the aqueduct and all of the water system at that time. They were both just totally shocked and they talk about the town --

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.