<Begin Segment 18>

RP: Tell me about leaving Manzanar.

MN: Evening?

RP: Leaving. Did you leave as a family, or did you, did somebody come out first?

MN: Okay, my grandfather had already passed away before we were leaving Manzanar.

RP: Passed away in camp?

MN: No, he passed away, he wanted to, he wanted to come back to his own place, and so again, Father Lavery and everything, my mother got help. We were able to, and my uncle did have a car here, in storage, so we were able to arrange for, get the back seat out of the, and transport him down here. And maybe he lasted a couple days or so, about three days, but he knew he was, he came home. And so he went, he was out of camp first, and then my sister was sent to Lanterman. But we came out -- Rose, Etsuko, she came out a little earlier because at the time they said, "If you don't have a place to go, you can't go." Alright, so she was, she went to work for this Mrs. Van Rothenberg -- this is the husband of the Blue Diamond -- she went to work as their housekeeper, companion. And she went out first, and then the rest of us came out as a family, and we said, "We have a place to go, we have a place on, house on the ranch," so this is where we went, live out in the valley there. But I'm not, at the time I'm not much on gardening. I don't know a weed from a plant. [Laughs] I do now. So what I did was I went to work for, where did I go work? I think I first went to work for a doctor, and in the mornings I would do, kind of help around the house and then the afternoons I did the office work for him, helped him. 'Cause he was like a chiropractor, so he had his practice in one of his big rooms, down here on Wilshire, Wilshire and Western, big home there. And then I thought, "Well, that's not much for me." So I decided I'd go back to, I went to school for, I took business courses, and then I went to work for Department of Social Services. But I had, my assignment was downtown, so I had to take the bus from Sunland, get up at five in the morning, get the bus and then barely make it down to work, eight o'clock. That was down... but, and then another, coming home it takes another two hours on the bus. But worked, managed. Then I finally got an assignment to, into Burbank, and that was nice.

[Interruption]

RP: This is tape three of a continuing interview with Miyo Nagai. Miyo, we were just discussing some of your experiences after Manzanar, on returning to the ranch and, quote, normal life again. What kind of transition was it for you to go from Manzanar back into, quote, the real world?

MN: Well, it was a little different. A lot more cautious, you don't feel as free. But we, little by little, we didn't have any big, anyone really upsetting us or anything like that. We just kind of...

RP: You mentioned that you had a caretaker looking after the ranch, who was supposed to look after the ranch. When you returned to the ranch, what condition did you find it in?

MN: Well, he didn't do very much. Some of the furniture was missing, but how can you explain that? [Laughs] We had oak, we didn't have a lot of furniture, but we had solid oak something, and some of the things were gone. He said, "Well, I don't know." He says, "No one else came in here." But we, well, and all he did was look after the ranch, not keep it up or anything. I really don't know what that man did. But he was living on the side of the hill for a long time. Is that, is that his hot tea? Have your hot tea? [Someone hands RP a mug of tea] But the ranch was, I wasn't used to it because being, living out here in the city all the time. But she went in, Sumi, and she worked in the fields, and Rose was, Etsuko was out, right close by off of Los Feliz there in Catalina, she'd work for Mrs. Van. And then, so I decided, well, I better do something else. I mean, I was always used to, sure, I worked in a flower shop, but not on the ranch, picking flowers and things. I didn't know what to do. [Laughs] I think I was more in the way, you know? In fact, when I used to go home on weekends and go visit the family and everything, we'd have family dinner, I had to do, help with the cooking, do the cooking and the dishwashing. That was my job, not the fields. Sunday was not a holiday for us because Monday was market day, so they were picking, out there picking flowers and things. Saturday, yes, but Saturday I had to work. But it was, I managed.

RP: Did you get support from any other individuals or organizations during that time when you were reestablishing yourself? You mentioned a Mrs. Peterson and friends.

MN: Yes, she lived right in the back of, on Los, just one block north of Los Feliz. Very nice lady that, she helped a lot with, even with the showing, when you're trying to get the shop put together. When we came back to the shop, though, I think my mother decided... I know, we lived out in the valley, out in the house there, out in Sun Valley, but we had the shop here on Los Feliz again -- not the same shop, a little tiny shop -- so we would commute. But Mrs. Peterson helped us out a lot. Her husband was a carpenter or painter or something for the studios, motion picture studios.

RP: Other folks that you mentioned, Mr. Thompson, you talked of Ben Anderson.

MN: Dr. Ben, Dr. Ben Anderson, he was a family doctor, and those were the doctors that used to come out rain or shine. If we were sick, they would make house calls. So now if you, in Burbank and, in Burbank, if you see a street Thompson, this is named after Dr. Thompson.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.