<Begin Segment 12>

KP: Let's go back to your high school a little bit. You mentioned when we were doing the pre-interview, you were talking about some of the teachers that you particularly liked?

TF: Oh, in the camp? Oh, well, I thought they were all pretty good. Mr. Frizzell, (Lou) Frizzell, I think was a recent graduate, I think from UCLA. But I think he was the most popular with the kids, because he taught drama and music, and he wrote an operetta which was being put on. He was, after the war he was pretty good, too.

KP: You didn't have him for a teacher, though.

TF: No. I wasn't in on all that good stuff. But I liked Mr. Harold Rogers, who taught French, and being the student that I am, there was two of us who really took to French. We didn't take it like real studious students, but he treated us real nice. And...

KP: He had another language skill, too, didn't he?

TF: He spoke Japanese, and I think he taught Japanese at the University of Colorado. And so he went back there. At least he wrote me a few letters afterwards. But my favorite was Janet Goldberg. I never knew where she came from, but when I came back from Idaho, my good friend told me, "Take journalism." And so I did, and I also happened to take Senior Problems with her. Now, in journalism, it was kind of nice because I'd get there and she tells me, she's going to make me responsible for the senior class pictures, so go ahead and do it. See, my difficulty there is that, when she told me, I said okay, and so I devised a certain way to get the things done, get the pictures done. And after it's all over, I find out there was someone else assigned to the same thing that I didn't even know about. And so I don't know how she felt about it. But she was one personality where everything was really working nice that way. But then Senior Problems, where she talks about our rights, civil rights, I never thought we had rights. I always thought that everybody had rights, whatever they were. But that wasn't the same kind we had, because we were already stuck in there. The army lies to you, and they do whatever they want to do. And so I thought I was a pretty nice guy, but at one of the reunions, the gal behind me said, she was sitting behind me, and she said I was always arguing. But she never held it against me. At least in journalism I was an entirely different person. And so I kind of thought that pretty nice that she would at least take, quote, "crap from the students" who don't seem to understand. But I really didn't mean to give her a bad time, it's just that it was kind of hard to believe we had rights. Because when we were in L.A., I didn't think we had any rights. Nobody said we had any rights, and therefore I didn't know what rights we had, other than being told you're not wanted, or you can't do this, you can't do that. It's different when... you know, like when I was a soldier on the train, the guy would say, "Soldier, you can have this seat." Me? You get that. And in Reno when I'm going home from camp, just before going overseas, the bus driver said, "Soldier, you get to go on first." And it changes all the time, depending on what the situation is. So in camp, it's just a lesson I learned. That even though I didn't think I was that [inaudible], somebody says, "Yeah, you were." I don't know.

KP: Maybe Ms. Goldberg enjoyed someone who was thinking and questioning.

TF: Well, I always wanted to find out what happened to her, but nobody knows. Because I would have told her that, "Thanks for putting up with my innocent but maybe cantankerous position."

KP: Well, maybe if someone hears this interview someplace, they will hear that.

TF: Because you make a lot of friends that way, and I don't think I ever mentioned this thing. But when I went to camp and this picture came out, I received a letter from a teacher, at least I think, who was from the high school I went to. But I think she was the teacher who took care of the Japanese students, because there was a lot of American-born and a lot of, from the old country, and I think she took care of that. Because she's writing me, giving me encouragement and stuff, and I don't want to ask who she is, because I never met her. And yet she writes and encourages me, and this went on. And it was, you know, not continuous, but occasionally. And by the time I married, I'm telling my wife this is from, I think, the teacher. And then it got to be Christmastime, and then one year it came back "deceased." And so I knew that she retired and moved to Paradise, so I wrote to the Paradise office there to see if the cemetery has any record of the burial there. But they had no record, so we weren't able to go there and say goodbye.

KP: You think she was a high school teacher you had in Los Angeles?

TF: I think that's what it is.

KP: And you said after the movie came out, you said there was something about a movie or something that came out that she started writing you?

TF: Oh, that picture of us with the bag. The high school identified it as us, and so I think that's how it came about. And these are some of the kinds of things that you start regretting that you wish you did more. The least I could have done was check to make sure. But I remember her name, and being old as I am, I have this tendency to forget. And then a lot of times it comes up like that. Like right now, it's Ethel Swaine. She's one of those that I won't remember because she's always been supporting me. And I think she was the counselor that sort of helped that people. I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but through my life, all eighty-five years, as I look back, every time I turn around, I have encouragement and support, no matter where it was, except in camp. Do I dare tell you?

KP: Statutes of limitations up, you can tell us.

TF: Pardon me?

KP: The statutes of limitation's up, you can you tell us.

TF: Oh, okay.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.