<Begin Segment 3>

KL: What year were you born?

SS: 1923.

KL: And were you their first child?

SS: No, I was the... let's see, I had two brothers and a sister and then I came along. And then I had a younger sister, the five of us.

KL: What were their names? What are their names?

SS: The first is Tom, Tom Shigeo. Shigeo is the name, actually, and they all have nicknames. Tadao, he went by Ted. Etsuko, and she went by Jean, and me. I didn't have a nickname. My younger sister's Haruko.

KL: So people just called you your full name, Shiuko?

SS: Except when I was working in New York, when I was working, they looked at the spelling of my name, and they couldn't pronounce it, so they started calling me Sue. So I was going by Sue part of the time.

KL: That was later as an adult?

SS: In New York. And down in Washington, D.C., where I was working. I think they looked at the spelling, maybe because I put the "I" in there.

KL: Yeah, you and Tomiko were --

SS: They can't pronounce it. They think it's difficult; it's not really, but... so they started calling me Sue.

KL: Does Shiuko have a meaning, the characters of the name?

SS: The character means... what was it? I can't remember, it'll come back to me. [Laughs]

KL: Do you know why you didn't have a nickname as a kid?

SS: No.

KL: Were you born in Seattle?

SS: Uh-huh, we were all born in Seattle, Washington.

KL: And did your, did you grow up in Seattle, you remained there?

SS: Yes, until the evacuation. So went to Bailey Gatzert school, it was mainly Japanese there. And then Broadway High School. And there again it was mostly Japanese, because after the evacuation I think... maybe around seventy-percent of the students were gone.

KL: Did the school remain open with that many students?

SS: I think so. I don't know anything about Seattle after that evacuation.

KL: Do you remember the house that you... did you always live in one house when you were growing up?

SS: No, we lived in a hotel. We had rooms in a hotel when we were growing up. And after we came back (from Japan), I think we were in a house, I remember that.

KL: What part of town was the hotel in?

SS: I can't... I don't know what part of town that is. It was close to "Hoover(ville)." There was a Hooverville, I think, in that... do you remember? And there were people living, and there were hotels on the outskirts of this place called Hooverville, where people were camping out.

KL: Did you go there?

SS: No.

KL: Who stayed in your hotel?

SS: Well, mostly workers. They were all bachelors.

KL: What was their work?

SS: I don't know. Maybe some were longshoremen, I don't know.

KL: Were they pretty consistent?

SS: Yeah, some of them were very nice.

KL: Would they come and stay for...

SS: They came, and then they would stay for a period and then they would leave and then they would come back again.

KL: Do you remember any of them?

SS: I remember them, yes. There was one particular man who would throw us dimes out the window.

KL: To people walking by?

SS: To us, the children. That's something we remember.

KL: So it was okay for you to hang out with the people who were there?

SS: Well, we're outside, and we'd go by his window and he would throw out nickels and dimes.

KL: That would be exciting.

SS: So we were all children.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.