Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Jean Matsumoto Interview
Narrator: Jean Matsumoto
Interviewer: Kristen Luetkemeier
Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: July 10, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-mjean-01-0007

<Begin Segment 7>

KL: What was the Japanese Ancestral Society that your dad was part of?

JM: Oh, it's been around a long, long time, and they... someone with a very, I don't know, it's just, talk about long term planning, back in the early 1900s, certainly before 1915, bought a huge plot of property out at the Rose City Cemetery for the Japanese community. And you can still, there's still a little bit of space left there. And this piece of property is owned by the... he gave it over to the Japanese, what's called the Ancestral Society, and so they, you purchase your plot from them. And our first minister who died in 1915 is buried there, so we know it goes back beyond then. And then there's a lot of little babies that were buried there back long before we went to camp.

KL: Do you remember who the minister, the name of the minister when you were growing up?

JM: Oh, yeah, of the Oregon Buddhist Temple? It was Wakabayashi. It might be something like Shozui, S-H-O-Z-U-I, I think. But a wonderful story about him was that the members of our, the Buddhist community decided they needed a minister, so they asked to have one sent from Japan. And he came in 1903, and nine years ago we had our hundredth anniversary. But he came, and then he went back to Japan, and they talked him into coming back again. And he didn't know that his wife was expecting a child, but then he got an ear infection, and because there was nothing like penicillin, he died from the ear infection. And so he's buried out at the Rose City Cemetery. And for our, I can't remember if it was our temple's seventy-fifth anniversary or something, we invited his son, and he was able to go to the cemetery. He somehow or other is... later on, his daughter married one of Etsu Osaki's minister relatives down in California. So we still have ties with that family.

KL: Did you have, were you part of activities or groups within the church aside from...

JM: Yes, growing up, yeah. Part of a youth group called the Young Buddhists Association, and I was still active, I was on the board for many years. I taught Sunday school for... which is now called Dharma School, I think about forty years or something. It took until 1996, and I served on the board since, oh, gosh, when Mrs. Tamura had her stroke, and that was back in 1960-something. I used to go representing the Sunday school, and so I've been going there for about thirty years. And now they've had quite a few young, younger members as temple presidents. And the temple is quite diverse, probably about one-third of our congregation is non-Japanese. And the children who come to temple are just wonderful. They have names like Pawlowski and Smith and Yarne and Saiget, which are Chinese last names. And the last year I taught, I had ten students, and I think the one that had, there were two that had Japanese last names, and one was, the mother was Caucasian and the father was Japanese. And the only child that had both parents Japanese was Alex Koyama. Yeah, everybody else had a Chinese father, a Japanese mother. It's been wonderful watching the diversity.

KL: Are there things from your childhood that I haven't asked about that you wanted to mention?

JM: Oh, goodness gracious. Well, some of the things I answered in there. I was born with a dislocated hip, which nobody knew about 'til I was six years old. And my father said why couldn't I run and keep up with the rest of the kids in races. And so one of the men in our hotel, Connie or Mr. Meek, said, well, there's Shriner's Hospital. So somehow or other, I was in Shriner's hospital in December of 1941. I'm sure after the 7th, it was right around... I don't know whether it was before or after, but somewhere around there, very close to it. And I said I don't remember much about December 7th because we didn't have a radio, or I don't remember ever owning a radio, or listening to the radio. But anyway, I was in the hospital. And then the doctor got sick, and whatever they were going to do, which is just probably going to put me in a cast, you know, got postponed until the doctor went on his Christmas vacation. But anyway, he got sick when they were going to do it, and then by then it was after February. And by February, the executive order was out. And so they, my mother didn't want to leave me in Shriner's Hospital while they were sent somewhere, and they didn't know where, and so I went on to Minidoka. And so I think when I was about nine, I remember going to Children's St. Luke's hospital in Boise and spending three months there where they did what was a shelving procedure, and I was in traction for three months in the hospital there. And then they did surgery, and they put the, I guess it's not the femur, but anyway, the socket, they made me a socket, because the socket was so shallow. And it's called a shelving procedure. And so then they sent me back to camp for three months in a cast from the waist down, one side of the leg. And all I can say, it was a hot summer. [Laughs] I used to have one of those back scratchers that I used to stick down. But anyway, I came out, then they took me back to Boise because the cast fell off, and no physical therapy after that, which would have probably helped. but I don't know, everything went well, and I have survived on that socket now, I'm seventy-seven, and I may never have to have... oh, and then all of a sudden it quit hurting. When I was sixty-five, this hip started to hurt, and we figured out that I wore this socket out, and so they were able to replace it, 'cause it's normal. This one's so misshapen that they can't possibly, it would be major reconstructive surgery. But for some reason, this one quit hurting. And so I may never have surgery on this hip, but I had an absolutely pain-free hip replacement of my right hip. And since I started using the walker, I had to use a cane and then I used a walker, so now I'm pretty much able to do... as long as I can get in my car and get anywhere I want to go, I'm happy.

KL: Do you know how your folks or the doctors in Minidoka were able to arrange for your stay in Children's Hospital?

JM: I don't know how they arranged it, but somehow... yeah, all I know is one day I was in a car with Betty Sakurai, and they were taking her for a checkup, too. And that's how I got to know... and then Lily was my fifth-grade teacher, (Tomiko's) her cousin. It's funny, we had Caucasian teachers for our main teachers, but like Lily said, she was just out of high school, and they put her in as sort of an assistant.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.