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KL: I'm Kristen Luetkemeier conducting an oral history interview for the Manzanar National Historic Site. Today is April 16, 2012, I'm here with members of the Johnston family in Los Abrigados Hotel in Sedona, Arizona. And before we begin, do I have your permission to conduct the interview and keep it in our files on site and make it accessible to researchers and members of the public?

JJ: Yes, you do.

KL: Okay, thanks. And I'm going to ask you all to just introduce yourselves and also say the year that you were born, if you would.

WJ: Okay, I'm William, I was born in 1936.

DW: Well, I'm Dorothy Johnston Whitlock, married name, and I was born in 1934.

JJ: I'm James Johnston, and I was born in 1939.

KL: Okay. So who were your parents? What were your parents' names, and a little bit about their background?

WJ: Our father was Ray D. Johnston. He was raised, really, in Cushman, Arkansas, but grew up more really in Batesville in Independence County.

DW: He was born in 1898, I never forgot that. It was like he was in the past century.

KL: Yeah.

WJ: But went to college at University of Arkansas, got his bachelor's at University of Iowa.

DW: No, his bachelor's, or his master's?

WJ: Master's.

DW: You said bachelor's. [Laughs]

WJ: But started working with the USDA, he was working in, was County Agent in Stone County at the time he met my mother, but he was County Agent of Searcy County. And, of course, my father's parents lived in Batesville, and my mother, who graduated from University of Missouri, her name was Willie Bloomer, Willie Jasper. But any rate, she had gotten a degree in home economics and took a job with the Home Administration Agency in Independence County in Arkansas. So she was based out in Batesville, and my dad would come home to visit his parents and they met, and this is the result.

KL: [Laughs] And so the meeting went well, huh?

DW: And she was born in Cassville, Missouri, in 1905.

KL: Okay. So they both had background related to agriculture.

DW: Yes. What was the next part of the question?

WJ: You want me to just follow up with how my dad got to Camp Rohwer?

KL: Well, tell me a little bit about, do you have memories of your grandparents, of your parents' parents and their...

WJ: My mother's father passed away before she was born, two or three months before she was born. So none of us know him other than stories and a few photographs. But my mother's mother lived with us a good deal of the time.

DW: Her later years when she was older.

WJ: When she was older, she lived with my mother after my father passed away. But she, Zuma Bloomer was her name. Really remarkable lady, knitted and crocheted everything, very straight-laced as a rule. Us kids could get by with a little something every once in a while, but not much. My father's mother and father, I can barely remember my father's father, my grandfather on this side.

DW: Oh, I have memories.

WJ: He was kind of short, robust fellow, liked to eat. My grandmother, Sally was her name, he always called her Miss Sally, regardless of where they were or what situation, his wife was Miss Sally to him. She was pretty much an invalid, she was an artist, she painted quite a bit, watercolors, did China painting. But she died...

DW: Oh, we were in high school.

WJ: Yeah, 1950, somewhere in there?

DW: She lived with us, too, for a while, at different times, both our grandmothers lived with us when we were in school. But she passed away in a nursing home, actually. Her care got pretty excessive. Mother's mother lived when she, you were still at home [addressing JJ], us were gone.

JJ: I was in dental school when she passed away.

DW: When she passed away, they were living in Memphis. But to go back to Grandfather Johnston, he was a Buster Brown salesman and he sold shoes all over that part of the world, I guess. But he was a very active Shriner. He went to all the Shriner conventions all over the United States, and our favorite things as kids, because he brought back all these ribbons and playing with that, I remember that.

WJ: And his sword.

DW: And his sword, and his Shriner's hat. Okay, I don't know what we missed in there, but that...

KL: Tell me all of their names. I think you said some of them.

WJ: Well, let's see. Mother's father was William.

DW: William Jasper.

WJ: That wasn't it.

DW: Yeah, that's why she got her name. Mother's dad was William Jasper Bloomer, and she had an older brother and sister, and she was pregnant with my mother when he passed away with typhoid fever. And so she, if it was a boy it was going to be William Jasper, and it was girl, so she named her Willie Jasper.

WJ: Okay. I didn't think he was going to name her Jasper.

DW: Yeah, no, that was where the whole thing was going... whatever baby came out was going to be William or Willie because he was gone.

KL: Yeah.

DW: That's what I wanted to add. Zuma Bloomer not only was remarkable in many ways, but when she lost her husband while she was pregnant, she has two young children...

WJ: Three.

DW: Well, three, but the baby got there, yeah. She went back to teaching and taught school while they were living in Cassville. Somewhere in there, when the middle child, which was a sister, was playing the piano, she was probably about sixteen, I think.

WJ: A little younger.

DW: A little younger.

WJ: Twelve.

DW: But she was playing the piano in their house and a train came loose on the siding, and a car jumped the siding and went through their house and killed her sister sitting there playing the piano.

JJ: The name of that train was the Ozark Sparkler.

DW: Oh my, I'd forgotten that part.

JJ: And the company, because of the liability of this one wreck, declared bankruptcy, ceased to exist.

DW: And then I know that it was difficult because she still had two children, and as soon as both those children were ready for college, she quit her job as a teacher, moved to Columbia, and got a job in the registrar's office to enable her children to go to college. She was quite remarkable.

JJ: And she had that unusual name of Zuma, and it was given to her by her mother who had read this, some sort of novel, and the heroine in it was named Zuma.

KL: Oh, okay.

JJ: So she picked that name up.

WJ: I hadn't heard that before.

DW: I had, but I had forgotten. See, out of all of us, we'll remember.

WJ: We'd all make one of us. [Laughs]

DW: Well, and then we could answer one of the questions I remember which was how did we get to Arkansas: we were all born there.

KL: Yeah.

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