<Begin Segment 10>

KL: -- back with tape two of a continuing interview with the Sumi sisters. And we were talking a little bit in the break about how you said your mother kept you calm when you were in Compton, and I wondered how. What did she do or what did she say that helped?

SO: She said, "Shikata ga nai," which means, "it can't be helped." I think that was like the battle cry of the Isseis. So it's something that you're just going through, but it can't be helped.

MS: So you just make the best of everything. But she didn't talk that much, say that much about anything, and maybe that was why we were kept out of this whole thing. Maybe in a way it's good and maybe not, because we didn't know. But I think it would keep you calm not knowing everything. Or if she was constantly complaining about this or that, I would think it would affect the children. So I think it's a lack of talking too much (about things), even at Manzanar and after.

KL: Did you notice that the other parents in that Japanese language school building, did they have a similar approach to your mom?

SO: They were much, much older than she was. Our mother was more modern. So I don't...

MS: You know, I hate to say this, but this is my observation at Manzanar, too. That because she was younger, like the kids that was in the same grade as me were the same age, their parents were like ten or, at least ten or fifteen years, or even twenty years older than she was. I thought that they, the parents or the mothers picked on her, like a kid. And I know that happened at Manzanar, and I think that was the reason why we moved from Block 9. We got there, and we lived in Block 9, and we went to Block 8. And there weren't as many people from Terminal Island there, I'm not sure, but that's my observation.

SO: We were also, as children, I think we were always trying to comfort her, since our father was gone, we're trying to make her... I know I was always hugging her. So just trying to... I think maybe we were trying to keep her calm, too, by not getting into trouble, and trying to be helpful. I remember trying to comfort her a lot and hugging her a lot.

MS: It sounds like a close relationship.

SO: We only had each other, I think. Because like she said, the women didn't like her. She was pretty, too, our mother. And so pretty and young, I think, right?

KL: What did she look like?

MS: Oh, she was beautiful.

SO: We'll show you the picture. And the picture you have at Manzanar, at the center, she's right there. She's right, she looks really pretty, I had forgotten what she looked like. But to see her in that picture just made me cry.

AL: Can I ask, you say other people teased her. What kind of things were they saying or doing to her specifically?

MS: I don't know exactly, but that's the feeling that I got.

SO: They would not include her, because being such a close-knit family, they would not include her in a lot of things. More so with our father being gone. They didn't want to include her because she was pretty, you know.

MS: I think that was the main thing, she was young and pretty. And that's the feeling that I got.

SO: Me too, me too.

KL: Did you feel included by other families, or did some of that attitude filter to you?

SO: I think we felt like that with the older kids, because they used to take care of us, "Oh, we remember the Sumi family. We used to babysit you." You know, like the teenagers. So we were, I think they helped our mother, but I don't recall being close to any Isseis. I don't recall.

MS: I tell you one thing, she died when she was forty-nine from stomach cancer. I felt like I lost a best friend, older sister, and our mother. Because she was such a great person. Being the oldest, I felt like that.

SO: She had to help her a lot. She was like, like when we went to Manzanar, too, I mean, she had to help my mother.

MS: I had to stuff those mattresses, because I was the oldest.

SO: Yeah. And then they'd leave the rest of us kids with our little screaming baby sister, and I do remember that. Cold, it was at night when we got to Manzanar. They had to go and take care of the mattresses.

KL: Did your folks learn English?

SO: Like I said, our father went to school here, so if he didn't understand something that... well, we spoke Japanese in the house. And if you asked him something, he'll say, "How do you spell it?" And then you'd spell it, and then he would know the meaning of it, and then he could respond. We always spoke Japanese at home.

KL: What about your mom? Did she always just speak Japanese?

SO: Uh-huh.

MS: If they spoke English, it was a broken English.

SO: Broken. We'd throw some Japanese words in there, and English, and it was like a slang.

MS: But we spoke English, so I think... well, I know they understood more English than they could speak it, being here for so long. But they felt more comfortable speaking Japanese. So that's how they talked with us. So our Japanese became very bad. I mean, it was more... you know, with English mixed in, Japanese, it wasn't the right way of speaking, I'm sure. Because when I was working, this one guy, I thought I'd impress him with my Japanese, a man from Japan. And he looked at me and he said, "You sound like you're speaking Chinese." [Laughs]

KL: That was the end of that, huh?

MS: Yeah. I wasn't good as I thought I was.

SO: Well, I know that ever since I was a little girl with the war and all that, I would never speak Japanese in public, never. Even through high school, junior high, never. You know how the group of girls, we used to get together and they'd be rattling off in Japanese, I would not take part. If they spoke to me, I'd respond in English, because I found that very rude, and also I didn't want to be known as I'm Japanese either. So I never did.

MS: I think you would find that with the people from Terminal Island, speaking more Japanese than English.

SO: Yes.

MS: Even with the Niseis at that time.

SO: They still do, I think. I wouldn't eat Japanese food, nothing Japanese. I wouldn't speak it, I wouldn't eat the food.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.