<Begin Segment 12>

KL: You mentioned in your writing and kind of mentioned in conversation, too, that one of the things that you were learning around the same time as you were involved with the Camp Fire girls was racial tolerance. And I wondered if that was a value of the Camp Fire girls? You mentioned you were getting some of those messages of racial tolerance from your church community. But I wondered if you would talk a little bit more about different ethnic groups that were in the Owens Valley and how they kind of interacted with each other, and how you're thinking about...

KP: Well, I can tell you, a couple of the Indian girls were bullies. [Laughs] They picked on us really bad when we were in elementary school. But no, we grew up with them, and in high school, we had square dancing, and my favorite dance partner was a Paiute boy, and we just had a really good time together. And as I said, I was raised racially tolerant of anybody, and it seemed to me that most of our classmates, people in school, were okay with it on the whole. I'm sure there were radicals that hated the Japanese, but I didn't see it. I wasn't aware of it, I didn't pay attention to it because I didn't want anything to do with it. That kind of thinking, they're just people, we're just people. I've been all over the world, and people are just people. They have sorrows and... they have families and they have sorrows and they have joys just the same as we do. So I've always related to them all over the world that way, our guides and all those kind of people. And I was just really thrilled to get to see Japan and China, and to interrelate with those people.

[Interruption]

KL: Well, back to your, sort of, growing up with the Paiute kids, those reservations down around Lone Pine in particular, the Lone Pine one was founded when you were very young. Did you spend really any time on the reservation or do you have any...

KP: One of my best friends growing up was a little girl from the Paiute reservation, because we lived right next to the Paiute reservation, the motel was right next to the Paiute reservation. And she would come over and play with us all the time, Beverly Newell, she's still there in the same house. And Rose probably knows that family, too.

RM: I know that name.

KP: Charlie Newell, that family. So a lot of them, of course, were in school with us, and we did everything with them.

KL: Did you visit Beverly in her house, too?

KP: Oh, yeah.

KL: What else do you remember about sort of the layout or the look or feel of the reservation, the Lone Pine reservation?

KP: Well, it was pretty much the way it is now, even way back then. My son, when we were going to live next door to the reservation, he was about three and a half or four, he said he didn't want to live there because the Indians might scalp him. [Laughs]

KL: He'd been watching some movies or something.

KP: He was watching the movies, cowboy and Indian movies.

KL: What was your response. Just laughter?

KP: I said, "Well, I grew up with them and played with them and went swimming or wading in the creek with them and we always had a wonderful time. "So you'll be fine with them in school." And they were good athletes and good people.

KL: You mentioned Mrs. Pedneau who was formerly Ms. Kong, and she had Chinese ancestry. Are there any other individuals, I guess occasionally African American people or black people coming into the Owens Valley?

KP: No, we didn't even have any Hindus then. We didn't even have any of those people at all. Like I said, very few blacks, very few.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.