<Begin Segment 11>

KL: So you are the poster girl on the front of the Ansel Adams reprint Born Free and Equal. And I wonder, I want to talk about that for a while and just, I guess, to start off, what do you remember about Ansel Adams and being photographed by him? What struck you about his presence?

JO: Well, I just remember that he was a man in a hat, and he had this camera. And he wanted his poses without any question, so I remember complaining to him about that one feature, "The sun's in my eye." He didn't pay any attention, he just let me sit there and then finally, I don't know, he must have taken a lot of different poses, I mean, pictures, but that one photograph he took, he must have really liked it, because he used that same picture in a textbook that he wrote a chapter for on developing negatives or something. So he was really concerned about how you develop a negative, and my picture was in there. And the reason I know that is my friend saw my picture and she actually showed it to her photography instructor. And this was at Cypress College in Cypress. He said, "Oh, I've seen that picture before," and he brought out the textbook. And my friend then went and looked for the textbook and bought it and gave it to me, so I have that book.

KL: Do you know how it happened that Ansel Adams connected with your mom and your sister?

JO: I have no idea, but my mother was saying it was probably Dr. Carter who recommended. Because she was very friendly with Dr. Carter. But it was fortunate for us, because of that experience, even afterward, many years down the road, when our photographs were used for exhibitions all over, it just made life more pleasant in remembering the days of Manzanar.

KL: In what sense? Can you talk a little about that?

JO: Well, because our pictures were taken by Ansel Adams, and he was so famous, and not very many people have that to look back on. And then to have... of course, he also captioned our names in the book, where a lot of the other people were anonymous. I think he only captioned one other person or two other people.

KL: How much time did you spend with him, or how long were these shoots? How many days?

JO: Oh, just one day, maybe an hour or two in one day. But actually, the one day that I have the same dress on, he took at different locations, so it must have been like a half a day, I don't know. Because I don't know how we got... we must have had to walk to all these places like the store, while he drove his car, I mean, his station wagon, he had a station wagon that he used for his supplies, I guess.

KL: Did he have a staff with him, any assistants?

JO: No, just himself.

KL: Was Ralph Merritt part of the photo shoots at all?

JO: He just went by himself. And when we went to the store, when we went to Merritt Park, where else did we go? Oh, the Toy Loan Center, I guess that was the other place. And then in front of our house, our unit.

KL: Do you know why those locations?

JO: That was just his choice. Oh, and then he also took my mother's picture doing the calisthenics, because I remember she said, oh, that probably was the next day because she had to get people down to the volleyball court, and she had to get a class down there.

KL: Where was it, the volleyball court?

JO: It was in the firebreak area where they're playing volleyball, the picture where they're playing volleyball, and she's standing on the sideline. You can't tell that it's her, but I can. She doesn't stand straight, she always stands a certain way, but she's doing the calisthenics. And Ansel Adams has that picture, too, I don't know, I thought it was somewhere also in his archives with all those pictures, but I didn't see it there, and I'm not sure. But I saw the picture actually, the Quaker Journal in 1992, the Quakers, Friends Journal that they put out has her picture there. So what I did was I took a picture of a picture to include in my PowerPoint.

KL: I'll have to look for that publication, the 1992 Friends Journal. Is it part of a larger story about Manzanar or about Japanese American removal?

JO: No, about the Quakers helping the Japanese, and it's different people writing their stories about how they helped. Because they were instrumental in getting a lot of people into colleges, three thousand students who had to leave college, they had them going to colleges in the Midwest and East Coast, mostly Quaker colleges, I guess, places where they would be acceptable, so they wouldn't have friction.

KL: Yeah, I remember places where they would be acceptable so they wouldn't have any friction. Yeah, I remember the first, 2012, the Manzanar pilgrimage, I didn't catch a lot because I was kind of just circulating, looking for health issues and stuff, but I do remember as part of the interfaith service, someone giving thanks for Quaker help. It's amazing how tie, how strong that impact was. I was impressed by that.

JO: Actually, in the JANM museum, they had a program all with the Quakers, and there was somebody from the Friends Service Committee came down and talked, and then handed out these journals. And I also go and speak to a seventh grade class at, it's called Los Angeles Academy, and the teacher that's teaching that class is Quaker, so I had him attend that, and he was very, he said that was wonderful. He had never known all of that information. So, you know, even the people who are Quakers don't know how much the American Friends Service Committee helped with the students, and how grateful they were. Some of them couldn't get transcripts, and I'm thinking that it must have been through the Quakers that people that went to SC and couldn't get their transcripts got them, because they went on to college, Dr... what's his name? Kleinschmidt or something, he would not allow transcripts to be released for the Japanese, because he thought that was aiding the enemy or something. Well, anyway, some of those people, they must have got it somehow, and I think it might have been the Quakers that got it for them. I'm assuming that because the Quakers...

KL: It'd be interesting to know.

JO: Yeah, the Quakers helped an awful lot. Yeah, it would be interesting to know, and if these people that went to SC and didn't finish and went on to finish their college education back east, it would be interesting to find out.

KL: Yeah, or if they had to just make some other way of demonstrating those. Did Ansel Adams come back to take photographs of your dad, or did I make that up?

JO: Yes, he did. He came back a second time, but I think it was in the spring of '44, and my father had already left for Chicago.

KL: Okay, so it never happened.

JO: It never happened. But he took pictures of us again. That's when he took a picture of me at the Block 12 garden, that's the time he took it of me there.

KL: So things hadn't changed, he still didn't care if you had to look into the sun or look the other way or whatever.

JO: I couldn't even look into the sun, I had to face the other way from the camera. But he wanted his poses a certain way, and so that was it.

KL: You don't recall the photography exhibit in Manzanar or the response to it?

JO: Oh, I wasn't there, we weren't there. We had left before the exhibit. I think the exhibit was after, because we left in July of '44.

KL: And you didn't hear anything about it showing in the Museum of Modern Art or any response to that?

JO: No.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.