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RM: My name is Rose Masters. It's August 23, 2013. We are in the West Theater at Manzanar National Historic Site. This interview is with Susan Brown Phelps, daughter of Robert L. Brown, reports officer and assistant director of Manzanar War Relocation Center. This interview is being conducted for the oral history program at Manzanar National Historic Site in Independence, California, and will be archived in the site library. Susan, do I have your permission to record this interview?

SP: Yes, you do.

RM: Thank you. To begin, let's just start with where you were born and when, what your birthday was.

SP: I was born March 1, 1941, in Bishop, in a little, in what was then the hospital, which is an old house that I think still stands.

RM: Do you remember what street you lived on in Bishop?

SP: You know, I'd have to look it up, but I intend to go there later today actually to try to find the house that I went to, which was a small house that my parents had just built. And I saw it about fifteen years ago, and it was... when my parents built it and we lived there it was on the very edge of town. There was wild beyond it, and now it's across the street from the school.

RM: Do you remember... do you remember Bishop? You were very young, but do you have memories of it?

SP: Well, I do have memories of it because when I started second grade, we moved to South Pasadena, and I lived there until I graduated from high school. But my mother and I -- my parents were divorced when I was about seven -- my mother and I frequently came to Bishop for Christmas, to spend Christmas with friends, and to come over Labor Day for the rodeo. And so I have a lot of fond memories of Bishop and close family friends that nurtured me, who nurtured me as a child and teenager, so I feel attached to Bishop.

RM: Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, your parents' names? Let's start with your mother if you don't mind. What was your mother's name?

SP: My mother was Marjorie Strong Brown, and she was born and raised in Chicago and came to California when she was college age, mainly because her parents had retired to Los Angeles about 1927 or '8, somewhere in there. And my mother enrolled at USC, and that's where she met my father Robert L. Brown.

RM: And where and when was your father born?

SP: He was born the same year as my mother, 1908, but he came from Modesto, California. And I don't know much about his background except I think his father was a, like a agricultural broker of some kind. I don't know whether it was cattle or more agricultural products, farm products, but I think he did that kind of work. And I guess my dad graduated from high school and decided to go to USC or something like that. (Narr. note: RLB Oral History states he was born in South Pasadena but went to high school in Modesto.)

RM: Did your mother have any siblings?

SP: She had an older sister named Elaine. And Elaine also lived in Los Angeles all her adult life. She was a schoolteacher.

RM: Did your father have siblings?

SP: I think he had a brother named Dick. I've seen photographs of him. He was, had some kind of disability, I don't know what it was. I don't think it was a mental disability, but more of a physical disability. And he died young, and I don't really know the circumstances. I know that his, my father's mother was a staunch Christian Scientist, and my mother was always critical of that, because she felt that my father hadn't had proper medical care as a young person, and who knows if that was, played into the problems of this sibling.

RM: Do you know, did your father... he went to high school in Modesto?

SP: As far as I know he did.

RM: And then decided to go to USC from there?

SP: I guess so. I don't know a lot about that.

RM: Do you know what he majored in at USC? (Narr. note: He had a degree in English with an emphasis on journalism.)

SP: I think journalism. I think my mother did too, actually. And I don't know what his real ambitions were, whether he wanted to go into the newspaper business or not. He was also very interested in music, he hadn't had any musical training, but he learned to play the drums and he was very active in, I guess, the USC band, and sort of pick up bands that friends put together. And my mother went for a summer to Lake Arrowhead where he was the band leader. I know he led bands in the Los Angeles area too sometimes, it was the era of the big bands, the swing bands, and he was very into it. But I remember asking my mother once why he didn't go into that as a career, and she said, well, it was because he really didn't have any musical training and didn't feel he had the skills to make it in that business. So when they graduated from college, well, they actually had eloped, and my mother had been disowned by her parents because of it, so they were kind of on their own. And it was the height of the Depression, it was a very hard time financially. And so it's my understanding that the reason they wound up in this area was that my father got a teaching job teaching English at Big Pine High School, and that's what brought them up here.

RM: Do you know what year it was?

SP: I think it was 1933 maybe, possibly '34. I don't think it was as early as '32, somewhere in there. (Narr. note: It was 1935.)

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