Densho Digital Archive - Susan Brown Phelps Interview (denshovh-psusan-01-0013)

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RM: Well, I was going to ask Kristen, do you have any questions that you'd like ask Susan that come to mind?

KL: Yeah, I think I have a couple. Oh, I wondered about how, you mentioned you had some conversations you had with your dad in the 1960s, and I wondered how his thinking about Manzanar and maybe even his role in it, but just Manzanar and this event took place, how his thinking on it evolved or changed in different periods.

SP: Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know exactly. I'm sure his perspective about... well, I feel sure that he, by the '60s, shared with many Americans the sorrow, perhaps, of having done that to the Japanese. I think... I still wonder sometimes about why there weren't more voices to counter the hysteria and the need to relocate the Japanese. And I was thinking last night, the only thing I can compare it to is our experience with 9/11 and what I view, personally, as an extreme overreaction to terrorism. And because we've been attacked in one place, we've got to start a "war on terror" and invade Iraq. Our American government seems so often to overreact to situations and feel they have to do something. And I think that must have been what happened when Pearl Harbor happened. I can understand the fear of a Japanese invasion of the mainland itself. Times were so completely different then. I do think that people like my father and Ralph Merritt had a sense of violation of the civil rights of the Japanese that was happening through this relocation and they didn't like that. That's why they worked so hard to make, I think, to try to create an environment in the camp when they would feel as free as possible even though they couldn't leave, but that their everyday life felt free and their speech was free and their activities were free and they were participants in American life in a "normal" way as far as schools and activities and finding work and being able to be entrepreneurial in a small way and so forth. But I'd love to know how much it was really bothering them that these people had lost everything, they were suffering from loss through their relocation here, the emotional difficulties all these people must have been having. Love to know more about how that was playing out in their everyday lives, many, many questions about it. But I do feel that my... I feel my father was not ashamed of his role, I think he felt it was his duty as a citizen, his participation in the war effort, and he did it as well as he could with Ralph. It was their assignment and they did what they had to do, so to speak.

KL: I kind of wondered, too, and I don't know, I know you were really young when your parents had this involvement and maybe not even born, but you mentioned a lot of names that are really significant to the Owens Valley and to Manzanar, and I wondered, kind of the same question Rose had for your dad, of what kind of a man is he, if you could give like a one sentence, just kind of response -- or longer if you know more -- but to some of those people. And I have a list, but let's actually start with Ralph Merritt.

SP: Ralph, I remember Ralph. I spent time with Ralph as a teenager at his home visiting and having long, sort of, intellectual conversations about politics and history and probably talked about Manzanar, but I don't remember the details of that. And I remember him being a very kind of slow-spoken, mellow person. I just remember liking him a lot. He was physically not very handsome anymore, he had these huge ears, big ears, but he was... you know, he was interested in the world and interested in what was going on. Interested in my participation in going to Germany at that time. I remember I wrote a letter to the editor about the Berlin situation while I was living there, and it was published in the L.A. Times, and he saw it. And he sent a copy of it to my father and said, with some comment like, "See what becomes of our babes?" or something like that, you know. So he was proud of my interest, I guess. I would say Ralph was a kind person. Again, shared many of these same values that my father did, I think. Humane, humanitarian, a definite humanitarian.

KL: Roy Taneko and Ned Campbell are the other names from Manzanar that came to mind.

SP: Yeah, I never knew either of them, I just know that my father liked them a lot, that's all I really know.

KL: Did you have something you wanted go with Ralph Merritt?

RM: No, I was just going to say Takeno.

KL: Takeno, sorry. Thank you. And then from Inyo Mono Association, Father Crowley, what do you recall of your parents' commentary about him?

SP: Well, yeah, they adored him. I think they were often involved in social activities with him, parties that were held. I guess he was a real character. And I'm so sorry I never knew him. And my mother would tell stories.

KL: Do you remember any of them?

SP: Well, she talked about how he had a circuit that he would go every Sunday, drive to several different churches around the Owens Valley area to give mass. And that was when he was killed doing that. I guess he hit a cow or something, and it was very, very upsetting to everybody when he died. They would go camping maybe with him. Fireside evenings, and I think he would sing, perhaps. I forget what all the stories are, but he was... and, of course, they thought it was wonderful that he was a Catholic priest and would drink with them, party with them. I guess he was just among this whole group of men who at that time were very devoted to, both the preservation and promotion of Owens Valley as a center of recreation and sports, skiing, the beginning of skiing and hunting and fishing.

KL: Norman Clyde?

SP: Again, I don't know any stories about him, I just know they talked about him.

RM: I just wanted to ask about a person that had come up in his diaries was a woman named Dorothy Kragen, had you ever heard her name?

SP: No, I don't know her. Lucy Adams I ran across yesterday, that was a name that was mentioned.

RM: Did you ever meet her?

SP: No.

KL: Did you have a sense of, like, Norman Clyde's personality or interest?

SP: I'm sorry, I don't.

KL: George Savage?

SP: Again, I think I might have met him once, but I don't really have any impressions of him. I know my father kept up with him for a long time because of their mutual interest in journalism, and it may have been that he was, might have been some job possibilities through him or something, but I don't think anything ever materialized.

KL: What about Dave McCoy? You said he had kind of a crazy scheme. What was your summation of his personality or his relationship with your folks or others?

SP: I never remember meeting him. I think they went skiing with him in the Mammoth area sometimes when he was first putting all that together. He was probably part of the group that got together socially in Bishop at that time. I have photographs of some of these parties, and a bunch of them playing instruments like a little band group in the house and singing and stuff. I think they had a lot of fun together, these people.

KL: They would just party in each other's homes?

SP: I think so, yeah.

KL: Were your parents or your family part of a religious community in your life?

SP: No.