Densho Digital Archive - Susan Brown Phelps Interview (denshovh-psusan-01-0014)

<Begin Segment 14>

KL: How did the project, the writing project with Art Hansen get started? Do you have any awareness of...

SP: Well, I have the impression that Art as a scholar decided he'd take that on and track down the people who were administrators of the project and found my dad. I think by then Ralph had died probably.

KL: You said your dad was really into it, and I wondered if you remembered specific conversations you had with him, what was exciting and what anecdotes kind of came to mind and what he was thinking about that project?

SP: I wish I could remember in more detail, I don't. I just sort of have a general impression. And he was... over a period of time when I would see him, he would talk about it, the project. We were very happy to be part of finally getting all this recorded before everybody was gone and doing his best to try to track down facts like contacting Roy and contacting some other people, too, because he couldn't remember everything, being sorry he couldn't remember everything.

KL: What do you think was his motivation for being so passionate about recording it? This may be a little bit redundant.

SP: Well, I think he felt it was an important chapter in American history. It was like a footnote as history goes, really, in many ways, but it was a significant part of the Second World War, and certainly a sad chapter and violation of human rights in American history, and I think he had a sense of that. He wanted to have it, do what he could to make sure it was recorded accurately and fully so that people would know what went on. He having been part of, central to making it happen, was wanting to do what he could to make sure it was recorded before he passed away.

KL: What were his tasks when he worked for UNRRA, do you know the specifics of what his job description was?

SP: I honestly don't know. I assume that he was an administrator, making arrangements for things, contacting people and trying to figure out the logistics of organizational tasks that had to be done to help the refugees.

KL: Would you spell out the acronym?

SP: UNRRA?

KL: Uh-huh.

SP: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, something like that?

KL: You mentioned that there was a historic site at Lees Ferry that he was really interested in. Would you describe that, what it looked like, where it was, what it was used for?

SP: Gosh, I should remember better than I do. It was a historic old ranch... I'd have to have somebody help me recall even what the role of Lees Ferry was historically. Was it the crossing, one of the crossing places for when the Mormons came across?

KL: The Jones and Powell trip set out from there.

SP: Oh, it did?

KL: It was in a lot of Ed Abbey books, which is the park ranger's fascination with it, probably.

SP: Okay, yes, now that you're mentioning the Park Service, yes, he was, somehow he got involved, I don't think he purchased this land by himself, I think it was in partnership with some other people from, friends from the Caterpillar dealership perhaps, and colleagues, and they had acquired this land and they, I think they wanted to have the Park Service purchase it from them, or the Park Service wanted to purchase it. And I'm not sure what finally happened, but I do remember going up there and spending the night once, it was a beautiful, beautiful location.

KL: It's a research project.

SP: Yeah, that is a research project, that's true.

KL: I guess the same question just as far as the description, the personality, what values and interests of your father's second wife, Charlotte Hayhurst.

SP: Charlotte was a very nice person and she was... she was a good companion to my father because she doted on him, and he liked that. Something my mother was not willing to do even though she loved him dearly. And she was, she liked, she tried to do, she wanted to do fishing with my dad and they did go fishing together, especially when they lived up in Washington state. She had, she was a reader, she was interested in politics and talking about serious subjects with my dad, but I think not to the extent my mother probably did. But she was, I would say she was not... she was a very nice person, but she was not as interesting a person as my father was.

RM: I was wondering if you would be willing to give a description of your mother. She sounded like a very interesting person, and you obviously spent a great deal of your life with her. And I asked you about your father, but I didn't ask about your mom, and I was curious if you could tell us about the same sort of question, what kind of person she was, from a daughter's perspective.

SP: My mother was a person who suffered from mental illness I think, looking back now. Didn't recognize it at the time, but she struggled with lots of personal problems throughout her life that made it difficult to live with her. But she was also a very intellectually curious person and an adventuring person the way my father was. I think they had a lot of fun together for many years before they came to blows. And my mother did a great deal to make sure that I had opportunities as a child to travel, to have piano lessons, to have horseback riding lessons, to go to Girl Scout camp, to explore my talents, even though it was often very hard for her financially to do that, and emotionally even to pull it off. And I attribute my own sense of adventure in being out there, I've done a lot of traveling in my life and I attribute my interest in doing that, my ability to get out there and go to my mother's, the way she brought me up. And I'm grateful to her for... I've known other people whose mental illness have brought them down and caused them to collapse and not be able to go on with life in a fruitful way, and she managed to keep going. And I really hand it to her that she did do that against some hard odds, and showed me the way. It was great. She had a wonderful sense of humor, she was remembered for practical jokes and doing crazy things that made a lot people laugh. So I have lot of good memories.

KL: Would you bring us up to speed on the rest of your brother's life after your time in the Owens Valley? What he was like, what he did for a career?

SP: My brother graduated from college at the University of Washington, he wound up spending a lot more time with my father, which was very hard on my mother. And he became an entrepreneur, basically. He started a restaurant called Bob's Landing that he ran in Seattle. He became a sailor, he was quite active in that for a long time, really all his life in many ways. He got into all kinds of, sort of, development deals, many of which did not succeed well. But he managed to parlay things enough so that he lived a pretty first-class life most of his time. He and my mother shared an interest in having a lot of money, and my father and I shared an interest in not caring about having a lot of money. And the irony was that my father wound up with the most money by working for the Caterpillar company.

And my brother married and had two daughters, one of whom I'm very close to. Divorced his first wife who did not fare well, and married another woman who he was married to until he died, so he was married to her for probably at least twenty-five years. And she had money which he utilized. And they had the adventure of buying a yacht and sailing, they set out to sail around the world, but they never got... the furthest they got was New Zealand where they stopped and bought property and lived for maybe five years, and he tried to start a vegetable growing business using Dutch techniques in northern New Zealand, which I gather finally went into bankruptcy because he, suddenly that was all over and he returned to the States. So he had a sort of checkered career. But one of the things he did was to build a place called Villa Valencia, which is near Laguna Hills in that area, which is a place where they provide, it's a place for elderly people where they have assisted living. I don't think they have nursing home care, but they have independent apartments, think assisted living. That was one of his successes, and it's still going down there. His widow lives in Tucson, which is where he died. When they left New Zealand, they went to Hawaii for a while and then they wound up in Tucson.

RM: I can't remember if you said his name at the beginning of the interview.

SP: Okay, it's Robert. Robert L. Brown, Jr.

RM: And when was he born?

SP: He was born March 15, 1933.

RM: That's it for me, thank you.

SP: Okay, well, thank you guys. It's amazing that you're interested in all this, but those are some of our stories.

RM: I'm so glad you walked in yesterday. Thank you so much on behalf of me and Kristen and Alisa and Manzanar National Historic Site for doing this interview with us.

SP: Well, very happy to have done it. Thank you.