Densho Digital Archive - Susan Brown Phelps Interview (denshovh-psusan-01-0004)

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RM: So when your dad first started working for, I guess it would have been the army, beginning the WCCA, do you remember him ever talking about what his specific job duties were in regards to the beginnings of Manzanar?

SP: No, unfortunately, I never talked with him in that kind of detail about it.

RM: Did he talk to you about his later duties at Manzanar and what kind of things he did here?

SP: If he ever did, I don't remember the details of it. The main thing I remember about talking with him about Manzanar was that in the last years of his life, he was being interviewed by Art Hansen about his experience, and he was very pleased to be doing that, spent a lot of time at it and going over the transcripts and so forth. And so it was, it became an active matter in his thinking, and when I would see him, which was not very often, I can remember talking to him about that. The main thing I remember is asking him about what it was, how it was that he could participate in something like that, which at this time, which was in the (early '70s), just seemed like such a, how could we ever have done that, how could we have ever dislocated all these Americans, and how could they have come so willingly, and how did this even happen?

SP: And I remember taking away from that his view that in the ('70s) we could look back on it and see how terrible it was, but you have to put yourself in that place at that time and see that there was such fear of the Japanese invasion, there was hysteria about sabotage of Japanese people, and that basically at the time they looked at it as a matter of protecting the Japanese. Which seems very hard for me to imagine from this vantage point, but I can see at the time how they might have felt that it was as much to protect the Japanese from hate activities as to protect other Americans from terrorist activities, so to speak. So it was... they all had convinced themselves that it was the best thing to do at the time, and they were all doing their jobs and doing the best they could.

RM: You'd mentioned a little earlier about how the Japanese Americans in Manzanar did work very hard to turn this into a beautiful place and a real community. And your father was, as you know, integral in the Manzanar Free Press, and you'd mentioned his relationship with the editor, Roy Takeno, yesterday. I was wondering if he ever talked about the Manzanar Free Press and Roy Takeno.

SP: You know, I don't remember a specific conversation about that but I do know that he was in touch, I'm pretty sure it was Roy that he was in touch with during the period that he was being interviewed by Art Hansen, and he was asking Roy about his recollections about things. And I remember reading something in the papers I have at home about Roy writing back and saying, "Gosh, I don't remember about that anymore," or whatever. So I think they kept in touch 'til the end, so they were good friends, I think.

RM: I was curious, actually, about the friends that he made at Manzanar or in the Owens Valley because of what happened at Manzanar. Ralph Merritt came in in November of 1942, and I assume that from that point forward he and your father must have worked closely together. What do you know about their relationship as coworkers, as friends?

SP: Well, I know... I wish I knew more about to what extent they knew each other before this experience, I don't know about that. I know they were very close. You know, it was harder in those days because communication wasn't as easy as it is for us now. So when we, like my father, our family left this area in probably the fall of '44 to go to Washington, D.C., and Ralph was still here. And so I've always felt that my father and Ralph were very close and remained in touch, and I don't think they ever had opportunity to spend a lot of time together after the Manzanar experience. I just know that the way I experienced it later was that both my mother and father were in touch with him and my mother was very adamant about my knowing Ralph, because she admired him so much, and she wanted me to know him. And my father felt, I know, felt that way, same way, too. It was difficult because after my parents were divorced, my mother didn't want to have anything to do with my father and she didn't want me to have anything to do with my father, so it was very hard. There was quite a period there where it was, it would have been lovely if they had been in better communication.