Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Susan Brown Phelps Interview
Narrator: Susan Brown Phelps
Interviewer: Rose Masters
Location: Independence, California
Date: August 23, 2013
Densho ID: denshovh-psusan-01-0007

<Begin Segment 7>

RM: So when you had to leave Big Pine, do you remember being excited, or how did you feel about leaving?

SP: I imagine that it was a hard time for me to make that transition. I don't remember a lot about it. I can remember really enjoying being on the ranch. We had chickens, which I got to feed. We had a cow, a milk cow, I remember going with my father up into the pasture to get the cow and bringing the cow back, and trying to learn how to milk the cow and not having big, strong enough hands, but working with my dad with that. I remember my dad slaughtering chickens to eat and being fascinated by how he cleaned the chickens, and finding partially formed eggs in the chicken. Climbing trees, going fishing, there was a little pond, trout pond in front of the house, and fishing in there, either by myself or with my dad. Playing in the orchard, climbing trees, hanging on my trapeze. It was for me a very happy time to be there. My mother made chili sauce in the fall, and the smell of the chili sauce out in the yard is something I remember. Picking the apples, the smell of the apples in the orchards, you know, it was a great atmosphere, environment for a child.

RM: Was your family selling the apples, was that what your business was?

SP: Yes, I think so.

RM: So when they decided to sell the ranch...

SP: I don't think they owned it. I think they leased it or they were... I think it was some kind of business deal with whoever did own it. Who knows, but I think it didn't go well.

RM: And next they went...

SP: To South Pasadena. My father was looking for work, and he was kind of working his connections from the war. And one of them, I noticed a photograph in the Manzanar book, Ned Campbell is named there. And Ned Campbell was another friend that he kept in touch with. And it was through Ned Campbell, somehow Ned Campbell had gotten involved. I think maybe he had worked for UNRRA too or something. But somehow Ned Campbell was in touch with people in the Philippines who had somehow gotten involved with disposing of surplus military equipment from the war. They must have privatized that in some way, the government. So they were... they were arranging to sell old Caterpillar equipment that had been transported over to Asia for the war effort. And through that connection my father got a job working for a Caterpillar dealer in Tacoma, Washington. And I remember flying with my mother, my first airplane ride, up to Tacoma to check it all out. And driving back down the coast with my parents back to California. But that was about when my parents broke up, so in the end, he went there and took that job, but my mother and I stayed in South Pasadena, and they then got divorced.

RM: And was your brother still in junior high down there at the time?

SP: Well, he was by then into high school. He was with us, three of us, until he graduated from high school.

RM: Did you ever meet Ned Campbell?

SP: You know, I don't think I ever did. I feel like I must have. And I'm sorry I didn't because he was always talked about, but I don't remember meeting him.

RM: Do you remember --

SP: He lived in South America, I think, a lot, after the war, in Peru or something. I still have possessions that are gifts that they sent to us, you know, souvenirs of the area.

RM: Did you get to see your father regularly after your parents split up?

SP: I did not. It was a great sadness to me, the situation, my family was what it was. But I really did not see much of my father at all until I was about sixteen and then I saw him just occasionally until I was in college, then I saw him a little more. But I never knew him as well as I wanted to know him.

RM: And your mom during this time, you mentioned she was working as a teacher. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?

SP: Well, she went back to school to get her credential when my father left, and became a teacher. She taught first grade for several years, and Robert Hill Lane school in East Los Angeles. I realized later that she really only taught for, only worked for about ten years of her life, from, say, '53 to '63. But it was during the period that I was in junior high and high school and college. And when I went abroad in college to study in Germany, I wanted to stay longer over there, and she was ready for an adventure, so she applied for a teaching job at the Army schools in Germany and got it. Taught for the year over there that I was studying on my own in Berlin, so we got to travel some together and spend some time together, which was great, and again, a sense of her sense of adventure. In '63 she remarried a man that she had dated for most of my high school and college career and moved with him to Pittsburgh where they lived for about fifteen years.

RM: You mentioned that the part of Los Angeles she was teaching in, the high school had a high population of Japanese American students.

SP: Elementary school, yes.

RM: Elementary school, thank you. Did she ever meet anyone who had been in Manzanar or in any of the camps during the war?

SP: I'm sure she did. She never specifically talked about whether they were from Manzanar or anything. She never really talked much about Manzanar except in these kind of general terms of admiring their achievements and so forth. I never really had a sense of how often she even came to Manzanar, because we were living in Bishop. And my impression is that my dad would come down and work all week in Manzanar and stay in Manzanar and then come home for the weekends. And I'm sure that was hard. I was an infant and a baby, toddler, to have him gone all week and my brother was in elementary school. And I'm sure she came down sometimes, we must have come down to visit, but I don't recall doing it and I don't... of course, I wouldn't, I was too young. But I don't recall her talking about it, but she must have because she could describe it.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.