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RM: This is tape two of an interview with Susan Phelps at Manzanar National Historic Site, August 23, 2013. The videographer is Kristen Luetkemeier. There is a note taker, Alisa Lynch, and also she's acting as observer, Kristen is also taking notes. Susan, we were just talking about your returning to the United States after being in Germany and studying at Stanford, and your father's feelings on that. I wanted to return very quickly to your apple ranch in Big Pine and ask you were that was, if you recollect what street it was on and how to get there.

SP: Well, I tried to find it myself last night and did not succeed. I did get there in 1996. So the best of my recollection is that it is, would be west of town towards the mountains, and not very far out of town, not more than five or ten minutes out of town. And it's just, I don't know, nestled up in there. When I saw it in 1996, it had been converted into a place where boys who, juveniles who need better direction or something were taken or living, some kind of center. And my daughter and I went up in there and we just sort of wandered around, found the house where I had lived, everything looking very familiar from photographs that I have, and I took pictures which I have since compared, and you can see that it's the place. So it was fun, and I was hoping to see it again on this trip, but I haven't found it yet.

RM: I hope you'll be able to find it later on the trip.

SP: Yes, yes.

KL: It sounds like it's pretty far north in town.

SP: Yes, I would say so, yes.

RM: Let's jump back to your decision to go to graduate school and how you made that decision, specifically what you studied. You mentioned that you went into education, is that right?

SP: Yeah, I got my master of arts in teaching degree and secondary education. I taught history for a couple of years in the Boston area. But teaching was not my thing, education is still my thing, but I really wanted to get involved in international education, field of international education. But basically my life went, took other directions, so I never really got involved in that until a year ago when I went to Africa for ten weeks to volunteer in a secondary school for girls in Kenya.

RM: What are those other direction that your life took?

SP: Well, I wound up in Washington, D.C. and worked in the Library of Congress legislative reference service doing writing projects related to education for Congress. And then during that time, the Congress passed an International Education Act in 1965, and I got all excited about helping to implement that act, that would be right up my alley. So I followed where in the Education Department it was going to be implemented, and applied for a job and got it. And that was where I met my future husband. This was the height of the Johnson era after Kennedy had been assassinated, and still a lot of idealism about government and things that it could do to improve society. And sort of one of the first disillusioning experiences was the fact that Congress never funded the International Education Act. So after my future husband and I had worked for a year on getting ready to set up this administration of this act which never then could happen, after we were married, we became disillusioned with working for the government and left Washington to seek our fortune in the world of small businesses. And we did that, we wound up living in Vermont and then California and Massachusetts and later in Florida, operating small businesses. For twenty years we were in the used and rare book business, and we did that in three places: in Santa Barbara in the Book Den, which still exists, and we created the Book Den East in Martha's Vineyard, and the Book Den South in Fort Myers, Florida, we had a lot of fun for twenty years doing that kind of work.

RM: What got you interested in the book business?

SP: Well, we determined that we would make a living running a small business, and so we thought, well, we would go to real estate agents and say, "What businesses do you have for sale?" They would say, "Well, what kind of business would you like, would you be interested in?" And we'd say, well, we don't want to sell shoes. [Laughs] We looked at various things and, "Book business, that sounds good. We love books and love reading," so that was kind of how we backed into it.

RM: What year did you get married?

SP: 1967, end of 1967.

RM: Were you still in Washington at that time?

SP: Yes. We worked for another... we left Washington in the spring of 1970.

RM: What's your husband's name?

SP: His name was Richard. He died in 1996.

RM: How many children do you have?

SP: We had one daughter, Elizabeth, who has just turned thirty-two and she is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.