Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Mitsue Nishio Interview
Narrator: Mitsue Nishio
Interviewer: Kristen Luetkemeier
Location: Culver City, California
Date: August 13, 2014
Densho ID: denshovh-nmitsue-01-0016

<Begin Segment 16>

KL: You told us before we started the tape how you learned English. Would you tell us again how you learned English?

MN: [Laughs] By reading comics in L.A. Times and L.A. Examiner.

KL: Did you take English classes ever, or classes at Manzanar?

MN: No, because no classes. There was, I went to a little class in Manzanar because they started an English class.

KL: How was that?

MN: It was fun. But start from nine o'clock to noontime because everybody, most people had children already, so their husband works and... man works in a mess hall, wife has to come home and take care of the kids before husband went to work.

KL: Did you take your daughter to class?

MN: No, I didn't. My husband was home in the morning. They'd go and cook breakfast, but until eleven o'clock, 11:30, they're home. So my husband took care of baby.

KL: Who was the teacher, do you recall?

MN: My teacher was Margaret Minamiki. She was a teacher outside. She was a Catholic family. Her brother was a Catholic Father. And her mother, she was very good at sewing and knitting, so she had a class in afternoon, so I learned to make a sweater and stuff like that.

KL: Where did you get the supplies?

MN: They, we had a canteen. It had all kinds of material, yarn, and... they sell mostly everything to make it. So I went, the lady used to have a sewing school before the war, in Los Angeles, she went to Manzanar Block 22, so we went, I went to ask her if she can teach us how to make dresses, mostly children clothes. I'm more interested in making my daughter's clothes, so I went to her class and I think we paid about two dollars a month for the tuition.

KL: Where did she teach?

MN: How to cut the material, sewing.

KL: Did she teach in her barrack? Or was it --

MN: In her barrack.

KL: Where was your English class?

MN: English class was in, near the Block 7. Not administration... education building, that's where we used to go to English class. Not every day, though, about two, three times a week, in the morning.

KL: What else did you do with your time?

MN: I used to sew, go to sewing and knitting class. There was a library with a lot of books, so I used to go the library and the books.

KL: What was the library like inside?

MN: Inside it's just a barrack. They made a whole, handmade the shelves, men made it, and all kinds of books. There was a lot of books there. And a lot of times we don't have to cook or go shopping, do nothing, so just to sit in the shade and talk, gossip. [Laughs]

KL: What kind of books did you look for? What were your favorites?

MN: Well, any kind of book, detective or any kind of book was there.

KL: Did you read in, did you read English books?

MN: No, not then. No, I didn't know enough English.

KL: But there were Japanese books in the library?

MN: They were all, mostly Japanese. Some people, like my sister-in-law, they were born and raised here, so they borrowed the English books. But I borrowed the Japanese books. We had a lot of time on our hands. We didn't have to go shopping, we didn't have to clean the house, cook.

KL: What did you gossip about?

MN: Huh? Gossip?

KL: Yeah, what was the gossip?

MN: About everybody, all the Japanese ladies, all Japanese people. [Laughs] We'd just sit in the shade on a hot day. There's a big tree there, sit in the shade. Nothing to do, so just talk.

KL: Are there -- we've mentioned Ralph Lazo, the Mexican kid, and we mentioned Harry Ueno -- are there other people that you remember from Manzanar that were either leaders or that were close friends?

MN: No. There were a lot of close friends, but I, we became a lot of friends, I made a lot of friends in Manzanar. But most everybody passed away in sixty-nine years. There were some people older than me, younger than... they all passed away.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.