<Begin Segment 24>

KL: What else can you tell us about your life after Manzanar? What did your husband do for work?

MN: He wanted to start a market business, but it takes a lot of money, so he became a gardener like everybody else. And I was just a housewife for a while, until my kids started junior high school. Then I worked in a factory. My last job was making ballpoint pens. I was there twenty-one years.

KL: What was the factory's name?

MN: Lindy, Lindy Pen. L-I-N-D-Y. We made all kinds of pens.

KL: Did you enjoy having a job?

MN: Yeah, I liked it. But I was sixty-four and I said I'm ready to retire, and the company, well, Mr. Lindy expanded it too much, other business too, so company had, became bankruptcy. That's why everybody had to quit. I was ready to retire anyway, but I was lucky. Everybody else was younger. Some were people in fifties and forties and thirties. They had to look for a job. I was the only one didn't have to look for a job because I'm ready to retire.

KL: What about for your husband, what was it like? He had a background in business and then he worked in gardening.

MN: He was very unhappy about the gardening, but he died early. He was fifty-eight he died, when he died. Forty-eight years ago.

KL: Wow. Yeah, he was young. And you said he was unhappy about gardening?

MN: Yeah, he was really unhappy about it. But he couldn't start the business. It takes too much money.

KL: What about his parents? What were the rest of their lives like?

MN: The parents, when war started they were already ready to retire, that age, so they, everybody had to sell their business store, but they sold theirs too and went to camp. After they came out of the camp we lived together for a while, then they went back to Japan. And he died, he had cancer and he died in Japan. So my mother-in-law was left alone in Japan, so she came back to America again. She lived up to almost a hundred years old. Yeah, she was going to be a hundred years old in December, December 17th, and she died a few months before.

KL: Wow.

MN: She'd never been to a hospital. All her babies were born at home, and she'd never been to dentist. When she had a toothache she just pull that tooth, put the string on and pull it. So she'd never been to a dentist or doctor or hospital. If she lives she's about 130 years old, I guess, now.

KL: Was she a Japanese citizen for her whole life? Did she...

MN: Yeah.

KL: Boy, she was back and forth a lot. She saw a lot, I'm sure. You said you went to visit your mother several times, in Japan. What were those visits like?

MN: It was, was nice, because Japan was quiet, peace and quiet. Because I went, first time I went back was 1960, and I went back 1965 and '70 and '83. Japan became very peaceful and nice.

KL: Did your grandparents survive the war?

MN: No, no, no. They died early. My grandfather died when I was fourteen, I guess fourteen. He was eighty-four. And my grandmother died when I was fifteen. She died year after Grandfather. That was a long time ago, about eighty years ago, more than eighty years ago.

KL: Wow. You've seen a lot. And I'm excited to see your pictures, some too. [Addressing WP] Were there other things that you wanted to ask about? I just have one wrap up question, Whitney, and then...

WP: I was just curious, I'm just going to tell Kristen and then she'll, she'll tell you.

KL: I'll repeat it to you, so we can...

MN: Sure.

KL: It'll be like telephone. [All laugh]

WP: I was curious if she had noticed a lot of, any changes in Los Angeles from before the war and after when she got back here in this area.

KL: Yeah.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.