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KL: -- Kristen Luetkemeier. I am a park ranger at Manzanar National Historic Site, with the Manzanar Oral History Project. Today is September the 10th, 2014. I'm in the Fresno home of Marion and Saburo Masada to record an interview with Marion about her childhood in Salinas, her experiences in Poston, in confinement, and her later life, including her and Saburo's connections to various pilgrimages and confinement sites and the public talks that they give about their and their families' experiences. Mark Hatchmann is also in the room, operating the video camera. Saburo is also in the home and may be back and forth. Marion, before I start asking questions about your parents, which is where we'll start, I just want to confirm again that we have your permission to be having this conversation and to make a recording that's available to the public.

MM: Yes.

KL: Thank you for that, and for your commitment to educating people about your experiences. Let's start off talking about your parents. I'll ask you first to introduce us to your mother. Tell us her name and when she was born.

MM: When she was born?

KL: Uh-huh.

MM: I don't know the year, but it was March 19. My mother is Helen Sameko, Ninomiya is her maiden name, Nakamura is her married name, and she was born March 19. I don't remember the year. She was born in Prunedale, California, a suburb of Salinas, and she went to the public schools up to the age of sixteen, when she entered high school. And at sixteen she got married to my father.

KL: Do you, what can you tell us about your grandparents, Helen's parents and family she grew up in?

MM: My grandparents? Okay, well, I didn't know this, but my grandmother raised me, because my mother had three small children, every year, one after another, so I'm the fourth child and so she needed help, so I guess I was sent to live with my grandmother. And my grandmother had two young daughters just a little bit older than me, so we were like sisters to one another. And I didn't know this until I saw a little paper in the archives that, there was an article written by me at the age of ten, I guess I was ten, and it was called, "My Autobiography" -- [laughs] -- and I said I was raised by my grandmother and it told about going into the camp and seeing all these official looking people taking pictures of us, and in the laundry room, I remember that, and going into the camp. It was, it was hot, and I got sick on the train because it was hot and thirsty, and that was all that was written there.

KL: Where was that? You said in an archives somewhere?

MM: Yeah, I have it someplace. Maybe Saburo can get it out of the computer.

KL: Who was your grandmother, then? What was her name?

MM: My grandmother's name is Yasuno Ugai, U-G-A-I, Ninomiya, N-I-N-O-M-I-Y-A. And I was able to go to Japan to her burial place to pay our respects, because I feel that I owe a lot to my grandmother, great-grandmother, for sending my grandmother to America to marry as a picture bride my grandfather, and as a result all these generations of children, families now numbers over a hundred, as a result of that. And so we went to Japan -- I forgot what year it was, 2001 I guess --

KL: Where was she from in Japan?

MM: Okayama, O-K-A-Y-A-M-A. Okayama, Japan, out in the boondocks. And she started a church, and it was nestled right against the mountain. I remember you'd just go outside and, boom, the mountain was right there. It was a small --

KL: Yasuno started the church?

MM: My great-grandmother.

KL: What was her, do you know her name?

MM: Yasuno.

KL: Oh, your great-grandmother. I'm sorry, yeah, so she started the church.

MM: Yeah, my great-grandmother started a church, because she was married to a very well-known carpenter, but he was a drinker and a womanizer, and when my great-grandmother had my grandmother, their one and only child, she didn't want to raise her child in this kind of atmosphere, so she left her husband in the dead of winter, strapped her to her back and trudged four hundred miles away to get away from her husband. And in order to make a living she became a Nichiren priestess, a minister, and how she made her livelihood was going from door to door asking for food, just to eat, because she's starting this new temple.

KL: I don't know Nichiren. Tell us what, tell us about...

MM: It's a sect of the Buddhist, Buddhist religion. And she was very, very... in Japanese we say neshina. How do you say that in English? Very faithful member. And so she started this church, and very nice building and this little town of Okayama, way out in the boondocks. When she had this little baby to raise, she would go door to door begging for food for herself now and the baby, and then also, when the baby got bigger, she also had to ask for clothing for her child. So this, my grandmother grew up with hand-me-downs from people.

KL: And was Helen your grandmother? Or your birth mother?

MM: No, no, that's my mother. She's the first child of my grandmother.

KL: So Yasuno is your great-grandmother?

MM: No, Yasuno is my grandmother.

KL: Grandmother, okay. And Helen is her daughter.

MM: And Mrs. Ugai, U-G-A-I -- I don't know her first name, but that was my grandmother's mother, is Ugai, U-G-A-I. And Yasuno is her daughter, her one and only child. And so when my grandmother Yasuno became of age, she had an opportunity to get married to this gentleman in Salinas, my grandmother, Ninomiya.

KL: What do you think motivated... do you think it was she who made the decision to marry and come to Salinas?

MM: I think maybe my great-grandmother felt it was an opportunity for a better life for her one and only daughter, and so she gave the permission for her to come to America and marry him. So before she left she prayed over her daughter that, and with her daughter, that she would have a good life with this man that she's going to marry sight unseen, and to bless the generations to come. And somehow I've, I feel the recipient of that blessing, and that's why I feel very close ties with my great-grandmother and grandmother.

KL: How old was your grandmother, when she left?

MM: When she left Japan, I think about eighteen. Eighteen.

KL: So around what year was that, that she made the trip?

MM: I'd have to look it up. I didn't, I don't have that.

KL: It's okay.

MM: Let's see now, when she came to America she came through San Francisco. What's that... Angel Island. Angel Island.

KL: Did she ever talk about her time at Angel Island?

MM: No, she never did. She never did. I have a copy of her marriage certificate, and she was married in the Presbyterian church -- this is another tie I have. She was married in the Japanese Presbyterian church in San Francisco, and then Sab and I, how many years later, forty years later, Sab and I get married in the Japanese Presbyterian church in San Francisco. So it just kind of gives you the goosebumps, and on top of that, the first church we served, Saburo and I served, is the church that I used to live in when I came out of the camp having nowhere to go, to live, because there was no housing. And so here I am living in this Westview Presbyterian Church as an eighth-grader, and how many years later I marry Sab and that's the first church we serve. I mean, how uncanny is that? And it just all ties with my great-grandmother's prayer.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.