<Begin Segment 25>

KL: I'll let you do that, but the only other thing that I had is that is that it struck me that you said twice that your mom said, "There's nothing to remember," and that word remember is a strong, it resonates a lot with me. So I guess I wonder... it's not exactly what I was thinking about that.

PS: You know, even when I've asked my mother, I said, "How did you feel when Janice was born?" And I said, "Were you excited?" I said, "It was your firstborn child." And she would say nothing. And maybe it was because he wasn't there, but she would never say, "Oh, I was so excited that Janice was born, and she was such a pretty little girl," or anything, she would never say any of that. I said, "Mom, don't you remember? Do you remember how it felt?" But nothing.

KL: Yeah, I guess my question to that, and there were sort of two parts of it. One is that it's -- and we're contradictory creatures, I think people are, so maybe that's just the answer. But she would say there's nothing to remember, and yet she went to the Manzanar pilgrimages.

PS: I know. And I never could understand why it was so important to her if she wasn't going to voice her opinion and how she felt about it. And I thought maybe that's why she got me involved. Maybe she did want me to be her voice.

RM: The fact that she actually had you speak for her, in some ways, in those discussions, or she would tell you something and you could talk about it, I mean, it does sound to me like literally there you were her voice. Right now you're being her voice, she's not, obviously, sitting here telling you to do it. But I think that's pretty amazing that she did find a way to tell the story, it's just not maybe the typical way of telling the story.

PS: But I know that I had to do it for her, because she wouldn't do it. And that's why I had to... this other friend of mine said, "You must have been horrible, you were a pest." I said, "Well, yeah, I had to. My mother wouldn't tell me anything, I had to keep asking her the same question over and over again." And maybe say it in another way so that maybe she would tell me. But she was always closemouthed about it. I think she told some things to my younger sister sometimes, but not very often. I think more the thing is that she was really in love with our father, and that she married Paul because he was a good man, and she was older now and she could see that he was more responsible. And being in love doesn't mean that they're going to do the right thing.

RM: She and Paul had children then, and how many...

PS: They had two daughters. But I don't think she was madly in love with him when she married him. She knew that he would be a good provider and he'd treat us good. And she made a decision. Because she needed someone to help her, so it was one of her sacrifices. But you know, eventually she loved him dearly, and you learn to love someone. That's why sometimes these prearranged marriages do work, because they find out they're similar backgrounds and stuff.

KL: Yeah, my last question is just sort of the second half of that, "there's nothing to remember." What do you think of that?

PS: There was a lot to remember. There's a lot that I wish I knew that's she went through, but I know that... because my mother was really a touchy-feely kind of person, and kind of emotional. And so it must have been hard, very hard, for her to repress all those feelings for all those years and not say anything. And I'm glad that I'm here to do it now.

RM: Yeah, it seems so different. When you were describing her, like, arguing with Hank's parents, and when you said she always said what she thought, and that sometimes got her in trouble, and then for her to have held this back for so long.

PS: Well, I think she had to do that because she couldn't divulge that we weren't, he wasn't our father. And she always allowed him to punish us when we were bad, and she would never say anything, even if he hit us. He didn't hit us where he would have to go to prison or anything, but corporal punishment was in then. A spanking here and there didn't kill you. But by the time she had my younger sisters, she told him that she wasn't going to let him do that anymore.

RM: Do you think it was an active decision on her part not to tell you two as you were growing up about where your biological dad was?

PS: Oh, yeah.

RM: You think it was purposeful, it wasn't just an accident.

PS: It wasn't an accident, she wasn't going to tell. Janice didn't remember, and Janice was older than me.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.