<Begin Segment 8>

RM: So I guess we should probably step back to your mom and your dad.

PS: See, I don't know which block they lived in. Do you know?

RM: I don't. On the roster it says your mom lived in Block 20, and it has her as married to your dad at that point, and so it looks like he also was living in Block 20. But you and your sister are on there as well, so I'm not sure. It seems like Block 20, but I'm not sure, it could have been somewhere else. And we can look and try to find more about that.

PS: Because all she told me was that she went to live with him and his family, and then she had an argument with his family. And I think she said not nice things to his father, like he was a stupid old man, and she packed up everything and left. In which case she went back to her old family.

RM: So are you okay with my asking you about when your mom came to camp?

PS: No, okay.

RM: So you had told me earlier that when your mom came to camp, she was pregnant with your older sister.

PS: Uh-huh, Janice.

RM: Janice. And I guess I don't need to ask, "How did that come about?" But what I do want to ask is about what we were talking about earlier, that situation where your mom and your dad lived in separate areas.

PS: Uh-huh, with the curfew.

RM: Yes, of the Los Angeles area with that curfew. Can you just tell us about that?

PS: Well, they couldn't see each other 'cause of the curfew, and my mother, I think, knowing she was pregnant and not married, she was kind of in a desperate situation, and she decided that maybe she should kill herself. And so she thought, "I'll jump off of the Sixth Street Bridge," and she walked over there. She said, "You know, I'm afraid of heights, and I looked down and I said, oh my god," and she said, "I turned around and walked home."

RM: Do you know if she ever told anyone about that?

PS: I don't know, but that's what she always told me, she said, "I was gonna do it, but I couldn't."

RM: Did she talk about trying to get a hold of your father since they were in separate areas?

PS: She never said how they would stay in contact, but she must have been able to tell him where she went, or either he found out which camp she went to, because he comes later. And I guess it was okay by then for my mom, because she finally got to see him again. And I guess she thought that he was going to stay with her. In fact, he did for a while until... because she got pregnant with me eventually.

RM: Yeah, so let's talk about, so your mom is living in Block 20, and then your dad eventually gets to Manzanar and they get married. Do you know anything about that story, about what it was like getting married in camp, and also I guess what it was like for your mom to be pregnant and unmarried before that in camp? What was that like for her?

PS: Being in camp and pregnant and not having a husband at the time when she first arrived, she said was not pleasant, 'cause the women kind of ostracized her. And the bathroom facilities were not very private, so you couldn't hide what you looked like.

RM: Wow, I never even thought about that, those showers with absolutely no privacy, that must have been very difficult.

PS: I mean, you couldn't hide your pregnancy there.

RM: Do you know if she went to the camp hospital facilities?

PS: Yes, she did.

RM: Did she go for checkups when she was pregnant?

PS: She never says that, she just said that she went to the hospital to have Janice, and that Hide was still there when Janice was born, and that Hide was embarrassed when my mother was giving birth to Janice because my mother was swearing, using bad language. She kept on saying to my mom, "It's embarrassing." And my mother said she didn't care, it hurt.

RM: So when your parents got married, do you know if they got married in one of the churches in Manzanar?

PS: I don't think so. I'm kind of thinking that they went to the courthouse or something to get married.

RM: Do you have their marriage certificate from Inyo County?

PS: [Shakes head] She never showed me that.

RM: I'll try to get that for you if you're interested.

PS: Yeah.

RM: Do you know if anyone else attended, or if it was just the two of them went up to the courthouse?

PS: She never said. You know, why we don't know anything is because it was kind of a secret for a long time after the war, 'cause my mother never told us that we had another father, I mean, our biological father. My stepfather was my father to me until I was in my, probably mid-teens. So she never mentioned it.

RM: So you're still filling in those blanks.

PS: Right. And I would try and ask her things, and it had become so vague to her.

RM: Did she talk about the, after she and her father got married and then those months leading up to October when Janice was born...

PS: He wasn't there.

RM: He wasn't there?

PS: No, because he went beet topping, I think, is what she said. That his mother told him he needed to go beet topping, and he always listened to what his mother told him, which made my mother angry because he wasn't there.

RM: So she was alone giving birth to your sister in Manzanar.

PS: Yes.

RM: Wow. I would have been swearing, too. [Laughs]

PS: Of course, she had her sister.

RM: Yeah. So her relationship with your dad's parents...

PS: Was not good.

RM: There was some friction there?

PS: Uh-huh.

RM: Did they ever... what did they think of her?

PS: I don't think they... probably didn't like her. I mean, because my mother was very verbal, I mean, calling somebody a "stupid old man" isn't very nice, and I'm sure she didn't say anything nice to his wife. She was just angry with them for telling their son to do things.

RM: That's amazing to me that even though he knew the timing, he was gone...

PS: He was gone.

RM: ...when your sister was born. So besides the swearing and your sister -- excuse me -- your aunt being there when Janice was born, did your mom say anything about just the healthcare in general at Manzanar or that hospital and what it was like to be...

PS: She said she had to stay there, I think, back then you had to stay in the hospital a long time after you had a baby, I think. It wasn't like now, you're in and out almost in one day. I know when she had me she put Janice in the orphanage, and she left her there, she said, for a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks.

RM: This would have been a difficult situation for anyone, but she was having to go through this while she was incarcerated at Manzanar. Did she talk about how that aspect of it, how that impacted everything that was going on?

PS: Well, you know, I asked her even about food, I said, "What did you do about feeding?" And she said, "Oh, they always had it in the mess hall, you just went by and picked up your bottles." So she never had to make food for us. She never said it was a burden being alone. I don't think she had any help. I don't know whether his sister helped my mother, but she was a lot younger, I think, I don't think she would have helped her. It would have had to have been aunt. But I think, I don't know what time they left.

RM: So did she talk about other elements of raising an infant in Manzanar? I had heard of the Well Baby Clinic at the mess halls where they would make formula for the moms to take, and it sounds like that must have been what your mom was going to. Did she talk about other aspects of that? I just feel like there was a lot of logistics that would have been difficult to figure out. Like where did she get diapers and all of that.

PS: You know, she never said anything. Only with me did she ever mention diapers, and that was when Uncle Ben came back on his leave from the army to help her and do my diapers. [Laughs]

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.