Densho Digital Archive - Mary Jean Spallino Interview (denshovh-smary

<Begin Segment 19>

KL: You had mentioned too that on one of your other breaks from school at Manzanar, you took a trip to Chicago. In wonder if you'd tell that story for the camera.

MS: Oh, okay. So I went to Minneapolis, and then I took the train to, or the bus to Chicago and I stayed at the... what is that house? The hotel there?

RM: Palmer?

MS: The what?

RM: Palmer House?

MS: Yeah, I stayed there, right in the heart, I did. And I forget how long I was there, but there was this one student, I don't know, I guess he had written to me or something, and so anyway, I just met him the one afternoon, and he had gotten a job, relocated, you know, and gotten a job. And I remember going to the movie, seeing Ingrid Bergman and... anyway, Gaslight. That's what I remember about Gaslight, we had a nice visit. He had gotten a job. He was just a, oh, I don't know, maybe by that time he would have been twenty maybe or so, a kid, you know. But that was the only contact that I had with any of the students after they left.

KL: Do you recall his name?

MS: I don't, I don't.

KL: What did he say about life in Chicago?

MS: Well, I think everything was okay. He was an outgoing fellow and could manage, I'm sure. And I don't even remember about his family. I think his family was still in Manzanar, but I'm not even sure of that. I do not remember.

KL: I think that's it.

RM: Oh, that's perfect because I wanted to jump in with a follow up question that I meant to ask earlier. You mentioned that you were twenty-two when you started teaching at Manzanar?

MS: No, let's see... no, I'd be twenty-three.

RM: Twenty-three.

MS: Because 1919.

RM: Yeah. I had read that you were the youngest teacher in Manzanar.

MS: Well, it could be, because I was just out of school. That's about the age that you would be just getting of college, and most of these other people were maybe a year or two... and we had some older ones, too, it wasn't just, they weren't just young teachers, there were some middle aged teachers, I mentioned this little lady, she was a dear person, but she snored. So they were all ages, but I probably was at that time the youngest.

RM: What was it like to be only a handful of years older than your students? Do you think that helped?

MS: No. Well, it may have. I would have more empathy, I think, with them, but I was still an adult and an older person to them, you know, to a kid fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. She's an old woman at twenty-three.

RM: Yeah, that's right.

MS: And she's an authority here.

RM: So you think that they still saw you very clearly as much older than they were.

MS: Oh, yeah. I was not a pal, I wasn't a pal. But I know that they probably realized I was young enough to understand. But I never was or tried to be a pal, because I don't think that's what a teacher's supposed to be.

KL: I did have one other thing. I wondered if there were any other people in independence or Lone Pine just attached to Manzanar who stayed out in your memory. You mentioned the guy you went out with that one time, and the Savages, but were there other individuals?

MS: No, I didn't go on dates, there wasn't anybody for me to date. Nobody interested in me, particularly. Maybe some of the older men will latch on to any younger person, but I didn't do any dating or anything like that there. But there was another... see, when you don't think of these things that are all these decades, there was another, oh, I wish I knew his name. They were a married couple, he was a big burly guy, nice guy, very outgoing. And I think he taught social studies, I have no idea what his name could be. You don't have a list of all of the names of the teachers.

RM: We do, I just...

MS: Oh, but you can't go through all of them now.

RM: Well, I foolishly forgot it.

MS: Well, he was a nice guy, and his wife was there, and I'm not sure whether she was a teacher or whether she just lived there, I can't remember. But he was a fun person. There's so many, and there was a gal by the name of Melba, do you have the name?

RM: Oh, yeah.

MS: She was a cute person, she didn't stay long.

RM: Yeah, I know who she is.

MS: She was older. She didn't look older, but she was older. And she was there I think the first year that I was there.

RM: We'll just have to get that list to you.

MS: Yeah, it will, because that would jog my memory so much, I think it would.

RM: We'll send that, and if you wanted to write any memories you have of those people, we can add it to the file that we keep with this interview so that it'll be recorded, and that would be wonderful. So another thing to add to the list to mail to you when we're done.