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

<Begin Segment 20>

RM: I wanted to ask about sort of the end of camp. We already asked about graduations, but you know, Manzanar started closing down. Do you remember your classes getting smaller and thinning out?

MS: Not particularly, but I'm sure it happened. And during the, after the first year or so, people started leaving, going to the Midwest primarily, and one time I drove. We would drive the people up to Reno so they could catch the buses to the Midwest or wherever they were going. And I remember... so we started, even after what, the first year or so, we started seeing more and more people, they'd relocated, and I do remember taking a group up, it was kind a lark, to me, to get away and drive up to Reno.

RM: Yeah. Do you remember a woman, I'm going to mispronounce her last name, Nan Zischank, who worked in the camp and did a lot of those drives up to Reno with the kids?

MS: Say the name again?

RM: Nan Zischank.

MS: Nan, N-A-N?

RM: Yeah.

MS: Gee, I don't... Zischank sort of sounds familiar, but I don't remember.

RM: Did you have another person with you when you drove to Reno?

MS: No.

RM: You were just the lone driver.

MS: I was the lone driver. They didn't have that much personnel that they could spare, and you'd only take maybe two or whatever.

RM: On that trip up, did the people you were driving talk to you about where they were going and how to go about it?

MS: I'm sure we talked, but I don't remember any of that stuff.

KL: Did you ever meet any Paiute people, any Indian people?

MS: No, I never knew any of them.

KL: There was a lady on the WRA staff for a while, her name was Viola Martinez, she's Owens Valley Paiute and she helped counsel people to relocate. Maybe that's what made me think of the question.

MS: Oh, really?

KL: Yeah.

MS: I don't remember.

KL: I mean, there were other people on the staff, too, but I think she's...

MS: Not that I know. But, see, I probably knew just the teachers and the people that I would report to because they would be in a different building. So I don't know anybody by that name, don't remember.

RM: You mentioned over lunch that you don't think that you remember any other teachers that stayed from the very beginning to the very end.

MS: Offhand, I don't think so. I think I was the only one. I can't think of anybody... Lucille, I'm not sure about Lucille Smith, she may have, because I was in contact with her after I moved down here, even up to several years after I moved. But I don't know that she was there... but after the school closed down, I think I was the only one who stayed on to help do the closing of the camp.