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

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RM: What was it like to look back on those years? I mean, that was a long time that you spent teaching in Manzanar.

MS: That was four years, but remember, those were war years. When you moved around -- you could move around freely if you chose, but you couldn't, because the transportation and rationing, everything entered in. So it wouldn't be like now, you just conformed to what the situation is. So it was fine for me, I was restricted, I mean, I was there. I could have gone home, why didn't I? I don't know, I just decided I'd stay to the bitter end. So it was just not much going on at all. And it doesn't make sense for a young person to stay in a place like that, does it? But I did, those last few months. Maybe because I had a job, it was secure, I didn't have to go home and start looking for another job, who knows?

RM: Do you remember helping with the Manzanar Final Report at all?

MS: No, I don't. I don't think that I would have been the person... there would have been other people that, you know, higher up that would have more information. I think I was just kind of a flunky around there. Well, you know, all I remember is that it was very easy, whatever I was doing. Just spending government money.

RM: Is there anything about Manzanar that you remember that I haven't asked you about? I didn't ask about gardens, if you ever did any victory gardening or you remember any Japanese gardens?

MS: No, but the Japanese were very artistic, and they'd have pretty little things around, right outside their door as best they could. I don't remember any areas that were outstanding. I do remember that toward the end, or maybe in the middle -- this has nothing to do with gardening, but I just thought of it, that some of the Japanese residents would go outside, not the gate, but out the back. And the management knew that, but they would get out, you know, and I don't know whether, was there someplace where they could catch fish or something? I can't remember, but they were sort of free to get out, roam about a little bit, just so they were back at dark.

RM: So you remember security lessening towards the end of camp.

MS: Yeah. And it was always at the back, toward the mountain side. And they knew that they were getting out a little bit, but it didn't seem to matter.

RM: Kristen, did you have questions about camp? Okay, so what did you do next?

MS: When I came home, I got the chicken pox. [Laughs] Never been so sick in my life, it was terrible. I decided that I was gonna take up shorthand, so I tried it. And then I came down to... toward the end of '46 maybe, late summer, I came down to, I got a job at the Red Cross here at the Marine Air Station, and I worked in the Red Cross there. A very nice man, field director, his name was Kramer, same as mine, and he had a nice family, and he had another girl who worked with him in the Red Cross, so two of the gals and George Kramer, and Julie, her name then was Cicerelli, we became very good very good friends. Okay, we worked at the Red Cross office, and mostly helping the soldiers get loans and stuff like that, you know, we had the teletype. And then Julie and I bought a little nursery school on Balboa Island. The main road, Marine Avenue, on Balboa Island. It was right next to the fire station, and we ran, we kept the two women who operated the little nursery school, because we were working in the Red Cross office. But we kept the two women, it was just run for, in the morning. We had the peanut butter, Scudder, Laura Scudder's little grandson. See, it was a wealthy area around there, and when we purchased the school, why, we got the car, too. And the two women who ran it, very nice, competent women, would pick the kids up, they'd have 'em only in the morning.

So Julie and I kind of ran that, and then that was... well, it doesn't matter what the year was. And I stayed down here until '49, and then I had to go back to look after my father in Hollywood. So we sold the school and I left the Red Cross. The Red Cross wanted to move me, they wanted to make me a field director someplace in Arizona, and I didn't want to go there. I decided to go back to Hollywood to look after my dad, and I took about a year, I went over to Hawaii to stay with a friend of mine who was a secretary to the Department of the Interior in Honolulu at the base there at, what is it? I went over and visited her for a couple months while she lived with her mother there. And I came back and then I thought, "I've got to do something," so I went back to teaching.

RM: Where did you go?

MS: I went, for two years I taught in the junior high at South Pasadena, and then they incorporated with the San Marino, so then I went to El Monte Union High School district, it was the new high school, Rosemead High School. Then I stayed there about fifteen years. And then I quit because in the meantime I had married, so just quit, that was the end of my working days.

RM: Were you still teaching Latin?

MS: Uh-huh, I was.

RM: Did you teach other subjects as well?

MS: I think once or twice they use you in some of these special classes, you know. Once or twice I had to... once I had an English class, because I knew grammar. I didn't know English literature too well, but I'm good in grammar, or English and so forth. I think I taught that, and then I think they put me with a, it wasn't a retarded group, it was sort of semi, like social studies. But basically Latin, yeah. And that's where I had Marianne, who runs this place, I had her for a couple years in Latin. And I just, it's interesting, I taught the four years in Latin, and I just, all these years, I quit in '67, and all these years I've been in contact with one of my former students. My husband and I went to her wedding, and I received a note -- every year we'd exchange Christmas cards -- I didn't get a Christmas card this year. And her daughter sent me a notice that she had died, she was only seventy. But this has nothing to do with Manzanar or anything, but you asked me, and I was just remembering Rita and going back to teaching. But I quit in '67 and I haven't worked since then. That's the story of my life. [Laughs]