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

<Begin Segment 23>

RM: I'm curious, so you got married to George McCarron.

MS: Jim. James Francis McCarron.

RM: Oh goodness, all right. [Laughs] I'll let you tell that part of the story.

MS: Well, bless his heart, he was a wonderful family, Irish, obviously, and he had all the charm and everything, a good man and a very dear, lovely man, he was the love of my life. And we were married for thirty-two years, but he had, he died of pulmonary fibrosis. When he was a kid he'd had pneumonia a couple of times, so he was vulnerable in the lungs. And it was good when he went because it's a terrible thing, struggling to breathe. And then he died in '90, and I remarried in '92. I married Al, he and his wife, Rose, and Jim and I, and other couples had been good friends for, oh, I don't know, maybe fifty years. Al lost his wife in January, I lost Jim in the fall, and two years later we were married and we had a good fifteen years together. So I've had a good life. I've been very fortunate, good health.

RM: Did you speak with either your first husband or your second husband about Manzanar and your experiences there?

MS: Oh, they knew, yeah. Al and I a couple of times took trips with people through Leisure World, I lived in Leisure World after Al died. But Jim and I had built a home up here in the hills, and so we would take trips that would go up 395, that's the route, isn't it, 395, up to Mammoth, and I would always point out to Al... he knew about Manzanar, but, see, he was a World War II veteran. He had been five years in the South Pacific. Jim was not in the service because he was in the marketing business apparently in supplying food, because he's the one from Massachusetts. But anyway, and Jim and I had gone to the 25th, I think it was the 25th anniversary at the Otani Hotel down in Los Angeles. And so Jim was well aware of Manzanar, and Al and I, by going back and forth to Mammoth. But then there wasn't much going on at Mammoth.

RM: Did you keep in touch with any of your fellow teachers or anyone at Manzanar?

MS: For a while, but it petered out because we all scattered. And I think now, what a shame to not have kept contact, but I didn't. You know, other, more important things, and you can't keep piling on more and more. So I have no contact with any of them anymore. I did the first few years with, like, Lucille. And the couple I mentioned, the tall gal and a short gal, I can't remember their name, but they returned to the Midwest. The Campbells, they were such nice people, lost all contact. So there's nobody that I have been in contact or even could talk with about Manzanar.

RM: Were you aware of the Japanese American redress movement in the 1980s?

MS: The what movement?

RM: Redress movement?

MS: Oh, the money that they... yes, I was. And this couple I mentioned, the Yamaguchis, here at the women's, they have a new women's group here, and Barbara is the leader of it. And she had, Miki is the wife, Miki Yamaguchi, and she was the one that was at the camp in Arkansas. They had her as their first speaker about the internment and her situation and all of that. And it was heartbreaking because... and I think a lot of people didn't realize that, because many people living here are from other states. They're not all from California. And I think a lot of the people in the Midwest and East really weren't... they probably didn't care then that much, you know. And I'm sure that it was eye-opening to them. And she mentioned the fact that eventually there was a certain amount of money. And somebody in the group, it was just a women's group there, but a couple men were there, and Miki's husband Bill was in the back, he's a dear man. He was in the back, and somebody asked him, "Did you get money? Each one got money?" and Bill said, "Yes." And I think it was $20,000.

RM: That's right.