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

<Begin Segment 4>

RM: Before I move on to asking how you got interviewed to be a teacher at Manzanar, I'm curious about what made you decide to pursue becoming a teacher in the first place.

MS: Well, in those years, I wasn't... I did have friends who were -- women friends, girlfriends -- who were interested in the medical field. I was not, and you either went into the medical field or you became a teacher, and that just seemed to be the logical thing for me. Because most of my girlfriends were going to become teachers. I did have one friend who wanted to be a doctor, but the field wasn't all that... I mean, it didn't have all those different choices then because those, not everybody went to college then. And if you didn't, why, then you became a stenographer or something like that, a secretary. So most of my friends became teachers.

RM: And so did most of your girlfriends go to college that you were close to?

MS: From high school, I would say that all of my friends went on to some further education, any of my close friends, yes.

RM: What did your parents think about your decision to become a teacher? Were they supportive?

MS: Oh, whatever. Just so I went to school. [Laughs]

RM: Yeah, they wanted you to be educated?

MS: Absolutely.

RM: Had your parents studied any languages like Latin and German?

MS: Well, my dad was of German extraction. So, and his father had been born in Germany. Not his mother, but his father. And it was... it wasn't the prime language in their household, but it was the second language. And remember, he was reared in a small community in southern Minnesota where there were a lot of either Norwegian or Germans. And so my dad could speak German. Now, I don't think it was very grammatical, and he'd only use it... but even to his old age, if somebody was German, my dad, I think he was trying to show off at that point, but he would speak German. But my mother was of English extraction, so there was no German spoken in our house.

RM: Uh-huh. This is going back in time a little ways, but I had read about how some families who spoke German in the home during World War I, they stopped, they repressed that.

MS: Oh, yeah, they didn't dare speak.

RM: What about your grandparents, your grandpa on your dad's side.

MS: Well, he had... they were gone, my grandparents. My grandmother, she was operated on by Will Mayo, but she died, she was only in her fifties. I think she had ovarian cancer, as I recall. I forget what the question was. [Laughs]

RM: [Laughs] Sorry.

MS: Oh, did my grandfather speak. And he died in 1910, so the war didn't affect him at all, World War I.

RM: What about your dad during World War I? Was he...

MS: Well, see, by then he was a doctor. Let's see. My dad graduated in 1910 from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. And then he went, after he and Mother married, then they moved to Minneapolis and he worked with the Minneapolis Steel & Machinery as their medical guy. So there was no German spoken. And I don't... World War I, I don't think they encountered, I don't think any people in southern Minnesota encountered any antagonists maybe because a lot of them were from, ancestry, from Germany.

RM: Did he talk about what the World War I years were like in Minnesota, especially if he was working in the steel area?

MS: No, not much. But you know, when I was a little girl, see, when I was a little girl, that would be the early '20s, I remember there were so... my parents would be young then, they had so many friends, and I remember them talking about people being, men, soldiers being shellshocked and their lives ruined. And I know my dad had some cousins who were in the war. My father was not in the war because of this heart murmur. But I do remember, and I was aware of a lot of casualties after World War I, just maybe there weren't a lot, but in my little mind, I could remember hearing about these things.

RM: Well, thank you for going back in time there from where we were.

MS: Oh, yeah, things I haven't thought about for a long time.

RM: It's very interesting, and it's interesting that you continued that tradition of learning German that your grandpa had spoken.

MS: No, I'm sure they did speak it, because my father's father, my grandfather, was a blacksmith in this little town of Preston, just outside of Rochester. And I'm sure that he spoke a lot of German with neighbors, and my grandmother was also of German extraction, but she was born in this country. But I'm sure that she knew German, but I don't remember my father saying that it was not their major language, it was English. Because I think those immigrants really felt that they wanted to be American, and you have to speak English, and they wanted their kids to speak English. But I don't know that.