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

<Begin Segment 5>

RM: Well, so let's move forward to the next war this country was in, World War II. You mentioned that...

MS: [Laughs] I remember that very well.

RM: Yes. You mentioned that you graduated from UCLA with your undergraduate degree in 1941, and then went on to get your masters in teaching degree and graduated in '42. How did that... so where were you and how do you remember the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan?

MS: Oh, anybody alive would remember. It was Sunday, we were in church, my mother, dad and I, we went to... we always went to church. Came home, the kid down the street came up and told us.

RM: What did you think?

MS: Well, it was a shock, can't believe it. But I think everybody... and I had a friend, he died about six months ago, my age, he was wounded at Pearl Harbor. So I often heard a lot of what he had to say. As a matter of fact, it probably saved his life, because he was wounded and he had to be cared for, and he wasn't sent on to wherever.

RM: Did you know soldiers who were fighting in the war during the time that you were at UCLA, or that were in the military?

MS: When I was at Manzanar -- well, so many, oh, yeah, so many went. I mean, all the young fellows who were, whatever they called... what was the term?

KL: I don't know the designation, but whoever was eligible.

MS: Everybody... as a matter of fact, this is a sideline, I don't know whether you're interested. I have a cousin, he's my age, two months older, lives in Falls Church, Virginia. He was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, and just this last six months, he got his Silver Star, seventy years later. But, see, so much was going on in that battle that errors were made. Anyway, he finally got, he made it through. And I had a couple of cousins, and they made it through the war.

RM: Did things change for you after the United States entered the war?

MS: Well, it changed for everybody in the United States.

RM: What was the effect at UCLA and in your neighborhood?

MS: Well, of course, the kids, the men at UCLA, they'd all be concerned about their military, December of '41 to so forth. I don't know, I just continued on from '41 to '42 with my regular classes. That's what my friends did.

RM: What do you remember in the newspapers at the time and on the radio about what was going on?

MS: We had the radio on constantly, and we'd hear this and we'd hear that. But I don't... it'd be like now, like Iraq and Iran, I mean, Afghanistan and all...

RM: A lot of information?

MS: Yeah, you get different information. And of course it wasn't, didn't come through as quickly or readily.

RM: Do you remember hearing anything on the radio about what was, you know, Japanese Americans, or even immigrants of Japanese ancestry who weren't U.S. citizens?

MS: Well, there was a lot of antagonism. We never felt it, and I think... I mean, the people I knew, we didn't think much, we didn't consider those that we knew, we didn't put 'em in the same category as those in Japan. Because we knew Japanese, we had friends, we knew that they were hard workers and they kept the fields going down here. So when they made them, gave 'em that short time to get rid of everything, we didn't think it was right, at least the people I knew and my family. But there was a lot of antagonism also, and it's understandable.

RM: Do you remember talking about that with your family?

MS: Oh, of course. I'm sure that it probably was the major conversation every day. And I can remember, there's something on the radio, or I don't know, but that the group of guys maybe in the newspaper I saw it too, where there was that song, "Goodbye Mama, I'm off to Yokohama," that kind of thing going on. Well, that was derogatory, of course, but it's understandable when you're taken off guard. I'm sure there was a lot of antagonism, and there certainly was in Owens Valley. Because they said that, there were people there that said if they saw a "Jap," they'd shoot 'em.

RM: I'm going to make a note to ask you about what the Owens Valley was like, because that's... we're really interested in that. Could you tell me if you remember any, having to do blackout curtains or anything like that?

MS: Oh, yes. Because I was still in school, I was going to UCLA, and I had a part-time job at Sears. Okay, Sears is, this Santa Monica that we mentioned, and the other street, five blocks. And the first night of the blackout, I had to work, so it must have been a weekend, I can't remember now. But the first night of the blackout, I had to work at night, and I had to walk the five blocks home. And I've never seen such darkness in my life. I was thinking about that the other day. It was a really weird, eerie feeling the first night.

RM: Yeah, Los Angeles with no lights.

MS: No lights at all. And we had to have the curtains, you had to pull 'em and all that.

RM: What was your job at Sears?

MS: What was my job? Oh, honey, I was a clerk. But eventually I worked up to the catalog section, and I loved that because I was behind a desk, people would come to me and I'd just write down their orders. [Laughs] Well, that was really moving up. I had originally, when I was at Hollywood High, worked at Woolworth's on Hollywood Boulevard, that was a neat place to work. Because at Christmastime, you know, when they had the Christmas parade, these people, famous people sometimes would drop in to the five and dime store, you know, to pick up something. [Laughs] But then I was elevated from that to, behind the catalog section.