<Begin Segment 8>

RM: So tell us about moving to the Owens Valley just your first day, showing up at Manzanar, what did you think?

MS: I thought it was a god-forsaken place.

RM: Had you been told what to expect?

MS: I suppose I had. But remember, when you're young like that, in your early twenties, you're open for new experiences. Oh, heck, this is an awful place, but that's okay. And it was wartime; it's a different feeling. If it were nowadays, you'd have a completely different feeling, but wartime everything was stirred up. And it was a job and challenging.

RM: Do you remember your very first day?

MS: No, I don't. All I remember is that we were given a part of the barrack, and it was empty. No chairs, no nothing, and the kids showing up. So we sat on the floor. No books.

RM: What about your, the room where you lived? What was that like?

MS: Not so great. [Laughs] That's why eventually I moved to Independence. See, I was an only child, I wasn't used to sharing a lot of stuff. And I wasn't, we had an older woman, she was the sweetest thing. We called her Kempie, I can't remember what her name was, she was there only one year. But, to me, she was old, she might have been fifty. She snored; oh, it was horrible, and I wasn't used to snoring. [Laughs] So I put up with that for a while, and then when I talked to the superintendent, I forget how it came about, but he knew the Savages very well and they had a room, so that's when I moved to Independence. But it was, I wasn't used to that kind of living. And you know, the latrines out in the middle, I just wasn't used to that.

RM: So did you live in Block 7?

MS: I think that was the block.

RM: Where the same high school was?

MS: Yeah, as I remember, it was close, but I don't... did I mention it in any of the... I can't remember what those... but we didn't have far to go.

RM: Right, yeah. I'm curious to know what the bathrooms were like in Block 7.

MS: They were latrines. They were... well, I survived it. I think they had doors. Now, there were some people that I had met... I go with a group of Japanese once a month. I have, they were all people who were in different internment camps. And they indicated that there weren't doors on the toilets or anything like that, I don't remember that being that open, and yet we went to the same latrines that they did. So I think Manzanar had a better setup than maybe that in Arkansas or Gila. Because we lived in a more cosmopolitan, sophisticated state. So I used the latrines, I guess I didn't think much about it.

RM: Do you remember the showers? Were they...

MS: They were like the high school showers, like the gym.

RM: Sure.

MS: And I think they had doors on 'em although some of the people said they didn't. Not people I know, but people I have talked with, Japanese from some of these other camps said initially... well, initially, everything was thrown together and they couldn't do everything at once. So it would be minus some doors.

RM: What month did you arrive at Manzanar?

MS: I think it was September.

RM: September, right at the beginning of school?

MS: Yes. I know it was September.

RM: Who were the first people you met?

MS: Who were what?

RM: The first people that you met.

MS: I don't know, I guess my roommates. I guess it was Kempie... there were three of us, I can't think who the other one was. She didn't stay long. A lot of them just came for one year, and it wasn't their cup of tea.

RM: So you donated this, I thought, really amazing collection to the Manzanar National Historic Site.

MS: Well, I'm glad, because I didn't think it was all that much. It just seemed like a little bit of this and that, you know, a hodgepodge.

RM: Sure. Yeah, but for us, it's a collection of rarities.

MS: It kind of ties with what other people offer.

[Interruption]

RM: This is Rose Masters, and it's tape two of an interview with Mary Jean Kramer McCarron Spallino. And we were just talking about sort of her experiences when she first arrived at Manzanar, but I wanted to let Kristen Luetkemeier on video ask a couple questions before we jump back in.

KL: They're real quick ones and they're sort of related to the two things that you're not supposed to bring up at a dinner party. You mentioned that you went to a church really regularly when you were living in Hollywood. I wonder what church that was.

MS: Bethany Lutheran Church, it was on Sunset and Alexandria.

KL: Why was it so important to you guys?

MS: Well, in those years, everybody I knew went to church. Pretty different from now. When I was at Manzanar, I usually went to church, I forget what church it would have been. And I still do go to church, I've gone to church my whole life.

KL: Rose may ask you a little more about Manzanar, and if she doesn't, I will. But then I also wondered, you kind of came of age during Franklin Roosevelt's presidencies and his programs, and I wondered what you and also your parents thought of President Roosevelt in 1940.

MS: Well, my parents were not a Roosevelt fan. And, of course, I would be apt to follow my parents, right? But looking back, I have a different feeling. I think he came along at the time when he was -- am I supposed to look at her or you?

RM: It doesn't matter.

MS: Oh. I think he came along at the time that we needed somebody like him.

KL: Yeah, thanks, that's it.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.