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

<Begin Segment 9>

RM: Okay, thanks, Kristen. So we were just talking about September of 1942 when you were first in Manzanar. Then you donated this letter from November of 1942 that you wrote to Dr. Barnum. I'm curious to know who Dr. Barnum is.

MS: I don't know, remember much about him. He was an elderly, obviously he had been a medical doctor. He lived near us, he was friends with my folks, and of course I know him through my folks. He had a marvelous library as I remember, a lot of books. And I would visit him from time to time, but he knew I was at UCLA and all. And he's just a nice old gentleman. And when it was in response to a Christmas card that he had sent me, I think I went overboard and all that, but that's okay. And I don't recall what happened to him, but he was an elderly man. Very well educated, and a doctor, you know.

RM: So first I want to ask, did you have much correspondence with people outside of Manzanar?

MS: No, we didn't have time to write letters, no. Not much correspondence at all, by telephone occasionally. No, everybody was so busy, families were so busy. In the city, they were dealing with the gas rationing, wartime activities, and also we didn't do any writing back and forth and corresponding.

RM: So we're lucky to see this one letter then.

MS: Oh, absolutely. I hate to write. You wouldn't know it from that long letter, and I probably pondered, it's as if I'm looking at somebody else writing a letter now. But I probably put it off because... there are some people who like to write, I never have.

RM: Well, the reason I'm bringing this up is because you're such a beautiful writer, and so I'm glad you wrote this letter. One of the things I was so taken with, and I read it out loud to Kristen, was your description of the Manzanar climate. And I was wondering if you could just talk about that climate.

MS: Well, I wasn't accustomed to it, you know, oh, those awful windstorms, really. You could not see from here to there, I'm not exaggerating. And some, not all, windstorms were that way, but sometimes you really could not see. It was horrible, the windstorms. Usually in the fall as I remember, I'm not sure. And everything was so dry, I was used to Los Angeles where we had the palm trees and the green grass and everything, so it was quite a change. Although I'd been to the desert, we visited the desert when I was a kid, you know. I wasn't used to living in the dryness and cold, so cold. And once or twice we did have snow, it didn't last. But it was a miserable climate, really.

RM: And yet you said in here, "Despite all of this I like Manzanar."

MS: Well, I was probably thinking of the whole atmosphere of what we were doing, and we were building something, we were building the school because we started without any chairs, so we got the chairs, we got a desk, finally we got some books, we were building it. And I was doing my war effort. I could have gone into the navy, I could have been a... what are they called?

RM: A WAC or a WAVE?

MS: Yeah. But a junior officer, because they were looking for women with college training, you know. But with my being an only child and all that, that wasn't a backdrop for me. So I was doing my job, and I think all of that went through my mind, how do I really remember... and my parents, it was fine with them. I think they were just glad to keep me fairly close, 350 miles wasn't too bad.