<Begin Segment 15>

KL: How did your parents react to Tanforan?

MS: There's not much they could do about it.

ST: No.

MS: Dad occupied himself by making that little pond. You know, every place we lived, we always had a pond. Even at Tanforan, we knew we were gonna only be there for a short time, but he dug this little pond out in front. And I don't know where he got all those twigs and things, but he made a little bridge to go over the pond and then he carved a little guy with a fishing pole sitting up on the bridge. [Laughs] That probably took up most of his four and a half months.

ST: He was very artistic. He'd find a little driftwood or whatever, he sees something in it, and magic.

MS: Yeah, in Tanforan he did go and cut some of the, they call it, you know, off the trees, he'd see a, probably where they had cut a branch off, and it made a funny lump on the tree, and I don't know where he got the saw. Maybe they let him borrow it from somewhere. And I think there was one that he had that he cut off of a tree. Because he saw some kind of a shape in it that he thought was interesting. And sometimes he'd take it and kind of embellish it to make it look more like what he sees.

KL: And he had done that at home, too? Do you remember him doing that before the war?

ST: Oh, yeah.

KL: That pond sounds amazing, with the figure and the bridge.

MS: It was just a little one, but then, you know... I don't think we even had water in it, did we? Did he put water in it? I don't think so.

KL: Did your parents, either of them, ever say anything to you or to friends about their feelings about being stuck in Tanforan, or were they pretty quiet?

ST: I don't recall them saying anything.

KL: Did their demeanors or their behavior change at all around you guys?

MS: No. I don't recall.

ST: Actually, it was kind of a relief to them. No more farming, you know?

MS: Yeah, all the hard work that they put in.

KL: Yeah, that had never really been their choice, it sounds like.

ST: Oh, no.

MS: That must have been quite a transition for them to not have a routine, you know, to have to do, to do anything.

KL: [Addressing LP]: Did you want to ask anything about Tanforan?

LP: I was actually curious, when you were talking about the Italian family, Anita's family and everything, were you aware of or looking back at that time, do you think that when people were being removed and all of this was going on, as an Italian family, were they worried about Italians being profiled in that way?

MS: I don't think so.

ST: Slightly. They were restricted in where they can move, you know. Like the bakery.

MS: Oh, really?

ST: Yeah, it was on the west side of the street, and the owner wasn't allowed to go in his own bakery. You know, they made a limit line where they can go.

MS: I don't know anything about that. Whose bakery was that?

ST: Half Moon Bay Bakery. [Laughs]

LP: And then also I was thinking, I kind of lived in Pacifica for a while, and when I look back at that time in my life, I think of the beach and the ocean. And you mentioned your dad fishing, but as a family, or as youth, did you get the opportunity just to go down to the ocean and play at the beach, or do you have any memories of just being on the ocean or the water?

MS: That was where we spent most of our Saturdays, yeah. We all got to go fish, and at low tides, we always went to get abalone.

ST: At Pillar Point.

MS: That's where Maverick's is now, where they have all that. But we used to climb up and over, there's that big radar station up there now. But we used to climb over that hill and go down to the other side. And then there was a very rocky beach down there, and that's where we used to go to get abalone when they had minus tides.

ST: Abalone and octopus.

MS: Yeah.

ST: Mussels.

MS: My mother was good at catching octopus.

KL: How do you catch an octopus?

ST: Ask my mother.

MS: She grabbed it with her hands. She saw it at the low tide, I guess it got caught in the, in between the rocks there, and she saw it and she just reached in. And I guess the thing wrapped around her. She was fearless. [Laughs]

ST: And she put it in a sack and had quite a nice meal.

LP: Did we get the exact location of where the farm was in Half Moon Bay? Do you...

MS: It's now...

ST: We used to call it Gumtree Lane.

MS: Gumtree Lane.

ST: But there's no more gum trees now, so they call it... what?

MS: Do you remember the name of the... gosh. Frenchmans Creek? That's what it's called, Frenchmans Creek Road.

ST: Oh, yeah.

MS: Yeah, that's right.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.