<Begin Segment 31>
KL: So where did you go, what was at the end of the train ride for you?
MS: Well, we ended up in Oakland and then we took the ferry over to San Francisco. And then Ack met us, and he drove us over to Hunter's Point. And they had assigned us to dormitories, and then we found out there was a whole bunch of other Japanese, displaced families that were living there. So it was kind of like a camp community again for us, all over again. That's where I met my husband. [Laughs]
KL: At Hunter's Point?
MS: Uh-huh.
KL: What were conditions like there? What was that community like?
MS: Well, it was kind of weird in the beginning because it was a dormitory. So my parents were way on one end, because they had a double room, and Tsuki and I had single rooms way on the other end. But the Japanese community, kids just kind of all stuck together. That was the first time anybody called me a "Jap," but it was a little black boy. And he didn't say it in a bad way, that's the only word that he knew, and he had never seen one before. He must have been about five or so, and he looks at me and he says, "Is you a Jap?" So he called me a "Jap," but he didn't mean it in a bad way, because that was such a common terminology in those days.
KL: Had you been around black people before?
MS: I only remember one before.
ST: One student, yeah, in Half Moon Bay.
MS: Oh, that was just before the war broke out, just after it broke out. So, yeah, but then, of course, we'd go to Hunter's Point, and then there was a lot of black people there. But in those days they were very nice to us, there was no problems. In fact, they befriended us.
KL: And how old were you when you went into Hunter's Point?
MS: I was twelve.
KL: How long did your family stay there?
MS: I was thinking maybe, what, two years? Close to two years before we moved to Candlestick Cove.
ST: I don't know, I got there and...
MS: When did you come back?
ST: '46. Christmas of '46.
MS: Oh. So by then we were in Candlestick. Although you were in Southgate also.
ST: Yeah, for a little while.
MS: That's right. So we were there for at least a couple years and then they moved us into another project. Candlestick Cove was where the, near the stadium that just got torn down.
KL: How did you and your husband meet? Who I should say, I guess, is in the room. Yas Suzuki is also here in the background.
MS: He was one of the ones that I saw walking around in the dormitories. And it was kind of funny because in camp, he was in my sister Mickie's class, and apparently he was a holy terror. And when Mickie and Hattie came to visit us one day, she saw him walking down the street, and she says, "Do you know that Suzuki boy?" And by then he was kind of my boyfriend, but I didn't want to say, so I said, "Kind of." And she says, "Well, don't get to know him, because he's a bad boy." So I married him. [Laughs]
KL: She probably couldn't win arguments with him maybe, or something. She continued to be...
MS: Well, see, when he was in camp, he was very short yet, and he didn't get his six feet tall, height yet. And she was already like five feet three, so he had to look up to her, so he didn't fool with her. But apparently he pulled some cute little tricks, like he and his friend built a moat around the stairwell of the class and filled it with water so the other kids couldn't get out, and neither could the teacher. And I think there was also an incident where he found a scorpion and picked it up and put it in one of the girls' books and slammed it shut, so that when she came in, of course, it opened up where the dead scorpion was, and she had a fit. [Laughs] And let's see, what else? Sticking somebody's pigtails into the inkwell. I guess that's enough. [Laughs]
KL: No, it's not enough. If there are more, we'd love to hear it.
MS: Anyway, that was her basis for telling me that I shouldn't get to know him well because he was a bad boy. He's reformed somewhat by now.
KL: I don't believe it. [Laughs]
<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.