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RP: Tell me about, a little bit about your sisters. First Martha.

VI: Well, I can haul her here and let her talk to you, but she's here at this reunion. She's older, she turned, went to beauty school and became a beautician, and had her own beauty shop. She had that before the war, she had just started it.

RP: That was in Spokane?

VI: No, in Seattle.

RP: Oh, she started in Seattle?

VI: Seattle. Then, you know, when we got relocated, and when she left, she went back to Spokane, and then she worked at a beauty shop for a while, and then came back to Seattle.

RP: So she owned her own beauty shop in Seattle?

VI: Right, yes.

RP: How much older was she than you?

VI: She's about six years older.

RP: And how did you get along with your sisters? I know...

VI: They tolerated me, you know. [Laughs] So being, they probably tolerated and spoiled me, is probably what they did.

RP: I hope so. Everybody else did.

VI: [Laughs] 'Cause I can't, I can't remember any harsh words that they said to me. So they still treat me very well. My other sister, after relocation, she went to college, and she studied special education. And on a Fulbright scholarship she went to Japan to study special education. And the most interesting things that she told me is in the United States, if you have a retarded child, that child is usually cared for, or brought out in the open and try to do things. When you go to Japan, if you had a retarded child, they'd hide it. So you had a complete different idea of what special education was. So it was a very, very interesting subject and experience she had going back there and seeing the difference. And then she went to school in Japan for a little while and came back, and then she's been a special ed. teacher at the Oakland School for thirty years. Of course, she's retired now.

RP: That's in Seattle?

VI: In Oakland, California, yeah.

RP: I'm sorry, Oakland. Seems obvious.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2007 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.