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RP: Tell us a little bit about some of the, were there special activities that you were involved with, with the church? I mean, how active did you become as you were growing up at the church?

MS: Well, I could play the piano a little bit, and we have, on Sunday night we used to meet when I was growing up. I guess they called it Christian Endeavor or something like that. It was just a Sunday evening thing. Of course you have Sunday school, and I've just always been active in the church. And some of our family is, and actually, all my children belong to the church. And where my oldest daughter lives, there is no Church of the Brethren so she's going to Unitarian. She says we're (as close) to be Unitarian and not be Unitarian as you could be. So we're not a... well, and we have all kinds in our church, too, back east, especially. Out here, we don't have so many, but we have from conservatives to liberals. And they have, I think it's Brethren Revival Fellowship that are the conservatives. And we have a group called Voices of an Open Spirit, and I helped start the women's caucus in our church, which is left. And, well, my children would... my son has got a little church, it's supposed to be a conservative one. His wife has what we call and "open and affirming," one that will include gays and lesbians. So Bonnie has a pretty-good sized church, but Ken, they used to have a church together in Modesto, but they don't have a church together now. So Ken got a small church and a conservative church. And I said, "What are you doing there?" "Well, Mom, I'm interpreting scriptures." And so he's a good storyteller, and he's a good people person, so he's getting along okay. He's been there a couple of years in this conservative little church. And so, as I say, we have all kinds. And when we have these annual meetings once a year, they're usually over the Fourth of July, this time it's a little later. And well, we have very much difference of opinion. I mean, they don't all see the same. And there's a new group called Voices of an Open Spirit that my son's working with, and they're having, like, a special meeting in November in Indianapolis. And I won't be going to it, but Ken will, and a lot of my friends will be there.

RP: I wanted to ask you about, were you involved in any, as a youngster, a teenager, or your parents, the church is founded a lot on social activism. And were you at a young age involved in helping other groups out?

MS: Well, when I went to college, I went to Pomona Junior College and then, because it was cheaper. We didn't have much money. And my dad had gone back to Texas, and my mom had traded the house in La Verne for one in Pomona where she could rent out rooms. They had a paper mill, it was on the west side of town, and she was trying to make a living renting out rooms. And we went to church, we had to walk a good mile. Our church was downtown in Pomona, and we lived way out west. Finally, Mom sold that place, or I think we let it go. I think it was a time when FDR was president, and I think we owed six thousand dollars on it, and it got, the value went down and it wasn't worth it, so we just let it go. So Mom bought a new place for eighteen hundred up close to the middle of town by the YMCA. And that's where we moved. And I was living in this little house when, by 1940 when I got married. And well, yeah, I started to tell you that when I was in college, we had kind of groups that went around to the churches and told about what was going on in the world. And I had to represent Mussolini from Italy, and I always told that story. But we also had an International Relations Club, and I was in that in the beginning. That was when I was in college. I'm trying to remember, the Quakers have Whittier College, and I know one summer I went to a thing there. It was a... I can't think of the name of the group that had some kind of meeting down there and I know I went down there with my teacher, Miss Muir. She was a very good teacher, and she was at the university, La Verne College, then she went to Manchester, then she came back, and she was out here again. And we went down there for a week and I washed dishes or something to pay for my meals. And I worked all the time because we didn't have the money, and I got some scholarship when I went to La Verne. And, of course, junior college is cheap. But I've always been an outgoing person, and I always have been able to make speeches. So I've done it around in the churches on various things. And, of course, after I was in Manzanar, then I talked about Manzanar and showed these pictures I have. I've just always been an outgoing person.

RP: You got a degree in math?

MS: Yeah.

RP: And then you got a teaching credential after that?

MS: Uh-huh, at the same time.

RP: And that was from La Verne College?

MS: No. At the time I finished college in 1937, and La Verne didn't have a graduate program. So I had to go to Pomona. And we had a relationship, we could go to Pomona and take courses, and we could even go to their, they had a concert series in Bridges Hall over there, in Bridges Auditorium, the auditorium's the big one. And we had a relationship, we could go to those musicals. It was the time of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald and all those people. But anyway, so I took courses at Pomona College while I was going to La Verne. And at that time, the red cars were going, and you could go from, you could go from La Verne to Pomona or you could go from La Verne to Claremont, or you could go from Pomona to Claremont. And I went on those. And then I got a car, my brother bought me a car. And you know, then you could get a car for thirty-five dollars. And so the second year, I went to La Verne, I brought other people from Pomona to college at La Verne. And then even for the graduate year, well, one summer I got a job (with) a family in Claremont, I made fifteen dollars a week. And they were very educated people, and they had an aunt and uncle living with them. I know I made fifteen dollars a week, and I saved it up and I got a, I bought a typewriter and a car. I think I paid thirty-five dollars for the car, and you know, I don't know what the typewriter cost.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.