<Begin Segment 7>

RP: Ralph eventually got ordained as a minister?

MS: Uh-huh. (The) job he got when he was out of college was down in L.A. at... I think it was called Riis High School.

RP: Jacob Riis.

MS: Yeah. And it was Riis High School, and it was for, I think they were problem kids. And Ralph got hired because in La Verne, you know, you were taught character education and everything. But you know what happened, it was, he started at Riis High School in September of '41. Well, Pearl Harbor came on December 7th, and so he, after that, he told them that he couldn't sell defense stamps in the school. And they didn't know what to do with him because he was a conscientious objector, really. And what he, the job he had in L.A. was what they called a long-term substitute job. Well, when he wouldn't sell the defense stamps, they took it away from him. He lost that job, and so what he had to do was keep subbing in L.A. And at that time, it was good to sub in L.A. You wanted to get in L.A. It's different now, but so he'd be here two weeks and then he'd be there two weeks, and then he'd be here a week, and that's what he did the rest of the year. And so we were living in the east side of L.A. in what's called Boyle Heights. And I, that year, I started subbing around. And one job I had was in Long Beach Community College, I think it was. And I know I was teaching some stuff that I didn't, hadn't had before, spherical trig or something. But I was subbing, and I'd be there a while, 'til the person came back. And I, if I couldn't do the problem, I'd just say, "You just ask the teacher when (he comes) back." [Laughs] But I finally got a long-term substitute job in, well, it was Norwalk, Excelsior High School, I think it was. But I was teaching history. I had a minor in history, and I was teaching U.S. History. Well, you know, I knew it, but I didn't like it. But I did it the second semester, anyway. And then when, when they interned the Japanese after the war started, we decided that we could go teach with them. And they set up these War Relocation Centers, like Manzanar was about the first one, I think. Anyway, they interviewed us, and we got hired on civil service. Wasn't anything to do with the teaching business. And I know a woman came to L.A. and interviewed us, and we got this job at Manzanar. And so I think that, I think we went to Manzanar in September.

RP: '42.

MS: Uh-huh, and then we taught there until March, I taught there until March.

RP: Mary, something I wanted to bring up, when I was reading your husband's biography, you mentioned that in March of 1942, you attached to your, to your tax returns a letter protesting that the use of these, this money for war purposes.

MS: Yeah.

RP: Yeah, do you remember that?

MS: Oh, yeah, we did that a long time.

RP: You do that every year while the war was on?

MS: Well, yeah, we did it a long time.

RP: Is that something that you, you independently decided to do, or was that something that the church counseled you to do?

MS: Oh, no, no. We just decided to do it. And we just told 'em we didn't like our money being used for war, and wanted it to be used for peaceful purpose. But didn't make any difference.

RP: Since that was a time of a great deal of fear and war hysteria, did that attract the attention of the FBI to you?

MS: Oh, yeah, I think so. And you know, they'd go talk to our neighbors, and shoot, our neighbors didn't know anything about what we thought. When we lived in L.A., we lived right in Boyle Heights. But the FBI wasn't very smart. They didn't know how to find out really what people thought and did and knew. And I know that, I know they investigated us several times, different times, different places. But we never, they never... whoever they talked to always said that we were religiously motivated and that we weren't against the government or anything.

RP: You weren't trying to undermine the war effort.

MS: Yeah, right.

RP: Did the, did you actually have a, were you actually interviewed by the FBI?

MS: Oh, I can't remember. My brother was a conscientious objector, too, and he was, they had what they called a Civilian Public, CPS camps, Civilian Public Service camps.

RP: And he went to a camp?

MS: Yeah, my brother did.

RP: Where was that?

MS: Well, he went to one in, it was on the Columbia River. I've been there, too. Well, anyway, he... I can't remember the name of it right now. Anyway, he was at one on the Columbia River, and then he got a, they put him in a state hospital. I don't know what you call it, but they got farmed out. And he had charge of doing pictures and working in photography at the state hospital, and that's where he met his wife. And I know we're gonna talk at our church this year about what all the conscientious objectors did, but Ralph had, when we lived in L.A., we went to a church on the west side and Ralph got ordained into the ministry, and you didn't have to be trained. And so he was a minister in the Church of the Brethren. And then after we were in Manzanar, we started this hostel, and he was hired by the church. And so there was a man in New York, I think his name was Quniter Miller, he went to bat for Ralph and got him, I guess, out of the, didn't have to go in the military because he was a minister and he was working for the church, even if (he wasn't) a pastor. We were resettling the Japanese. We were hired by the church, I don't think we got paid much. But you know, we got our board and room and a hundred dollars or something a month, I don't know. I don't remember about all that.

RP: Right.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.