<Begin Segment 13>

RP: Was it pretty much a given that you would attend a Catholic high school rather than a public high school?

MI: No, that was my choice.

RP: You decided to do that.

MI: Well, one of the reasons is that we were finding out that when you go to a parochial school, we were way ahead of the public school. We were way ahead.

RP: In terms of the curriculum.

MI: Curriculum and education...

RP: Quality of teachers?

MI: Quality of teachers. We, we were getting real... I know that there were times when kids that came from public school entered Maryknoll, they weren't up to par with us.

RP: It was quite a drop off.

MI: There was a drop off. The only one that we felt were above us was the kids from Japan. And they were learning to speak English and study English. But when it came to math, they were way ahead of us. They were... I don't know, they had already learned everything that we're just starting to learn. Maybe that was the way it was here, as against in Japan.

RP: You say kids from Japan. Are you talking about Kibei kids or...

MI: Yeah, I guess they... well...

RP: Who had gone back...

MI: No, they... see they were people, children, well it could be Kibeis, but they were basically children of employees of Japanese companies.

RP: Okay.

MI: And a lot of them came to Maryknoll. And the shipping company, the NYK line, the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, my closest friend, her father was a manager here. And when she graduated with me from Maryknoll, I went to Sacred Heart but she went to Saint Mary's Academy. So, apparently in Japan, too, they prized the parochial school system of teaching.

RP: What do you remember about your graduation from Maryknoll?

MI: From Maryknoll?

RP: Yeah.

MI: Oh, we wore this long dress, gown that we bought at Bullock's, my first long dress. Not much. Toyo took my graduation picture, that's about it. I'm pretty sure there was a lot of things that went on but, you know.

RP: Sure. Did you have any best girlfriends at the time? People you liked to hang out with?

MI: Yeah. And some of them ended up very sadly. One of them was Aiko Ohmaye. So sad. She went to Sacred Heart with me. Her sister did, too. And then when the war was declared and we had to evacuate, she was the one that called me and said, "Did you know that the next group is going to Manzanar?" And so she says, "Why don't our families sign up together so we'll go together, so we could be..." So I told my parents and they said okay, they signed up. And it turns out that we went to Manzanar and she ended up in Tule Lake. And I'm not sure what happened, but her whole family went back to Japan. Now why, I don't know. And the sad part of it is, she went through all the deprivation of the war and wanted to come back. And she came back on her own, and then we found out that she had advanced case of TB. And I didn't know that and she stayed with me. And Father Lavery is the one that found out, and had her taken as a patient at the Long Beach hospital, army hospital or something, government hospital, so that she could be given some treatment. And she never showed up and then she went to Boston where her sister lived. And then she got killed in an auto accident. And she came from a very high class Japanese family. That was a sad one. That was really, really sad. And then there's some from the PSKs that went back to Japan, got sent back to Japan. And Barbara Dougherty said that she doesn't know how they found her, but she said she did not recognize them. And she said they were in such a bad state and they were asking for her help.

RP: These were students?

MI: No, these were the...

RP: PS...

MI: Part of our PSK.

RP: Group. And they were in Japan.

MI: And they were in Japan.

RP: And they didn't recognize her.

MI: So that was, that's another, that's all part of the war. It doesn't have to do just the fighting. There's a lot of other little things that occur. So I'm not sure what happened to those girls.

[Interruption]

RP: Mary, did the rest of your siblings also attend Maryknoll?

MI: Uh-huh. All four of us.

RP: All four of you did.

MI: Yeah.

RP: And your father was able to afford, obviously afford that school?

MI: Yeah.

RP: Was he doing, how was he doing financially?

MI: Apparently he was doing well. But you know at the time, when you're young like that, you don't even think of what your parents are earning or whether they are doing good or are they making sacrifices or...

RP: Later on you realize that.

MI: Then you go, gee, you know, come to think of it, Grandpa never bought a new car. And I remember that we said, "Papa, you need to get a new car. We're getting tired of this old car." And no sooner he bought a New Yorker, then we got evacuated and he had to get rid of it. [Laughs]

RP: God, what a... yeah, the fates.

MI: Yeah. It was the way... what do they say, the cookie crumbles or whatever. But anyway.

RP: Something like that.

MI: I would say that yeah, probably my father did, you know, financially better than most.

RP: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.