Densho Digital Archive - Mary Suzuki Ichino Interview II (denshovh-imary-02-0020)

<Begin Segment 20>

RP: We were talking about some of your experiences with the WRA job. And you were just starting to talk about one of them.

MI: Oh, I went to the welfare council. Yeah. Well, oh, we were talking about Ronald Reagan.

KP: Yes, Ronald Reagan.

MI: Okay, this is a big one for me. Well, for me it is. I guess everybody else... but one of the families, a very prominent family in Santa Ana, the Neenos, they owned a big farmland. And apparently, the way I understood it was, it was entrusted to their neighbors to look after. And one of the family members came back and was welcomed with open arms but the next day they were threatened with a shotgun to leave the land. And we got onto that story. This was how we do, well, that's what the reports office job was. And Mr. O'Dea was just livid. He said, "After all what they had gone through here, you know, you make one face saying welcome and the next day you're being told to leave the land." So we wrote, we sent a telegram or something to Walter Winchell. And Walter Winchell picked up on the story. And it was on Walter Winchell. And it was big. It... oh, I was ever so proud. I was like gee, I was part of that big thing. And so it showed where how, how it could be so un-American, you know, when you don't realize what sacrificed we had made. And here that somebody had the nerve to do that. What kind of people are they? And somewhere along the line, Ronald Reagan came in on this thing somewhere and there was something like called the American, "I Am an American Day," that followed after that. And there was a band... oh, it was a big production and hardly anybody showed up. Well, you know, Santa Ana, at that time, was not known for being that tolerant, you know, of minorities. But anyway, he gave a speech. I have, that picture is in that album. I took it at quite a long distance, I don't know how you're gonna blow that up. Maybe you can't. But that's Ronald Reagan before... I don't think he was governor then. Or he was governor already. But he was so incensed, he came.

[Interruption]

RP: We were talking about Ronald Reagan.

MI: Yes. So I do have that photograph of him speaking in the stadium.

RP: This was in Santa Ana?

MI: Yeah.

RP: And you were actually sent down by the WRA to photograph...

MI: Everybody... no, not to photograph. Everybody was invited to go. And my husband at that time was on leave from the army and so we all went. And we said, gee. They said, "Well how come this place is so empty?" Said, "Well, there's a football game." So then I guess the football game was more important than this affair, whatever. But anyway, so it's something from the past that tells you what Ronald Reagan did.

KP: Do you remember the year that was? Or any idea when that...

MI: Let's see. That's gotta be about '45 because I was married in '46, yeah, it was before we got married.

KP: And Ronald Reagan's involvement was as a military person...

MI: Not as a military person. I can't remember. He wasn't a governor then.

RP: No.

MI: No, but he was very active in politics anyway.

RP: I think he was Captain Reagan at some point.

MI: Was he? Yeah, he gave a pretty nice stirring speech. It's just sad that hardly anybody showed up.

RP: He basically went on record as abhorring that kind of treatment of folks coming out of the camps.

MI: Well you know, when my husband came on leave and here's he's a warrant officer, he's in an officer's uniform, and we went to the Sears Roebucks in L.A. on Olympic Boulevard. And we were walking around deciding what we wanted to do, get this or whatever. And this one man came up to him and said, looked at his uniform, and he said, "Is that a Boy Scout uniform?" And I thought that had a lot of... I would have given him a piece of my mind. But my husband just quietly said, "If you think so." So, you have to deal with all that. If you got violent or, then you almost lose the whole point of the thing. Yeah, but that's the kind of treatment they were getting. And like even like, the reason a lot of people could not find a place to live was because restrictive covenant was still in there and they would say, "Oh, we don't want the Japanese." Or, like in, in my case there was one place, and this was in 19... about what, fifties or thereabouts? Even, you know, after the internment, I went to see a house for sale and she said, "No, I can't sell to you. Why don't you stay with your own people." I said, "What people?" So, see there, you deal with all these things. And I learned -- I guess that's what you call maturity -- anger doesn't do anything. But if you say, "Well, that's the way you feel. I guess that's your privilege." You gotta leave it at that. Let them figure it out later on. Yeah, but that's what happened.

RP: So that's the kind of thing that you were dealing in this job. You were trying to respond to these incidents or acts of discrimination.

MI: Yeah, yeah. And then there was one family that took in a student, it was a she. And there was, they found a cross burning on the front lawn. And that was right here at Pasadena. So, see, you have that. And then it was, it's very interesting how things went. Because they couldn't find a place to live, for one thing. They couldn't, people wouldn't rent to them, unless they owned their own house and they could come back to their house. My husband was lucky in the fact that there was a reverend who had the power of attorney to keep an eye on his property. So he got to go back to his old house. But others were not that fortunate. And those who were not either had to seek a place of employment that provided a place to live, and that meant that you had to be a domestic. And that's how they, from a domestic they started going back up again. Then there was one gentleman, and I can't remember his name, and, oh, he was adamant. He said he's not gonna have these people come back and be a domestic. They're not that category. Oh, okay, well, that's nice to say but if you can't find a place to live you can't find a place to live. But that's how the Japanese gradually came back. So it's pretty interesting how.

RP: From your perspective working in the WRA office, do you feel like the WRA made a real honest and sincere effort to help internees coming out of the camp in terms of... I mean, you were up against some pretty strong obstacles. But, how do you feel, again, the WRA were, was the organization that administered to your needs in the camp and then you're working for them outside. And so...

MI: Well, I don't know.

RP: Do you think more could have been done?

MI: Yeah. But see, we did a lot of work. Because we got all the nitty gritty down to earth kind of reports. Whereas like in Mr. Robertson's office which is nice, clean, they meet the official, and they say, "Yeah, this is the problem we are having. Can you help?" You know, politics is like "you rub my back and I rub your" kind of, and that takes forever. So I really can't say. But it was on the third floor where these people came in trying to find jobs, trying to find places to live. Places to live was the worst space. Yeah, that was, that was really hard for those guys. It's just like my dad, was, he was just plain lucky that he found what he did and we lived in that, god, that was a really a come down for us to live in that place. But boy, we didn't complain.