<Begin Segment 11>

RP: What do you remember about Terminal Island in the time that you lived there? The community...

MS: It was quite a few Japanese people there. I imagine there must've been a couple thousand living there, that were working in the canneries. Women packed the fish, and fisherman that lived there. So to get that many people out in forty-eight hours, that was a job. Couldn't get enough trucking people to come in to move them.

RP: Did you, did you see Caucasians who came in to help, like the Quakers or any other churches?

MS: Oh, the Quakers, you know Reverend Nicholson? He, did you know him? Well, he was very, he was very close to us. In fact, he wrote a book and he has, our names are in there, Ishii family, Shigekawa family. He died not, some time ago.

RP: Did he personally help you out?

MS: Yeah, he came right in to help people moving and all. He came to camp often. And the Quakers were very good, more than the other Christian group, and he was sort of personal friend of ours. In fact, he lived in Pasadena for a while and my folks lived there, so we went to call on Reverend Nicholson 'cause he was living there, and we met his son who was a young teenager. So I think it was a couple years ago, my son and his wife were in Pennsylvania, they have a Quaker museum, I believe, and they were in there and this man came out, he must've been, they said around eighty, old man, and he start, being Japanese, he start talking to them and he asked what camp they were in. And they found out that was that boy, Reverend Nicholson's son, way in Pennsylvania. Here my kids from here went on a vacation, so he, he wanted to talk all about, he says he came to Poston with this father and he said he knew, remembered me and my husband. Isn't that a coincidence? So my sister's working, my daughter's working on trying to get information, so she called him and she's talked to him on the phone and he calls once in a while and talks to her, and he said, he talked and talked and he follows 'em out to the door. He just was so happy to see someone that knew about his parents. And they're very wonderful people, the Quakers. They really, he came right into camp and when they were relocating he came, really helped, and he, I think he went to Washington, protested, I believe. He was one of 'em, I think.

RP: So he visited you in Poston, too?

MS: Yes. And it's so funny, his son said he remembered me. He was young, he must've been ten or, I don't know, young boy, and he happened to bring up, asked my son which camp and he told me he was born in Poston and it came to a head that, he says, "I know your parents." Isn't that a small world? And then not only that, like my son went to New York on a visit, and he went to make a reservation at a nice restaurant, and he went in and this maitre d says, "Mr. and Mrs. Shigekawa," he made the reservation. And usually they ask you how to spell it and said to them, he said, "I know a Shigekawa." That was in New York. And then he said, "I know a Shigekawa." My son says, "Where you from?" He says, "Texas," this boy, that maitre d at that restaurant, real fancy restaurant in New York City, and he said, so my son said, "Oh, that's my cousin that lives in Texas." He's a schoolteacher, and this maitre d says, "He was my schoolteacher." [Laughs] Isn't that something? And not only that, the schoolteacher's wife is, is married to a, what was it, a pitcher for Angels, Nolan?

RP: Nolan Ryan?

MS: Well, my one in Texas is married to Nolan Ryan's wife's sister, I think. So I tell everybody, Nolan Ryan's my relative. People look at me, says, "What?" I say, "Well, my nephew married Nolan Ryan's..." And here, just, and here, 'cause I told my kid, I said, "No matter where you go, you better be a good, behave yourself. You don't know who, where, who you run into." And then my daughter was at Jackson Hole and she ran into my nephew's daughter from Sacramento that married a man that had something with the Park Service at Jackson Hole, running, running a boat, you know how the river, what do you call, raft and all that? So I guess she used the name Shigekawa, her being a screenwriter, that's her, she uses her maiden name. So he recognized the voice, he says, "My wife is a Shigekawa." I said, "Well who?" It was her cousin's daughter. Her cousin's daughter from Sacramento was in Jackson Hole, and so we tell my kid, I said, "Behave, no matter where you go. You don't know who you're gonna run into." 'Cause there were six brothers, my husband's Shigekawa family, and then there were two brothers that each one had seven kids and my husband's family had six, so they're all over and they're all, they're all related some way. It's not a common name. So now there are about three, four generations so they're all over. So every one of 'em, if there is one, I don't... if there is one, it's not, they're not related, but no matter where you go, if they're Shigekawa, some place we're related, some way. Thirteen kids, they're all over, all over United States.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.