<Begin Segment 6>

RP: What are some of the values that your mother and father stressed when you were growing up?

MS: Well, my father, material things didn't mean anything to him. Like... he made a living, but money didn't mean anything. He wanted us to grow up -- in fact, when we were small, he wouldn't let us use chopsticks, so I think I got to use, like I go to Oriental food even now, Japanese food, I use both 'cause I learned to use a fork before I really learned to use, you go to a restaurant, everybody else is using chopsticks. Here, I'm still using fork part time 'cause he said... and then he'd always make us talk in English. Of course the family, we'd talk in Japanese. We knew some. One day I came home from school, he says, "What did you do today?" So I tried explaining in Japanese what I knew. He says, "Oh, your teacher knows Japanese?" He wanted me to talk, tell him in English, and I start explaining to him in Japanese. He says, "Oh, your teacher speaks Japanese?" [Laughs] So he, he trained us to be Americanized, but there's a lot of discrimination those days. Lot of things happened that, like even high school, I wasn't always welcome into their clubs and things like that. It was difficult. I had, always had to fight. And my, they'd call us Japs, you know what I mean? And my brother would, he wouldn't take it, so I knew I had to go fight when they picked on him. I was a toughie. [Laughs] But I graduated my high school and I was able to go to SC.

RP: Were there, talking about discrimination at school, were there other areas of Glendora that you were not allowed to be in, being Japanese American?

MS: Like, we couldn't go in any public swimming pools. Even, I went with a church group to, they had a picnic and they had a swimming pool, and I still remember, I went up to pay to get in and they said, girl kept looking at me, she says, she's tellin' me, she says, "I don't think you better go in today." I couldn't go swimming with the group. And same with my husband, too. We went through that. Mexicans and Orientals weren't allowed in the swimming pools. Lot of, for a long, long time. And like when I went SC, it was still bad. They wouldn't, you couldn't join fraternities and sororities, so we formed, formed our own. Japanese students had their own, they called Japanese group, like we had our own socials and everything. Of course they couldn't keep you out if you were honorary. They had to accept you into like Phi Beta Kappa or something. They couldn't turn you down. But we were never invited to join any sorority. So our sponsor was the wife of a secretary of the Japanese consulate in L.A. And so she was our sponsor, so they, they classified me as 4-H because I knew somebody in the Japanese consul. I was "enemy alien." Yeah, that was in the report. You know when my father sued the Western Defense that all came out, and he was, after the war he was, just before war broke out he was working in Terminal Island in a fishing boat and he was four, he was 4-F because he was transporting oil to the Japanese. I guess the Japanese battleships were out someplace, weren't they? That's why... isn't that dumb? And then you've heard the expression purse seine? That means the type of the boat, so the FBI was goin' up and down the coast lookin' for a ship, boat called the "Purse Seine." And so the ACLU put the money out to have my husband then sue the Western Defense Command, and DeWitt was head at the time, but he didn't know what to do so he turned it over and it was the third man that they finally got down and went to trial. And all this report, so the lawyer, our lawyer got all the report that they had on, on me and my husband, my family, so not only that, they went to the neighbor in Anaheim to investigate my husband 'cause he grew up in Anaheim, and the report, it says they asked these people if my husband drank. So this lady says, "Don't you drink sometimes?" She told us about it later. That's how stupid these FBI people were. So ignorant. But that all came out. The lawyer insisted, they want the full report and they did, we saw the copy of the whole investigation. They did all little, all the dumb things came out. That because I knew the consulate's wife I was enemy alien.

RP: Did this, did this suit begin at Poston?

MS: It was in, while in camp.

RP: When you were in camp.

MS: So he, they brought him to L.A. for the trial, and they brought him with enemy escort. He couldn't travel alone. The man is... and he took my husband to visit people he knew, so one day he told me, he said, "I'd like to get away." He was bored just escorting my husband all over, so he wanted to get out and have a good time. My husband's telling him, "No, the government sent you with me. You can't leave me." [Laughs] He told him that, and then he went to visit an old friend that I had known since I was a child, and so she communicated with me so he went to call on her, and afterwards she wrote to me that all the neighbors were peeking out the window, wanted to know who that was. You know, the army car is parked there. My husband went to visit my friend, girl that I had known, we grew up together. After we both finished college we went to work together and all and she kept in touch with me when I was in camp, so my husband went to call on her when he was here for the, in L.A. for the trial. Things are pretty... so you get used to, but it was hard, because I was one of the older ones of the Niseis, you know what I mean? I had to fight for everything. There were a few that were older than me, I think, but I'm one of the older ones that, the Isseis, I mean the Niseis.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.