<Begin Segment 3>

AL: Do you remember anything about the first grade?

AS: Well, I still have the report card from first grade believe it or not. And I received "unsatisfactory in behavior" so I think I was kind of naughty. I don't remember specifically the incident except being in a dark closet. I do mention it in my story.

AL: Could you tell us again?

AS: Yes, I was put in a closet for an unknown reason. And I was in there crying and then I saw an inkwell on one of the books so I took the inkwell and poured it over the books and then I don't remember what happened after that. I must have, probably, I must have been spanked because that memory's erased. So I was not a, an angel in first grade.

AL: And this is at Manzanar?

AS: Yes.

AL: The closet at Manzanar?

AS: Uh-huh.

AL: And, yeah that's, that's an interesting story. I read it in the book but, like I said, we want to have the stories also on this tape.

AS: Uh-huh.

AL: If someone... because people may not have read that interview, so I might ask you some of the same questions. So when you, when you were at Children's Village, you don't have memories of, other than playing with the babies, you have any other memories there?

AS: No, I don't. I don't recall playing with the children or roaming... well, of course, being small like that I wouldn't be roaming around the camp. I just stayed in that section of the Children's Village.

AL: Were there any people on the Children's Village staff that you had a connection with? Any of the staff members?

AS: There was John Nakayama and then there was wife Taiko, I think, yes. She, they were the one of the caregivers, or they were among one of the caregivers. And I kept in contact with John Nakayama after camp.

AL: So did they live there at Children's Village?

AS: I think so, yes.

AL: Did you recall the Matsumotos?

AS: None whatsoever. I... being so young I don't recall them. I think they were sort of like the administrators. So they didn't, I don't recall their mingling with our, us children.

AL: Right. And, do you know anything about the background of the Nakayamas? Had they been at Shonien before the war?

AS: I don't know anything about them.

AL: When did you first meet Celeste, your friend Celeste?

AS: Well, it was actually... Miss Stuart was a schoolteacher and she asked the government for the last two foster children in the camp and Celeste and I were the one, last two.

AL: Had you, the two of you, bonded in camp at all?

AS: No, it was only when we came to be foster children with Miss Stuart.

AL: Okay. In your other interview you talked a little bit about, was it Miss Robbins?

AS: Yes.

AL: Yeah. And could you tell us a little about her and your memories of her?

AS: Yes, I remember going to her house, sitting on her lap 'cause I was just young, playing with a typewriter, or with a piano, and apparently she placed Celeste and us, and myself, into a foster home. And then she, I must have impressed her somehow because she kept in contact with us and she came and visited Celeste and myself. Took us out I think to the zoo and then I communicated by letter every year until she ended in a nursing home and passed away and then... so I kept in contact when she was in her nineties.

AL: Wow. So what, could you give us her full name and what her position was?

AS: Eva, E-V-A, Robbins, R-O-B-B-I-N-S. She was a social worker there and I believe that she placed children in the foster homes or parents before they left the camp.

AL: Do you have any recollection at all of the fact that we were at war, I mean, as a child, did you know why you were at Manzanar?

AS: No, I had absolutely no idea. It was only when I got out of the camp, in junior high and high school that I realized that we had been at war and that's why we were put in the camp.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.