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RP: This is an oral history interview for the Manzanar National Historic Site and today we're talking with Celeste Teodor. The interview is taking place in the California Hotel and the date of the interview is August 12, 2009. The interviewer is Richard Potashin and the videographer is Mark Hatchman. And Celeste will be sharing her experience as a former internee at the Manzanar War Relocation Center as well as a resident of the Children's Village orphanage at Manzanar. Our interview will be archived in the Site library, and do I have permission to go ahead and conduct our interview, Celeste?

CT: Absolutely. Yes.

RP: Thank you very much for your time today. Very special to have you here.

CT: I'm honored to be asked.

RP: Okay. Well, I want to start out trying to piece together a little bit of what you remember about your early childhood and your family. First of all, tell us where you were born and what year.

CT: Okay, I was born June 24, 1936, at the Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles. I, the only reason why I know this information is through my birth certificate. And at that time my mother was not living with her husband. He was, the address was unknown. That's all it says. And I was the second of two children. At first we thought we were twins, but it wasn't. I was, she was eighteen years old and I was the second, one baby had already died before I was born. And that's the, I'm getting my history from the birth certificate alone and nobody else.

RP: Do you recall your mother's name?

CT: Well, I didn't know her until I was ten. She, she came to one of the foster homes that Annie Sakamoto and I were living at and she portrayed herself as a visitor named Mrs. Young, so she used to take Annie and me out to Knott's Berry Farms, things like that, periodically, not often, but periodically. And she was okay. But then after I left Wilma Stewart's house where Annie was residing I went to Aunt Jessie Bloom's house and that's when I learned that she was my mother. But I didn't like her. I'm told she was drunk and, on my first visit, and she says, "I'm your mother," and all that. I said, so what? And I told her, I says, I was ten years old, and I said, "Listen, I don't want you in my life, just get out of it." And it was, because it was a shock for her to be drunk and smoking and all that, so, and that was the end of our relationship.

RP: So your mother just gave you up after birth?

CT: She gave me up after birth, yes.

RP: And I did, was able to locate her name, Shizue Yoshida?

CT: Yeah, they called her Sue Ichioka. I thought that was her name. I have no idea what --

RP: Ichioka, and then she married this gentleman by name of Yoshida.

CT: I don't know that.

RP: That's, that was listed in those records.

CT: Oh. Well, then she must've been married to my father later on, or it could be early on. I had no idea.

RP: Right. Yeah, from what the record said that she got married in 1934 to a Frank Yoshida and then divorced him in 1937. And during that time she had apparently some other relationships, one with a Chinese man who was referred to as Sam Tong or Frank Loi, there was all these different aliases.

CT: Frank Loi? Oh, is Frank Loi an alias of Yoshida?

RP: No, of another man.

CT: Oh, of another man, because that's the only name on my birth certificate is Frank Loi.

RP: Is it Frank Loi?

CT: Yeah. But I never met him.

RP: You never met him.

CT: And never have desired to meet them.

RP: So the first time you actually met your biological mother was at, in the foster home?

CT: You mean the egg donor? Yeah. [Laughs] Was in the foster home, at age ten. This was after World War II, I mean after Manzanar.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.