<Begin Segment 10>

RP: Let's, you just told, shared with us how difficult it was to leave a very positive, loving situation at Manzanar and then go into this, this void of uncertainty. So at that point in time you become kind of a ward of the state, and so the state basically tells you you're going here, you're going wherever and they place you in this home. Tell us a little bit about Wilma Stewart, what you remember about her. I know there's... not very favorable, but share with us what she was like and what set you off about her.

CT: Well, Wilma Stewart, number one, a kid doesn't like an ugly person. I mean, I can't help it, but that's true. When you're, when you're nine years old you look at the person you're supposed to live with and she's short, fat and ugly. [Laughs] So I, that was number one why I didn't like her. And then as she, as I lived with her I noticed that she was exploiting all the foster children to work like slaves in her yard, do the garden work and the housework and the dishes and all that. Well, I was a little too young to have that exploitation to the fullest, but we did have to do dishes. And then Mrs. Young, my biological mother, who called herself Mrs. Young at the time, came to visit Annie and me and take us out, and I guess she saw something in Wilma that she did not like for me, so she talked the welfare people to move me out of there because she was a religious fanatic to the point where, "No, you can't curl your hair because God made you have straight hair and that's the way he wants you to have it," some nonsensical thing like that. So I got out of there, I guess, after a year. Thank God, otherwise I might've been a basket case or a criminal or insane, or all three, see?

RP: So your biological mother had some influence in getting you out of...

CT: Yes, she had some influence on that and I do thank her for that, but I didn't know she was my biological during that time. But she talked to the welfare, and as a matter of fact the welfare took all the children away from her except Annie.

RP: Why, why did she, why did they leave Annie there and take everybody else?

CT: Well, Annie, I guess Annie, Annie was very compliant. She was always, did what she was told, never gave anybody a bad time, but Annie was also very bright in school work, so she says, "Oh, I have the perfect child here. She'll do as I tell her and make top grades." And that's exactly what Annie did.

RP: And the state paid Wilma --

CT: No, I don't think they paid. I'm not sure. You'll have to check with Annie on that. I think that she volunteered to take Annie under her wing for nothing. I'm not sure on that, though. I cannot be positive.

RP: How many other kids did she have there?

CT: She had about five others.

RP: Including you and Annie?

CT: Yeah.

RP: And tell us about, do you remember who they were, what their ethnicity was? Were they --

CT: They were Caucasians. All of them were Caucasians.

RP: Did you bond with any of them at all?

CT: No, I did not. I just didn't, I think I lost my bonding after Ruth left. I said, no, I'm not gonna bond with anybody. Course, I didn't know this was a defense mechanism on my part at that time, but I decided not to bond with anybody, and I never bonded with anybody after that, until I went to the Nitake's, but maybe that's for a later session.

RP: Yeah, we'll get, we'll get to that. Where was Wilma's home located? Was it in Los Angeles?

CT: Yeah, it's in Los Angeles, Herman Park, Highland Park area. And Annie still lives there and she inherited the property, so she still lives there, so I go visit her in my old stomping grounds, I should say. But I would never go visit her while Wilma was still living. I mean, to stay overnight or anything like that, 'cause Wilma felt, thought that in my teenage, while we were teenagers that I would be a bad influence on Annie, so she kinda kept us separated.

RP: Incorrigible character.

CT: Yeah. Well, the welfare, they stamped my, at least one welfare lady, her name was Hammer and she had no teeth and her hair was all disheveled, and she was another ugly person that I didn't like, and she, what she did is that she stamped my, my folder "incorrigible." [Laughs] She did.

RP: From the experience at Wilma's?

CT: No, from the experience that I had with her, 'cause I was very mouthy at that time and she couldn't stand it.

RP: She couldn't take it, so you were, you got this label of incorrigibility, kind of like an institutional label.

CT: Yeah. But it didn't bother me.

RP: So you went from this very disillusioning experience at Wilma's -- and by the way, Wilma didn't have a family of her own, did she? She was a single woman?

CT: She was a single woman. She had a single sister and she had her mother, her elderly mother. And the elderly mother, she was more understanding as far as human nature went, but, because she was married and she knew the ins and outs of how to raise kids, but the welfare system, I absolutely have no respect for them because they place people in such inappropriate homes for the children. But maybe that's all they had, too. And I just said oh my gosh. Like they placed me in the Nitake home and that was the last home that I was placed in at age thirteen to this woman who was sixty years old, I'm thirteen, and she doesn't speak my language and I don't speak her language. The saving grace were her children, who were, they were ten years older than me, but they still lived in the home, see. But they were my saving grace and to this day they're my very dearest friends, but I never bonded with the, with the old lady, never. No.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.