<Begin Segment 13>

RP: Yeah, wanted to just go back to the experience you had discovering your biological mother. Can you share with us kind of the, the experience that you, just tell us what, what happened? And the other thing I wanted to ask you was, this is the first time that you actually know she's your mother and yet you tell her to leave. Can you give us a sense of the emotions and feelings you had, maybe during that exchange and after that exchange, and did you regret the actions that you took or did you support the actions that you took?

CT: Well, she had come to visit as Mrs. Young to Jessie M. Bloom's house and took me out. I don't even know where we went. And in the middle of that visit she says, "I want you to know that I am your mother." And she says, "I notice that lately you have been shunning away from me, " and she says, "You know, you should like me because I'm your mother. I gave birth to you." Oh, brother. And so I says, well -- and at that time she was drinking, her own little flask, and course I've been taught that drinking was sinful and all this and that, so that didn't help the situation much -- and I just told her, I says, "Well, I don't know about you, but I do not want any more visits from you because --" She says, "But I'm your mother." I says, "I don't care. You never took care of my the first ten years of my life and I don't wish to have you do so now." And I just told her to get out of my life. I says, "I don't think you're good for me." And I said that as a ten year old, and that was the last I saw her. And Aunt Jessie, she knew how upset I was. She wasn't present when I said this, but when I got home, then I was very upset and so, but she was very understanding. Says, "I don't know who that woman thinks she is, but she says I should love her because I'm her biological, or I'm, her mother who gave birth to?" She didn't say biological, 'cause I didn't even know what the word meant in those days. So, so that was it, and I have absolutely no regrets because I think she would've been bad for me. She would try to take me to visit these places for, to learn these exotic sexual dances and things like that and I wasn't the least bit interested in learning dances like that and she was so disappointed that I just wasn't interested in things like that and I was interested in sports, baseball, things like that, basketball. So we just had nothing in common. There was nothing there, so I told her to leave and that was it.

RP: You grew up pretty fast.

CT: You grow up real fast then and you have to speak for yourself because if you don't nobody else will. I learned that after getting out of Manzanar. I never had this feeling before. When I was in Manzanar I always felt that people were there to support me and they did support me. Even the townspeople supported me. The priest supported me. So I never felt that I needed to defend myself like I did after I got out of Manzanar. And so I says, well, you have to defend yourself.

RP: Right. So high school brought a whole new sense of family to your life.

CT: It did. High school was wonderful.

RP: You were president of the girls' athletic association.

CT: Yeah.

RP: You were also involved in the student body.

CT: Student body's legislature. I was vice president of my class and cheerleader, all the fun things.

RP: And of course boys, too.

CT: Oh, of course. [Laughs] That goes without saying. Yes. I was crazy about boys.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.