Densho Digital Archive - Celeste Teodor Interview

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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.

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RP: Yeah, let's go back and, so where were you placed as a, as a child with no parents?

CT: Well, I was told, this is just what I was told, that I was at Shonien as an infant and I was raised there, and after World War II broke out then we were all transferred to Manzanar. And I was five years old turning six, about to turn six.

RP: Do you have any memories whatsoever of your time as an orphan at the Shonien?

CT: No, but I do remember the kindergarten class I was in in the public school, and when they said I had to leave the whole class and the teacher gave me a big party and gave me a rubber doll, which I'd never had, and they told me I could bathe it and all that, and it was just wonderful.

RP: This was when you found out you were going to Manzanar?

CT: We were going, they all found out all the Japanese were gonna leave and I was the only one in kindergarten, so the rest were Caucasians, and they all gave me a big party. I says, oh, how nice. It was nice.

RP: How, how soon did, or how early in your life did you realize that you were different in the respect of your ancestry, being Japanese and also Chinese? Did it occur to you early in life or was it until Manzanar?

CT: No. That I, you mean when I was first discriminated against?

RP: Actually, when you --

CT: That's when you first know that there's a difference.

RP: That your different.

CT: It was after, after Manzanar, in the fourth grade and this was, the wounds of World War II and the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor was still very fresh, so I remember my girlfriend says, "You know, Celeste, I want to invite you to my birthday party, but my parents says you can't come because you're a Jap." And of course, oh, that hurt terribly, but you get over it. But it was, I liked the kids. I liked my peers, wherever I was I liked them and I adjusted very well in the school system.

RP: Do you remember anything about your life at the Shonien relative to where you stayed? Did you have your own room or did you, were there a lot of kids in one large room?

CT: Now, that's at the Shonien?

RP: At the Shonien.

CT: I don't remember one thing. Not one blessed thing, except my kindergarten class. That's all. I don't remember anything. I must've been well loved because they had this caregiver, Ruth Takamuni, who was at the Shonien and then she was transferred to Manzanar. Now, the first six years of my life was under her care and she was very loving, I keep track of her family and everything. She recently died of Alzheimer's, but we became very good friends with her family, 'cause I just tell them how wonderful Ruth was. And I think that helped me a lot in later life because I had love and she used to teach us religion, about God. I think that's what saved the day in my late teenage years, not to be committing crimes or ending in a mental institution or something because you just pick a path. It's either constructive or destructive, and I believe that Ruth was a big factor in this, my life.

RP: So she kind of filled the void of not having a mother? She was kind of like a mother figure to you?

CT: Yes. Oh yeah, she did and I bonded very well with her, 'cause I remember her name, I remember everything that went on in Manzanar, and I, I have nothing but good things to say about the orphanage. Whereas I'm hearing some of my colleagues, they didn't have such a good time. They said that they were locked in a closet and beaten, but nothing, I never had those experiences.

RP: At Manzanar?

CT: Yeah, at Children's Village. I was shocked to hear this, but I believed them because that's what they experienced.

RP: Did Ruth, did Ruth have her own family at the time that she...

CT: Oh, no. She was just a young person, I guess in her early twenties. She wasn't married or anything, so she just came along with Lillian and they decided not to go to their families, wherever they were stationed at. She decided, and the other caregivers decided, according to Lillian Matsumoto, to come along with the children that they had nurtured all these years, so I thought that was wonderful.

RP: There was quite a discussion about making sure that the people who had loved you at the Shonien loved you at Manzanar too, to keep the staff intact.

CT: Right.

RP: It was very important for the children's welfare. And in your case, Ruth was that person.

CT: Ruth was that person, yeah.

RP: Anything else that you remember, special about Ruth, made her really special in your eyes?

CT: She was just very loving and she would teach about Jesus and, as children and not in a fanatical sense, but she would just teach us between right and wrong and give us a superego, so she just saved me. She saved me from myself, let's put it that way, as I became a rebellious teenager.

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RP: Now, where did that rebelliousness begin?

CT: Oh, I think it began when they, in Manzanar when they, when they used to make us eat everything off our plate and I wouldn't do it, and I didn't like, if I didn't like food they'd make us sit there 'til midnight at the dining hall, and then at midnight they'd let us go. They told me it was midnight; I had no idea, but I know it was a long time because there were several of us that wouldn't, wouldn't eat what we didn't like.

RP: And what were some of those foods you didn't like?

CT: Well, the one particular one was that shaved daikon, you know what that is? Ooh, horrible. I get the creeps. And all my friends would say, "Oh, we love it, Celeste." I said, "Well, you take it whenever it comes." It's a garnishment that comes with sashimi and they, I said, "You can have it, but I won't touch it." And that was the only thing I didn't like.

RP: And so you just kind of waited them out?

CT: Just waited. Waited and waited and waited until they told us we could leave, but I won the battle. They did not.

RP: Important. Important.

CT: That's why they say that I fight. You said in the paper that they said I was a fighter, well I was.

RP: Questioned authority. So other than Ruth, do you have any recollections of all of Lillian or Harry Matsumoto at the Shonien?

CT: Not at all. I know that they, they had, they were in charge of the physical end of it, the making the dormitories functionable and making them sensible, that we had indoor plumbing and we didn't have to go a block to go to the bathroom or anything like that. And I think our mess hall was, was in the confines of the Village. That's all I remember. And they had beautiful lawn. I remember that, and pear tree 'cause we used to pick the pears and wrap 'em up in newspaper because they said that's the way that ripen, and I didn't know it, but we wrapped 'em up in newspaper and got to eat 'em when they were ripe. And I just remember a lot of good times there. I remember the swat line, too. The swat line is when the -- your peers did this -- you'd have to go through swat line. They'd hit you if you misbehaved. The line, I guess they gave a list, said, "Okay, the following are to go through the swat line," and at least you're, you had to go swat line while your peers whacked you on the behind.

RP: So did, you got swatted a few times?

CT: Oh, yeah.

RP: So why, what would you get swatted for?

CT: I don't, I have no idea. [Laughs] I don't know what I did wrong. I said, "What did I do wrong? I didn't do anything wrong."

RP: Would these be kids your age or older kids?

CT: A little older, but boy, when it was their turn, I was able to swat them, too. Because after all, I was from six to eight in camp.

RP: So that's how discipline was enforced in the Children's Village.

CT: Yeah, that's what they say, but I wasn't in the swat line too often. I was, would escape it. But what I liked about the Children's Village was the freedom. I'm finding some stories where they said that you couldn't leave the confines of the Village, but I don't find that true because I used to wander all over that camp. They told me later it was one square mile. I said, "But I'm seven and eight years old." You're older you can do, people they don't give seven and eight and nine years old kids any credit for having any brains. So, so we used to, I used to walk all over that place. I used to visit my girlfriends in school's homes where a lot of, I hear, a lot of the orphans say that -- not a lot, a few of the orphans -- says they were never allowed in the homes of their friends.

RP: You were welcomed?

CT: I was welcome. And then if I missed dinner at the orphan, at the Village, I don't think there was a head count or anything because my girlfriend would take me with her girlfriends and we would all eat in their dining room. They never took a head count, 'cause I got away with that so many times. I was too far to run and in time for the, for the dinner or, yeah, it's usually dinner. And I used to visit my friends at their mess halls and they never ate with their families. They always ate with their girlfriends. They didn't have family gatherings anymore.

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RP: So were your closest girlfriends girls in the village or in the rest of the camp?

CT: Well, probably from my class in the rest of camp.

RP: And you were, were you at this time third, fourth grade?

CT: No, not fourth. I would say second or third. Yeah.

RP: Do you remember some of your closest girlfriends?

CT: I don't remember a name or anything, and the only reason why I know Annie Sakamoto is because we both moved out of camp into a foster home together. I don't remember anybody's name. I do remember one girl. Her name was Florence, and she was eleven and I was six, and she, one Christmastime they gave us a box full of nuts and cookies and candy, and she stole it. She did. So here I'm only six and she's eleven, so I went up to her and I says, "Florence, I know you stole the box of goodies," and I says, "and God's gonna get you for that." [Laughs] But the thing of it is she died an early death, not there in camp, but I says, oh, you're kidding. I couldn't believe it.

RP: Why? Is that karma?

CT: It's karma. I don't know.

RP: Sounds like you had a sense of right and wrong at that age, too.

CT: Yeah, I mean, you don't do things like that, steal. One thing we did have, a orange crate, cubicle by our bed and we kept all our private things in that orange crate, and of course I didn't know it was an orange crate. I thought it was a dresser, with a curtain on it. And nobody was allowed to go into each other's private, and that had to be respected. So she didn't respect it and I didn't care if I was six and she was eleven. See, that makes a big difference. I mean, she could beat, beat you up if she wanted to, but...

RP: Yeah, you mentioned that this popular conception amongst some of the orphans that were very restricted in their movements to the Village, and maybe for some of them it became their, their center of their life.

CT: Yeah.

RP: Because they had all their friends there and everything else, but for you it was a completely different experience. Were there any other places that you remember visiting in the camp, that --

CT: Yes, I visited the Catholic church because I liked the -- well, I am quite dramatic, to say the least -- and I loved the ceremony of the Catholic church and so I used to visit them a lot. I visited Protestant church and I visited, I think the Buddhist church, but I don't remember too much of that, but I do remember the Catholic church. They were very nice.

RP: What do you remember about the ceremonies or the rituals that affected you?

CT: Well, the altar and, well, this is all very primitive, but his robe and I don't know, it was just very dramatic and I think I enjoyed the show more than I took in the religion.

RP: The message.

CT: Yeah. Yeah, right. So, but they were always nice to me and went to catechism class and everything like that. This was on my own. Nobody in the orphanage knew I went to catechism class.

RP: They didn't, nobody encouraged you to go there?

CT: No, but we would have a kind of Sunday School classes, I think, in the Village itself. And, and then we would have, but we were free. I was free to walk all over that camp and visit everything I could, and Peter says each town that we went to, or if we visited Turkey or Greece or something, I always insisted I had to walk all over town, because I says, "I cannot get the feel of the, the environment by a bus," so, but I start thinking back, maybe this kind of comes back from my childhood 'cause I was always walking, curious. Remember going to the movies, the outdoor movie, and they said, and there was a lot of gravel. I could hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of the gravel. And, but I'd go there by myself and sit with whoever was there, and they permitted us to go, at least I thought they permitted us. I just went. I had no idea whether I was supposed to have permission or not. I didn't know rules or regulations, if there were any. I wasn't told of any. I don't remember any.

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RP: So in all your travels around the camp, places that you went to, what kind of feelings or opinions did you form about what you saw at that age? Let's start with the barracks. You went, you visited your friends in their barracks. You saw the rooms and stuff, and how did you feel about those rooms versus where you lived?

CT: I didn't not have that mindset. My main interest was the people. My mindset was not what kind of house you had. That just didn't enter my mind at all, and to this very day it still doesn't enter my mind. I don't care what kind of home you had. I care about the people in the home, so I never had any thoughts about whether their barracks were inferior and whether ours was superior. That just never entered my young mind in those days.

RP: What about the environment itself, where the camp was? Did, you were affected by the heat or the storms? A lot of people talk about the dust and everything else. You remember any of that when you were at Manzanar?

CT: No. I don't remember any, I remember snow. We had snow.

RP: Was that the first time you'd actually seen snow or been in snow?

CT: Yeah.

RP: And so how did you react?

CT: I loved it. I loved the snow, and it seems like before it snowed it was freezing. We were cold to our bones, but when it starts snowing it seems like there was an insulation or something and it would lift that horrible frost. I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's the way I felt. And, but I liked it. Now, when I felt the weather is when I went to the pilgrimage, I said, oh my, this is awful. This is so hot. But I never felt any discomfort, as far as I can remember, of weather. None.

RP: So in your experiences at Manzanar, you never, you never recall any older parents or adult casting any stigma attached to you being an orphan?

CT: Absolutely not. Never. I didn't feel this until after I left camp, and when the kid says, "Are you a welfare child?" This is after camp now, and I said, "Well, what's a welfare child?" And he says, "That's when you receive charity," and it made such a profound difference in my thinking after that, that I would even lie to all my girlfriends that I'm not a welfare child. I would even forego the hot lunches that they gave you and I would take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day, just to show them I was not a welfare child, because it was such a stigma. But the other people made it a stigma, not me. But I says, oh well, it must be a shameful thing to be on welfare, so when the welfare lady told me at age eighteen that I was off the rolls of welfare I says, "Good, I'm glad." I don't, I was greatly relieved that I was off of welfare. It's not like today where some, some of them wear it like a badge of honor. I thought it was so shameful in those days, just that really bothered me, the welfare, to be on welfare.

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RP: In one of your stories that you wrote up about your time at the Children's Village you referred to it as the happiest, happiest time of your childhood.

CT: It was the happiest. It was.

RP: In, in a sense, discussing this over the phone with you, you said actually not having a family was liberating in the sense that you didn't have to take on all the troubles and difficulties that parents had to face in a place like Manzanar. Can you explain that a little?

CT: Absolutely. That's what I was explaining to Rosie Kakuuchi, whom I just recently met and a lovely person who lives in Las Vegas, and after I read her biography I says, "You know, Rosie, I don't understand people of Manzanar. They're setting us up in panel and talking about our, our Children's Village life and all that, but I think I had it -- I'm not speaking for everybody, I'm speaking for myself -- I had it much easier than whole families." The whole families consisting of mother, father, brothers, sisters, because after the bombing of Pearl Harbor I can imagine the parents, all of a sudden everyone is told they're gonna be evacuated to one place and the parents who were Isseis, the first generation who were not yet citizens, I can imagine that they were so frightened that they might be separated from their children by being deported and the children would be, would not have their mother and father again. And naturally this would be discussed in the family setting, which would give the children more anxiety than me, who was in a well protected orphan, orphanage and who didn't have to listen to all the bad things that was happening at, at the time, such as the posters calling "Japs," "Japs" to be evacuated and all the horror stories I heard later, that they had to sell their possessions for a dime, for a refrigerator or something like that. I heard these horror stories and how they were kicked off their lands for no cause, so I says I can imagine how hard it was hard for the private family and those are the people I really have empathy with, but I also have empathy for the older orphans, for people whose families were torn from them and they were just pushed into orphanages. I said that's horrifying. But as far as I was concerned it was a walk in the park. We got to go on the bus and sing songs and go to camp. That was it.

RP: That's what you remember about your trip to Manzanar?

CT: Yes, we were on the bus and I thought it was a truck, but we were singing. We always sang. And it was, it was a lot of fun.

RP: Do you remember soldiers on the bus at all?

CT: Yeah, and I remember soldiers on the towers, but, and soldiers on horses, and I thought they were nice. They were nice to me. And we would test them by running out of the barbed wire and then they would come and tell us, "Okay, kids, get back in." They wouldn't point a gun at us or anything like that, but they knew what we were doing. We were testing them. But I didn't find them threatening at all, so, but we used to have fun with 'em. They used to put us on their horse and let us ride, with them of course, the rangers -- not the rangers, the soldiers.

RP: The policemen?

CT: Yeah. So that's what I remember. It was, and then I remember lots of times we were permitted to go off the base, and there was a brook, water brook, and we were able to play in the water brook. I remember that so vividly.

RP: This was the whole --

CT: But then we were told no, you weren't allowed off the base, but we were. We went by trucks.

RP: You went a fair distance away from the camp?

CT: It was...

RP: To the, to a creek somewhere.

CT: Yeah, to a creek. Maybe it wasn't a long distance, but to us it was a ride in the bus, or the truck.

RP: A field trip.

CT: Yeah, a field trip.

RP: And did the whole Village go on these trips or just one group of kids?

CT: I think just one group. It wasn't the whole Village. It was just one group that said we could go and we could go fishing or something like that. We didn't have fishing poles or anything, but it was nice memories. I just remember it as nice memory. So I told one of the interviewers, but this was maybe ten years ago -- this was when Dr. Hansen and his crew were interviewing us, Lisa -- and I told her, I says, I said, "They're not gonna use my interview." I said, "There's no way." I said, "Because this country likes gloom and doom and struggles and I can't give you that, to be truthful with you. I just can't."

RP: All you can do is be true to your own experience and that's what you had.

CT: That was it.

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RP: Now, you mentioned that there were other older orphans that had some struggles at the Children's Village. Specific people that you know?

CT: I knew a Nadine Kodani and she was a troubled teenager, but she was so kind to me because I, I got a whipping in front of everybody in that Catholic boarding school after we left and we were all sent into that environment, and I don't know what I did, but I must've misbehaved, so that bitch -- oh, excuse my language -- she, in front of everybody, the whole school, she turned me over and gave me a whipping. That was so humiliating. It was just uncalled for, so I was glad to get out of that place. That was, I guess that was a place that they put you until they could put you in a home, but that's all I remember of that place.

RP: Were there any older orphan kids kind of took you under their wing?

CT: Nadine was one of them, and the, I mean, I remember Nadine. She was always so kind and everything and I tried to get a hold of her, but I couldn't contact her. And somebody had just told me yesterday that she refused the, the reparation money. I don't know why or anything like that. I didn't even know I was gonna get any reparation money until... see, I was married to a Caucasian, so I was not in the Japanese community and some friends of mine said, "Celeste, did you know?" And says, "Well, write to the archives and all this," so I did and then they sent me my check.

RP: What about the case of orphans like Dennis Bambauer who were hapas, half Caucasian, half Japanese? Their struggles were a little different than yours.

CT: Yes. Dennis, I only know of what I've read about Dennis, okay, but he was, they said he was much taller than the other children. He was taunted terribly, and he said he only stayed there for a short time. He wasn't there the entire time, but he could tell you his story.

RP: You don't, you didn't have any connection with him at all at the Village?

CT: I had no... no. Not, not during the, not at Children's Village. I didn't even know him. I just know Dennis afterwards, when we met for different meetings.

RP: I was curious to know, what was school like for you at Manzanar?

CT: Well, school, I thought, I became paranoid, of course, but I thought that they used to divide us in dumb, average, bright, like that. And I was in the average, but they said that, "If you can answer these questions then you could go into the bright." So they would ask us questions, the whole class, and we'd raise our hand like that and they would never pick the children from the Village. They always picked the people who were in, had mothers and fathers, and so I thought, and I could answer every one of those questions and I said, god, I said, look, they're not picking any of the people in the Village. They're picking only the outsiders, so naturally I thought it was a form of discrimination. And after that I just moved on. But I remember my schooling.

RP: What kind of student, you said they put you in average --

CT: Oh, I was, I was not a good student. I fooled around. I loved to, I loved extracurricular activity. I passed, but I was not, I was not a scholar. And where Annie, my best friend, Annie Sakamoto, was a scholar. She was tops in her class all through grammar school, through college, where I wasn't. I was a C average, but I never applied myself either. I was more interested in having fun than anything, and I still am. [Laughs] Now, my husband, he was, bless his heart, he was top student in his class and I don't know why he chose me as a partner in life. But he did.

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RP: We talked a little bit about the grounds of the Children's Village. There was the pear orchard there, was very spacious lawn areas, areas to play. Did you spend much time playing?

CT: Oh yeah.

RP: And what did you do? I mean, what kind of play did you get involved...

CT: Well, we would play, it's usually running or something like that or some sports, but what I remember of that lawn -- now, maybe I'm crazy -- but I remember it was on a hill, a little bit on a hill. Now, may be just a figment, but we used to roll down, roll down our bodies down the hill and then run up and roll down again, as if we're skiing. But, and then they had this house that the gardeners built for us, this doll house, and it was made of, it was real nice, and one time the thing collapsed and nobody was in there. And then so right away all the caregivers said it's because of God this and all that, and I said well, yeah, I guess so. That's a miracle. It was a miracle. But I remember that doll house, or that house for children to play in. And I think we had swings and things like that and teeter totter. I was just too young to play in ball sports, but eventually I became a ballplayer, in basketball, tennis. I competed in swimming in high school.

RP: Oh, in high school.

CT: After, after...

RP: After Manzanar.

CT: After Manzanar, yeah. But I had a good time. The most important to me was, was no restrictions, believe it or not, and I don't like restrictions. I like to be free, and I think that's one reason why I was so happy is I came and went as I pleased as long as I was there for meal time, most meal time. And I was.

RP: Was there any kind of a curfew or bed check for orphans? You had to be in by a certain time?

CT: I don't remember. I have no idea if we were, because I remember going to the movies at night with the rest of the crowd, and that wasn't the crowd from, from the Village. It was the crowd from outside. And, and I don't know how often they showed the movies, but whenever they did I was right up with them in the first row. But I remember having a good time there.

RP: It's quite a beautiful location.

CT: It is. It's gorgeous. The mountains are beautiful. And I don't, after attending a few of the pilgrimage in April, most of them in April were so hot. I couldn't believe the heat. I says in April... but this last time it was beautiful. A little windy, but the weather was gorgeous.

RP: Do you recall the last few months of your life at Manzanar, when the camp was, people were leaving the camp and it was starting to close down?

CT: That was the saddest day of my life, is when we left. We cried and cried and cried, and saying goodbye to each other. Because I was older then, I was almost nine and everybody's crying, so naturally I was crying, because that was the thing you were supposed to do. And it was sad because we were also facing an unknown. And as a child, as a real young child you're not afraid of anything, but when you're getting up there, nine years old, you start to have some anxiety as to where you're going to go and who you're going to be with, and you're away from your friends. But you adjust when you get out.

RP: Did you know of Annie in the, in the Village at all?

CT: No. I did not know Annie in the Village because, see, we were three years difference and at that young age you don't socialize with three year olds when you're six. You socialize with people that are your age, or older, but not little kids.

<Begin Segment 9>

RP: Your relationship with Ruth at Manzanar continued to be a very strong, nurturing situation, or was she busy with other kids and couldn't give you...

CT: Oh no, she, she was, it was still very strong until she left, but she left a year before I did. And I begged her to take me to New York with her, but she couldn't. And so she went to New York and then eventually got her life and married her husband and had her own children. And I was able... I did not know where she had gone because the first foster mother's, Annie's foster mother, she took all my addresses and threw 'em away. Why she didn't want me to have contact with my past life, I'll never know. 'Cause she's crazy. She threw 'em away, so I lost all contact with everybody until 1991 when they had the Children's Village reunion, which I couldn't attend because I was in Turkey at the time. And that made me sick, but Annie got all the information. She got Ruth's number and from there I was able to write to her and communicate with her until she died two years ago.

RP: So up until 1991 you had lost complete track of Ruth?

CT: Yeah, I did, because Annie's foster mother, Wilma Stewart -- I was there, I think, just a year -- she just threw all my belongings away, personal stuff, and at that time if you're only nine years old you can't do much except cuss and that's it.

RP: What was that like meeting up with Ruth again?

CT: I never did meet up with her, but we, we communicated by letters. You know how you get so busy with your life and everything and you just don't have the chance to, and I regret that, that I never was able to see her. And then the last ten years of her life she was in full blown Alzheimer's, so I knew it was just impossible, so I used to communicate with her daughter and her, and Ruth's husband, because she didn't know anything of the Children's Village or anything, which was a shame. But she gave her husband a good history of it.

RP: Were, was there anybody else on the staff that touched you in the way that Ruth touched you?

CT: No.

RP: At Manzanar?

CT: Not that I can remember, no. She's the only one.

<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.

<Begin Segment 11>

RP: Let's go back to the, the second home. Where did you go next after you left Wilma's? Where were you placed?

CT: Okay, I went to Jessie M. Bloom and it was, she had children with disabilities, physical and emotional problems, so they thought that would be a good home for me. But Jessie M. Bloom was a lovely, lovely person. She was wonderful, and I still didn't bond with her, but she was fair and that's all a kid needs is fairness. And I made my best grades there and was ambitious and all that, but I misbehaved. I was running all over L.A. [Laughs]

RP: You were out walking around and running?

CT: Oh, I was running all over L.A. I went to Thomas Starr King Junior High School and I liked the school, liked the kids and I was just beginning to get on my own where there was a, begin to have a lack of prejudice against the Japanese people, but they, but I was removed from that home because I was too much for Jessie to handle. I was.

RP: So you were the only Japanese child in the home?

CT: Yeah. The others were Caucasian, but I had fun with those kids, too. One had epilepsy, one had TB of the spine, so they had a lot of physical disabilities and I was just too much to handle.

RP: Were they kids your age or younger?

CT: No, they were a little older.

RP: A little older.

CT: But I remember Aunt Jessie when I came to her house, the first thing she did was curl my hair, 'cause she had heard about this, the background, so she says, "I'm gonna curl your hair." And she was just lovely. She was a nice person. I just feel sorry I was so...

RP: So wild?

CT: So wild. I was wild. We used to visit the hobo camps and all that with my girlfriends and talk to them, hop trains.

RP: You did?

CT: Oh yeah. So I was just too wild for her. But I continued my hopping trains at the Nitakes', but they didn't know it. [Laughs] Yeah.

RP: [Laughs] Oh, wow.

CT: Yeah, they didn't know it at all.

RP: So that kind of, what else kind of captured your imagination about life? At that time you're thirteen or so.

CT: Well, when you're thirteen, I was at the Nitakes', then I start settling down because for some reason the kids liked me and I was very popular in school, so I held vice president or held cheerleader and all that and these were all elected offices, and everybody came from the same background because this was after World War II and nobody had any money. And I remember years later when I was working with some young girls, they said, "Well, you can't be popular in high school if you're not rich." And I said, "No, that's not true." Course, I wasn't thinking that they're twenty years later. All this came later, all the materials and all that came later and the importance of it, I should say, came later. But when we were in school all of us were gettin' over World War II, so there was no competition of material things and material things was not the least bit important, and so I was able to hold office or do whatever, have fun and, and be one of the big wheels on campus.

RP: Sort of create an identity for yourself.

CT: And so that became my family. That became my family; my peers became my family, so whatever anything else happened in the home, which was not bad, it didn't matter to me. I was indifferent to the home, indifferent to the foster home.

RP: So Aunt Jessie was a, was a great antidote to Wilma?

CT: Oh, gosh yes.

RP: But you were just a little too much for her to handle.

CT: I was too much, and I admit that was my... but you go on.

RP: And where was Aunt Jessie's home located? Was it also in Los Angeles area?

CT: It, you know where Elysian Park is?

RP: Uh-huh.

CT: Yeah, in that area. Yeah. She had, she had a nice home on a hill and I remember in the backyard was a big hill of ivy, and so it was very, very adventurous.

RP: You must've been close to a train track. You said you visited the hobo camps.

CT: Yeah. I don't know if, I don't remember the hearing of the... but these hobos --

RP: Tell us about them.

CT: These hobos were not what you have today.

<Begin Segment 12>

RP: This is a continuation of an oral history interview with Celeste Teodor and this is tape two. And Celeste, you were just about ready to share with us your experiences with some of the hobos that you visited.

CT: Yes. It was a hobo camp, but these hobos, they were well-read. They were educated people who fell on hard luck, I guess, after the Depression era, but they were still living there in hobo camp. But they were nice, used to tell us stories and, and when I say us, I was with, usually with my girlfriends who also ran away to visit the hobo camp. And --

RP: From the same home that you were in?

CT: No, no, no. Girls from the private homes.

RP: Oh.

CT: 'Cause we, I had girlfriends other than the home, and so we would go down there and visit them and... a lot of them were alcoholics, though, but they would tell us interesting stories about life and they wanted to make sure that we didn't, trying to teach us, 'cause we were young and, and to teach us not to go their path and things like that. And they never, we were not afraid of them. They were very, very nice. Of course, we, when you're young you do a lot of stupid things and one of them was going to a hobo camp unchaperoned. [Laughs] And so, but that was just one of our experiences in running all over L.A. Going to Hollywood, the [inaudible]. We had no money, but we could at least visit the outside. And just one adventure after another. We, we enjoyed that. We enjoyed the freedom. Freedom to me was more important than anything else, not being restricted to be at home at a certain time. But that, now that was in junior high school, at Jessie M. Bloom's house. That's before I moved out to the country at the Japanese family.

<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.

<Begin Segment 14>

RP: I was curious to know, was there any point in your life at this time that you had any interest at all in fleshing out your Japanese ancestry or culture?

CT: You mean to begin to...

RP: Begin to, to sort of awaken to that part of you.

CT: You mean as far as finding out who my relatives were, things like that?

RP: Not so your relatives, but just your Japanese cultural background and traditions and that type of thing.

CT: No, I really didn't because even though I was in a Japanese family at that time, all my friends -- see, my school was, I would say, ninety-five percent Caucasians and very few Hispanics and only one black family, and maybe two or three Asian families, so my contact was with Caucasians. So, and the fact that they accepted me after that small period when we were at Wilma's house and somebody in the street -- I was with Annie, she was much younger -- and they said, this was right after World War II, and they said, "Are you, are you Jap?" I says, "Yes." And they threw a brick at my head. And that's the only time I had discrimination, and then it was after junior high school that, that my peers, and they were all Caucasians, too, accepted me, as one of them. So I was happy about that. And then you move on.

RP: Going back to, to the foster home with the Japanese family, where were they located?

CT: Baldwin Park.

RP: And what was Baldwin Park like at that time?

CT: It was ninety percent Caucasians and it was a very nice town, small town. The welfare felt that I should be out of Los Angeles City because I was too wild and so they said, "You're gonna go live out on a farm with a Japanese family." I said okay. What choice did I have? So I went out there and met them, and the two daughters were sitting on the piano bench and right now, right then I was hostile. I've already, I started experiencing hostile feelings and didn't trust anybody, but they were so nice, the girls were so nice and everything, it was fine. And the mother was trying to communicate but couldn't. And, and then the surroundings was real nice. It was a big house and everything, but... so I moved there. I moved there and then after I got into school and everything my school became my family, and the Japanese, the peers, the siblings, my foster siblings, they were real nice people and they, but they were running their own lives, too, because they were in their twenties or on up.

RP: Right. Did you get any, anything from them, any lessons or as you go through life you pick up something from this person or that person?

CT: Well, Mary, the youngest girl, she was twenty-one at the time. I bonded with her, and I'm still very close to her. I bonded with her. She was like my big sister, but I chose her as my surrogate mother, even though we were, what, nine years apart. She was nine years older, but when you're thirteen nine years is a lot. But she was always so kind and so nice and I did bond with Mary, but I didn't bond with her mother who was sixty because we could not communicate. But Mary, to this very day, we meet, we meet almost every year for, they always invite me to the Nitake family reunions and all the nieces and nephews, now they, there are a hundred of them, from seven children, original children. And they were very friendly, very nice and I'm glad I met them just so I can have this association with them now. The home was okay, but it didn't matter to me because, like I said, my family was my peers in high school and it's very important in those days to be liked by your peers, more than anything else, at least that's what I felt.

RP: Right.

<Begin Segment 15>

RP: Let's, let's move on. You graduate high school, and where did you go to high school?

CT: Baldwin Park High School.

RP: Baldwin Park.

CT: Yeah.

RP: And eventually you pursued a nursing career. What made you choose that profession?

CT: Well, I had to work three years to save the money to go to nursing school, and I chose that profession because it was the cheapest education available, not for any, you know...

RP: High moral calling or --

CT: Yeah. No, not for the fact that I want to see world peace, that type of thing. I just liked, I said, gosh, and it was a practical thing with me. I says, nursing is the cheapest education available and that time it was three hundred dollars for three years, room, board and books, okay? And you get your RN degree. It was not LPN or nurse's aide. I wanted the RN because I figure you could use nursing in many different fields, and that's the reason why I chose it.

RP: Now, just to step back just a little bit, you turn eighteen and you're no longer --

CT: On the welfare rolls.

RP: Yeah, your guardian is no longer the state of California. How did that feel?

CT: How did it feel? I felt free, because they were always trying to, well, I remember as a teenager I would get a job as a paperboy, and it was paperboy because I cut my hair and put a baseball hat on and stood in the street and said, "Herald Express and Daily Newspaper." [Laughs] And one of my friends, Dean, told me to do this and I would get paid maybe two cents a thing, so I did it for him and he would pay me. Well, when the welfare department heard that I was, had a paid job they told me that I would have to gather all that money and pay that towards my room and board. I says, "You kidding?" I says, "I want to save for college." So I had to quit that job, then I would get another job washing down showers and I got paid. Welfare people came in and found out about that. They would take the incentive out of anything because I didn't feel that I should have to pay my room and board and get nothing in return, so I says, "Okay, I'm not gonna work." And then I would find work where they couldn't find me. I would find some kind of job, mowing lawns or anything to get some spending money, 'cause I needed spending money. They gave you two dollars a month and I needed spending money because I was about to go into junior high school.

RP: So finally being out from under their thumb was a huge --

CT: Oh, that was a huge relief. Huge relief. And I was no longer, I could no longer be called a welfare child. That was so important to me, more than anything. So I went out and got a job. I first worked for a mimeographer, one of those old fashioned machines, put that ink and all that, and then I went to the Magan Clinic and worked for the file, as a file clerk. And then I, then the nurses, all the girls there encouraged me to go into nursing too, and they gave me a big party and bought a lot of different things for me so that I could have it. They were real nice and have it for my first year of school.

RP: And you, where did you go?

CT: To that (Knapp) College of Nursing in Santa Barbara.

RP: City College?

CT: Yeah, City College affiliated with Cottage Hospital (and Knapp College of Nursing). It was a diploma school, but, but this is how stupid I was. Let's see, I was about twenty when I applied and my grades were terrible in high school, so I competed against a lot of students, but I only filed at one school. Dense. But I wrote a beautiful letter to the dean, and she was a Dutch lady and I told her, I said, "I know I goofed up, but if you're willing to give me this chance I promise you that I will pass and make you proud of me." So I found this out years later, okay? So all six instructors rejected my application, but Miss Heisman, the Director of Nursing Education and Director of Nurses, in those days you were a dictator. This was in 1958. She says, "I overrule you all. I'm letting this child come here." And after, when I found that out years later I wrote to Miss Heisman, told her, "You know, you made a difference in my life accepting me." And I thanked her, I wrote a beautiful letter, and so she was in a retirement home at Boyle Heights. I never did get to visit her, but the director of her retirement home sent me a letter and said that Miss Heisman had died and that she was so proud of that letter she framed it on her wall. She was, and everybody used to call me Miss Heisman's pet because she was just wonderful. Everyone else was scared to death of her, but I wasn't, and you stop being scared. So, but she made a difference in my life and from there I met my Peter.

<Begin Segment 16>

RP: Yeah, tell us a little bit about your husband. He was, he had a, an experience as well, talking about being restricted or not free. He was from Romania.

CT: He was from Romania and he had had to endure Hitler's Nazi regime. He endured the, his first one was the royal family, then Hitler's and then the Communists. And when the Communists came they would not let any citizen whatsoever leave the borders ever, and so he tried, he was in medical school and then he graduated and became assistant professor of infectious disease. He tried for thirteen years to get out by writing papers and everything like that, so finally the, Romania chose him to become a spy on the Sabin vaccine in Paris, France. So he knew that Sabin laboratories weren't gonna let him in. They just put a good show on, that's all. And then he asked for political asylum and at this time he had two Romanian spies after him to shoot him down, but British intelligence, they intercepted them and killed the Romanian spies, and he didn't even know this. So anyway, he stayed in Paris for one year until he asked to come to the United States, and so he had two other friends and they said, one says, "I'm going to go with a Protestant sponsor," and the other one says, "I'm going Catholic." He says, "Well, I'm going Jewish." Well, "Peter, you're not Jewish." He says, "Yes, I know." "But, so why are you going to Jewish sponsors?" "Because they're the smartest people in the world. They've been persecuted all their lives and they know the ins and outs of everything and I know I'm gonna get there faster than you." So he was here in a couple or three months, in no time, and his friend from the Catholic sponsors was, it took them one year and the other one, the Protestant, took them two years. And so they never let him forget that either.

RP: So he comes over here and how did you end up meeting him?

CT: Okay, well after he, he took his internship and he took his residency, then he got married for two weeks because he knocked up this girl and he, he thought, "Well, Elizabeth Taylor can get a divorce any time she wants." He really thought this. "So if I'm not happy then I'm gonna get a divorce." After two weeks he wasn't happy, so he told her, "You're gonna get a divorce or I'll get one," and so she wouldn't, so he had to come to Nevada, by the advice from his lawyer. "You come to Nevada. She has too much power here." So he did and that's where we met. He was at the Nevada test site.

RP: What was he doing there?

CT: He did not have a license. He had to, so they put him in charge of setting up the lab, but also he was doing physicals and then the other doctors would sign it, 'cause he had his, he just didn't have his license in Nevada. He had his Virginia license and Ohio license and everything else, but Nevada at that time refused to take foreign graduates to, for a test. So anyway, so he also was teaching the nurses, the differential diagnosis of chest pains and things like that, so we were told to go listen to him. This was mandatory. And I had just gotten out of nursing school. I was sick and tired of school 'cause, like I said, I am not a scholar. I do not like school. So he came in and I says, I'm gonna sit in way in the back of the room while he's lecturing all these girls in the front seat, and I says, I'm going to sleep. So I fell asleep and after the lecture he came back with an amused grin on his face and he said, "You know, I've been a professor of a big medical school in Bucharest, Romania and nobody has ever slept in my class." And I says, "Well, I was tired and I'm sick and tired to listening to all these lectures because I just got out of school and I'm tired of it." So he just laughed, then he asked me for a date and the rest is history. [Laughs]

RP: What were you doing at the test site?

CT: Well, you earn more money there as a RN than, because I think the average monthly pay for a RN in all the states was about two hundred and eighty-four dollars a month, and on the test site I think it was twice that much. It was a lot more, so that's why, I now had friends who were out there and they said, "Celeste, they're hiring nurses. Come on out here." So we did, I did and that's how I met Peter. Isn't that luck?

RP: And so you, you shared your stories of being in a camp like Manzanar and he shared his stories of being under Communist rule and --

CT: Oh, yes.

RP: You both had a tremendous...

CT: His was worse because he would be sitting there at lunchtime and some stranger would come to him and start talking against the government. Well, if you sat there and listened, that could be a spy for the government and if you listened then they will throw you in prison, so he used to, he says he lost a lot of weight in those days because, "Oh, I have an emergency," and wouldn't even listen to them. And then at the same time he was supposed to report that person for talking against the government, but if he did that that guy would've been, could've been a nice guy and he did not want to put himself in this position, so he would escape by saying he had an emergency. And, and he says just that feeling of such restrictions and maybe having to report somebody who's perfectly okay, it was just devastating to him. That's why he worked so hard on those papers, to try to get out of there. And he finally got out, but I remember many nights he would wake up in a cold sweat thinking that he was still there and, see, this was just right after Stalin died and so the mindset was so devastating, emotionally draining for these people.

RP: So he put freedom in a whole different perspective for you?

CT: Freedom, that's right. Freedom was the, he loved this country. He loved his adopted country, and he, he couldn't understand the Americans criticizing it. He says they don't know what freedom truly is, and see, I didn't feel this pressure because I was a little kid, but he was an adult, see? Just like the Japanese interned, the internees, the adults probably had the same feeling he did and it was a nightmare for them. So, but Peter was, he, I'll never forget, he used to just break out in a cold sweat thinking he was still in Romania.

RP: Both you and your husband made a mutual decision not to have children?

CT: Yes.

RP: Did, did your, did your experiences as an orphan have any role to play in that decision?

CT: I think so.

RP: And how?

CT: Well, well us not wanting any children, everyone says we're selfish and it's true. I didn't want the responsibility. I already had too many emotional turmoils during my young life and I just didn't want to have it afterwards. We were both career people to begin with. I liked my nursing and he just, it was a mutual consent, and I believe not having children makes you closer sometimes. I think that it's, I love children. There's no question about it, because when I was at Children's Hospital affiliation I won the award for the best pediatric student nurse in those days, so I do. I love children. I love other people's children, but I just didn't want to have my own, you know? I get along well with children, but we just decided not to. But in those days it was almost taboo, because I remember after I got married I had my gynecological exam by the doctor and he says, "Now that you and Peter are married how many children are you gonna have?" And I said, "None." And he says, "Well then get the hell off my table." [Laughs] He was so mad. I mean, I says, "Oh my gosh, is this the way people behave when you are truthful and say, 'I don't want any kids'?" So after that I had to lie about it. If they asked me, "When are you gonna have children?" like they always do at the beginning of your marriage, I would put my head down and say, "I'm sorry, it's just too painful to talk about." [Laughs] And then that'd make them feel guilty.

<Begin Segment 17>

RP: I want to go forward a little bit and, talked earlier about this reunion that developed in 1991 or, I think it was '92, that Tak Matsuno helped organize.

CT: Yeah.

RP: Unfortunately you weren't able to be there, but when did you first begin to reach out to this part of your past, the children's orphanage, which was one of the happiest times of your life? And tell me how important that was to do that.

CT: It was very important. I wanted to see everybody and talk about, talk to everybody about their experiences and how it affected them. And I was absolutely sick that we had been in Turkey, that we had already made plans to go to Turkey, and number one, I did not want to disappoint my husband 'cause he worked hard all year and looked forward to this trip for months, so that was number one for me although I was extremely disappointed that I did not attend. I thought about Manzanar, thought about the reunion while I was in Turkey. My mind was not in Turkey. It was over here. And then it was after that when Annie gave me all the material that I got Ruth's address and was able to correspond and then I became more interested in, from, from then on, to meet everybody to talk to. Like last night we had a very good visit just with the former orphans and Wilber, and it was interesting, like Dennis would tell us something I didn't know and Karen, she, she told us a few things I didn't know, too. And it was just nice talking to them on a one to one. See, we all met after the dinner and when there were fewer people around, so, and I'm still interested in them, interested in every one of them. I like the Matsunos very much and Tak is the one that first contacted me about the 1991, and I liked his family.

RP: Have you returned to Manzanar?

CT: The pilgrimage?

RP: Was, you went to the pilgrimage this year. Had you been to one before that?

CT: Yes. Yes, we had been to one when Sue Embrey was still alive, and I think we've been to two others. Yeah.

RP: And so what does that bring emotionally and how does that affect you, going back there and...

CT: It makes me feel proud. I mean, it does. It makes me feel good because, I told Peter, I said, "Peter, I feel comfortable because I'm among my own people again," which I've been away because I'm married to Caucasian man. We were out of the loop as far as meetings and things like that with the Japanese people. The only contact I had with Japanese people was the Nitake family. Years, every year we would meet, but as far as community, I was never involved in the community. So it's, it felt good, felt good. And then, and then they decided to do this book, but this book has been in, ten years, twenty years in the making with Hansen, Professor Hansen and his crew first, and so we went through many interviews and I figured, okay, I will cooperate and go on interviews, but I didn't see that it was gonna become a book until all of a sudden there became a renewed interest in the book. And then things start flying fast, and Cathy had called me and interviewed me some, so I was very happy when the book came out. I was shocked that it came out, as a matter of fact. I ordered a lot of books and gave 'em to my friends for raffle prizes and things like that and, and really have enjoyed the book and enjoyed reading the other people's perspective on how it affected them and all.

<Begin Segment 18>

RP: Why is the, the story of the Children's Village important to you personally and why should it be important to anybody else?

CT: Because in those days the Children's Village, in the minds of the other people, was nonexistence and we were always unimportant to other people. I felt that growing up. We were, I'm talking about adults. I'm not talking about my peers. But it just seemed like in those days there might have been a stigma of being an orphan or a homeless child with the Isseis and there might have been discrimination, I don't know, with the older children. "No, you can't play with them because they're an orphan," you know? And they would just say things like that, I heard. And, and then there was a, it was more of a stigma after you got out if you were an orphan or a welfare child, to me, because now I'm growing older and I see what the older people went through, older orphans went through, and the discrimination of... and then I saw the, as a teenager I had a boyfriend. He said he was my boyfriend, and everybody liked him because Bill was a terrific diver. He dove for the Olympic team and all this and that, but I thought that he was trying to take advantage of me because I was an orphan. He was trying to make out and things like that and I knew this, so I just told him, I says... oh, he says, "Celeste, will you marry me?" Here I'm thirteen and he is maybe in his twenties and he said, "Will you marry me and we'll have twelve children?" I said, "Goodbye, Bill." I says, "No way. I don't want nothing with you," 'cause I could just see myself barefoot and pregnant and not accomplishing anything in my life. But I thought sometimes these, the Japanese and Chinese men that had, or boys that had parents and they would kind of think that just because I was an orphan I would be an easy come on, which I wasn't because of Ruth. Ruth says that you just don't sleep with boys if, if you're not married and it was as simple as that, 'cause this is wrong.

RP: She instilled that sort of value system early on. You took it in.

CT: I did, in my teenage years, yeah. You'll read in my husband's obituary column that --

RP: And because, because you've gone through that experience as an orphan you just naturally have a great sensitivity to other orphans and other stories, and this person came along during the pilgrimage and her name was Cathy Drake.

CT: Yes. Cathy Drake.

RP: And tell, share with me a little bit about Cathy Drake.

CT: Cathy Drake, I met her at the last pilgrimage and she was so interested in the orphans and she was very nice, and she told me, she says, "You know, I've been drawn to the Manzanar orphans because I was an orphan myself," but this was in Japan and she was a hapa, half Caucasian, half Japanese. So this military couple, they adopted her and Cathy told me that she's been fighting emotional turmoil because she was forced as a little kid to lose her identity of being Japanese, half Japanese, and she says, "You know, Celeste," it wasn't 'til her parents died that she finally felt free to get to know what her identity was. And I said, "Oh my, Cathy." I said, "That is horrible, to have to lose your identity, half of your identity because of that." She says, well, they forced her. "Don't you admit that you're Japanese." This was a Caucasian family that adopted her, military couple. And I says, "Oh my," I says, "It's better to be in an orphanage than to have to go through that." I felt great empathy for her, but, but I think she's doing okay and everything, but she, I think this really has bothered her emotionally, 'cause I'm a psychiatric nurse and I see these sensitivities in people that has affected them, what their childhood has affected them to great lengths sometimes.

<Begin Segment 19>

RP: Just a few more questions, Celeste. We're gonna, then we'll wrap up things. Going back to the Children's Village time in your life, did you have any, I know you had a lot of freedom, did you have any responsibilities at all associated with the Village in terms of chores or things that you were assigned to do?

CT: Well, we had to make our own bed and we had to keep our crate neat and clean, and that's the only thing I can think of that we had to do. Otherwise, I can't think of any chores or things like that that I had to do.

RP: How about toys? Were toys important to you at that time in your life and did you have any?

CT: I had the rubber doll that the kindergarten class gave me, so I kept that for a while until probably I got tired of it. No, toys were not important to me. What was important was sports, and I liked the teeter totter and swings and the playhouse. I liked that, and running around with my friends. I guess the toys didn't matter, but I did like my goodies at Christmas time. I really liked that because, see, we hardly had candy. There was no such thing as candy, that I can remember, okay. And as a matter of fact, when, when I got out of camp and went to public school this one girl, she could get a hold of bubble gum, Dubble Bubble gum and she's the only one that had it and we would all chew it and blow bubbles. Can you imagine? I would just be dead by now. [Laughs] Those little things, you think about things like that, but I don't remember toys to speak of.

RP: Do you remember any special occasions at the Children's Village? Like you just mentioned Christmas, do you recall what you did at Christmastime in camp?

CT: Yes. I remember this one, well this is when I stopped believing in Santa Claus because they had a woman, a woman portraying Santa Claus. Can you imagine that? They had a woman portraying Santa Claus and I went up there and I says, "You're a woman. You're not Santa Claus." I says, I was so devastated and so disappointed that, that I, I stopped believing in Santa Claus after that. I didn't trust him. I said, I don't trust this. But now birthdays, I remember birthdays. Everybody, somebody would have a birthday where they have a little cake and as little kids we look up there and says, and we ask the caregivers, "Is this our birthday? Is this my birthday?" 'Cause you're so egocentric as a little kid that you think that it's your birthday and not anybody else's birthday, but I remember those days, about the cake, the birthday cake. They would have just a little cake and just a, I guess, a few people got to eat it. They would not have a big cake.

RP: You get a gift, too? Do you remember getting a gift?

CT: No, no gift.

RP: Just the cake.

CT: No, just the cake. The cake was good enough. That was great. That was a big treat in those days.

RP: Cake full, with candles, too?

CT: Yeah, yeah. I remember that. I don't know if anyone else remembers, but I remember.

RP: That's very special.

CT: It was very special.

RP: Yeah.

CT: But you know little things like that are very special. You didn't have to have a closet full of toys to be impressed with anything. It was anything simple. A pear, one of those pears was, finally unwrapped the little pear, those, it's ripe, say, "It's ripe." We'd get so excited that it was ripe, we could eat it.

RP: How'd it taste?

CT: Delicious. It was good. To this very day I wrap my pears in newspaper, you know that? And that's from childhood.

RP: Are there any other sights, sounds or smells associated with camps that will always stick in your mind?

CT: Well, sights or smells, sights, sight is the, the whole camp itself, the walking around it. That's what I remember more than anything. I remember the barbed wire, but I was not afraid of it. My friend Annie says that she used to be so scared to death of the searchlights, but that never scared me. I was older, I guess, that's why. She was younger.

RP: Do you remember any blackouts that occurred, where the lights were deliberately blacked out?

CT: Yeah.

RP: You do?

CT: Yeah, I remember that they'd say, "Blackout. This will be a blackout. We can't have any lights on," or something like that. I never questioned why. I just said okay, "Everybody turn out the lights," that type of thing. But I don't remember how often or anything that occurred. And of course I was not old enough for the politics of the camp either.

RP: Right. Is there anything about, about camp that frightened you or scared you? You said the barbed wire, the lights didn't affect you, but was there anything else that did?

CT: Not really, because I even visited the hospital. Yeah, and, 'cause I had to have physiotherapy. They told me I had polio of my feet and my ankles were weak, so I remember that I would go up there, physiotherapy several times a week and they were all very nice. I was never scared of anything. I can't remember anything that I would be scared of, so I'm sorry I'm not a frightened little child where it's affected my adulthood.

MH: I have a question. What, how did you obtain your clothes at Children's Village? Did they have, did you order clothes? Did they provide you clothes? Did you have your own choice of clothes?

CT: No, we didn't have a choice. They just gave us clothes. And in those days I never paid attention to what I wore, just like today. I don't pay attention to what I wear today. I was never interested in clothes. I never, I don't know, they just didn't, I can see in the orphanage picture that they're, everybody was dressed quite nicely, I thought, and yet one of the former orphans -- I won't say who -- said that the orphanage sent her, her people a bag of clothes and they says, "Oh my gosh, these are just terrible, these clothes." I myself? So I told her, I said, "Well, it's 'cause you had nice clothes. You were well-loved and everything and then you were thrown into the orphanage because of circumstances, and that was gonna be a traumatic thing to you, from clothes on down. And, and then you moved out with your family and when they sent the package of clothes up there from the orphanage then they were just appalled at what you were wearing because you were used to nicer things, where I wasn't used to nicer things. I just wore them to wear them." But I've never been conscious of... and also your environment and the school environment, they did not point us out, "Oh, you've got a dress from the orphanage," or, "You look like a shabby little orphan." Now, if they had said that to me, then naturally this will work on your mind, but none of that was ever said to me about the clothes that we wore or anything like that. And since I was raised even in high school, see, you're getting post Depression and post World War II babies, children like me, and these things weren't important to them, so the outside environment did not make you aware that you were not rich because we were all "poor" in money.

<Begin Segment 20>

RP: One other question about, you talked a little bit about eating at the, the Village, did you all eat at separate tables or did you have one long table that you ate at, or how did...

CT: We had a lot of different tables, but everybody, there was a bunch of children on each table, yeah. And so once in a while some of the big guys would get in a fist fight because they moved the, they moved the table accidentally and spilled the, spilled the milk, so, but they were sitting at the big boys' table and to me they were big boys, so they would fight and fistfight, just wham wham wham each other. I enjoyed that. That was wonderful. We were at the little kids table, but we would have a fight many times at the dining room table because somebody spilled something. [Laughs] It was unbelievable.

RP: So you had your own cook there, didn't you?

CT: They had, yeah.

RP: At the, at the Village?

CT: Apparently, according to what I've read, the Clifton Cafeterias in L.A., that was very famous in those days, and he was one of the chefs just of the Children's Village. And the other mess halls had just regular people, but this guy was an actual chef and I cannot tell you if I liked the food or not. I can tell you what I didn't like, but I can't tell you whether it was -- well, a little kid, they don't like to eat anyway. They're, you just eat what's there. You don't have discriminating tastes like you do when you're an adult. You just eat what's there. But, but the one thing I didn't like, I'd sit there 'til midnight and wouldn't eat it. Horrible.

RP: The shaved daikon.

CT: Oh, I'll never have that. You like it?

RP: I haven't had it.

CT: It's horrible.

RP: Okay. You know, I'll take your word for that.

<Begin Segment 21>

RP: One final question, and that's just to get back to the, the apology and reparations check that people got. You said you didn't expect to get that. You weren't even aware of it.

CT: I didn't even know. I wasn't aware of it until my foster family, the Nitakes, told me about it and they said, "Celeste, did you apply?" So they got all the information for me, for me to apply and I did.

RP: And how did you feel about that, or did you have any feelings associated with receiving an apology letter for an experience that you yourself described as, as a happy, one of your happiest in your life?

CT: I never experienced, yeah. Well, I said, "Well, if the government's gonna give it to me I'll take it." [Laughs] That was my attitude on it. I, politically I had no feeling about it. I mean, I did not appreciate the pioneers who fought for this. I appreciate now by reading their history, but at that time I did not appreciate that. I just was happy to get it.

RP: Do you mind if I ask you what you used the money for?

CT: Yes. I saved it and put it in the stock market and made money on it.

RP: Okay. Are there any stories that we haven't touched on that you would like to include in our interview before we conclude it?

CT: No, except that I had a wonderful marriage and I have that to, my memories of my husband to push me forward.

RP: And any words of wisdom or lessons that you would impart to young people who might watch this interview regarding your experiences as an orphan or at Manzanar?

CT: Yes. Don't ruminate on the negative. You have to be positive. If you ruminate and keep about what's been done to you in the past you will never grow. You'll get more bitter and it will make you ill, and I says you have to let go. I know it's hard for some people to do that, but you cannot look back and ruminate and let it spoil your life on the negative. Just brush that aside and think positive. But I've been a positive person all my life, even when I was a kid.

RP: Okay. Celeste, on behalf of Mark and myself and the National Park Service, thank you for a very special interview today.

CT: Well thank you for having me. I feel honored. Thank you.