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LG: We are here today on May 8, 2023, at Shofuso Japanese House and Garden in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My name is Lauren Griffin, I am the interviewer, and if you could go ahead and introduce yourself.

TM: My name is Teresa Maebori.

LG: And is that your full name? Do you have a middle name?

TM: Well, that's interesting. I do now have a middle name, but when I was born, my mother did not give me a middle name, or my parents did not give me a middle name. And it's sort of traditional that the middle name is Japanese. And I was born in 1945, February, my mother did not want someone to look down a list and see my name and know that I was Japanese. So she did not give me, or they did not give me a middle name. Because it's traditional to give children a Japanese middle name, and so she said she'd wait until I got to an age, maybe twelve or something, I think it was around that time, when I could select my own name. Which was kind of funny because there's not much that goes with Theresa, so it's Teresa Ann Maebori.

LG: And you picked "Ann" yourself?

TM: Uh-huh.

LG: Why Ann?

TM: Just the sound of it more than anything else.

LG: At that time, did you not want to pick a Japanese name?

TM: At that time, I did not want to have a Japanese middle name. I was born in February 13, 1945, the war was still going on, and my parents were incarcerated. Plus, at the time that I was born, I was born in a labor camp in Caldwell, Idaho, and so it was a, you know, very harsh existence for a citizen of the United States. And I think all -- not all, but many Nikkei, Japanese Americans, could not, were not proud of their ancestry. And, you know, their houses were... if you were a Japanese language teacher, if you were a priest, if you were a leader in the community, you were rounded up right away and taken off to prison. So they tried to get rid of everything that was Japanese. And so, definitely, name was part of that. It's interesting, though, my older brother was born in to Tule Lake concentration camp, but he got a Japanese middle name. And I don't know, I think it's also traditional that males, the firstborn, I think it has more traditional kinds of, I don't know what you call it, they feel much more traditional about that. So he did have a Japanese middle name. Both of my sisters were born after the war in '52, and '54, '55, had anglicized middle names, but the two boys had Japanese middle names.

LG: So you have four siblings?

TM: Siblings, although my two brothers have died.

LG: And where are you in the birth order?

TM: I'm second. So my brother was born in Tule Lake, as I said, in 1943, and I was born in 1945, and the other three were born in Auburn Washington.

[Interruption]

TM: Okay. In terms of birth order, I'm second born. My brother, Stan, was born in 1943, in Tule Lake concentration camp. So he was born in January, and I was born in February of 1945, two years later, but at that point in time, my parents weren't in a labor camp. And then when they got out, at the end of 1945, as near as I can remember, or as near as I can figure out, they went back to Auburn, Washington, in 1946. And my other three siblings, my brother, and my two sisters, were born in Auburn, Washington.

LG: And what generation are you?

TM: I'm Sansei, my parents are Nisei, and my grandparents are Issei.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.