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Legacies Project Oral History: May Watanabe

When: 2022

Transcript

  • [00:00:10] FEMALE_1: Now we can begin. This is a videotaped interview for the Legacies Project which are students gathering oral histories and putting them into an archive for future generations. Just please ignore the camera and have a conversation with me. We may have to pause the tape at certain points, but we can just pick up where we left off. Everybody, please turn off your cell phones and other audio devices. You can call for a break at anytime, we can pause the camera and pick up where we left off. I'm going to ask you some simple demographic questions. You can decline to answer any of them perfectly fine. These are just brief and we can elaborate later on in the interview. Please say and spell your name.
  • [00:00:50] May Watanabe: My name is May Watanabe. May as in the month of May, W-A-T-A-N-A-B-E.
  • [00:01:03] FEMALE_1: What is your birth date including the year?
  • [00:01:06] May Watanabe: May 13th, 1922.
  • [00:01:09] FEMALE_1: How would you describe your ethnic background?
  • [00:01:12] May Watanabe: I'm an American of Japanese ancestry.
  • [00:01:15] FEMALE_1: What is your religious affiliation, if any?
  • [00:01:19] May Watanabe: Well, I don't know what to say exactly. I was baptized as Presbyterian, I became a Baptist and I attend Friend's Meeting now.
  • [00:01:31] FEMALE_1: What is the highest level of formal education you have completed?
  • [00:01:36] May Watanabe: I have a BS in nursing and I've done graduate work in Public Health.
  • [00:01:43] FEMALE_1: What is your marital status?
  • [00:01:48] May Watanabe: I live alone now. I'm divorced, I'm widowed, I guess you'd say.
  • [00:01:57] FEMALE_1: How many children do you have?
  • [00:01:59] May Watanabe: I have two daughters.
  • [00:02:00] FEMALE_1: How many siblings do you have?
  • [00:02:03] May Watanabe: I have one brother who's deceased.
  • [00:02:07] FEMALE_1: What would you consider your primary occupation you do back then?
  • [00:02:11] May Watanabe: Primary occupation? Well, I'm retired, but I figure a nurse is always a nurse.
  • [00:02:22] FEMALE_1: Now we can begin the first part of our interview, beginning with some of the things you can recall about your family history. Do you know any stories about your family name?
  • [00:02:33] May Watanabe: Many stories about what?
  • [00:02:35] FEMALE_1: Your family name.
  • [00:02:36] May Watanabe: My family name. I'm not sure what you mean by that.
  • [00:02:51] FEMALE_1: Well, your family name. I'm sorry. What does it mean?
  • [00:02:55] May Watanabe: My name was Omura. My father and mother, their roots are in Hiroshima, but they were both born in Hawaii. Then eventually came to the States. I'm not sure what you mean by family name. Omura in characters means large village. O, is big, no, I can't tell you what the mura means, but I think that's what I would say about family name.
  • [00:03:50] FEMALE_1: Are there any naming traditions in your family? How did you get your name?
  • [00:03:58] May Watanabe: Traditions?
  • [00:03:59] FEMALE_1: Yes.
  • [00:04:02] May Watanabe: Well, my mother has told me stories about her childhood or the fact that her father had an export import business in Hawaii and he had to come and earn money. Their family tradition was to be responsible for the, I don't know how to say, the big gong that hits the bell in a Buddhist temple, because they were a Buddhist and the family had that responsibility. I suppose you'd call that a tradition. In a Japanese culture, there are many traditions. If a person dies, they have memorials, certain number of days, months, years, that's a thing I would hear in the Buddhist family. [NOISE] My mother was a Buddhist originally. She converted to Christianity, but she had a little a shrine and memorial, the day that her father died, she would always serve the first dish of rice, say, and take it and put it in front of there. That's something I didn't think about for a while. It's hard to say tradition, they're are many. In New Year's, the tradition in a Japanese home is to prepare all kinds of good food and have an open house. My mother used to stay up until late cooking until midnight. You're supposed to stop at midnight. [NOISE] Excuse me. My father would be sitting at the radio because in those days, there was no television. It's hard for you to imagine lots of things that you have today we didn't have then. He would say, Ma its New Year's in New York. [LAUGHTER] Then he would say it's New Year's in Chicago. [LAUGHTER] We would have all this food prepared, we were supposed to finish by midnight and you always took a bath and wore new clothes for New Years. Of course it's different in this country, but the way that we celebrated in our home, we would invite and the men are the one who come visiting. The women stay home and serve the people. I remember I did wash dishes in between. [LAUGHTER] But that's one tradition and we always went across the street where there's these people who were like grandparents to me and say The New Year's greeting in Japanese. We had to memorize that. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:07:41] FEMALE_1: Do you remember it?
  • [00:07:46] May Watanabe: [FOREIGN] I don't know exactly. [LAUGHTER] It means, Happy New Year and please keep loving me as you have before, kind of it's not literal. That was a tradition. I haven't thought about this in along time [LAUGHTER] What else? Well, there used to be a girl's day and a boy's day. Girl's day, March 3rd, and boys day March 5th. Then they decided to combine it, but I think they still celebrate those. They had special dolls and I would have decorate on tiers. My aunt sent me this whole beautiful thing. It has little lord and lady and all these servants and warriors and so forth on different tiers and always on a red, covered tiers and it'd be different levels and I still have that. Some of the bugs have gotten into the phases because it's probably corn stuffed. [LAUGHTER] But a number of years ago, my daughter decided we were going to display that and dug them out and tried to restore it and I think it's somewhere. [LAUGHTER] What other tradition?
  • [00:09:43] May Watanabe: The boys had special dolls and they would fly a carp, which is considered very strong fish. Maybe you've seen them in some pictures where there is like a kite would fly, they would display them in house. We didn't do that, but in Japan they do that. I'm sure there are many traditions that the family would try to maintain some of them because my parents are concerned that we're Americans. But it's important to remember the traditions and the culture that are in our background. I think that was good.
  • [00:10:39] FEMALE_1: Definitely. Do you know why your ancestors came to United States? Why did your ancestors come to the United States?
  • [00:10:47] May Watanabe: Well, people left their countries a lot of times hopefully to make a better living. I said, though I never talked to them. I never asked. Actually, my mother and father both, as I said, were born in Hawaii although they were educated in Japan the early years, and their families knew each other because they came from the same area. I don't know what happened in between, but my mother worked in Hawaii trying to help her father. She left school because his business partner cheated him and so he had to make up for the loss. She worked for other people. I remember her telling me stories about working for this lawyer family as a maid. It was a huge house, several floors. It was a first floor maid, a second for maid and show for cook. This family had twin boys and they were always dressed up in one in brown and one in blue. They always had dinner starting with soup and had to dress up for dinner. People said, my goodness, you're still working for her. Nobody's last very long because she was so strict. But she said instead of taking a streetcar, which was $0.05, she would save that and walk in order to save it. Now that seems unbelievable. Now in this day you can imagine paying $0.05 for a streetcar, but saving it. But I think our parents did a lot to hopefully have a better life. Then she worked in a restaurant and she's much smaller than I and she waited on tables. But the employer liked her so much and later she became the cashier, which wouldn't be so hard. Then the woman employer brought her to America for a trip supposedly. But my mother didn't tell her that she was not going to return with her. She had been writing to my father and he was working in Seattle. She was intended to stay and she did and they got married in Seattle. [LAUGHTER] That's an interesting story. I have letters that he wrote her, but I haven't been able to read. I think I still have them. I've always wondered. I'm wondering [LAUGHTER] what was written as those letters as they were planning this little thing in their life. Back to my history. I did go to Japan when I was like nine years old and I got to meet my grandfather. I think my mother's mother died when she was very small. I thought it was at birth, but I think leaders told me no. She had a younger sister and she has an older sister. The older sister went to school. I don't know whether they were, but I think she may have been born in Hawaii too. But she went to Queen's And Hospital and she became a nurse and later a midwife and so that in Japan, she delivered many babies. What's interesting is that many years later, some of those babies she delivered, she later became their go-between. You know in some countries you have go-betweens when you were someone monitoring your marriage? The parents would meet and arrange a meeting between the possible prospects. [LAUGHTER] But I thought that was always interesting that she delivered a baby and that baby grew up and ended up, she helped to arrange a marriage. One of the traditions of years ago in many countries too and still in some, I think where marriages are arranged. Sometimes couples have never met by themselves. I think his father died early and his mother died when he was in the United States. He said, you need to go home and see your father before something happens. She took my younger brother, and we went to Japan on a ship. No flying at that time took about 14 days. He had his birthday on the on the ship and they celebrated. We were not in first-class, but the children how children run around all over the decks We had a whole baseball team on the ship or a Japanese baseball team. As I remember, I think there was a tennis player and I think it was built children. We got to know all these people and on her as a little girl maybe this isn't part of the story. [LAUGHTER] My mother made me take dancing lessons. I danced for the program on the ship. There was a Filipino band and every time I would go up to see the movies on the ship, the Filipino band would play this tune. [LAUGHTER] I felt like a celebrity. They still sent me some flowers. The thing you do remember. Then what I was saying was in Japan, I met my grandfather who was a very, as that remember, tall and a stately person. My mother said when her mother died, he had to take care of them and he was very strict about that they should know how to clean house and so forth. They had to clean the house before they could go to school. She said in Japan they had these little walks because he took his shoes off and everything must be clean. She said they had to scrub the little patio walkway before they went to school clean the house. But my grandpa was. What I remember about him? Funny. Eating crackers with strawberry jam. [LAUGHTER] Probably we came from United States. That's something I remember about him.
  • [00:20:07] FEMALE_1: When your family migrated to the United States, did they bring any possessions with them?
  • [00:20:17] May Watanabe: Yes, I'm sure they did. As I told you that have the little shrine. I think they did send things from Japan, took a long time because it came by ship. There are many items around the house it pictures. I suppose he came from Japan. They have things like hangings, vases.
  • [00:20:47] May Watanabe: Even I suppose at that time it might have been sent from Japan. The utensils, chopsticks and dishes and rice bowls. I'm not very good about knowing years. [LAUGHTER] I can't say well is this year something came from Japan. I don't think I paid too much attention to that, but we did have articles. We had, as I told you that, Japanese doll displays the [FOREIGN] type things, which one of my aunts sent to me, I had two aunts. That's two sisters of my mother. The older one was a midwife. The younger one married a man who worked in Manchuria. Now that's the time of history which, in Japan as in Manchuria. Then my father had a brother. I don't know too much about his relatives as much, but the brother had three sons and a daughter. The oldest son came after he finished high school in Japan to live with my father and mother and was like a son because he spent the rest of his life in the United States and he gave up his being the oldest son. He would have inherited the house. He gave up his right to that to his second brother. I went to that house again. We just changed so much now because his father, his brother died and his I guess it's his brother's daughter lives there. The beautiful garden was run down and, they'd gone through the war. It's not quite what I remembered. [BACKGROUND]
  • [00:23:49] FEMALE_1: Just perfectly fine.
  • [00:23:53] May Watanabe: Do I have to stick through it before I know it? I'm going all over the place. [BACKGROUND]
  • [00:24:04] FEMALE_1: Do you know any courtship stories? How did your parents, grandparents, and other relatives come to meet and marry?
  • [00:24:12] May Watanabe: Well I told you about my father and mother before you even ask. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:24:17] FEMALE_1: What about your grandparents?
  • [00:24:19] May Watanabe: I don't know about them. My mother's father married again because his wife died. I always thought it was at childbirth, but it wasn't because I think the younger sister was about I don't know whether my mother was around six or what, but, so she never really knew her mother that well, I think and evidently because of my grandfather's business, they went back and forth from Hawaii to Japan.
  • [00:25:10] FEMALE_1: The next part is earliest memories and childhood. Please respond only with memories in the earliest part of your life. Where did you grow up and what were your strongest memories of that place?
  • [00:25:24] May Watanabe: Well, I was born in Chico, California, which is a small town in Northern California. The reason I was there because my parents were married in Seattle. I hear this story about my mother was pregnant when they decided to come to California. Because I was pregnant, I came on the train, but my father drove down. If I remember clearly, in one of these old cars that were opened on this side and with some friends, I guess, and she said it was snowing and rain and they had no sides, they had to wipe the windshield wiper. Just to get a picture of the times. They came to California to Chico because they knew somebody and they were farmers. Then my father opened the store, which was a produce store. There weren't very many people of Japanese or Japanese-Americans in Chico. Maybe once I think I tried to count, I think there might have been 70 something, 12 families and some single men. Because in those days, many immigrants from Benny countries were single men who came to seek a better life I think. These are stories that my mother said that they lived, I think outside of town. But they got to know these people who became like my grandparents. They lived a fairly near where my parents open the store. They would bring me as a baby, toss me through the window, and my girlfriend. Wow, what do you mean, toss it through that window? I said their bedroom was rightfully so they would just pass me through the window. They said as they went to work, I know that was funny. [LAUGHTER] But it was very hard in the beginning because people would go by the store and see these Japanese faces and pass by. My mother said we had $0.50 in the cash register, when they first open. But as the years went by, people came to trust them. Really the business builds up to a so that doctors and lawyers and wives would call up and say, Tom, this is my order. They'd trust him to fill the order and then they'd come by and pick it up. But it took time because they weren't accustomed to. I'm sure who are these people that look differently, not realizing that they're like anybody else. My father wanted to be very sure he had quality products and trustworthy and as a businessman, but a person who really had good ethics. My mother works very hard and became ill. She works so hard. She was always a manager, and very outgoing. She had carpenter's come and build living quarters just actually, it was like a platform above the store, not out of the building, but just a level above it. That's where they lived for a while until they finally were able to rent a house. I was trying to think. I think there was another grocery Japanese gross man who, I don't think he was a citizen. I think he came to America and they had a grocery store further out-of-town. There was a laundry, was trying to think, that was run by a Japanese and fish market and a barber. This woman and man these people who are like grandparents. They had a boarding house because in those days, there were many single men who were working and hadn't needed a place to stay. Later when they did rent a house which was across from them, it was very convenient for them to be babysitters for. Remember this man growing chrysanthemums and he had a persimmon tree. I remember seeing one of these single men catching the chicken and cutting head and he eat raw liver. Funny to think. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, they're such good people. I went to school from first grade and graduated in Chico. There's something else.
  • [00:32:37] FEMALE_1: Yes there is.
  • [00:32:41] FEMALE_2: I just thought I was going to sneeze for a second [LAUGHTER] I guess I just felt it in my nose. That's all.
  • [00:32:49] May Watanabe: I'm the one who has the allergy.
  • [00:32:55] FEMALE_1: When growing up, what was your childhood house like?
  • [00:33:05] May Watanabe: I think that I was in a protected. What I mean by that is I think parents did everything they could to make life pleasant. I remember walking to the outdoors, in those days they would dam up a stream and so we would walk to the one mile dam, there's a one mile dam and a five-mile dam. We would walk there and I would get so brown tan. It was very hot in the summer and Chico could be 100 and over in the summer, very dry heat. Every day if we go swimming. I remember my brother was real outdoor kid. He go fishing and he became a boy scout and he would be the leader of the pack or go and buy meat from the meat market where my mother used to shop and get vegetables from his father's place and take the kids out camping. My mother would worry about them when they went out camping in the woods and say, daddy, let's go take a ride, motor drive by and see how they were doing. [LAUGHTER] One day, mother and I came back from shopping and I said, what's that it smells like fried chicken? He was cooking frog legs. He had gotten frogs, he was an adventure. He used to go fishing early in the morning and he came back with a salmon that came up. He was holding it at his waist and it was long overdue, hanging down. He was real. He said there was one boy who was older than him, who used to tease him and be mean to him. How kids are awesome. My mother taught him. Now, she said that was a Japanese saying [FOREIGN]. That means losing is the winner. That you don't fight because you restrain yourself, which I thought was a important lesson. That boy later he got in trouble at later life. He used to get my brother into trouble. Getting a pain in my leg I get cramps once in a while so just a minute.
  • [00:37:02] FEMALE_1: Do you want to take a walk?
  • [00:37:03] May Watanabe: Yeah. I didn't gain weight, I was small. I get sore throats, I guess, and she was just convinced that I I needed to have my tonsils out in those days. Nowadays they don't do that so much. She even took me to Sacramento to see a doctor, so finally she must have convinced him. Both my brother and I had a tonsillectomies and the best part of it was that we can have ice cream. She didn't have a lot of education she had to stop going to school. But she would read these magazines and try to keep us well and she tried to feed this. She worked very hard. Anyhow, and part of this was she thought, well, maybe taking dancing lessons would help me exercise and so forth. I had dancing lessons from five or six years old and I did tab, I did belly, I did acrobatics. I did point your toe and a Dojo and all that. We were in dense programs, of course, once or twice a year. She would sold all the costumes and I guess all through high school. She used to take us to concerts because she felt that was part of my education. My poor dad would sit there and fell asleep. She tried to give us a rounded life. She used to have people, a Buddhist priest come in from 50 miles away and do services in the home. As a child, I remember having to sit there and listen, murmur that I couldn't even understand. We learned to say [FOREIGN]. They would go bang bang on this. But there was a Sunday school teacher in the Presbyterian Church who gathered all the Chinese, Japanese together and tried to have them go to Sunday school and thanksgiving and have a big thanksgiving dinner at the church and invite people. My mother said, well you must have some religion or some kind of way of worship. She had us go to Sunday school. This woman was just so kind and so concerned, I think this was her missionary duty in this small town. We would have Christmas plays and play shepherds and kings and marry and have the whole padgett and big dinner, so she was a big influence.
  • [00:41:08] May Watanabe: As I said later. Actually, I'm just going ahead with the story. But then the people in Chico, the Japanese families decided that it's important for the children to learn to speak and read Japanese to maintain some of that cultural knowledge. They decided to build a one-room schoolhouse and on this ranch. It was literally a one-room schoolhouse with benches. They hired a teacher to come from 50 miles away every Sunday. We would go to school and learn to read and write. We would take our lunch, maybe they're from 09:00 till three or something. At 11:00, this Sunday school teacher would come out there that we'd have Sunday School and we would sing hymns and learn Bible verses. Then the end of the year we would have a program. We would even learn to sing and do some Japanese dancing and put on a play. [LAUGHTER] I wish I could remember all those things that I was tought that I think is an important part of my life that I had that basic knowledge. I can still bright some simple form, remember some of the characters and speaks some not as fluidly as well as I would like. I wish I had more knowledge of it and I suppose I could study. But when I went to Japan fairly recently, they were surprised at the Japanese that I could speak. I was surprised because I would come some words or phrases that I didn't realize I remembered. I thought, wow, where did I get that? I think it's from hearing my mother speak at home, she would mix it. But she would teach me things about the Japanese tradition or ways of how to speak and manners, which are really outdated now probably. But the older people in Japan appreciate that. I was taught the old traditional way. Young people now speak entirely differently as well as like how speech has changed in teenagers here. I mean, it's like a different language, I think in some ways. That shows you that time takes its course. Going back to, have we talked enough. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:44:42] FEMALE_1: What was the typical day like for you when you were a child?
  • [00:44:48] May Watanabe: Typical day. As I say, I think that mother didn't make me do all the things when she said, go to school, study. I had piano lessons, I want to go in the kitchen and help. No. She said I can't practice for you. I was supposed to practice, then I couldn't get away from it. [LAUGHTER] I would just as soon have gotten in and helped her in the kitchen, I think. I studied late, I studied hard, and I I got good grades and I had a good life. I think I was a good girl. I wasn't naughty and I tried to do what they expected me to do. Actually, the school I went to was very small. I went from first grade to 12th grade. I think the schools were connected to the college. School was called College Elementary. My classmates, I thought they were about 12 or 13. Must have been bigger than that. I loved school, I liked it. My classmates, immediate ones we had a good time, my mother would invite them for birthday parties and she'd cook up a storm and we'd have a picnic near the one mild end [LAUGHTER] out in the woods. It was a very good childhood. My brother didn't particularly like studying that much. It's hard when you have somebody ahead of you that set a pattern. Your maze brother thing when you go to high school. But he wasn't bad. He was good. He's a boy. I remember him. I guess he must have been still in grammar school. My mother was sick. She was in bed when he came home crying. He had ridden a bicycle and to avoid a car, he fell over the bicycle and cut his mouth on the license plate. It was just keeping, just open and reminds me of charity that you bite into it. He came walking home. My father took him to the emergency room. But he had that scar the rest of his life. Funnier things you think of. I have to tell you a story. Just recently I had a chance to see my first friend I've had from first grade, she doesn't live in Chico anymore. But we got connected just this August. That's a whole another story [LAUGHTER].
  • [00:49:22] FEMALE_1: I can't wait to hear about that, and hopefully we can talk about it in the next season.
  • [00:49:29] May Watanabe: Have you had enough today?
  • [00:49:31] FEMALE_1: No. But the hallways might be filled with screaming children in a few minutes. To talk about preschool and kindergarten. You can decline to answer any of these questions if you'd like. Did you attend preschool?
  • [00:49:51] May Watanabe: You're going to have to speak louder.
  • [00:49:53] FEMALE_1: I'm very sorry. [LAUGHTER] Did you go to preschool?
  • [00:49:56] May Watanabe: Did I go to where?
  • [00:49:57] FEMALE_1: Preschool?
  • [00:49:59] May Watanabe: Yes. I think so.
  • [00:50:01] FEMALE_1: Do you remember the name of it?
  • [00:50:02] May Watanabe: Kindergarten, they call it, not pre-school. I don't think they had that in those days.
  • [00:50:09] FEMALE_1: Where did you go to kindergarten?
  • [00:50:11] May Watanabe: It was a school that's all connected, I think. I don't remember exactly, but I went to elementary school up to, in those days, it was you go to sixth grade, no to the 12th grade. It's connected with the college. There was a college in town. It was called College Elementary. We went straight through. You had friends from childhood all the way up. Then we went into high school with the same people because that was a little larger. I think elementary school, there were like 12 or 13 eighth grade that we graduated. We couldn't continue to have friends in a larger school when we enter Chico High School. We were a pretty close group. We'd have parties. My mother used to cook up lots of food. We'd go to the park and have picnics, and we go to each other's home for birthday parties.
  • [00:51:30] FEMALE_1: What else do you remember about high school, were there school dances?
  • [00:51:35] May Watanabe: Yeah. There were. I were dancing with somebody that was so tall my head was under his chin, I think, which isn't so unusual. It continued to be like that. I guess I never grew that much. When I was small, what I remember is they'd call you shrimp or names about your height. But also, there are children who say Ching Chong China man because they don't know what you were or make remarks, but I don't remember a great deal of that before the war. I wasn't very big and so my mother always thought that I didn't grow because I needed to have my tonsils out, that I was getting cold that she insisted that both my brother and I had tonsils taken out. In those days, they did that a lot. Now they don't do that so much. I remember going out of town even to see a doctor. Though we both had them at same time, the best part was we could eat ice cream. We had a fig tree in the back. My brother used to take these wonderful big figs and sell them to my father to sell in the store. That's keek. He was an outdoor kid and he would go fishing down in the one mile, then one morning he came back. Did I tell you this before?
  • [00:53:33] FEMALE_1: You briefly touched on it.
  • [00:53:36] May Watanabe: But he came home with a fish that was from the foot toe to his waist. I told you about the frog legs? See, I'm repeating. Then I was pretty active in high school. The Y group, the honor society, all that thing. The teacher of the glee club and the Y and Scholarship Route went to Mills College. She said that I should apply for a scholarships there. I ended up going to Mills College. I was in Oakland, which is about 200 miles away. I remember my father sending me boxes of fruit. We'd all get along and share it. Then the war came. One of the girls and I would hide in the closet [inaudible 00:55:04] in the dark. We had to turn our lights out at a certain time when there's. During the war time, I was supposed to be the light warden and see that everybody turned their lights out at a certain time. We would go into the closet. What silly things to remember. In my second year in college, am I jumping too far?
  • [00:55:37] FEMALE_1: No. You're doing good.
  • [00:55:43] May Watanabe: I went to the chapel on a Sunday morning. When I came back, the news was glaring, was at noon. They said the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. I said, what are they saying? I couldn't believe it. It was December 7th. I don't understand why the head resident said, go up to your room. Well, assuming there was an edict saying that all Japanese Americans had to be in by seven o'clock or whatever it was. I wasn't allowed to go from my dormitory to across the street, practically, just walking distance to the library after seven o'clock. It was scary. My advisor, [inaudible 00:57:14] really minister. He was a teacher. He was so angry that they put up this on the telephone poles about this thing. He insisted on taking me to San Francisco to see the adjutant general or whatever he was, to say, no, this was not right. This is unconstitutional. That, of course, didn't do any good. It was surreal to think you were born here, you're a citizen. What are they saying? That you are the enemy? That you're likely to be a spy or do sabotage. Just think if you right now were suddenly told that your citizenship doesn't mean anything, that the Constitution doesn't mean anything, you're under arrest, and you didn't know what was going to happen. Well, then later they decided they should put all people of Japanese ancestry, which meant anybody who came from Japan or who is even born here, that they should be taken from certain area on the western coast from Washington, Oregon, to California within a certain distance and be evacuated, is what they call. First, they weren't ready for this. The country was not prepared to be putting all these people into camps. First, there were small camps which were called evacuations.
  • [01:00:10] May Watanabe: Evacuation, I can't remember exactly. Fortunately, I didn't have to go to that, but there were several set up for those that they first removed and had to put them to places like race tracks which were converted into places where they can incarcerate people. People had to live in horse stalls which still smelled. They had to clean them up and fill their own mattresses with straw and live in those horse stalls even though temporarily. If I had stayed at school I would have had to go there and be separated from my family. They allowed me to go home. In a short time they said certain people and it's interesting because the line is drawn at certain people on one side of that line had to go where others had a choice of moving away if they wanted to or they could stay. We had to pack up, my mother had to sell furniture. The church was good enough to take my piano and some things store some things and my father had just moved his store from one location to another and had put new equipment in, walk in refrigerator and just enjoyed a year of herself of a new place and he had to get rid of that and he put his car, which means so much to a man into storage and would come by and see. They knew we had to miss. They say my mother would have this beautiful IV on a porch. They said, won't you give that to me? You have no use for it. She had to sell the furniture. We had to pack up then you could only take what you could carry legally. But before that time in between when the FBI came in to search your house in many homes they had things that were from Japan. This is part of their ancestry and so they say they would burn things or throw them away because they didn't want to be considered somehow tourers or something. [LAUGHTER] It was funny, isn't it? They were not, forceful anything they came in and looked at the house. One sat on this little thing that enlightened class and my brother had made a little Greek stool, something Romans do. He sat on it and broke it. I think that embarrassed him and they didn't spend too much time. The police chief was a friend of dad because my father had been invited to be in the Rotary Club and he was a respected citizen, but they took him to the police station. He apologized to him that he had to do that and of course he was released. Not that many Japanese or Japanese Americans living in Chico, so everybody knew each other. We went to the train station and got on the train which we didn't know where we were going. Shades are drawn, young soldiers are outside on the platform. I can't remember how long we borrowed, but where we ended up was at a place called Tule Lake and it's a dried up lake sand. They had army barracks for us to live in. For our family of four, it was like 20 by 25 or something. We had an army cuts and a pot belly stove in the middle. In the summer, it was very hot, dry sand and these tumble weeds that could go along. In the winter it was cold, there were cracks in the wall. You could hear your neighbor. Army barracks they're divided up and some people had more than four people in one section. We had a community place where we ate, it's like the community laundry and showers with nothing in between. It was just freezing cold in the winter. These people, they dug in the sand and they somehow planted things later. Made gardens, carve things out of pieces of roots, and put up petitions so that you could have a little privacy, having a shower, and people managed. But it really changes family life because you're in a mass kitchen and you're standing and rows with your plates and you don't eat with a family and kids tend to go with kids. Young kids probably thought it was fun getting together with them, but it changes your family life. Gradually, they had activities. They started schools. There were volunteers who came from outside to teach. Eventually, they had a little store where you could buy things, Sears, and people bought things through Sears Roebuck Catalogs. They had jobs to maintain the community. Because I could speak a little Japanese. I think, I told you about when we were small, the community had a Japanese school so that helped some but I became an interviewer there. Then later, I had two years of college. Unfortunately, I received full credit because my college allowed me to take my finals with the dean of the high school giving them to me and they gave me credit for all that so that I did have full credits for two years of college. That's a time when you decide what you want to major. I had thought about nursing, but when I decided I really think I would like to be as nurses when I worked in the hospital as a nurse's aid and I saw my first delivery. I thought, oh, this is a miracle. I want to be a nurse. That was a life changing moment I guess. My father he would always like to be independent and had, had his vegetable produce market. Now I thought, well, I've just got to do something to help the community and he shoveled coal. I really believe that contributed to his heart condition, he develop high blood pressure. Later when we he died on the [inaudible 01:10:46] he died with a heart attack. My brother is in high school and he was with a gang of boys. I never knew too much about much later. Years later I found that actually he was a good student and gave a speech [LAUGHTER]. But it was a sad part, I felt that I never got as close to my brothers. This is terrible [LAUGHTER]. Oh dear, I didn't know about digging up all these memories.
  • [01:11:43] May Watanabe: I could just spend all the time talking about [inaudible 01:11:47] They euphemistically call it evacuation center or relocation center it was a concentration camp. When you take away all your rights and put people in there. We know it was not Germany, it wasn't that thing, but we had barbed wire fences and we had watchtowers and soldiers up there with guns. Actually, there were some people in different places that were killed because they were thought to be trying to escape, which was not true. There's a lot written about it now and there have have been books that are written which you might find interesting. There are a few books that I could recommend that gives you more of an idea of what it was like. They were all the same. There were 10 of these relocation centers, but truly late became the most infamous. In the middle of all this, I think the government finally realized that what a really hard to handle thing they did. They took away all the young men who could have been soldiers and made them change their rating to four, I don't know what is F or whatever that they became ineligible to be soldiers. Then they found out they're going to need soldiers so they decided what they're going to do is have a loyalty oath, which is a big controversial thing, very poorly stated. They wanted you to swear, there were two very controversial questions that you would swear your allegiance to the emperor. We're citizens, we never had allegiance to the other citizens, there were some who are not citizens because they weren't allowed to become citizens. The parents would have no country if they said, I swear no allegiance not to the emperor. We didn't even have it so you see how it was very poorly stated. I shouldn't quote this without reading exactly, but the young men would be loyal to United States. Well, this is ambiguous. There were some young men who said, I'm not going to sign this, this is crazy. My parents are incarcerated, within barbed wire fences and I'm supposed to say, I'm going to be loyal and go fight the war. It may have created a terrible thing for these people because you had families where the parents were Japanese citizens because they weren't allowed to be American citizens, and then their children are American citizens, they were born here. Some of them were already in the service, some of them wanted to go and so they're developed a group of men who said they want to go and prove that they are. Many of them were from Hawaii who signed up to join and a special group where they became very well known because they rescued at the Battle of the Bulge as a sacrifice of a large number of lives worthy of the other soldiers could not rescue them and they went into an area which is unbelievable and became very famous and the most decorated group of soldiers that for that size of that. Here are these people who are saying, I want to prove I'm loyal, I want to prove that we are good citizens. There are those who said, "I can't do that when you treat my parents this way and treat us this way" and so they were imprisoned. I know of a family where it just divided them. One son went in the service, another son went to jail because the father said "You can't go." Then he just begged his father to get him out and his father spent lots of money trying to get lawyers to get him out and he couldn't. Finally, when he was released, he came back and he died with tuberculosis and his father was I think so anguished he told his family don't mention his name again, burn all his pictures, and never speak of him again. What a sad thing. Younger brother remembers this with terrible pain. But what it did to people, they didn't even teach about this in schools for a long time. I don't know how much the teaching here. But my daughter went to high school and the teacher was trying to say a little bit about it and she said, "No" She said, "You tell us because I don t know all about." Although she didn't know a whole lot either. She just knew that her parents, me and my husband we were in different camps. But this is a large part of our life that we will remember and it does leave scars.
  • [01:19:33] May Watanabe: For a long time, parents didn't speak about this. Children didn't know or understand what the whole thing was and still don't probably. History books have not been truthful about it. Is a horrible thing that the Japanese the did bombing of Pearl Harbor. But then following it was a horrible thing about Hiroshima and Nagasaki too. This is a part of history that still a lot to be known, I think. The truth is, it's the people and how it affects people. Both sides of the world. How Japanese suffered too. You might be interviewing somebody who has gone through that in Japan. There is so much about history that we just don't know. I think that young people might find it very revealing. I think history makes us understand more people. I've talked a lot about this, but it is a big part of my life. I did go out to school. Little by little the government I think realized they can't keep up people in this situation forever and they encouraged people to go out. They had to be checked and rechecked, fingerprinted, the FBI, the army, navy. Then the group that really helped me was the American Friends Service, the Quakers. They helped me find a school to get to. They sent someone to meet me at the train and found a place for me to stay while until school began. I was accepted at Syracuse, New York, Syracuse University in the School of Nursing. There were, I think,12 of us. They call a Japanese American women who were accepted from different parts of who were from California, largely originally. I'm very grateful for all the help I got that way. I graduated from there, and had my BSN nursing.
  • [01:23:14] FEMALE_1: When you went to college were your parents still moving?
  • [01:23:17] May Watanabe: My parents had to be transferred. They took the people so-called loyal, whoever signed the papers, and put them into another camp. They had to move people out and bring people from other camps too late. That's when it became infamous. There were riots because between these people, there was rioting and fighting because you didn't sign it. It's a very mixed up situation. I think my parents felt that they live in this country. They meant to stay here. Their children are born here, and we'll need to continue to live here. They felt that they must sign regardless of how ambiguous this statement was. That they were moved to Colorado to call the Almaty until they were relocated is what they call. They eventually went to Cleveland, Ohio. My brother went in the service. I got my BSN nursing. Then I was married, and was someone whom I met at Syracuse. I was married in Cleveland where I didn't know anybody, but it was my family, my parents who knew people there. It's not like a wedding where you have your friends, that you know, that you have bridesmaids or, in the same situation like today where you would probably have some classmates or close friends but it was a very simple where the reception is like cookies and punch in a home that my mother had. Everybody made adjustments. After that my husband was in the service and he went to graduate school at Yale Divinity School. I worked there as a visiting nurse. Who was cope with the worst winter, I think, they had in ages. I remember standing, waiting for the bus. I taught mothers how to take care of babies. I'd never had one, but I talked mothers classes. I went into homes and taught them how to take care of babies. I went into tell them about health care. I was both a visiting nurse and our department of health knows. I did teaching them how to stay well, so forth. I really believe that that is really the important part of nursing is education. After living there in a house with a bunch of students who were married couples, we had some fun times. We'd have a waffle party. We'd have all these waffle irons or we'd have creamed tuna on waffles. Then there were so many waffle irons that it would pull the socket or whatever, blow off the fuse. That was fun too. But we lived in a third floor apartment. When your students you'd get by with a lot of things. You try to save money in. We had a leaky refrigerator, the kind that you bring ice in, and you have to have a dripping pen if you don't remember to remove it you have leaking all over. We hung out laundry outside. It was so cold it would freeze, the sheets would be frozen. Those are the kind of things that young people went through in those days. Then I've lived in many different places because my husband worked at what he called, he was a minister. He went through Divinity School, but he did student work. They called him a secretary at like the why he didn't worked with students. We lived in California, Minnesota, Ohio, California. We've moved all around.
  • [01:29:21] May Watanabe: I don't know how far you want to go here [LAUGHTER]
  • [01:29:25] FEMALE_1: When did you and your husband first buy your own house and raise a family? When or where did you and your family started?
  • [01:29:34] May Watanabe: A house?
  • [01:29:35] FEMALE_1: Mm-hmm.
  • [01:29:37] May Watanabe: We rented a lot until California. When we were looking for a house, I was doing it. He was working. I would call and say that I wanted this house rent. When I got there, and they saw me, they said, oh, it's already rented. Why? Because I have a Japanese face. I got tired of this and I just got, I would say, look, I'm of Japanese ancestry and I have two children. If you have children and if they thought you were Japanese as the Japanese face or whatever, then they just say, oh, it's already rented. I thought, well, I'm just going to deal with this directly. That's the kind of thing we faced when we came on. When I was in nursing in school yet, patients would asked me, what are you? They were afraid to ask. In Minnesota they had not had a lot of Asian people living there. I'd say, well, what do you think I am? They would say anything from Chinese, Hawaiian, anything but Japanese? Or they'd even say Indian because there are a lot of Native Americans that live in that area. Then I would say no, I say, I'm an American just like you, because I wanted them to think, really what this all meant? I wanted an opportunity to tell them that I'm a citizen, just like you. Maybe they were a Polish as history or German or Irish or whatever. But all along we had to explain things and tried to tell people and tried to have them try to understand that we are Americans just like you. When we finally went to California, for one job, we lived in actually the first time it was in concert huts like Kaiser Foundation had put up for steel workers or whatever. That's where my first child was born. But it was years later when we came back and thought we would stay there, that we bought a house. In California there were a lot of people who had come back after that. Because of that, I think we had a Japanese American Realtor and that was not such a problem.
  • [01:33:08] FEMALE_1: What is your first daughter's name?
  • [01:33:11] May Watanabe: What?
  • [01:33:11] FEMALE_1: Your first daughter?
  • [01:33:12] May Watanabe: My first daughter's name is Lori and my second daughter's name is Wendy. Lori lives here and Wendy's in [inaudible 01:33:25] When I was last working in Pittsburgh it's where I lived the longest. I worked at the University of Pittsburgh Student Health Service. I was a nurse there, so I took care of students and I loved that. I was there for over 35 years or more. People kept asking me when I was going to retire because I kept working and they could ask me. Finally, I can't even remember when I retired because my daughters said, mom, it's time that you move closer to one of us because it's not fair we have to come this far when you get sick or [LAUGHTER] so I moved here, which is good. But all the time, I'm a nurse at heart.
  • [01:34:31] FEMALE_1: Tell me about your children and what life was like when they were growing up.
  • [01:34:36] May Watanabe: When they were growing up?
  • [01:34:37] FEMALE_1: Yeah.
  • [01:34:41] May Watanabe: Well, Lori is still very outward person. When she was in sixth or seventh grade I think, she went through some traumatic things with their help. Actually I don't know how much she would want me to tell about this [LAUGHTER] . She had lost her hair. She started losing her hair and this happens to young people a lot when they're under stress and without realizing it. But she was very brave and when we first moved to Pittsburgh, it got to the point where I said, you need to have a wig in case you want to use it. She did because nobody knew her in Pittsburgh and so she came as entirely a new person. I might be telling tales out of school. Maybe she would say mom, you didn't have to share that. But I think because she was very brave. She used to make friends easily, had lots of friends, was in school plays, was very involved. Wendy, when you have a big sister, you tend to copy a lot I think usually you wouldn't want anybody to view. Any of you have a big sister or if you are big sister, you know there's that kind of thing. You don't talk about. But you can't help but notice there are some things to say. Wendy was in school plays and saying and did that kind of thing too. But she's a little more reserved, I think. Didn't have as many friends all the time in the house and she tended to read a lot and so as grown-ups, they are very close, but they're too different in their own way, wonderful in their own way. Both are loving, carrying people and that's what's important and I feel that no matter what happens, I'm very fortunate to have these two girls because I became a single parent when I was in 40s. They've grown up wonderfully, in spite of all that. I'm very proud of them. I think I've already sought. I remember a Latin class where this mother said her children were her jewels, they're my jewels. There's nothing more I could ask for.
  • [01:38:18] FEMALE_1: That is the end of state.
  • [01:38:19] May Watanabe: At the time.
  • [01:38:20] FEMALE_1: Yes at the time.
  • [01:39:08] May Watanabe: We've all [inaudible 01:39:08] I don't think it's just that I see a young person has some traumatic thing happened. It affects their self-esteem and that's the most important in life you have to think you're worthy, and that you're able to do things and you have to fight to achieve that.
  • [01:39:33] FEMALE_1: Today we're going to talk about work-life and retirement. As always, you have the right to refuse any questions.
  • [01:39:43] May Watanabe: What did you say at the end?
  • [01:39:44] FEMALE_1: You can do refuse any questions that I asked you not to answer any of them if you don't want to.
  • [01:39:49] May Watanabe: Okay.
  • [01:39:52] FEMALE_1: What were your personal favorite things to do for fun?
  • [01:39:56] May Watanabe: That's my work-life.
  • [01:39:59] FEMALE_1: Your adult life, what did you like to do?
  • [01:40:01] May Watanabe: For fun? I like to cook. I'm constantly looking at recipes and trying different things. I don't have a particular like some people have a hobby or I enjoy people. I don't know what else you as I say, I enjoy a lot of things. I'm used to like to play some tennis. I don't have a one thing that I really some people have hobbies, some people have particular needs, but I can't say right now. It's hard to say.
  • [01:41:17] FEMALE_1: Also during your adult life, what were the popular music styles during that time?
  • [01:41:26] May Watanabe: This was the thing I haven't thought about much. What do you mean? You mean, of course, young people, I suppose you mean what music or?
  • [01:41:33] FEMALE_1: I mean the dances that would go with the music? Did you ever go out dancing?
  • [01:41:39] May Watanabe: Personally I used to dance as I took dancing lessons and I yes, but I didn't do much of the jitter bugger or that thing. That's the thing that young people, there's a lot.
  • [01:42:05] FEMALE_1: What were the pop of their clothing styles or the hairstyles.
  • [01:42:14] May Watanabe: I think they changed. There's everything from page boy to how they used to make huge roles and and I can't say I've gone through many years, so there are many changes. Clothing. I can remember that sometimes there are these full skirts like circuit or skirts that were full and so if you turned around and then there were stages where I didn't wear linen, but some people had these what do they call them? Different styles of pants. Some that flared and bell bottoms. Then you have the the men that had these funny, baggy things [LAUGHTER] I'm pretty conservative I think. I didn't pay too much attention to trying to keep up with fashion.
  • [01:43:30] FEMALE_1: Were there any slang terms or phrases that were used then and not today?
  • [01:43:35] May Watanabe: Oh heavens, that's too long. I don't remember things like that.
  • [01:43:44] FEMALE_1: Now we're moving into the work and retirement section. How did you first become interested in nursing?
  • [01:43:51] May Watanabe: When I was in the concentration camp, we had jobs and so I did some other work, but then I ended up becoming a nurse's aid in the hospital. When I saw the first delivery of a baby I thought that is a miracle. I think now I want to be a nurse. I had thought about it. I had talked to nurses and second year in college, you're supposed to state a major and I wasn't sure. I had interviewed some nurses and so forth, but that was what really made me think it's really something wonderful.
  • [01:44:46] FEMALE_1: Did you have to go to any special training to become a nurse?
  • [01:44:49] May Watanabe: Oh, yes. When I was in Camp and I had had two years of college. Then when I went out, I went to Syracuse, New York and they had a nursing program. Actually, the government had a nurse cadet program so that if you join that program, you promise that you're going to work as a nurse for two years and then your education is free. I thought, well that's a perfect setup for me because I had first applied to a school in Ohio, but they didn't have well, that was later actually. But I was on the searches campus where you could hear the soldier trainees with ROTC or wherever marching by hook 234 and singing their song. I did my nursing there because I had two years of college I had a BSN nursing, and then I did some graduate work at what was then called a Western Reserve is now Case Western, I believe in Ohio. Later on I actually did some more Public Health graduate work in California. This was after I was married. I did school nursing some but I worked as a visiting nurse after I was married in New Haven. I remember standing in the cold Syracuse. I think they had the worst winner that year waiting for the bus and I went house-to-house and I taught mothers about having babies. I'd never had one yet, but I taught mothers classes, taught them how to obey babies and how to take care of what to expect and also I went to homes and visit homes and saw that they got follow-up care, encouraged them to I have immunization, that thing.
  • [01:47:32] FEMALE_1: Did the technology and dance at all during your time as a nurse?
  • [01:47:36] May Watanabe: Oh, of course. Changes all the time. One of the, I believe about the time is when natural childbirth was promoted. Dr Reeds famous theory about childbirth being natural and you could have delivery without having a lot of anesthetic did exercises and Yale, that was a big thing.
  • [01:48:07] FEMALE_1: What was the biggest difference in nursing then and nursing now?
  • [01:48:11] May Watanabe: Oh, I can't say that. There are advances all the time and I haven't been in when you say nursing is a really big field. Now you're talking about people think nurses in the hospital it isn't that. There's a lot of public health, there's nurses in research, nurses who have now become a nurse practitioners going way beyond. They do almost anything that basic things that doctors teach. Actually, I think nurses more teaching and they take more time, or that's ideal. Now hospitals are so busy I think, but I have not been in a hospital for a long time in Townsville. I was mainly in more public health. Excuse me, let me have a drink of water. My hands don't work. Thank you. I'll try.
  • [01:49:34] May Watanabe: Now, I could not work in a hospital again right now, there are just so many new machinery and the whole system is different. When I go and visit a patient now, it's just so different. It's not nurses who give the care, they're aides and people who are not don't go through the whole nursing team. When I was a nurse, we used to give baths, you gave the patient and you don't just hand them a towel and they bath themselves and they get patients up earlier. We had more hands-on, I think and we gave morning care, but we also gave afternoon care even back rubs. Whoever heard of a BackRub now in the hospital, it's just so changed. There's so much paperwork, computer, seems like all they're doing is reporting the computer and, I think it's changed a lot with all the new machinery and things. I would have a hard time.
  • [01:50:56] FEMALE_1: How was excellence judged in nursing, how did someone become a respected?
  • [01:51:00] May Watanabe: What?
  • [01:51:01] FEMALE_1: How was excellence judged, were there awards given out for the best nurse of the year?
  • [01:51:11] May Watanabe: I don't know what you're talking about nursing. As I said, I did a different kind. Of course I did hospital nursing when I was training and a little bit, but I was more public health. I feel that to me, teaching prevention is the most important part it's not just the nursing care, I think goes nursing care has changed a lot, but that is my priority.
  • [01:51:48] FEMALE_1: What did you value most about your job? What was your favorite part about it?
  • [01:51:54] May Watanabe: Well, I think I just told you, and I think that trying to have a relationship with the patient and with your co-workers? I enjoyed my work but see later I worked in a university setup, where the students is like clinic for the students and is quite different than what people think. Nurse, they think they're in the hospital, it's not just that.
  • [01:52:43] FEMALE_1: How did family life change for you when you and your husband retired, and the children left town?
  • [01:52:50] May Watanabe: When I retired? I didn't retire, I worked beyond retirement stage. Well, let me see. During the time where my children were small, I was at home, but later, I continue to work and then as I said, I was a nurse in a, I was just thinking of that period there between, I lived in so many different places. I was in Connecticut and I was in California, I was in Ohio, went to California again back and forth depending on my husband's job. Because of that, there was a connection where I actually, you might say, what did I enjoy working with people who worked with international people. A large part of my life has been connected with that kind of thing. As I think back, I worked with board members of the why and help with fundraising in Ohio. I help with giving dinners, this jockey dinners and raise money. I had fashion show where these women from all different parts of the world wear their beautiful gowns and wedding gowns and we had a fashion show. Then when I lived in Pittsburgh, there was an organization called the Pittsburgh console for international visitors, and this is an organization which would help when students came from other parts of the world and they would meet them at the airport and how's them sometimes until they found housing. Then they also had these wives who would meet say once a week and have a program, teach them about the city. Then it's interesting, after I left Pittsburgh, I've worked with international people here. The international neighbors group here, which is does that kind of thing of helping people who are mostly wives of people who have come here to study, or work, or not only in the university but in different companies are many Japanese who have come to work in branches of Toyota or other places. When they first come, we try to help them to understand the adjustment here to learn about Ann Arbor and parts of Michigan and if they have children, we try to give them information about children's activities. Actually, even today, I'm meeting with a group of discussion group and there are many small groups that the international neighbors had, which is anything from knitting, painting, cooking, book discussion, or practicing English. Then I have T-groups were the small groups where there's a hostess and then visitor is called the guest and once a month they meet and have programs all in terms of getting to know each other. I think that is probably one of the most things that I value most is meeting people from all over the world because our world is getting smaller, we need to think in terms of trying to have more understanding and I think that to me, there's nothing more important. If we don't try to understand and appreciate the differences, rather than emphasizing the differences and try to appreciate each other and I think that that has been a big theme in my life. I think that going everywhere I've lived this contact with different people and trying to really appreciate the differences, not emphasize them unnecessarily. I think if we did that more, we might have more peace. If we had more sharing, more appreciation. I had a friend who was a person like that who said, if we could only feed everybody, if people weren't hungry, we would have peace. There's so many people starving everywhere, suffering, we have no idea what it's like some of us here. I think that we're so comfortable, we complain about everything and now when I think of those people who don't have any water in the desert and so when I brush my teeth, I think when you need to use a cup and not just heat the water running. But even then, without realizing, we waste so much and I think if we could start thinking more of other people and how we might share, we find more meaning in what we're doing. Anyway, I could go on and on about that.
  • [02:00:14] FEMALE_1: Today or in life now, what is a typical day like for you?
  • [02:00:20] May Watanabe: A typical day? Oh, there's no typical day [LAUGHTER]. Actually, let's say what I did this week. I just went to a movie called Nano and it was about the time when the Japanese occupied Taiwan and it was about a man who tried to make a baseball team out of a bunch of rookies who they were country bumpers, but they consisted of young men from Taiwan as well as Japan. It took a long time, but he groomed them to be a winning team. But the interesting thing is that here is these young men who are from different backgrounds, history of conflict but they grew to know each other and have a team spirit and become a winning team. Even at the very end, when they kept winning until they went to Japan to play in big tournament. There was so much to it in terms of there's even a looking down by the Japanese and how do you speak to each other. Well, they had a common friendship and connection by just working together. They didn't let difference of background affect them. Even with the last game when their pitcher who had gotten injured and he insisted on finishing the game, the whole team was behind him and they lost the final game. But there was such a team spirit. But it was the whole idea of differences, not making any difference. [LAUGHTER] Well, here I went not on and on about this. But I also recently went to an ACLU fundraiser where we had this African-American speaker saying how terrible prejudice and racial discrimination and injustice still goes on. I'm interested in that kind of thing. I'm interested in restorative justice. There are many people who are put in prison for young people, for things that they're not that huge. Being in prison when they're teenagers for years is not doing any good. They need to think in better terms where instead of filling prisons and just forgetting about them, how do we do something about the prison system and not make it a business by having things like privatization when private companies have prisons, all they want to do is make money. What do they do? They want to put more people in there. This is not the way to have social justice. I'm interested in social justice and I'm interested in food rescue, like food gatherers. I go to their fundraiser activities. I'm interested in using our land and our water with consideration of how we maintain our good Earth. I guess I spread out. [LAUGHTER] There's so much to put our efforts into so that's the kind of thing I think of.
  • [02:05:24] FEMALE_1: What does your family enjoy together for fun or what do you and your family do for fun?
  • [02:05:30] May Watanabe: Way back then? Well, we lived in a small town and when we were small my mother said the only way she could have rest was go for a ride, everybody in the car. Small things like taking a ride up into the hills, wasn't very far. We would go on vacations from Chico to San Francisco area. My father liked tennis. I remember even going to a Davis Cup tournament in San Francisco. We go to the state fairs and picnics. Even back then they would have ethnic picnics, Japanese and the community and sometimes it was with other communities where you had braces and contests and so forth. But those were community things. We enjoyed because we had a small community. We would go 50 miles away to see a Japanese movie and also there were program and communities would have programs where they did Japanese dancing and singing and whatever. When I was a child, that's the kind of thing.
  • [02:07:24] FEMALE_1: What about today? What do you and your daughter do for fun?
  • [02:07:27] May Watanabe: What is it?
  • [02:07:28] FEMALE_1: What do you and your daughter do for fun today, in your life now?
  • [02:07:31] May Watanabe: How do?
  • [02:07:33] FEMALE_1: What do you and your daughter, what do you guys do for fun now?
  • [02:07:37] May Watanabe: Well, I told you to now, I'm doing a lot of things with my daughter because she's involved in those things. One of the things that she's very much into is race dialogue and this periodically they would have a series of six or eight meetings once a week and people in the community are invited to come together and talk about race and how we are so unaware sometimes of how we look upon other people, say things or assume things and not really understand they have a meaning. What it means to be a different color or a different religion or a different background. It takes a lot of work to really look at oneself and say, am I really being honest when people say, I'm not prejudiced. But the remarks they say, they don't realize that some of the things that really there is a very strong, I'm not sure how to say it, but we don't realize what we are really and how we relate to people. We think that we're fair, we think that we are not judgmental. Most of us have prejudices without even realizing it and I think this is something we have to really work on. There are so many things like that, that's a lot to be done in this life. I just went to a lecture yesterday at the senior center and heard a marvelous lecture about finding purpose in life. How many of us think about do we have a real purpose? I was so impressed with that, we don't stop and think or sometimes you go along every day just taking things for granted or get depressed or just go along without really thinking about. He said maybe you should think about how we make a dent in destiny. Never too early to think about that and never too late.
  • [02:11:10] FEMALE_1: Thinking back over your entire life, what are you most proud of?
  • [02:11:15] May Watanabe: Most proud of?
  • [02:11:24] May Watanabe: I'm most proud of my two children. I've already said the juice in my life. Because in spite of all the things that we've gone through. I think they both become good human beings that are doing good things and have a purpose. I can't ask for anymore.
  • [02:11:58] FEMALE_1: What advice would you give to my generation? What advice would you give to the students here?
  • [02:12:07] May Watanabe: What advice? That's a lot. I think live every day fully with purpose. This may be the only chance you get. If you do that, you don't have to worry. Be compassionate, listen, appreciate, be grateful.
  • [02:13:03] FEMALE_1: Is there anything you'd like to add that I haven't asked you about?
  • [02:13:30] May Watanabe: I don't know. I'd say I think that I've lived a long time and I'm grateful for what I have had and have now. I hope that I've received a lot and I hope I've given some. I want to live every day as fully as possible. I wish everyone will find joy in their life.
  • [02:14:29] FEMALE_1: Well, that's a rap. That's it. Would you like to tell us any more stories about?
  • [02:14:36] May Watanabe: For me?
  • [02:14:37] FEMALE_1: Would you to tell anymore stories or [LAUGHTER] anything else with a [inaudible 02:14:41]
  • [02:14:41] May Watanabe: Well, I don't know. Do you have more questions because I've wandered all over.
  • [02:14:48] FEMALE_1: Well, feel free to wander all over again or what [LAUGHTER] to all the question I got for you.
  • [02:14:55] May Watanabe: May be you'd like to look at my little hook there and may be you have some question. That was made by a student at the university. She's actually an artist, but she took a course on women, I think or something, and she was supposed to have a project. She interviewed me many times, taped. She took my pictures that I might have had on some papers, and she put it together to this level board, and she had a friend who is an artist who makes the cover. I was just amazed at what she did. It tells the story of my life in a bit. The brief moments and may be raise some questions. The other one is many pictures that my daughter is in Washington. When I go there, I'm going again on Christmas. I go there, I've been going there for many years like Christmas and coming back after New Year. Then we've told you this, and so we cooked this Japanese foods and invite people over. She had a friend who's a photographer, take different pictures. She isn't telling me she was going to put it together and gave it to me as a gift. Shows some of the foods and us cooking in the kitchen, [LAUGHTER] and with some other decoration she has. I thought that might be fun for you to look at. The other one is our art. I think that's the one I brought. I had many books. In spite of the fact that these people lived in deserts and there wasn't much there, they took like roots that are drying in the desert or the seashells that they found and made jewelry, they carve things and made beautiful art things. Out of the desolation, you can have beauty. It's amazing how strong survival spirit can be, and you can be going in the dumps and say, "This is the end, there's no use" or you can try to find some good in art. I think that is such and is amazing the artwork. It wasn't just at the camp I was in, but there were ten of them, and so they had a big exhibit in Washington DC and I think they've taken all over, so I thought you might like to look at that. Do you have any questions?
  • [02:17:54] FEMALE_1: I have.
  • [02:17:55] May Watanabe: Yes.
  • [02:17:56] FEMALE_1: I was just wondering what growing up with your brother was like because I have a little brother too, and it's definitely an experience.
  • [02:18:04] May Watanabe: Are you the oldest?
  • [02:18:05] FEMALE_1: I am, yeah.
  • [02:18:08] May Watanabe: How far apart are you?
  • [02:18:10] FEMALE_1: My little brother is eight years younger than I'm.
  • [02:18:12] May Watanabe: Well, that's quite a bit.
  • [02:18:13] FEMALE_1: Yeah.
  • [02:18:14] May Watanabe: You probably don't really have a chance especially as you go to school, you go farther and farther apart because he has different friends. In my case, he was only three years difference. But I look back and I think he might have had real problems because just happened that I was a good girl and I studied hard and [LAUGHTER] I figured grades. When [inaudible 02:18:45] go to school is that, you're May's brother? He felt like they had expectations of him and being a boy, he liked to horse around and you don't know really what he was thinking a lot about. I have a feeling that it makes a difference when your older sister maybe. Are you the first child?
  • [02:19:15] FEMALE_1: Yeah.
  • [02:19:17] May Watanabe: You got all that attention in the beginning and you felt a little bit like, I'm the first child and so forth, I don't know, but I don't think I felt that way and I'm sorry that I didn't get to know him better. Because I went away to college, and then the war came, and then in camp, he found friends over all his age, and they played baseball or they did things together, and I worked. It was much later I discovered that I didn't even know that he graduated with honors. [LAUGHTER] [inaudible 02:20:04] He graduated in the first-class from camp. Then after that we lived in different cities. He had his own family and we'd get together as a family, but that's different. If you have a chance to have maybe even if you're far apart because we were far apart, my little brother and maybe you've been big sister. But I can see where if you're that far apart, you have a different level of activity and friends but I'm sure he's still always looks up to you as big sister. Do you have other siblings?
  • [02:20:50] FEMALE_1: I do. I have a younger sister who is four years younger than I'm.
  • [02:20:54] May Watanabe: You're likely to be a little more closer, the same sex and, you talk about the same thing. Although there's that little bridge there, I think, that depends on what age where, my goodness, you know your little sister, I have my own friends. [LAUGHTER] Maybe you go through that too. But I think it differs in families. How about you?
  • [02:21:17] FEMALE_2: I have an older brother. He is four years older than me.
  • [02:21:21] May Watanabe: You have an older brother?
  • [02:21:22] FEMALE_3: Yes, so I'm younger.
  • [02:21:25] May Watanabe: Maybe he thinks of you as baby sister.
  • [02:21:27] FEMALE_3: Yes. [LAUGHTER] He's actually in college right now in Oregon, so we get to talk sometime, but not all the time.
  • [02:21:35] May Watanabe: Well, I think if we lived together more, I would have had more chance. I think we fought a lot too [LAUGHTER] We played marbles on the floor when we were little kids, but I think he thought I was a goody-goody. Even as older, I wasn't the person that drank or smokes, he didn't either but I don't think he ever smoked. He wasn't a beer drinker. But I don't know, there might be parts of life that you don't know about somebody else do. [LAUGHTER] Sometimes I think when you get older is when you get together more. May be you grew up and you have a family, he has a family, and you may have some sharing but [LAUGHTER] everybody's life is a little bit different. Any other question? You're filming all these? [LAUGHTER] Cut out the pieces. [LAUGHTER] The ums and the sums [LAUGHTER] How's it going?
  • [02:23:04] FEMALE_1: It's going well.
  • [02:23:06] May Watanabe: Is it?
  • [02:23:06] FEMALE_1: Yeah.
  • [02:23:07] May Watanabe: Yeah.
  • [02:23:07] FEMALE_1: Video looks great and-
  • [02:23:09] May Watanabe: Pardon me?
  • [02:23:09] FEMALE_1: The video looks really great.
  • [02:23:11] May Watanabe: Is it really?
  • [02:23:12] FEMALE_1: [inaudible 02:23:12] so excited.
  • [02:23:20] May Watanabe: You get together afterwards and say, well this part we won't use, but you just take one part.
  • [02:23:29] FEMALE_1: Well, actually we're going to have you come back for fore then review and then we'll have a set of question on [OVERLAPPING]
  • [02:23:33] May Watanabe: Oh, really? You mean before summer?
  • [02:23:36] FEMALE_1: No, this is in March. Around [OVERLAPPING] back.
  • [02:23:43] May Watanabe: I've talked to several people about whether they'd like to participate.Few days ago, you wouldn't have wanted me.
  • [02:23:57] FEMALE_1: 0fcourse we want you always.
  • [02:23:59] May Watanabe: My voice was like, it's strange today, June.
  • [02:24:03] FEMALE_1: We're glad you're feeling better though.
  • [02:24:06] May Watanabe: I feel fine. It's just that my voice was like somebody else's voice the other day.
  • [02:24:16] FEMALE_1: Got their all cell phones off. Okay, I'm just going to go over the introduction part. You can call for a break anytime you'd like,.
  • [02:24:35] May Watanabe: You know what? I forgot to put a new hearing aid battery.
  • [02:24:39] FEMALE_1: Okay. Just speak up. So I just honor.
  • [02:24:41] May Watanabe: I might have one in my purse but go ahead.
  • [02:24:44] FEMALE_1: Could you lean by also? You can move closer. [inaudible 02:24:46] Can you hear me? I feel like I'm yelling at you every time I talk loud.
  • [02:24:56] May Watanabe: No, people have to yell at me. [LAUGHTER]
  • [02:24:59] FEMALE_1: I will try to maintain the sexist.
  • [02:25:01] May Watanabe: You have a very soft, gentle voice.
  • [02:25:05] FEMALE_1: I'll try to be able to go the party.
  • [02:25:06] May Watanabe: Okay.
  • [02:25:08] FEMALE_1: As a pretty member, you can decline to answer any question or terminate the interview at anytime for any reason. What we really wanted to focus on today is your story about the strength of family and perseverance through adversity. Some questions may seem familiar because we have asked.
  • [02:25:24] May Watanabe: Slow down.
  • [02:25:25] FEMALE_1: I'm so sorry. It's been a while since we've done this. Some of the questions might seem familiar because we've asked them before, but please just be patient while we try to get this up. We need to edit and they'll go smoothly. We have about 29 questions for you today, and the first set of questions are designed to establish background information about you. Again, these questions will sound familiar, and thank you for being patient as you repeat them. Please state your name.
  • [02:25:59] May Watanabe: May Watanabe.
  • [02:26:01] FEMALE_1: When were you born and where were you born?
  • [02:26:04] May Watanabe: May 13, 1922. Chico, California.
  • [02:26:09] FEMALE_1: Where did you live as a child?
  • [02:26:11] May Watanabe: Chico.
  • [02:26:13] FEMALE_1: What did your parents do for a living?
  • [02:26:16] May Watanabe: My father owned a produce store.
  • [02:26:22] FEMALE_1: And your mother?
  • [02:26:23] May Watanabe: Well, she helped him. [LAUGHTER]
  • [02:26:26] FEMALE_1: Did you have any siblings?
  • [02:26:28] May Watanabe: I have one brother, younger brother.
  • [02:26:31] FEMALE_1: What's his name?
  • [02:26:33] May Watanabe: Paul.
  • [02:26:34] FEMALE_1: Describe your relationship with your brother during childhood.
  • [02:26:41] May Watanabe: Like any brother and sister, we had our moments. I think probably not unusual than any other brother-sister relationship. He did his own thing, I did mine. He liked the outdoors and he was out running around a lot, and he would joined the Boy Scouts. But when he was much younger, he would go fishing. We lived in a small town and there were creeks nearby and he would go fishing. One morning he went out early and came back with a salmon that was half as big as he was. He would go out and do things on his own. One day he came home and he was cooking something, and mother and I thought, what is this? It smells likes fried chicken? And he had caught some frogs and he had cooking frog legs. He was an adventure. [LAUGHTER]
  • [02:28:04] FEMALE_1: During your childhood years, did you or your family face any discrimination because you're of Japanese descent?
  • [02:28:10] May Watanabe: Oh, definitely. My parents, especially when they first arrived, they had come from Seattle. Before that of course, they were born in Hawaii but had gone back and forth to be educated in Japan. But they came to the United States and were married in Seattle, and when they came to Chico, my father started a business with a friend and eventually, he became the owner alone. The first day, people would come by and see that they were Japanese faces and they just walked by. This was because there were very few Asians in Chico, and I just shouldn't say because, but there were very few and I I'm sure they didn't mingle that much. But eventually, they established a reputation of being honest and having good products, and the relationship changed and they became very part of the community. As a child, I probably was kidded because children will call you names because you look different, but I think I brushed it off pretty easily at that time.
  • [02:30:02] FEMALE_1: The next six questions will relate to your life as an adult. What college did you attend?
  • [02:30:09] May Watanabe: I went to Mills College, which is about 200 miles away from Chico in Oakland, California.
  • [02:30:18] FEMALE_1: Why did you choose that particular college?
  • [02:30:21] May Watanabe: Well, I had a teacher who had gone there. She was also the Why leader and she was a Choir Director, and she thought I should apply for a scholarship. I did receive a part-time scholarship.
  • [02:30:47] FEMALE_1: Describe the impact of Pearl Harbor on your college experience.
  • [02:30:55] May Watanabe: Well, do you want that story about how I went to Chapel that morning and came back to the dormitory and the radio was blaring? I thought, what is going on here? They said that the Pearl Harbor had been bombed by Japanese and that I should go up to my room. I couldn't why I should go up to my room. Here I'm in a girls dormitory and I think everyone was so shocked and frightened. Why they thought that I should be separated, I don't know. But I do remember that and I thought this is very strange. We all knew each other whether they thought they were protecting me from something. But here we are on a campus that is separated from the community. It was a very frustrating feeling. Soon there was a declaration from the government that said all Japanese and people of Japanese ancestry were under curfew and we could not leave, go outside after seven o'clock. Eventually, I couldn't even go from my dormitory to the library across the street after seven o'clock, which is another strange thing within this protected community. Which has a fence around it as an all girls school. My advisor who happens to be the chaplain of college was just furious. There was a sign put up on a telephone pole outside. He said we're going to go to San Francisco and see the editor general. Of course they didn't do any good. But there are some people who recognized what injustices was.
  • [02:33:33] FEMALE_1: Did any of your friends or peers treat you differently?
  • [02:33:40] May Watanabe: Do you mean on the campus? I don't recall that anybody really treated me differently on campus.
  • [02:33:51] FEMALE_1: What motivated you to leave college?
  • [02:33:54] May Watanabe: I had to. [LAUGHTER] It either came out that we had to leave this certain area on the West Coast. It depended on where you lived. They weren't quite sure of themselves, I think the government. This was so sudden and they said that if you were in a certain area, you would be moved to a specific place. My family was 200 miles away and I didn't want to be separated from them. I had to go home so that we would be evacuated as they say, together.
  • [02:34:49] FEMALE_1: Describe how you were treated by your neighbors when you returned home.
  • [02:34:55] May Watanabe: Well, when you say neighbors, people who came by as my mother had been packing and getting ready to leave, they weren't neighbors. They were people who would go by and say, you don't need this anymore, why don't you just give it to us? She had a beautiful big ivy plant on the porch. But the church was able to take some of our things and hopefully we would be able to get some of those things back. But many things had to be sold or given away because we had a short time to leave.
  • [02:35:50] FEMALE_1: The last set of questions deal with your experiences inside the internment camp and its impact on your life afterwards. In what year was your family told to relocate?
  • [02:36:04] May Watanabe: Do you mean to leave my hometown?
  • [02:36:08] FEMALE_1: Yes.
  • [02:36:09] May Watanabe: Well, that was in '43, I guess.
  • [02:36:15] FEMALE_1: Describe the relocation process.
  • [02:36:18] May Watanabe: Pardon me.
  • [02:36:18] FEMALE_1: Describe the relocation process.
  • [02:36:20] May Watanabe: Well, in my case, we had to go to the train stop and everybody could take only what they could carry. There were guards everywhere and we were put on a train. We didn't know where we were going. The shades are pulled down so we couldn't see.
  • [02:37:07] FEMALE_1: What was the name of the camp and where was it located?
  • [02:37:10] May Watanabe: Tule Lake, California.
  • [02:37:13] FEMALE_1: Describe life for you and your family inside the camp.
  • [02:37:20] May Watanabe: Well, every camp is different but this one, most of them were deserts. Tule Lake is a dried-up desert. There's no longer water there. They were tumble weeds in the summer and snow in the winter. We were housed in longer buildings that were army housing with each family, depending on the number, would have a room about everybody exactly. But maybe 20 by 20 or 20 by 24 feet. It was with army cots, and no division in one room. Pot belly stove where you put clothes in and to create heat. Nothing else, maybe a table. Some of them had quite more people than four in them. Very cold, not insulated. In the winter it was very cold. Of course summer was very hot. [LAUGHTER] We had the extremes.
  • [02:39:06] May Watanabe: There were in the beginning. It took time to create a hospital, recreation schools, whatever. Finally, they organized somewhat, and eventually they had a convenience store where you could buy things from Sears, Roebuck. I'm not sure what else you want to know about it.
  • [02:39:47] FEMALE_1: Did you have a job at the camp?
  • [02:39:49] May Watanabe: Eventually, yes. They tried to give people jobs. There were jobs you had to have an office where you're interviewing people for jobs, and that was my first job. Then eventually I became a nurse's aid in the hospital, and I saw my first delivery of a baby, and I thought, that's what I want to be a nurse. Because I was at the point in my college that I needed to decide a major, and I hadn't done that yet. But having this experience, I thought this is a miracle. That's what I wanted to do, be a nurse. They helped me decide what I would like to do in the future.
  • [02:40:44] FEMALE_1: What about your mother and father? Did they take up new jobs?
  • [02:40:47] May Watanabe: My father always like to have his own business and do things on his own. But I think they never talk too much about. I think parents tried to save children from discomfort, from pain, and anguish, and they accepted things and tried to keep life as normal as possible, and certainly wasn't there because family life falls apart when you have mass eating together like in the army, and the children tend to go and sit with their friends. It's a whole different life. That is not the orderly life of a family where you eat together and have a chance to talk together more. My father just thought, I just want to be service to the community, and he hauled cold. It was very hard work. I believe he developed high blood pressure, and a heart condition. Of course, mother did her best to keep the family together, and she would even try to cook on the pot bellies so rather than going in to eat in the mess hall, as they said. The repairs that were very caring and as our parents are protective to keep life comfortable, and as normal as possible.
  • [02:43:05] FEMALE_1: When were you released and why?
  • [02:43:10] May Watanabe: I'm not good at remembering dates, but in the summer. I left that following summer to go to school. I received a scholarship. Actually, it was really under the government when I discovered that if I would become a cadet nurse, go into nursing program and promised to work in nursing for two years after that, then I would have my education, which was very helpful to me. I got on the train, and went to Syracuse. Actually the friends the Quakers helped me with the process, found me a place to live temporarily until school started.
  • [02:44:25] FEMALE_1: What happened to your parents?
  • [02:44:27] May Watanabe: My parents had to move to another camp as many did because there was a mass evacuation, it's a big issue this idea of loyalty. The government really discovered that this was getting to be too big of a problem with 120,000 people put into 10 different camps. They have to house and feed them, and they declared that they were not loyal. Then they decided they would create a questionnaire, a loyalty oath. What they were really trying to do also is to move these people out and also find out is they could take the young men whom they had changed their military status when this all happened, and make them eligible to be recruited for the army, for the military service. They made this questionnaire which had these two particularly ambiguous questions. Those who said yes, and those who said no, were separated. Some were put into other camps and then others came from other camps were put into Leigh. Leigh became notorious as a disloyal group. There are many stories behind that because families were separated because the children were citizens, and they could eventually probably live here. Whereas the parents who are not allowed to become citizens because of these laws that the country had made that they could not apply for citizenship became a big mess. Its separated some families, and in some sense, it made it difficult for the parents because they could not stay here, and they had to be sent to Japan where they could only declare citizenship there, even though they wanted to become American citizens. It is a very complicated situation. In some cases, the young people who would have grown up here as American citizens had to go to Japan with their parents because they didn't want to be separated. This is all because we make laws that really don't make sense sometimes separating families.
  • [02:48:25] FEMALE_2: What were the questions that were on the questionnaire to find out your loyalties?
  • [02:48:29] May Watanabe: I'm sorry.
  • [02:48:30] FEMALE_2: What were the questions that were on the questionnaire to find out your loyalties?
  • [02:48:34] May Watanabe: Well, the two that I'm speaking of. One said, do you forswear? I don't remember exactly the words, but the idea was, do you forswear your loyalty to the emperor? But we had no people who were born here had no loyalty to the emperor. They had no connections. I don't want to say something that is not exactly true, but they were also asking in a way that the young men, if they did not say that they would be completely loyal to the United States, then you see, they would be put into the camps. Well, I'm not doing this right. [LAUGHTER] I think I better go back and read exactly the words I did. I'm not good at remembering exactly the wording of things. But what it meant was that if you said no to one answer, it had a double meaning. So that there were some young men who said, why should I say that I'm loyal to this country and I don't have any loyalty to the emperor. Why should I say, [LAUGHTER], that when they have my parents and turn them in this concentration camp and make me eligible to go and fight for this country, which would do that to me. That's the thinking that developed in young men who said, I can't sign this, it doesn't make sense. There were some who were put into to live with their parents, some who were actually put in jail. It just created a lot of bad feelings. We then among the people because they felt that those felt that they were being disloyal, or actually it was so difficult with their feelings that were created. It's really hard to explain how families were torn apart, friendships were torn apart. Even to this day, they had been struggling to recognize that those who were put in jail were really brave enough and were willing to give up their freedom to declare what they felt was right. Then there were those who said, okay, we have to prove our loyalty. They developed a battalion which is all Japanese Americans, a large number them from Hawaii who became very famous because they rescued the Caucasian Americans that were in prison in this battle. These Japanese American soldiers who were called Nisei, sacrificed many lives and were able to rescue them at the famous Battle of the Bulge. Years later, just recently, they have been honored, recognized for what their sacrifice has been. It's a very complicated story that trying to prove that you are as loyal as American as anybody that is white. I think there is the racial situation still continues and for many people. I think that it's time that we recognize it and not just try to say, well, everything is all right. It's evidenced today, day after day in many situations where our relationships, our legal conflicts are about black and white. Also other racial groups, the Asian, the Native American, the Latino, and this country has yet a great way to go to be voted. I think it tended to be.
  • [02:54:21] FEMALE_2: What happened to your brother? Did he decide to join the military?
  • [02:54:25] May Watanabe: Yes, he was recruited and he had to leave school college. He was actually a medical corp. He was in Japan. He didn't have to go into battle. Japan was occupied and so he was one of the people who worked as a lab technician. My mother said when he came home, he was always washing his hands. [LAUGHTER] He had an habit of washing and you're working with germs. After camp we really didn't see each other that much. We didn't have an opportunity to really have close family relationship in the sense that there was a gap I think from the time I went to school. It's not like you were living at home and just commuting or something.
  • [02:55:46] FEMALE_2: So having the camps affected your parents after they were released?
  • [02:55:52] May Watanabe: Well, it's hard to say, the parents are said to have not talked about it very much. It's true, it's only in the past. I don't know I would say maybe 15, 20 years that there are stories coming out that people have, because many are gone now. But when we ask questions, they didn't talk about it very much. I think when we really didn't ask questions. It's only as we get older that we think, I wish I had talked to them more about it. But we just lived right then, we lived our own lives. But gradually there are stories that are coming out that when some of the children had interviewed their parents or done some research, I think that all parents try to protect their children from discomfort, from things that are negative. I think it's very disappointing to them when they come to this country where they feel they have freedom and they have opportunity and then this happens. Even when their children are citizens and they're just not given the same privileges that they thought they would have and had to really the parents sacrifice of in order to try to give them the opportunities, the rights that any citizen should have. But they're not complainers, they're survivors. They set examples of coming through.
  • [02:58:17] FEMALE_1: You mentioned that your father might have developed some medical issues in the camps. What happened after he was released?
  • [02:58:26] May Watanabe: Well, his heart condition became worse, his blood pressure and he died very early. He died, I think he was around 57 or eight.
  • [02:58:48] FEMALE_1: Describe your life since you've been released from the camp. Your jobs, what have you done since your release?
  • [02:58:55] May Watanabe: Well, I did become a nurse. After I went to Syracuse and because I had two years of college, I received a BS in nursing and I was married and my first job was being a public health nurse and I was a visiting nurse. Since then I've had some graduate work and I did public health nursing, I've done some school nursing, I've done part-time nursing until eventually my main work has been with college students as a nurse and University Health Care, which I really enjoyed, I like that young people, that age group. But all along I felt that nursing is actually teaching. Teaching in my case, I really believe in prevention and that I feel that if we take care of ourselves, eat right, [LAUGHTER] sleep a lot, do all the things that we all know we should do, then we would be happier, healthier people or happier [LAUGHTER]. That's what my life has been.
  • [03:00:35] FEMALE_1: One second. [NOISE] I'm sorry. What impact did your experiences have with your daughters? I'm sorry. Wait, a second. Do you have any children?
  • [03:00:52] May Watanabe: I have two daughters.
  • [03:00:55] FEMALE_1: What impact did your experiences have on the relationships with your daughters?
  • [03:01:00] May Watanabe: What? [LAUGHTER]
  • [03:01:05] FEMALE_1: Your experiences in the camp, how did that affect your relationships with your daughters?
  • [03:01:10] May Watanabe: I didn't have my daughters in camp.
  • [03:01:13] FEMALE_1: But later on in life, did they learn any lessons from you?
  • [03:01:16] May Watanabe: Well, they have become very interested in fairly recently and they feel it's important that they learn about it. [NOISE] Excuse me. Have a drink. Cut this, I guess. In fact, two years they went with me to a reunion, they call it a pilgrimage of Tule lake. Gradually the ones who were there had decreased in number of course, because there aren't that many now I think that are my age. Several years ago, we went to Tule lake with a group. Some came from different parts of the United States, there were actually visitors from Japan and Hawaii. We went from Michigan to Washington to Seattle and got on a train with a group of people who met there and we went to Tule lake and they had organized a weekend where we went to visit the old Tule lake site. We had talks and it gave the young people an opportunity to hear the ones who had been there. We were in different groups. Then the following year, my nephew and two nieces and one of the husbands of one of the nieces, we all went and had a big reunion there, which I think was very important for them to make this a reality of what their parents had experienced. I think that my daughters think the impact of being in camp on me is greater than I realize. They said, Mom, you have lost a certain amount of self-esteem. When you're told you're bad or you're not good enough and you're put into a place like that, it does something to you inside. I didn't realize that but it takes a great deal of effort to become whole and feel, yes, I'm as good as anybody else. It should not affect me that I shouldn't be able to strive and do the things that I want to do but at moments, you don't realize it. Some of the things you say and you do perhaps have been affected. My girls keep reminding me.
  • [03:05:11] FEMALE_1: What are your daughters names?
  • [03:05:14] May Watanabe: Pardon me.
  • [03:05:15] FEMALE_1: What are your daughters names? Their names.
  • [03:05:19] May Watanabe: I'm sorry.
  • [03:05:20] FEMALE_1: The names of your daughters?
  • [03:05:22] May Watanabe: My older one is Lori and the younger one is Wendy.
  • [03:05:29] FEMALE_1: What do you want your daughters to learn from your hardships?
  • [03:05:38] May Watanabe: I've always want them to feel secure and that they are worthy. They have a right to grow, to be free, to be what they want to be. Excuse me. I think they are growing that way and I'm proud of them. I think they're growing up to be fine young women.
  • [03:06:25] FEMALE_1: In two or three words, some of your life before the camps.
  • [03:06:31] May Watanabe: Excuse me, I need to do this. What was the question?
  • [03:06:42] FEMALE_1: In two or three words. Can you sum up your life before the camps?
  • [03:06:47] May Watanabe: Before the camp? I think I was happy. I felt secure. I felt I had hope ahead without realizing it. I think I was just like any other child who had parents that love me, who would do anything for me, which they did.
  • [03:07:23] FEMALE_1: What about your life in the camp, two or three words?
  • [03:07:27] May Watanabe: I think it was almost I wouldn't say a dream but unreal. It's a whole different life but certainly unexpected and had a sense of insecurity. The unknown of what is and what is going to be. You just look day to day.
  • [03:08:23] FEMALE_1: In two or three words, [inaudible 03:08:24] your life after leaving the camp.
  • [03:08:31] May Watanabe: I think life has its ups and downs, but I think it's mostly yeah.
  • [03:08:39] FEMALE_1: What about your life today?
  • [03:08:42] May Watanabe: I think I'm very fortunate. I'm saying I think is that to see my girls grow up the way they have. I've already said, those are the jewels of my life.
  • [03:09:06] FEMALE_1: Is there anything you would like to add?
  • [03:09:43] May Watanabe: Life is uncertain. It's challenging. It's hopeful. I think one has to live every day happy and as hopeful and as one can, be utilizing it's precious. Because that's the only day you can live really. You don't know what the future will be. The past is past, and so making everyday meaningful, I think is important.
  • [03:10:47] FEMALE_1: We have time. What do you think our country needs to do to get past the racism and all the issues?
  • [03:11:03] May Watanabe: I implied that. I think that you can't just be living the past if maybe appreciate and gain from it. But there's no guarantee what tomorrow will be. That I live each day and enjoy it and try to find meaning in your relationships with others. There's nothing more important than that. How you relate to people I think. Realize that each person is wonderful. Ideally, you can always leave it the way you like to live it. That's what I like to do is try to appreciate every day.
  • [03:12:36] FEMALE_1: Thank you so much.
  • [03:12:39] May Watanabe: I don't think this went well at all.
  • [03:12:40] FEMALE_1: I think it went perfectly.
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2022

Length: 03:12:40

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Legacies Project