Shirley Meeder: A Teacher's Younger Daughter at Manzanar

Shirley Meeder was not incarcerated. Her mother taught at Manzanar, and the family lived in the camp. (Her older sister, Joan Beyers, told her own story in another booklet.)

"Run straight home!"

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Shirley, barely ten, was at a friend's house in West Los Angeles when the friend's father told her to run straight home. She ran the three blocks in fear, knowing something terrible had happened. Blackouts and unease followed.

• Her father, John DaValle, came from a large Italian family in Northern California and became a pharmacist. Her mother, Marjorie, of English and German descent, grew up in San Dimas, lost her own mother at three, and learned early to make the best of things.
• They married in 1927; Joan was born in 1930 and Shirley in 1931. The Depression was hard.

Off to Manzanar

Her father left the family, and her mother had to become the breadwinner. Teaching jobs were scarce, but she was offered one teaching high school math at the Manzanar War Relocation Center.

• She stored furniture next to an aunt's garage and sold the dining set. She knew little of what lay ahead, but stayed cheerful for her daughters: it was an adventure.
• Before dawn one day in September 1942, they drove past their best friends' house shouting, "Off to Manzanar!"
• They found rows of barracks, barbed wire, guard towers, military police and two small stone houses at the entrance. With no furniture yet, they spent a night in a hotel in Lone Pine — their last taste of luxury for a long time — and returned in a howling sandstorm.

The first eleven months

They lived at first in a barrack no different from the incarcerees' — Block 7, Building 2, Room 4.

• Thin walls let in the wind and sand. One room, an oil stove, a hot plate, electricity but no running water, kitchen or bathroom. Meals were at the staff mess hall.
• The latrine was in the middle of the block, with communal showers; they went when no one was there, and got stung by blowing sand on the way back.

The riot

As Shirley understood it then, the incarcerees were mostly Issei and Nisei, and mostly pro-American, while some Kibei — educated in Japan — were pro-Japan and caused trouble. A few months after they arrived, a large crowd stormed the jail, marching past their barrack; tear gas broke it up. After the first night, staff families were moved out for safety. With nowhere else, the three of them stayed in the women's section of the county jail in Independence — empty of prisoners, and free to come and go.

Staff housing

After nearly a year they moved into a new apartment — living room, two bedrooms, kitchen and a bathroom with running water, "heaven," with lawns and flowers.

• Summers meant hikes, picnics and swimming at the Sand Trap by the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The children sometimes climbed through the fence while tower guards waved; once they were invited up a tower.
• The family's victory garden gave delicious tomatoes and watermelons. There were outdoor movies and dances, and Shirley and Joan joined the Girl Reserves, mostly Japanese American girls.
• A small old man who spoke no English came to fill their stove, always with a smile and a greeting in Japanese.
• Her mother's geometry students made beautiful designs; years later Shirley read their warm notes in her mother's Manzanar High yearbook — one boy thanked her for "pounding geometry into his head."
• Shirley went to school in Independence, grades six through eight. Waiting for the bus in the cold, the MPs let the children warm up in the stone guardhouse.
• The family saved gasoline stamps for trips, shopped in Lone Pine, and marveled at the snow-covered mountains and the incarcerees' Japanese gardens. One winter, snow closed the schools.

Then and now

As a child, Shirley accepted the incarceration. They seldom discussed it; she believed fear had prompted it and thought it justified, and that the incarcerees, though crowded, were not mistreated. By the war's end she knew they were mostly good Americans, many with sons in the U.S. military.

The family left in summer 1945. Her mother taught in Covina, they bought a house in Azusa, and Shirley went on to UC Santa Barbara and USC (1953), taught second grade, married twice and raised three children.

As an adult she learned more, and came to believe the camps were "a grave injustice": uprooted from homes and jobs, many incarcerees lost money and all endured offensive living conditions. Driving past decades later, she found only the two stone guardhouses left. Her mother, she said, made it all an adventure — "a remarkable lady."

Sources

Based on "Shirley Meeder," one of the ID booklets of Manzanar National Historic Site, National Park Service, written by park rangers with the people profiled and their families; the booklet's first-person account is retold here, with short quotations. The booklet closes with "Wind and Dust," a poem written at Manzanar in 1943 by George Nishimura, age 16, which is not reproduced. For more on the ten camps, see the Park Service's "War Relocation Centers."