Appendix I (Narrators, Interviewers, and Transcribers)
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Appendix I (Narrators, Interviewers, and Transcribers) Narrators Keith Bright (b.1915) was born in Taft, California, earned a degree in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Southern California, and built a career in the oil industty. In 1968, Keith and his wife Jane moved with their three children from the Los Angeles area ro a cattle ranch in the Owens Valley. Early involvements with state party politics led ro an appointment in 1986 ro a seat on the Inyo County Board of Supervisors. At the same time, Keith served as a negotiaror for the Inyo County-Los Angeles Long Term Water Agreement. In 1993, he was appointed to serve on the Advisoty Commission for Manzanar National Historic Site. The Brights live on their historic ranch north of Independence. Truman Buff (1906-1996), an Owens Valley Paiute, was born at the Fort Independence Reservation and lived there most of his life. Excelling in music and sports as a boy, he studied violin and saxophone at the Sherman Institute, an Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. He later played with dance bands in southern California and in the Owens Valley. Following a tour of the western states with an all-Indian band, he returned to the valley, mar ried, and worked twenty-seven years as a heavy equipment operator for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. A talented baseball player, he played for over thirty years with teams in the Owens Valley. Owen Cooper (b. 1916) retired in 1984 from Chalfant Press in Bishop, capping a fifty-year career as printer and co-publisher of the Owens Valley newspapers. Born in Los Angeles, he moved in 1927 to Independence, where the family operated Jim's Place, a popular restaurant. In 1933, Owens was the lone graduating senior at Owens Valley High School. During World War II, he oversaw printing of the Manzanar War Relocation Center internee-produced newspaper, the Manzanar Free Press. A devoted ham radio operator and father of two children, he lives now in San Diego. Ritsuko Eder (b. 1917) was born in San Diego. At the outbreak of World War II she was living on Terminal Island in Los Angeles with her husband. They lived a year at Manzanar, where their son was born in December 1942, and resettled in Colorado before returning to Los Angeles in 1945. Nettie Roeper Fausel (1874-1968) was born on her grandparents' homestead in the ranching area near Manzanar. Her grandfather, a German immigrant, went to California in the early 208 I Appendix I 1850s as a prospector. In 1882, the family moved to Independence, where Nettie's father Julius was the butcher, postmaster, and music teacher. Nettie and Max Fausel were married in 1899 and had one daughter. The Fausels lived in a small house on Edwards Street (Highway 395) behind the post office where Nettie was postmistress of Independence from 1903 to 1946. Nettie remained in Independence until her death in 1968. Dawn Kashitani (b. 1910) was living in Redondo Beach, California, at the outbreak of World War II. She and her husband, a minister, along with their son Paul, lived at Manzanar for over two years before relocating to Pennsylvania. Her daughter Joanne was born at Manzanar in September, 1944. Dawn lives in Santa Monica, California, close to her children and four grandchildren. W.C. "Stub" Lydston (1870-1957), originally from Maine, brought his wife and three daughters to Manzanar in 1919 from Whittier, a Quaker settlement in southern California. At Manzanar, he owned a small farm and orchard and worked for cattlemen in the area. The Lydstons moved to Independence in 1934, and Stub worked for the City of Los Angeles until his retirement in 1938. At age 68, he began work as a custodian for the Owens Valley Unified Schools. He passed away in Independence at age 87. Mary Kageyama Nomura (b. 1925) was born in Los Angeles. She lived at Manzanar War Relocation Center, 1942-1945, and graduated from Manzanar High School in 1943 where she was senior class vice-president and a staff member for the annual, Cardinal and Gold. A tal ented vocalist, she is still remembered as the "Songbird of Manzanar." At Manzanar, she met Shiro Nomura, and after leaving in 1945, they married, had five children, and for over thirty years operated a fish and grocery market in Garden Grove, California. With Mary's help, Shi assembled the Nomura Collection of Manzanar photographs and artifacts at the Eastern California Museum in Independence. After Shiro passed away in 2000, Mary moved to Huntington Beach, California; she enjoys her children and grandchildren and in 2004, performed with "The Camp Dance," a musical revue abour life in the internment centers. Emily Roddy (b. 1911) went to the Owens Valley in 1923 ftom Berkeley, California, and lived at the railroad station at Owenyo, where her family operated the boxcar hotel and restaurant. Emily married and later lived at Manzanar and packed apples. Living in California's Central Valley, she raised two children and worked as a truck driver before returning to Bishop, where she enjoyed church activities and driving her vintage yellow Mustang. She lives now in a Bishop nursing home. Concha (Connie) Lozano Salas (1915-2003) moved with her family in 1915 to Cartago, in southern Owens Valley, where her father Miguel worked at the Pacific Alkali soda ash operations on Owens Lake. She graduated from Lone Pine High School in 1936, married soon after and raised five children. Connie and her second husband, Silvestre Salas, retired to Lone Pine in the 1960s, and she was active in charities and enjoyed gardening. Connie passed away in Lone Pine in 2003, leaving a family legacy that included her husband, five children, sixteen grandchildren, sixteen great-grandchildren, and one great-great grandson. Doris Semura (1912-2005) was born in Hawaii, moved to Los Angeles in 1936, and married in 1938. The Semuras and their six-month-old son were sent to Manzanar in 1942; they stayed one year and relocated to Pocatello, Idaho, working on farms until they returned to Hawaii in 1948. Doris served as a house parent for the Diamond Head School for the Deaf and Blind for twenty-six years until her retirement in 1977. She passed away in Honolulu in 2005. Appendix I I 209 Vic Taylor (1910-1999) moved with his family from Los Angeles to George's Creek, near Manzanar, in 1920. For over forty years, Vic was a surveyor, hydrographer, and civil engineer with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the Owens Valley. An avid outdoors man, he operated an early ski-tow operation in the Sierras near Independence. He and his wife Eleanor had two children and lived in Independence throughout their entire sixty-four years of marriage. LaVerne Reynolds Zediker (1919-1996), an Owens Valley native, was the only daughter of long-time Owens Valley cattle ranchers Fred and Hazel Reynolds. The family moved to a ranch near Manzanar in 1928 where they ran cattle and supplied stock for Western rnoviernakers work ing near Lone Pine. LaVerne and her husband Jake had two daughters and operated a pack service into the Sierras. Nancy Connor Zischank (1907-1999) was born in Columbus, Ohio, and grew up in Boston. She married Max Zischank in southern California in 1931 and in 1935 they moved to Mammoth Lakes, where Nan became a championship skier. For over thirty years, they operated the Long Valley Resort at Crowley Lake. Nan lived at Manzanar during World War II and worked as a driver for the War Relocation Authority. She retired in Bishop afrer Max passed away and remained active in church and civic organizations until her death at ninety-two. Interviewers Arthur Hansen (Mary Nomura) is Professor ofHistoty, Emeritus, and Director of the Center for Oral and Public Histoty at California State University Fullerton, and is a consultant to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. He is past president of the Oral History Association. Bessie Poole and Jan Hillis (Nettie Fausel and Stub Lydston) and Catherine Piercy (Ritsuko Eder, Doris Semura, Dawn Kashitani) were long-time residents of Independence and Eastern California Museum staff members or volunteers. It is unlikely they had formal training in interviewing. All are now deceased. Richard Potashin (Vic Taylor, Emily Roddy, Connie Salas, Owen Cooper, LaVerne Zediker, Nan Zischank, Keith Bright) has lived in the Owens Valley for nearly twenty years. A self-taught oral historian with a background in environmental and plant science, he conducted over three hundred interviews while on the staff of the Eastern California Museum in Independence. He is now a Park Ranger, Interpretation, at Manzanar National Historic Site and oversees its oral history program. Jane Wehrey (Truman Buff) is an Owens Valley native and current resident, a historian and former Research Associate at the Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton, and has consulted for the National Park Service on the development of Manzanar National Historic Site. Transcribers Diane Gray, former staff member, Eastern California Museum Leah Kirk, former staff member, Eastern California Museum 210 I Appendix I Garnette Long, former director, Tapes Into Type, California State University Fullerton Oral History Program, transcribed eight interviews. Bessie Poole, interviewer and former staff member, Eastern California Museum Suzanne Walter, transcriber, Tapes Into Type Jane Wehrey, interviewer and author Appendix II (Owens Valley Historical Periods) 3500 BC-1834 American Indian Pre-contact Era AD 600 Period of greatest use of Owens Valley by Indian people begins 1769 Padre Junipero Serra establishes first of twenty-one California missions at San Diego, begins Spanish colonization 1781 Los Angeles founded as a Spanish pueblo with 44 people 1825-1870 Early Visions: Exploration, Assessment, Settlement 1834 Joseph Walker expedition brings first known white presence to the Owens Valley 1845 John C.