Grace Kimoto

Grace (Yamaguchi) Kimoto was a passionate storyteller and educator in the history of the incarceration. Before the war, she grew up in the Japanese American agricultural community of Cortez, known as the Yamato colony, where an entrepreneurial Issei journalist bought acres of land to help lay the roots for a future Japanese American community which would later be Cortez, Livingston and Cressey. As a young girl, she would help her parents run their farm and remembers how her parents were the quintessential Issei pioneers. “They even made their own soap. They know how to do all these kinds of things. Then of course, mom would be one of the last to take a bath after everyone. And then after mom took a bath, then she would do the laundry. Can you imagine?” 

Her family was fortunate in that they were able to return to Cortez and help get resettled through the kindness of an older woman who extended her hospitality and home to the Yamaguchis. Grace still marveled at the fact that a non-Japanese woman lent a helping hand at a time when anti-Japanese tensions in California’s Central Valley ran high. 

Grace Megumi Fleming conducted this interview with Grace in 2001.15 years later, Grace Kimoto passed away in 2016 at the age of 88, remembered fondly for her years as a devoted elementary school teacher in Winton, California.

It's November 13th 2001 and I'm here at Grace Kimoto’s home in Winton. I know you as Grace Kimoto, but tell me more about your name. Was that your given name?

My proper name is Kazuko. And in the olden days when my family or the other Nisei enrolled in school, the teachers could not say the Japanese names. And so they hooked on a lot of Anglo names.

And so my oldest brother's name is Keichi, well they gave him Kay. And my second brother was Masanao, so they gave Mack. My sister's name is Chizuru, so they gave her Clara. My brother was Atsushi, so they gave Jim. And then my next brother which is just above me, his name was Ken. And so they did not change his name. And then mine was Kazuko. And so they gave me Grace. And I have a brother underneath, so his name was Aichi, and they gave him David. And then my youngest sister and the last and of eight. Her name is Aileen, but her name was Etsuko. 

But there is one more in the family. The oldest above Keichi, her name is Mimori.  When my parents came to America and immigrated here, my grandparents came with them.  And the grandparents, when they wanted to go back, wanted to take one of the early born children back. They owned land in Japan and a house so they wanted to take the eldest brother, Kay, but my mother wouldn't hear of it. So she sent Mimori. She's the oldest one.

So Mimori grew up in Japan, and she was a citizen of the United States. She was always proud of being an American. She grew up in Kyoto with an aunt, and when she was old enough she married and got a yōshi so that the family line would be in tact. So he took Yamaguchi as his last name. Isn’t that interesting?

Well I knew of some siblings that had been split up. But this is the first story I heard, where the oldest was actually a U.S. citizen who stayed in Japan.

Of course, Mom had gone back to Japan several times after the war. And it was so precious when Mimori came to visit, came to our home. And it was really special for mom. She had heartaches over it. She kept telling everybody that, “We slept, ‘dakko’ (parent holding a child). You can tell that it must have been hard.

So your parents and grandparents came in what year?

It was probably early 1900s. I wish I had more dates. I think my brother Keichi was born 1919. So it has to be a couple of years before that.

Do you know when Mimori was born?

A year or two before that, 1917 or ‘18, my parents came. My father and brother came with their parents. And they got a picture bride. They both got brides from Japan. So it was a Shashin Kekkon (picture bride)  That's how they started, and they started in Watsonville, and worked in the strawberry fields for the Shikumas. And it's so interesting. My uncle, his name was Sadajiro, he had four children. And my father had nine. Half of my family were born in Watsonville. And my uncles first two were born in Cortez where I grew up. And it's so interesting, because somewhere, and I never really knew the answer, but I think that since my father had more farmhands because they bought a farm here, that they must’ve switched places and the older brother came over here on the farm. And the younger brother went to Watsonville. Switched residence.

We really worked on the farm. All of us in fact. After school was about three miles away. We usually walked. When my brother Jim was old enough, and he was like sixth grade, he got to take the family car to school. He drove and in sixth grade he couldn't even see. He'd have to look between the steering [wheel] to look out and I don't know if he was even sixth grade, he might have been fifth. But we all rode the car. And in those days they had running boards on the side. So he would pick up all of our neighbors.  And I guess it was a Model T or a Model A, so that we could get home. 

You see my father at that time was not just doing strawberries. You know we did the strawberry plants for Watsonville but then he also did row crops, vegetables. And what he did is, we had to get home and wash all of the pool of vegetables, and carrots and things. Wash them and bunch them, because my father was in the business of taking the vegetables to Turlock to the markets.

So you would grow the plants and send them over so they can plant them, before they’re fruit bearing?

Right. So my father was busy being a farmer.  He would grow strawberries, rhubarb, turnips and radishes.  Then we would wash them and get them packed. The next day he would take it early in the morning to Turlock to the markets, and some of the Merced markets.

Well did you have more than one car then? Because your brother was driving the kids to school.

We had a truck for the farm. Isn't that amazing that the Issei’s had that many children, and we didn’t know we were poor. If you own a farm, you always have food. And my mom would sew all the clothes you know I had new dresses for Easter and all, and we'd get shoes. I just marveled. How could all the Isseis have done it? Hard work.

My memories of my mother, she worked on the farm you know doing everything else like hoeing and weeding and everything. She never did irrigate, my brothers and father did that. And then by that time I was older, I made the rice. Cooked it in an iron kettle in a big outdoor fire. And we had ofuro and my job was to burn the brush underneath the ofuro so that I could get it hot. So my mother, you can't believe it, would come home and cook. She’s doing all this sewing and all that kind of stuff -- she even baked biscuits. That I remember. I don't know how she learned to make biscuits.

Oh they were smart.

They even made their own soap. They know how to do all these kinds of things. Then of course, mom would be one of the last to take a bath after everyone. And then after mom took a bath, then she would do the laundry. Can you imagine? So many! Course it's wonderful because nobody got the water dirty. You know the Japanese ofuro, we scrub outside and rinse yourself well. She would do that -- use the water to do the laundry.

They were like pioneers they had no --

They were pioneers. Yeah. And they really did. Can you imagine how much work that was? My dad passed away when he was only forty nine. Of ulcer. Yeah, I thought he was really old. You know, until I am now seventy three. But you can imagine fathering that many children and trying to keep the family with food and all? He used to come home with crates of food-- you know with milk and bread. Whenever bread ran out we would have rice. We would get our rice at the association and we'd probably order like 2,400 pounds. 24 hundred pound bags, so that it would last a whole year. You know because it's only a one year thing.

Where did the rice come from?

From Dos Palos by train. Dos Palos had rice fields. The Koda farm. Yes. So we had rice galore. And I used to be so embarrassed bringing rice balls to school. Many years later after the war I was talking to one of my teachers. I went to a two year, two teacher, two classroom school. And this lady, Mrs. Johnson says “I always wish you'd give me a taste of your riceball.” All these years I was so embarrassed. Of course, we’d have umeboshi inside or something. Isn't that funny? Now I love rice. It's amazing how the Issei did so well. 

So they first went to Watsonville father and uncle and parents.

Right. 

And when did they get their picture brides?

 Well, it would have to be a couple of years after they came here, don’t you think? And then parented half of the children up to Atsushi. And then we moved to Cortez. Cortez is a Japanese settlement.  There’s no post office or anything.

Does anybody in your family still have the Cortez farm?

Yes.  My brother Jim inherited it, and his daughter now lives there.

So when Pearl Harbor was bombed, you were 13 and a half?

When Pearl Harbor was bombed. My brother Keichi was already in the military. He had volunteered April of ‘41 so he was at Fort Ord in Monterey. And on that Sunday he happened to be home and it was noon or something. And we heard about it after we got home from the church. And my brother and I had to quickly go back to Fort Ord. I really don't know much about it except, I remember my brother had to go back and of course, the whole family was talking about it.

Were you scared?

Recalling it, you know Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But to me Japan was another country. So it had nothing to do with me as far as I know. All I knew was that my brother would have to go to war. And he did not. He was assigned to a medical. So he was always in the hospital in the United States. He did not have to go overseas. My brother Kenny went overseas to Europe. He was drafted out of camp. That's about ‘42. We were interned in Amache in Colorado. 

As far as you're concerned when Pearl Harbor was bombed it was sort of unrelated to you. 

At that time, no I didn't realize how it would impact me. I have no recollection of anyone saying much about how I was Japanese. I don't remember any of that until of course when an executive order came out and we were going to move.

Now, you didn't get a letter in the mail. I mean what I've been told is that these posts went up and perhaps the Japanese newspapers -- 

Probably the Japanese newspapers. Well I think the English papers, of course they had it all blasted.

It must have been unbelievable at the beginning. You know to have this order like that. 

Isn’t that interesting? It’s so unlike today when our government is saying, “Remember the Arabian Americans and the Muslim Americans are American.” In those days the government was not backing us up. The government was doing it to us. So what a big difference. We’ve come a long way.

Some people remember that after Pearl Harbor their parents panicked and they burnt or destroyed anything that could be construed or as incriminating evidence.

Oh yes, I remember that. We had to turn in our shortwave radios and any guns and my brothers had to take all that to Turlock to the sheriff. My mother got busy and we had outdoor toilets, you know. And so my mother was busy dropping all the Japanese wonderful things into a toilet. Can you imagine that?

Well do you think there were dolls or were they photos or--

I think I remembered some papers that had the stamps. Kanko, that’s what it’s called. And I suppose many of the Japanese things, and I was too young to really see the impact of all that. Probably my older brothers and sisters recall that.

I talked to one family where they had just recovered from the Depression, and you know the ‘20s were terrible and ‘30s. They were just getting back on their feet. And so one family had just collected enough money to buy a butsudan. And they had it for just a short time before they had to chop it up and burn it on the garbage heap.

And all the community, they took any leaders, any person that worked for a Japanese company. Isn’t it amazing that such hatred could flow out of our government?

Well in the panic, the hysteria. You know there is often the hysteria portrayed in videos from the white community. But there was hysteria in the Japanese community destroying all these Japanese things or thinking that maybe their Japanese neighbors were spies. And one woman told me that if your father wasn't taken away by the FBI then the pro Japanese would look at your father as if he were inu (a dog). If they weren't taken away then you were happy because he stayed home. But if they weren't then you had to deal with people.

Do you know, no one's written about this. About the internal panic. The Japanese community panic. You know that's a good book that somebody ought to write. You know the panic that was within the community. At my age, what I recall after I was taking this teacher's class and I was doing an assignment where the teacher wanted us to write down three things that we would take if we were interned and had to leave. In that class it hit me what I had done. I had taken all the food out the refrigerator piled it outside for my dog. And this is what, 20, 30 years later? I'm saying how stupid that was. The poor dog, I should have taken him to a friend, and had a friend take care of him or something. And so I had a crying jag after that.  For a couple of days, I just couldn't believe how stupid I was to do that.

So you left the dog there?

Uh huh. Isn’t that something?

Well in all the panic and confusion you couldn't take care of every detail.

No. I was the one that was doing this. My parents were doing all the more important things, packing and and putting things in. We took a lot of our things to the Presbyterian church and packed it there, which was rummaged through. And then we had a bunk house. Another building where the boys had lived, or any people. We had some Filipino workers that worked on the farm also.

Were you in charge of the family dog?

I think so. Well probably. I mean I was at that age you know everybody else was busy packing. We could only carry what we could carry, with getting suitcases and putting our number. That's what I do when I speak in front of a classroom. I wear a card that has my family number. So I will tell them how we were tagged like luggage.

There are sad stories about pets. One of my friends said that her father was an only child and his best friend was their family dog. Because they were so busy and probably because of racism they couldn't find a family to take the dog. So as the family took off on the train, the dog chased them on the train until it couldn't run anymore. Her father, you know, crying. Tears coming down and not being able to do anything for this poor dog and nobody will know how he survived.

You know we had our truck was sold you know, in the paper a sign that says “truck for sale.”  You know all of those things we just sold for nothing. People just grabbing it for -- everything was so cheap.

For opportunist vultures, It was a perfect time.

And so can you imagine? That would be a good book.

Do you remember what you did take?

I know in camp, I had a radio. So I guess it wasn't a shortwave radio, so.

Well I know they changed the rules after a while because--

I had a radio because I lived with that radio, listening to “Points Sublime” and D.A. (District Attorney) and some of these stories that are outdated. In fact in the March assembly center and the army barracks they don't have ceilings. So there were like five six families and you could hear what's going on at the other end.  And my mother used to just always holler, “Turn that radio down, it’s too loud!” because she was always afraid the neighbors would be disturbed.

But maybe they were enjoying it?

So at my age doing internment,  I was in charge of sweeping the floor.  And I mostly went to the recreational things you know and talent shows, baseball games. Of course I met all kinds of new friends, and one girl from Turlock. I had Alice Udo and Tayoko Fujimoto where my good friends in the Assembly Center in Merced. And Alice is passed on but Tayo I'm still in touch with. Tayoko’s sister was a hairdresser in Turlock. I was just at the age where they're teaching me how to take care of my hair and Tayoko would go and put curls in it. So I remember a lot of new friends. We had a lot of fun. One of them, Jake Kurihara was a “green pea,” he was a military police, I guess.

And so we tease him and follow him. It's so interesting because he finally did go to war in Europe. And I was writing letters that I thought my national duty would be to keep the boys happy. So I was writing letters to servicemen. And do you know I would be writing nine letters a day! My brother Kenny would give me some names of his buddies that weren't getting any letters. And then like my brother in law was also in Europe. And he was giving me names of military people mostly from Hawaii that were not getting any letters. So my duty was writing letters for these servicemen. Isn't that interesting for a 13, 14 year old kid?

I have talked to a woman about your age who said she wrote and wrote and wrote that she had penpals all over the United States which helped her feel like she was in touch with outside camp.  but you've gone beyond that to as you said a national duty.

I remember in my head that I thought that was my duty. It helped my brother’s friends that never got letters, he said. Of course, I was writing to my brothers. And then this kid, me, was busy going to school. Because they had schools galore. They had schools during assembly center here in Merced, and they had schools you know all through the summer.  And so I graduated with enough units from high school in three years. So the fourth year, my friends and my classmates came back to Livingston High School. I was going to Modesto Junior College. Isn’t that strange? So I never really went to Livingston High at all. Although all my brothers and sisters did.

I find this part about writing letters to the boys rather fascinating, because I hadn't talked to anybody. But I bet you weren't the only one.

I bet I wasn’t!

I bet those letters were a lifeline. You're sleeping in muddy trenches and when those letters come. 

Yeah even from my friend's kid sister. [laughing] And I was always writing about ball games and what's happening with the Yankees and what's happening with me, probably. I don’t know. I’ve really never talked to anyone afterwards. I did write to a couple of them as they came back to the United States. One was in Hawaii, but I never caught up with them.

You never know if you really helped out?

It doesn’t matter [laughing]. Well, I think my brother felt bad that some of the kids never got any letters. I'm sure that's why I got there. He asked me to write to somebody. That was Ken.  He was in Belgium most of the time.

What about Atsushi?

Oh he wanted to go so badly.  He had a heart murmur or something else and so he never could pass the physical.  He was never in the service. And Mack, my second brother. So they would not take Mack, because he was the only one left. And they would never take him. So he couldn't go. And of course David was too young. He did serve later. 

Of course you know, the Issei. They had craft class and English class and these kinds of things. But she was still busy selling war saving bonds. She was selling those and she was a mother in the window, you know and she was so patriotic. I'm thinking “Gosh!” She was still doing that kind of thing in camp. It's amazing. Isseis were loyal. They were so loyal. They were overly loyal.

And that's what I hear that immigrants, you know they fled persecution whether it's economic or political or religious. I mean this is their dream. And they had to uphold those dreams. I am trying to picture your mother in camp selling war bonds. When you said the mother in the window--

If you have a son in the service, you have a little banner. You can have that. Yeah. And then I guess if you lose a son or something, you get a Gold Star or something. So the Isseis, we don't really have their input as much as we should have. We just didn't talk about it.  No one talked about internment. For a long time.

I'm sure the focus was on getting back on your feet and once you did. Having been in the prison camp wasn't the most uplifting thing to talk about.

And I think that there's a personal shame, artificial kind of a shame that comes to us.  Especially Japanese. I think they're so conscious of looks. The Japanese have to have a little face you have to have. 

Well once history reflects upon the whole family. So even if one of your family members were arrested even mistakenly you carry shame. You must have done something to suspect you. I  mean, even if you were completely innocent, you know what made the authorities feel that you might be.

Personally you get that inside, is that it?

The haji? (shame)

Yeah, the haji. Yeah they're so conscious of that. So no one talked about it.

Well even amongst the larger population outside. I don't know if that analogy really works, but you've been raped it doesn't matter whether you're innocent or not. You know you don't talk about it.

That’s right. So those kinds of things you don't talk about. 

There’s a shame in being a victim, too.

 Okay. Yeah. I haven’t done much thinking about that. The psyche of the victim.

I don't know what to call it but that's why there are so many advocates for people who've been victimized. Because you want to feel like you've been so--

Law abiding.

Law abiding and you were never vulnerable. You want to feel like you were strong or that you would never be in that position to be suspected or violated or victimized.

That's true. So it's really interesting because when the Sanseis came along, they had questions because they were not brought up with any of the stories.

You know I talked to one woman your age who said the civil rights movement with Dr. Martin Luther King helped not just the African American church.

Oh gosh, isn’t that true? It helped America.

America, right. And anybody who ever felt that they were a minority or had been wronged thought, “Well, maybe they have the right to speak out.” And she credits the Civil Rights Movement with the information, the inspiration, the courage to have the redress movement.

Oh gosh yes. And the redress came so late afterwards. It had to be the right time. As we talk about our ethnic differences, how wonderful it is to put the umbrella of patriotism underneath all of our ethnic differences and all the ethnic pride, especially I feel, I have a lot of Anglo people say, they can't differentiate because they're of many backgrounds. And so they have a really difficult time and sometimes I sense that they are very jealous that they can't say I'm Japanese American, you know. But I think what we really need to stress is the patriotism umbrella over the whole thing. I think that's so important to make sure that the white Americans do not feel left out. 'Cause they still do not get the feel that they are a majority, and they're losing their majority-ness now making them even more nervous. And so I make the kids realize how proud they ought to be to be American.

I like this approach of inclusivity. 

If you want your message out, you need to make sure that everyone's included. Just like Martin Luther King's story is not a Black story, it's an American story. So that way the people who feel safe can say well, this could happen to me. You know mass hysteria could sweep through and, "I could be caught in it." Or that could have been me in the barracks with the sand and the snow coming through the cracks. But they won't get there, not having gone through it. If they're in the majority class. They won't get there. If they have a hard time, it's just difficult for them to really feel. But to let them be included through this umbrella idea. I think that is so important. 

We were talking about the whole concept of a patriotism umbrella which sounds like a really wonderful way to include everyone in a discussion and critical thinking about constitutional rights and discrimination and all those important issues. Can you comment on the whole redress movement? Were you a part of it? What did you think about it while it was happening?

During the movement I was still not involved with JACL. So it happened right in our neighborhood and my friends were all working on it. Of course I participated but I was not [part of] the movers of it, here locally. 

Were you optimistic that reparations would happen?

I didn't know. I didn't really--I was very neutral because I didn't really know. Maybe I didn't expect it.

Well it's easy to be cynical about such a thing. 

I remember the discussion about, "Well, gee do we just want an apology letter or do we want it to go a little deeper." And then the discussion was, "We need to put some money value so that it would really mean something." I think a little of that $20,000 at least made it really genuine and deeply in debt.

It made the congressmen think about it before they passed the bill before President Reagan signed it. 

Yeah that was amazing. 

It's a first in U.S. history that such a small minority or any minority groups organize themselves so well that there are all these congressional hearings, and money set aside. I mean, it must have been pretty exciting. 

That made it important, it seems to me. 

One person told me, "You know in America, money talks." [laughs]

That's right. And that's probably why they really worked for that. Several groups working with redress. And what happened to those that would have been individual lawsuits, all kinds of movements. 

What effect do you think the whole redress movement has had on people's consciousness now? Do you think that people take redress for granted? 

Japanese Americans? I think they take it for granted. A lot of them I think really do not appreciate the work. Although it was really grassroots. We put our own money into the redress, and it was a lot of grassroots. I think today, I really think the young people don't realize how much work that was. It's a good thing we had congressmen in Washington D.C. that can really take a hold of it for us. If we didn't have them, oh no way. No way would it have been possible. 

I mean it was, close to miraculous it seems to me that there was that much mobilization. 

Remembering how it began, how the internment began with our country. You know and the prejudices and the government was doing this. So remembering that it is miraculous. 

Well it seems now with the September 11 event that more and more, there's evidence that we should know our constitutional rights. One of them being our right to redress, to petition our grievances. 

But what's so neat is that the government and all the leaders are saying, "Don't forget: Muslim Americans are Americans." And that did not happen for us.

You know, I think of all these Niseis who were silent for decades. And Isseis who testified in public. It just gives me chills. 

It was so shocking, I attended the San Francisco hearing. And you know we didn't hear any criticism, any negative from Isseis. And when I attended the San Jose people brought buses of Isseis. The buses came from all over, of Isseis. And that was the first time I heard Isseis speak. And it was so sad because they're crying, we're all crying because we'd never have heard them speak out. "My husband was taken. And he just came home from work, he was dirty and they wouldn't even let him change his clothes." This one lady. And they took him away and for three days I didn't know where he was. I wanted to take him some clean clothes. Can you imagine? And I bet every one of these wives, these Issei women have a story of their own. 

But I guess I was young, see. One of my questions that I got at the college was, "How can you be still patriotic with what the government did to you?" And I answered, I think it's 'cause I was so young. I didn't have responsibility in the family, you know. And so I didn't I wasn't hurt that way. That people that -- my brothers actually had to worry about the family packing up. I just worried about my dog [laughs]. I met friends from all over. We were still in high school having fun with dances and going to movies.

Well, I guess that's one explanation. But like you said, your mother stayed patriotic. 

She sure did. I think most of the Isseis did. I think all the Isseis were very patriotic, at least in this community in Cortez.

Well I have interviewed people who repatriated to Japan but they were so sad for that mistake 'cause they realized it was completely war torn, devastated. There wasn't food. 

In camp, we experienced that [no rice]. We didn't get enough rice. And lots of us, my parents, we had a rice cooker in the room so we cooked the rice.

On the stove?

In the wood burner. So we made rice at home in our barracks. And then they served us nutritious food which we didn't know. You know, it's Western culture food. And we didn't know. And I always tell the kids at school, they served us one thing that I couldn't stand, everybody threw it away-- we had pounds of it. I said it was this ugly white stuff, you know? And I tried making the kids guess what it is. It was really really lumpy. Nobody guessed -- cottage cheese. I love cottage cheese now but oh, when they served it in camp, everybody threw it out. You'd see it in the garbage, all the cottage cheese because nobody knew what it was. Isn't that something? And here the government probably thought they were giving us something nutritious.

One thing I remember about [the trip to camp] is we traveled at night. They made us pull our blinds down. And then when we got to Reno, I broke the rule and I looked up because I got to see the biggest little city, you know that archway. But then I remember in the desert they let us out. And yes the guns were not facing out to protect us, it was facing in to keep us there. But one soldier, I really remember this: he asked for my red ribbon in my hair. Can you believe that? And I gave it to him. And I'm now analyzing saying he must've thought that was a war souvenir. You know, the soldiers pick up souvenirs. That must have been a souvenir for him. Isn't that strange?

It is. But he knew this was a historical moment.

I did tell you that when we came back from Colorado, my brother was a military, he escorted and came back with us to make sure that we were okay. In his corporal’s uniform, he came back with us. That was really helpful. And then our farm was still occupied and this neat lady, this old lady who was a teacher, she took us all in, the whole family. She was an older person, widow. And she took my sister Clara with her baby, Sandra. Took my brother David and Aileen, Etsuko. And then my mom. Took six of us into her home. And can you imagine how brave that must've been? I lived right on the street that goes into Turlock and we could walk to Turlock. But how brave, to take, when everyone else is saying we don't want him back you know and shooting the homes and breaking windows and all this violence.

I heard Turlock was a real hot bed.

Oh yes, Turlock and Livingston. So we were not welcomed home. So you can imagine how hard it must have been to come back. But this lady was so brave, Mrs. Winters. Ah, to take us in. I don't know we found her or how she found us. 

How many bedrooms did she have?

I don't think she had very many, I think she probably had two. It wasn't a big house. 

But she felt compelled. 

She felt the regret, probably. Don't you think? She was an educator. She knew the rights.

But it's people like her that keeps this nation strong, right? You know this is a gold mine of a story right here.

And I didn't appreciate her, you know, 'cause I was still a dumb [laughs]. But I now think, "Gosh, I wonder how we showed our appreciation to her." I bet you people hated her in Turlock. Can you imagine? She was a learned lady, I'm sure.

Interview conducted by Grace Megumi Fleming. JAMsj thanks Grace for allowing the museum to archive and share these oral histories