Life at Manzanar: Mary Matsuno Miya

Mary Matsuno graduated from Manzanar High School in 1945. Pictured here is her One World yearbook photograph.

 

In the three and a half years of its existence, the Manzanar War Relocation Center saw some 10,000 incarcerees pass through its gates. From the camp’s beginnings, inhabitants attempted to create a sense of community to combat the common feelings of isolation, hardship, and injustice. Sports, in particular baseball and softball, proved to be a necessary outlet for hundreds of Manzanar’s incarcerees. Teams of all levels held weekly practices and games, giving players of various ages an opportunity for competition, companionship, and even distraction from their restricted environment.

Mary Namiko Matsuno was 14 years old when she entered Manzanar, first residing in what was known as the Children’s Village—an orphanage and the only such program to be found in any of the 10 relocation centers. To create more opportunities for their charges, the Children’s Village sponsored its own teams; Mary was an original player for the Fighting Nines softball club. Her participation did not lead to an athletic career, nor was it a defining part of her time in Manzanar. But Mary’s short time on the diamond elevated her to a select club for whom baseball provided a key shared experience.

At the time of the Japanese Empire attack on Pearl Harbor, the Matsunos were an active household with nine children ranging from ages one month to 20 years.1 Mary’s mother, Okina, had just given birth to her youngest daughter, Elizabeth, a month prior. The family lived on Terminal Island, near San Pedro, California, and directly south of Los Angeles proper. Mary’s father, Kanroku, among other professional ventures, worked as a fisherman.2

Both Mary and her siblings recall their father encouraging them to speak Japanese, his native language, at home, although they were never formally taught to read it or write it. Her brother Takatow (“Tak”) Matsuno added, “At the time the war broke [out], and that was between five and ten years old, this is when I should have learned my own Japanese language. My brothers and sisters above me could more or less converse, but this is one thing I lost.”3 Decades later, Tak still expressed a resentment toward the American people for temporarily separating him from his father and thus depriving him of the chance to learn Japanese as well as he could have during those critical developmental years.

Tak and his siblings had spent their prewar days in much the same manner as their friends and neighbors—walking to school, playing near the railroad tracks, and looking after the younger siblings. Nervous exhaustion and mental health struggles landed Mary’s mother at a state institution in Patton, California, near San Bernardino in the summer of 1941, which often forced the older Matsuno children to care for the younger ones. For her part, Mary began cleaning houses for neighbors at age 12 to support the family.4

Upon the signing of Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, the Matsuno family, like all coastal residents of Japanese ancestry, was immediately impacted. Terminal Island, located in the newly restricted zone, was to be converted into a naval base, and thus all residents, regardless of race or ethnicity, were given short notice to leave. “There were three FBI people that came to the house, and they came searching all through the house…without any kind of warrant or anything,” Tak remembered. “They just came in, and they said that our father was an enemy spy or whatever. We had to get out of Terminal Island in 48 hours, I think it was.”5

Opened in 1914, the Shonien provided a safe residence and social programs for children of Japanese families who could not otherwise attend to their needs. By the 1940s, its operations were overseen by Lillian Matsumoto, who along with her husband Harry would accompany all of the young residents to the newly constructed Children’s Village at Manzanar in the summer of 1942.7

“We were [at the Shonien] roughly from February to July, I think it was. June or July,” Mary recalled. Then, with the world fully at war and the whereabouts of their parents and siblings unknown, Mary Matsuno was on the move for the second time in six months, this time to Manzanar. “I remember when we came on the bus into Manzanar, there were all these people, they were all Japanese, and they were all brown from the sun. And here we are, we were all white because we were just arriving.”8

From the main entrance, the Children’s Village was situated across the camp toward the back perimeter fence and destined to be the new home for all of those arriving from the Shonien. Tak remembered that while the Children’s Village operated much like the Shonien, the makeup of its inhabitants was the first noticeable difference. “[In the] Children’s Village, there was the people from the Salvation Army, which is from San Francisco, and then there was people from Maryknoll, which was Catholic, and then there was us from Shonien. There were actually three different groups of people.”9

Located in the west corner of the camp, the Children’s Village consisted of three barracks located near the hospital and separated from other residential blocks.10 One building served as the Children’s Village mess hall and living quarters for administrators Harry and Lillian Matsumoto, who previously served as directors of the Shonien. The two remaining barracks were separated by gender, with each featuring separate rooms for older and younger children. Laundry facilities were included in the boys’ building. A garden with a gazebo sat near the buildings, offering the Children’s Village inhabitants an additional gathering space of their own.11

Amid the confusion and injustice created by the entire relocation process, a bright spot was when the Matsuno children were reunited with their oldest sister, Susie. Despite being 18 years old and therefore an adult by camp standards, she moved into the Children’s Village to look after her siblings while their mother remained at the hospital. The whereabouts of their father were still unknown.

Daily life in the Children’s Village did not differ greatly from that in the rest of Manzanar, where other incarcerees lived as single adults or together in family units. Most of the kids’ activities were still confined to the Children’s Village barracks; however, Mary and others were supervised by matrons—older girls and women who made sure the children attended classes, were fed, and completed chores. “I think the boys got more love than the girls did,” Mary later said of the Children’s Village matrons. “Maybe the boys’ side [was] strict too, but we didn’t hear of it.”12 Chores consisted of cleaning the barracks or doing laundry, and while not tasked with caring for younger children in the Village, Mary would often visit her sisters assigned to the nursery side of the girls’ block.

An experience shared by nearly everyone in Manzanar was the distaste for the food served in the camp, typically cafeteria-style in one of several mess halls. When asked about the food in an interview years later, both Mary and Tak stated that “You had to eat your food that was on the plate. You eat it or you don’t leave the table. If you’re going to throw it up, you hold it until you go out.”13

With very few toys in the Children’s Village, kids passed the time by creating new games or playing tops or marbles. Tak recalled, “We used to look at the Sears and Roebuck’s and Montgomery Ward’s [catalogs], because that’s all you’d get to look at when you were in camp.”14 Other games involved throwing a ball over the roofs of barracks and the darkly ironic “Capture the Flag,” in which two teams attempt to reclaim a flag from a guarded base and “enemy” players can be tagged, taken prisoner, and even jailed until freed by their own team.

To the credit of the incarcerees, the rest of 1942 saw the establishment of many activities, social programs, and an overall sense of community building at Manzanar. Classes were organized, jobs were assigned, and some semblance of life continued in confinement. Movies were shown in an outdoor theater. An auditorium was built to host judo and other contests. There was also baseball.

“They had a baseball diamond, which was way down near Highway 395,” recalled Tak.15 There was a wide range of sports offered at all 10 war relocation centers, including basketball, football, boxing, tennis, volleyball, badminton, golf, archery (at Topaz), fencing (at Gila River), and ice skating (at Heart Mountain). By far the most popular of all were baseball and softball.16 At Manzanar, clay from the nearby Owens River was brought in to construct tennis, basketball, and volleyball courts, which dotted the camp between barracks. Softball ultimately became the most popular sport, with leagues established for all ages.17

In interviews, Mary Matsuno spoke of the athletic opportunities available in Manzanar, saying that her brothers were part of a great basketball team in the Children’s Village. Teams for experienced teens and older players were often built from the remnants of existing prewar teams, many members of which were detained together in the relocation centers. Dozens of teams were added toward the end of the summer in 1942 to give as many people as possible the chance to participate.

The Fighting Nines was a girls’ softball team consisting of players from the Children’s Village, including Mary and Susie, who came to be known as the home run queen. Other teams included the Junior Invaders, the Small Frys, 8 Misses and a Hit, and the Star Dusters among others.18

Scores for all games were reported in the Manzanar Free Press camp newspaper and announcements reflected the constantly changing structure of league play. For example, a notice in August 1942 read, “Nature has one hand over the Girls’ Softball leagues these days. Due to the fact that the moon rises earlier, girls’ games will terminate after 5 innings. Thus, making it possible for the gals to attend symphonies, dances, movies and socials in plenty of time.”19 Such socials were often hosted by individual teams for the rest of their respective league, which shows the need for connection and community was just as valuable as competitive play on the ballfield. A September 1942 Manzanar Free Press article announced that Mary’s team was hosting a dance for eight other girls’ softball teams from 7:00 to 10:30 PM.20

 

 

Both Matsuno sisters did well in their short first season, which was marked by weather delays and the occasional forfeited game. Susie gained some recognition as an outstanding player, being the only member of the Fighting Nines named to her division’s all-star team at second base in October 1942.21 An article previewing the all-star matchup suggested the opposing team had a tough battle ahead not only because they had not yet practiced together ahead of the game, but also because they “will also have “slugger” Suzie [sic] Matsuno of the Fighting Nines to contend with.”22 In their league’s final batting records, however, Mary’s .300 batting average was just ahead of Susie’s .296.23

At the close of softball season, the sisters continued to represent the Children’s Village on the basketball court as members of the aptly named “Fighting Six.” A November 1942 account in the Manzanar Free Press, in which the team lost to the Jr. Misses by a score of 34-6, read, “Despite their demotion to a less threatening position, the Fighting Six team lived up to the name, with a pair of family forwards, Suzie and Mary Matsuno forming their offensive battery.”24

Away from athletic competition, school and activities dominated most days in Mary’s first year at Manzanar. She ultimately spent grades 9-12 in the camp and recalled courses in speech, English, and bookkeeping. “I don’t think we had any real deep sciences or anything like that,” she added. Only one class existed for each grade. Among her teachers was Lou Frizzell, who taught drama and choir, and would later be best known for his recurring role on the television series Bonanza.25 Mary also took various jobs in addition to attending school and helping out around the Children’s Village. At different times, she worked in the mess halls, babysat for people working in Manzanar, and for a period of time worked in the camp’s pickle factory. Both Mary and her sister Susie gained some experience working at the camp hospital. Susie explained, “Without experience or anything, I worked at the hospital in the laundry room, folding the clothes after it was washed and ironed.” Her income averaged around $12 per month. Doctors were paid not much more.26

The most significant event for the Matsuno family in 1943 was the arrival of their father, Kanroku. He had initially been sent to a detention center in North Dakota shortly after Executive Order 9066 and had spent the following months shuffled between prisons and isolation centers, facilities outside the 10 war relocation centers, in Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. Given the choice to remain in the prison system or to join his family in Manzanar, it was an easy decision to make. With their dad in the camp, the Matsuno children were now eligible to move out of the Children’s Village and into a standard housing unit.27 Tak said that meant a little more freedom. “When we were in the Village, we would go to school and come back. We couldn’t kind of linger around and do different things.”28

As the oldest sister, Susie assumed the traditional mother role, doing the family’s laundry and looking after the younger siblings. “All the work that I had to do, I don’t resent because it was for the good of the family,” she said. “And then we had a neighbor, she taught me how to crochet and knit and she was a great help.”29 In a term paper on career choices for her 1943 Social Problems class, Susie wrote that her top career ambition was “to work as a social welfare worker in a community like Manzanar.” Her role model was a social worker who went the extra mile for the Matsunos while Okina was institutionalized. “I couldn’t believe that anyone would think of helping others as this lady did. She was so patient.”30

In a 1993 interview, Tak reflected on Susie’s role. “My oldest sister, Susie, she’s like my mother. She took care of all of us, and she took care of her family. And she’s still taking care of us.”31

While Susie’s position within the family and the camp changed in 1943, Mary’s daily life still revolved around school and other activities, including softball. Athletic competition at Manzanar was still abundant, but coverage in the camp newspaper, especially for girls’ sports, declined somewhat in the second year. The camp’s sports leagues also differed somewhat in structure and competitiveness from what was typically offered as physical education for girls in the Manzanar school. “With the new auditorium-gym at the disposal of the gym classes, the girls learned old-fashioned folk dances, the tango, basic steps of the fox trot, the waltz, and others,” the high school yearbook reported in 1945. “Included in the physical education program were health lectures every Friday, and sports, such as speedball, basketball, and volleyball, the latter played on indoor courts.”32

Mary found herself on a new softball team for the spring 1943 season. As a member of the Juniorettes of the Girls National League division, her season began in late May and lasted for about nine weeks. She competed against teams such as the Wee Funsters, Twixteeners, and Forget-Me-Nots.33 Though the focus of league play was primarily on participation and community, Mary’s Juniorettes did not fare well for most of the 1943 season. In a June contest featured in the Manzanar Free Press, the Zephyrettes “slaughtered” the Juniorettes, 28-4, although Mary did have one hit in five at-bats.34 A month later, a closer game against the Lambda Nine showed improvement, although the Juniorettes were still shut out, 2-0.35 As with the leagues during the previous season, and nearly all activities at Manzanar, many games were cancelled or rescheduled due to severe windstorms.

After the conclusion of the 1943 softball season, Mary turned her attention to schoolwork, caring for her family, and, like everyone else, anticipating what the next steps would be as the tide of the war was turning in favor of the US and its allies. In 1945, Mary was a part of the last graduating class at Manzanar, and among the youngest, as many of her classmates joined later to make up for time lost to the disruption of war and incarceration.36

While the end of the war and release from Manzanar brought some measure of relief from the injustice of the whole experience, life was not suddenly better for former incarcerees, including the Matsuno family. “When we came out of camp, each person was given $25, and they were on their own, more or less,” Tak remembered. “My father…was a fisherman, he was a carpenter—they had to do everything. They had to do all different kinds of jobs to get by. They couldn’t get jobs where the Anglo people would accelerate and then get ahead. There weren’t jobs like that because there was a lot of discrimination, and they wouldn’t allow any of that.”37

Susie confirmed the challenging task of entering postwar life amid discrimination. “Well, when you [applied] for work, you always had that prejudice. Any place you went, you had the prejudice. There wasn’t any place that American citizen Niseis could work at that time.”38 Despite these daily hardships, the Matsuno children were able to visit their mother, who was confined to the hospital for the duration of the war, and begin navigating life as adults in postwar America.

As for Mary, her adult working life consisted of a string of jobs, sometimes multiple occupations at the same time. Soon after the war, Mary began work at a hospital in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. “I worked the graveyard shift at the hospital—the first night the student nurse was late—taking care of newborns,” Mary explained. “The routine that you clean so many babies—it’s written up what you’re supposed to do. You have to take them out for feeding. Some of them you take them out to the parents. Others you feed them. Stuff like that. I remember the second night, I was by myself with 22 babies.”39

Mary also recalled with humor the time she was fired from a sewing company. “I didn’t even know how to sew, let alone a straight line or anything. They had me sewing zippers. Sew a zipper, heck, I was unraveling more than I was sewing,” she laughed. “They had no alternative but to fire me.”40 Other positions included more than 13 years at a restaurant, where she worked her way up from girl Friday to office manager.41 Moving around from one job to another for most of her adult life, Mary never felt quite skilled enough to do any kind of work. The skills and experience gained from each job helped prepare her to excel at the next.

In August 1952, 24-year-old Mary married Tom Ito, a 29-year-old divorcee also from Los Angeles.42 Following a divorce, Mary married Tomeo “Tom” Miya, a World War II veteran who served as a Technician Third Grade, in 1974.43 Marriage was a factor in how restitution was delivered once the Japanese American Redress Movement began to take shape. That campaign culminated in an apology by President Ronald Reagan to those incarcerated in the war relocation centers and payments to survivors. Mary explained some of the stipulations years later, “If I die and my husband gets it, then I had left it in the bank, it becomes taxable. It’s non-taxable to me, but it’s taxable to him…because I didn’t spend it.”44 She added that she intended to buy a car when she began receiving checks but also sent money to relatives in Japan to assist in maintaining property owned by the Matsuno family.45

By the 1990s, Mary’s younger brother Shioo had long envisioned a reunion of the Children’s Village inhabitants, especially as time grew short due to his declining health. Mary, Tak, and fellow Children’s Village resident Tamo Isozaki worked diligently to locate survivors and organize communication that not only led to several reunions, but also a major oral history project in 1993.46 In 2007, a reunion of the Manzanar Children’s Village was held at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Among the attendees were former superintendent Lillian Matsumoto as well as Mary, Tak, and Susie Matsuno.47 The bonds formed and identities shaped by the Children’s Village experience were still strong and evident six decades later.

Mary Matsuno Miya died in 2012 and was buried alongside her second husband in Riverside National Cemetery, which is a dedicated burial space for United States military personnel and a unique honor for a person who, as a child, was considered a threat to her own country. Mary’s endurance of injustice, her dedication to family, and her commitment to community—whether through work or participation on the dusty ballfields of Manzanar—are a testament to her character and what it means to be an American hero.

RYAN WOODWARD created the inaugural Women in Baseball Week in 2017 and continues to develop projects commemorating women in baseball, including the Women’s Baseball Heritage Trail. Ryan’s work has appeared in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, SABR book projects, and the SABR Landmarks Committee’s The Hardball Voyager. Ryan holds graduate degrees in history and library science and is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and the International Women’s Baseball Center. Originally from Kentucky, he currently lives in Rockford, Illinois, and is the full-time project coordinator for the IWBC.

 

SOURCES

In addition to the sources listed in the endnotes, the author also found the following sources to be especially valuable:

National Council for Japanese American Redress, Volume X, Number 4, April 1988.

Ng, Rachel. “The Moving Story of Bringing Baseball Back to Manzanar, Where Thousands of Japanese Americans Were Incarcerated During World War II.” Smithsonian Magazine, March 27, 2025.

Speiller, Russ. “Women’s Softball, 1942 Season Summary.”

 

NOTES

1 “Roster of Manzanar Residents, 6/1/42 – 12/31/44, Sheet 105,” National Archives via Ancestry.com.

2 Takatow Matsuno, interviewed by Noemi Romero, CSU Fullerton Center for Oral and Public History, Children’s Village at Manzanar Oral History Project, O.H. 2339, March 13, 1993, 2.

3 Takatow Matsuno, 8.

4 Mary Miya, interview by Celia Cardenas. CSU Fullerton Center for Oral and Public History, Children’s Village at Manzanar Oral History Project, O.H. 2489, March 13, 1993, 16.

5 Takatow Matsuno, 2.

6 Susie Watamura, interviewed by Celia Cardenas, CSU Fullerton Center for Oral and Public History, Children’s Village at Manzanar Oral History Project, O.H. 2487, September 7, 1993, 2.

7 “Shonien, the Japanese Children’s Home of Southern California.” UCLA Library Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, Edward R. Roybal Papers, 1956, http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb300008fj.

8 Miya, 6.

9 Takatow Matsuno, 5.

10 “Manzanar Camp Layout,” National Park Service, March 20, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/manzanar-camp-layout.htm.

11 Takatow Matsuno, 3.

12 Miya, 12.

13 Takatow Matsuno, 31.

14 Takatow Matsuno, 6-7.

15 Takatow Matsuno, 7.

16 Timothy Chuman, “Escaping Camp Through Sports,” Yo! Magazine, March 27, 2021, https://www.itsyo.org/posts/camp-sports.

17 Brian Niiya, “Manzanar,” Densho Encyclopedia, accessed July 10, 2025, https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Manzanar.

18 “Fighting Nines to be Hostess,” Manzanar Free Press, September 9, 1942: 4.

19 “Girls Softball and Moon Conflict,” Manzanar Free Press, August 17, 1942: 4.

20 “Fighting Nines to be Hostess.”

21 “Jr. Invaders Rack 5 on All-Star,” Manzanar Free Press, October 1, 1942: 4.

22 “Gee Whiz!!!” Manzanar Free Press, October 3, 1942: 4.

23 “C. Amies M. Kudo Cops National Bat Crown,” Manzanar Free Press, October 12, 1942: 4.

24 “Misses Ride High Over Fightin’ 6,” Manzanar Free Press, November 23, 1942: 4.

25 Miya, 7.

26 Watamura, 7.

27 Watamura, 7.

28 Takatow Matsuno, 15.

29 Watamura, 10.

30 Susie Matsuno, “Term Paper,” Densho Digital Repository, Courtesy of California State University Japanese American Digitization Project, 1943, https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-csujad-48-3/?format=api.

31 Takatow Matsuno, 12.

32 Manzanar High School, Valediction (n.p., 1945), 44 (accessed November 1, 2025, through Claremont Colleges Digital Library, Kruska Japanese Internment Collection, https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/p15831coll18/id/36.)

33 “Girls’ League Announced,” Manzanar Free Press, May 26, 1943: 4.

34 “Z’ettes Slaughter Juniorettes, 28-4,” Manzanar Free Press, June 26, 1943: 4.

35 “Lamda 9 Nod J’ettes,” Manzanar Free Press, July 14, 1943: 4.

36 Miya, 7.

37 Takatow Matsuno, 9.

38 Watamura, 13.

39 Miya, 13.

40 Miya, 30.

41 Miya, 29.

42 Tom Y Ito & Mary Namiko Matsuno marriage license (accessed November 1, 2025, through California, County Marriages at MyHeritage.com.)

43 Tom Miya & Mary N Ito/Matsuno marriage license (accessed November 1, 2025, through California Marriages at MyHeritage.com.)

44 Miya, 31.

45 Miya, 32.

46 Renee Tawa, “Childhood Lost: The Orphans of Manzanar,” Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1997, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-11-mn-37002-story.html.

47 “Manzanar Children’s Village Superintendent to Be Honored,” Rafu Shimpo, October 14, 2021, https://rafu.com/2021/10/manzanar-childrens-village-superintendent-to-be-honored/.