Frank and Mary Shutiva | Interview 1 | April 14, 2005

FRANK SHUTIVA: Could you tell me your name and where you were born?

FRANK SHUTIVA: My name is Frank Lawrence Shutiva, and I was born in Richmond, California, January 19th, 1927. I spent most of the time right in Richmond, all the way from preschool all the way to--

BETH CASTLE: We're going to start again with the simple question of if you could just tell me your name, where you were born, when you were born, and who your people are. You could start with that.

FRANK SHUTIVA: My family, my father and mother?

BETH CASTLE: Yes, please. Go ahead.

FRANK SHUTIVA: My name is Frank Shutiva and I was born in Richmond, California, received all my education in Richmond from {Peary's?} Shutiva. My father worked for the railroad up in Richmond railroad shops, and my mother was just a housekeeper there in the home.

BETH CASTLE: Homemaker?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yeah.

BETH CASTLE: And what year were you born?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I was born January 19, 1927, right there in Richmond in the 00:01:00Indian Village. They used to call Richmond Indian Village. Santa Fe Indian Village, how we got there was when the Santa Fe run their railroad lines through here in Acoma land, they said that they would give employment to the Acoma Indian men that go out there to any of their shops along the system. Some ended up in Barstow, Bakersfield, and Richmond, and a place called {Calway?}, where they had all the shops along the line.

But my father ended up in Richmond shops. He was a painter over there, and after he passed away, the railroad gave me a job there. Well, I was working there 00:02:00during the wartime, World War II, when they hired us school kids because all the men were going into the service, so they hired a lot of us school kids. I was sixteen years old when I started working for the Santa Fe Railroad, and after that every summertime, summer vacations I worked for the Santa Fe Railroad.

After that, after I finished high school, then I got drafted into the army. That was around September, 1946, and so I went into the army for--well, since I was drafted I only stayed in there eight months. But I was sent to Tokyo, Japan in 00:03:00about three months. I stayed there for five months. That was really something, to be stationed in the capital of Japan. It's something that you never forget, my experience there, seeing all those bombed-out places there. The people after that were pretty nice, the Japanese people, you know.

BETH CASTLE: We're going to go through all this in more detail before we get to Japan, but before we go all the way to Tokyo, can we talk a little bit more about your life in Richmond? What I'm wondering is, so your father worked for the railroad, so he went out there and you were born out there. Do you know how long your father had been working in Richmond before you were born?

FRANK SHUTIVA: My father worked there I would say about maybe fifteen, twenty 00:04:00years, something like that.

BETH CASTLE: His whole career, fifteen, twenty years? Or do you know how long he had been in Richmond when he left--because you're from Acoma, right? You're Acoma people.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. He went to that {Calway} shop first.

BETH CASTLE: {Calway}?

FRANK SHUTIVA: {Calway}, California, and he worked there for a while, and then some of them got transferred to the Richmond shops. It was a real big shop over there--

BETH CASTLE: In Richmond.

FRANK SHUTIVA: --repair shop, repaired at that time steam locomotives and boxcars. He ended up at the paint shop as a painter.

BETH CASTLE: He was a painter there?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Painter there.

BETH CASTLE: What did you want to ask, Brendan?

B. FUREY: Was that before or after the 1922 shopmen's strike that your father 00:05:00came out?

FRANK SHUTIVA: That was after, way after that, I think. He told me about the strike, but I think he was already in Richmond at that time, after that strike was over and all that.

BETH CASTLE: Was he one of the people that came from Acoma to replace the striking workers in 1922 in Richmond? Or did he come later, in like the thirties or the early forties?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I think he came later after that, but he did tell me about the strike they had out there.

BETH CASTLE: What did he tell you?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I can't remember most of what he told me, but just that, you know, this railroad was on strike, and that he didn't--I don't think he took part in that. I think he came later on after that and worked there for a while. 00:06:00After he passed away then they asked me if I wanted to come to it, like I was saying, that since I was born in the village there, on company property, most of the people that were in charge there of the shop--it was a big shop there--they already knew who I was through my father, and they knew me by my first name.

At first I was going by the name of Carroll [phonetic], Carroll Lawrence Shutiva, all through my school time out there, and when I graduated from high school then they put my diploma, they put Frank Lawrence Shutiva. That was my 00:07:00real--then I was going by that after that. Because I went to the City Hall one time to get my birth certificate, and I asked for by the name of Frank Lawrence Shutiva. The clerk said, "There's no--we don't have anything on record that Frank Lawrence. There's a Carroll Lawrence."

"Oh, oh, that's me!" I said. There was some kind of mix up at the time of my birth, and the doctor named me Frank Lawrence, thinking my father was Frank Lawrence, and he wanted to call me Junior, you know. But then as my godmother named me Carroll after one of her relatives, uncles or something, it was back here in the Laguna. But they asked me which name I wanted. I told them, "I want 00:08:00Frank Lawrence Shutiva."

"All right," they said. "So we'll put you down on your birth certificate," and then they had given me my birth certificate and it was Frank Lawrence Shutiva, so I've used that name ever since.

BETH CASTLE: So when you were a young person in the village, you went by Carroll?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, through the village, yes. Most of them know me by Carroll, and all my school friends knew me as Carroll, and some of even the men working at the shops called me by that name, Carroll, till I finally told them that I changed my name to Frank Lawrence Shutiva. "Oh, are you a junior?"

"No, because my father's real name is Lorenzo Frank Shutiva, not Frank Lawrence."

"Oh, so you're not a junior."

"No, I'm not a junior."

BETH CASTLE: But you did take after your dad in working for the railroad. 00:09:00Because the fact that you were born in 1927 in Richmond means that it's really likely that your dad was one of the people who came from Acoma to replace the workers that were on strike there, do you think? Because it was 1922 that there was a strike. Because we haven't found many people who can connect to that strike. And then to be born in the village when it wasn't really--I mean, it was kind of wartime where the village really exploded, from what I understand, with families.

What are your earliest memories of being in the village as a young person? What was it like? What did you live in? Can you remember what the area looked like, in terms of the geography or the buildings?

FRANK SHUTIVA: It's all changed quite a bit. It was hardly--all open land where the Santa Fe owned, where the Indian village was. At first it was just a mixture 00:10:00all together of Acoma and Laguna men. Most of them were all bachelor men going out there. And my father's family and a man named Lorenzo Hunt, his family was the only one out there at that time. The rest were all bachelor men going to work, since the railroad needed people to work for them.

Then after that, then they put in what they call the Laguna Indian Village. You had two separate, then, villages, Acoma and Laguna, and they started putting in more boxcars. We lived in boxcars, but they were renovated. Oh, the company fixed them up real nice.

B. FUREY: Now, the verbal agreement of 1880 that ensured employment for the 00:11:00Lagunas, now did that extend to Acomas, or did Acomas have a separate agreement with Santa Fe?

FRANK SHUTIVA: As far as I can remember it was separately. I believe the Lagunas had a verbal agreement with the railroad, but the Acomas didn't make no agreement like that. It was an oral agreement. That's the way I understood it; my father told me.

B. FUREY: What did your father tell you?

FRANK SHUTIVA: That the railroad and the Acoma government back here agreed that they would hire Acoma men, too, even though there was no written agreement to hire them. So that's how they went through, just orally, by word-of-mouth 00:12:00agreement, something like that.

BETH CASTLE: Historically--we've been trying to figure out exactly how the oral history and the story has been passed on, because what some Lagunas have explained was that there was an original agreement between the Santa Fe Railroad and the Laguna that if they ever needed--that all Laguna men could work on the railroad, if they needed workers. And then during the strike, and then later on during World War II, but during that first strike in the twenties, that they didn't have enough Lagunas to replace the workers in Richmond, so then the Santa Fe Railroad asked Acoma men to join. But it's been hard--does that sound familiar? Or does that sound like something that--?

FRANK SHUTIVA: That's probably--I don't remember too much of that, because that 00:13:00was before I was born.

BETH CASTLE: Were there more Laguna people in the village than there were Acoma, or was it pretty much--

FRANK SHUTIVA: It was about even. I remember only one family, Laguna family, the Reillys [phonetic], they were out there at that time with our family, and that was the only family I remember, Laguna family that were there. Like I said, most of the other men were bachelors. They were from the Laguna, and some from the Oklahoma tribe, and some from, I believe it was up north, one of the tribes, but just, you know, like one man, two men from each tribe. So it was just a mixture of different Indians from different tribes, as far as I can remember. I know 00:14:00when I was growing up they just had this one Indian family, the Reillys from--they lived in the Laguna.

BETH CASTLE: Where did the bachelors stay?

FRANK SHUTIVA: They had quarters for them, same thing, those boxcars for them. They had two rows of boxcars which the company fixed up, and so they stayed in those, used those for quarters. But a lot of them left during World War II. A lot of those men had to go into the service then, so we lost a lot. There were just a few of us. Then after that those Laguna families started coming in and moving out there during World War II, and the Acomas, too, at the same time, 00:15:00came out there looking for work out there, since they were promised jobs over there. So that's where they ended up, in Richmond shops. Some along the way, like this second building, house, home over here, their father worked in the {Calway} shop. It was just a small shop. Most of them ended up in the Richmond shops.

BETH CASTLE: So you were born in 1927. It's in the 1930s where you're growing up in the Village with your family, and you're describing that until World War II, there were really just your family and the Reillys, another family from Laguna, but there weren't many other families. Other than that, it was a group of single men from different tribes, in addition to the Laguna and the Acoma. Is that what 00:16:00you just said to me, that that's basically what we're looking at in the 1930s?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. Well, not in the 1930s. That was about, I would just guess 1943. After that, that's when they started coming out to work, most of the Acomas and Lagunas.

BETH CASTLE: Okay. So growing up, I don't know if you can remember back to some of this, but you said you went to {Peary's?} Elementary School.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: Do you remember, did you have a lot of other friends, or young people your age in the village? Did you walk to school together? Do you remember what it was like when you first went to school?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Just my sister, my older sister, and the Hunts, their daughter, 00:17:00Irma Hunt, and my younger sister Juanita. We were the only ones going to school in {Peary} School. And we were the only Indians, as far as I know, over there. Many of the people there didn't know that there was an Indian village there, and our friends, the schoolmates didn't know. I don't know if they knew we were Indians. [chuckles] Some of the teachers knew that we were Indians.

BETH CASTLE: How did they react to you? Did you get to know friends there, and what kind of relationships were they?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Very good relationships. Everybody was good to each other, all our classmates, you know. We act more like adults. Recess, we sit around and 00:18:00talk to one another like adults, you know. We didn't act like kids, go out and run around and play. We would sit there and we'd say--we'd talk about, maybe the war, and what we did during the weekend, and where we went to, and all that. We were all friends, all a mixture of blacks, Mexican kids, and there were some Italians, and just four of us Indian kids there, so we all got along together real well. The teachers treated us real well.

BETH CASTLE: They did?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: Did you speak your language in the village? What language did you speak when you first got to the village?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Mostly English, because my father and mother speak in the Acoma language when we were in the home there. Most of the time us children would speak just English. Now I speak a little bit Acoma language, trying to learn, but from that time on, ever since we--

BETH CASTLE: You spoke mostly English.

FRANK SHUTIVA: --spoke mostly English language.

BETH CASTLE: So it doesn't sound like there were a whole lot of kids in the village then, at that time you were growing up.

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, not too many. Like I said, just my older sister, myself, and my younger sister, and the Hunts family, the two daughters. We were about the only ones. My wife's uncle, Bill {Lino?}, he's since passed away, he had a boy 00:20:00and a daughter later, maybe a few years after that, after the people moved up there. They were the first ones that moved into the village, and we were about the only ones there that went to school, all the way to, like I said--but during the wartime is when the population in the village increased, and there were more kids, Laguna kids. We all got along together real nice, all of us, just carry on our Indian ways. But the only thing is, well, myself especially, I couldn't speak my language. It was really hard for me to speak my language. The rest of 00:21:00us, we all got along real well.

BETH CASTLE: You were telling--maybe we can talk about--as we came in, you're going to elementary school and moving into, is it junior high? At what stage do you remember World War II? Maybe we could start by describing to me whether you remember and what you remember from Pearl Harbor, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and how that affected you.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Let's see. Well, when I got up to high school, then about fifteen, that's when they--1941 that happened. We were just all mixed up, us 00:22:00kids. We were asking a lot of questions. What is going to happen? You know, we heard on the radio--we didn't have no TV then--we heard on the radio that they announced that Pearl Harbor was bombed, and that was hard to grasp, you know, what they were talking about, and what's going to happen. A lot of us kids were just questioning our parents. "Are we going back to New Mexico, or what are we going to do? Are they going to bomb over here?"

"No, I don't think so." Well, we're in a dangerous place there. Standard Oil refinery was on one side of the village, and the railroad shops was on the other side, and we were right in the middle.

BETH CASTLE: Did you feel like a target?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. So, "We'll just have to wait and see what happens. We don't know." Then there were some Japanese men that were working at the shops. Most of them were working with my father in the paint shop, doing those fancy paint work for the railroad, and I don't know why they picked on them. They were working there a long time, and some of the men then were getting angry at them, you know, because they were Japanese.

And my father had to go and defend some of his friends, you know. "No, well, they're not responsible for that. They're American citizens. They don't have nothing to do with that. That's the Japanese, Japan, the country there, not them." But they decided that they were going to have to go to some camps around 00:24:00in California, part of California, all over California I mean. So they left. They had to leave the jobs. Then my father had good friends, you know, they worked a long time together, and we knew their families and their children. We all went to school together.

BETH CASTLE: What happened to the Japanese families, the Japanese-American families? What happened to the families? Were they taken?

FRANK SHUTIVA: They were all taken, north of--I think it was a place called Tule Lake, northern California, where those camps were set up there, and different 00:25:00places in California where they were sent to, our Japanese friends, and even some of my classmates in junior high school and high school. We missed them. They had to leave, quit school, get out of school and go with their families.

BETH CASTLE: Did that seem fair? Do you remember what you thought?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, I didn't think so, because they had no intentions of doing anything wrong against their country. They were good citizens. Their parents were good citizens and we knew them real well, all my classmates. We knew them real well. Well, we were surprised that they had to do something like that, that 00:26:00they had to be removed away from the community.

BETH CASTLE: So the men who were replaced, the men who worked with your father, they were sent away, too, to the internment camps?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: Who came in to replace them as workers?

FRANK SHUTIVA: They had some mostly kind of older men come, too old for going into the service, the military service. So they came in and they were hired to take their place.

BETH CASTLE: Were they Laguna men?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, they were white people that came. Most of them were a lot of Italian men that came to work, to replace those that they lost. Most of them were all older men that had been working there a long time. They stayed on. And then those that come in, new workers, employees, they were about in their 00:27:00fifties, start working. My father had a lot of friends, made friends with them, the persons they hired, about four or five people that were hired at the paint shop.

BETH CASTLE: What other changes might you describe that happened in the village once the war started? You described this feeling; was it scary? Were people sad? What did you see your parents doing, maybe, or other adults, when the bombing happened in Pearl Harbor, and then how would you describe the village changing after that?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Our Indian ways, we used to, you know, all be--have a lot of fun, 00:28:00or just be real good to each other, and then after that everybody looked like, got serious, you know, everybody wondering what's going to happen. What's going to happen to us? What do we do? Are we going to be sent back to the reservation? And then a lot of them thought about their younger men that will have to be going into the service, and even our friends, their sons were going into the service, and the men right there that were eligible to go into the service, we lost a lot of them. Many of them were my father's friends.

As a whole, the people didn't feel--well, the Indian people always, you know, feel serious about others, like friends, no matter whether they are Indian or 00:29:00not. And the Indian people looked like they were kind of worried about the other men going into the service. Will they be coming back? Will they be all right? The Indian way is we pray for all the men that were leaving them. That was about the feeling at that time, that they didn't know what to think, what was going to happen after that, after what happened at Pearl Harbor. We just waited and see what was going to happen, that's all.

BETH CASTLE: Was there any feeling or discussion about whether this war--you know, as Indian people, was this war your war? Was this a war that you should be participating in, or fighting for? How would you describe people's responses, 00:30:00Indian people, to serving in the military and fighting for the United States?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, I guess that was the feeling that, well, we have to go and serve our country. That was about the feeling then with our young men, Indian men. If our country needs us, well, we'll go. That was about the general feeling among the young people, the young men.

BETH CASTLE: Was it different with some of--I mean, what I'm wondering about is, you know, native people have a very proud history of military service, but there's always that tension between being native people in a country that hasn't always kept good relations with Indian people. So I wondered if maybe, were there any older people that voiced concerns over participating in the war, or 00:31:00this wasn't your conflict, or was it the general sentiment that you're describing, that younger men were ready to go. Was that general, or do you remember any kind of conflictual--

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, I didn't hear--

BETH CASTLE: I mean, you're young at this time, too, so--

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. I didn't hear too much whether the older people resented, you know, but I've heard a few--I can't remember since I was just a young boy then, but I did hear about some resentment from the older people, you know. "Well, the government went and took all our land, and look what happened. They killed off our buffalos and killed off what we live on, and now they want us to come and sacrifice our young boys' lives to help them." Some of them, I heard 00:32:00talk like that.

But like my father said, "Well, of course they feel bad about seeing our younger men go in." There was a lot that came out there later on to work for the railroad, and a lot of them went into the service then right at the start. I remember one of the fellows there from here that went in right at the start of the war, and he was about the last one to leave the service after the war was over, and he served about the longest time in the service. He's passed away now. His name was Harry Felipe [phonetic], and he's the one that I remember that served the longest time.

The rest after that then, we had some--one fellow that's from {Haymus?}, and he 00:33:00did pretty good in the service. He was a pilot, about as short as me, but he was a pilot that served in Germany. He reached up to the rank of major, and he was the only one I remember that ranked that high among the Indian males that went in. We had a few female Acomas that served during the wartime.

BETH CASTLE: Do you remember what they did?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, I don't. Most of them that were out there in California served over in the Pacific, all the way from, I believe it was Australia, and all the way up here through all those islands in the Pacific.

BETH CASTLE: In the WACs and women's auxiliary?

FRANK SHUTIVA: In the WACs and some were in the air force. Most of them served in the army, the infantry.

BETH CASTLE: So you're describing--I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm thinking, you're describing at the start of the war, for the industry, or for the railroad, there was a big influx. A whole number of people came into the village to work on the railroad, but then soon after the young men really started to disappear into the service. Is that part of--?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. Most of them are all gone, the younger men. About first 00:35:00maybe '42 and '43, that's when they start leaving for the service.

BETH CASTLE: And when did you start working for the railroad company?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I started in 1948, after my father passed away. At that time jobs were all plentiful. Like I said, they hired us school kids, and then after that, after my father passed away, then they right away came and asked me if I wanted to come work for them. "Do you want to take your father's place, and do you want to come work for us?"

"All right," I said. "I'll come to work." I'd worked there before, like I said, during my school years, so they knew who I was. So I went to work, and after I 00:36:00got out of the army then I took advantage of their G.I. Bill, four-year course. I signed up for that and the government paid for some of my tuition, so I took that four-year apprenticeship. But before I could finish, about 1952, then I got called back into the service again, and this time they called me into--I got drafted into the marines. So I had to take a leave from my railroad employment and serve two years in the marines during the Korean War, only I served my time in a place called Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California.

After my discharge I went back to work with the Santa Fe again, and this time I finished my--I had two more years to go, and I finished that, got my diploma. But since I was working in a paint shop, I guess I didn't take all the precautions, working in a place inside where there's fumes, paint fumes, and so after thirteen years working for the railroad, then I started getting sick. They sent me down to Los Angeles to a railroad hospital over there, and I stayed there for--that's where I lost my hearing on both sides.

But they sent me down to--and I was having some kind of dizzy spells, so I 00:38:00couldn't do work anymore. So that's where they sent me, down to L.A., railroad hospital, and I stayed there for about a month. After that then I felt a little bit better, but I was so weak, and I told them at the railroad that I couldn't go on working with them.

BETH CASTLE: So how old were you at this point?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Let's see, how old was I. About twenty-three years old--no, that was after we got--maybe about twenty-eight years old when I had to--I think I was about twenty-eight, or maybe later.

BETH CASTLE: Well, we'll come back to this. Actually, what I'd like to do is I 00:39:00want to stop now and take a quick break, and then go back and spend more time talking before the war about what Richmond was like, because it sounds like things got significantly more serious during the war, and I want to think a little bit more about what social life was like, and sports and all of that. But I want to give us a chance to--if you could just stop this.

[interview interruption]

BETH CASTLE: What were you saying, Mr. Shutiva, about the stoves? You just said the wood-burning stove--?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. We had a wood-burning stove and the railroad furnished firewood, scrap woods which we cut to the right lengths for our stoves, from their--I forgot what they called those places where they generate steam--steam 00:40:00generators that they had to use for the railroad. They shared some of that steam. Steam went down to the village. We used steam heat for heating purposes in all the boxcars.

BETH CASTLE: When you first lived in the boxcar, what do you remember? What was it like? Did it still look like a boxcar that came off the track? Did it have wheels? What color was it? What was it like inside? Maybe you could describe that for me.

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, they didn't have no wheels on them. They were all put on some kind of a foundation, and the foundation, they told me, was railroad tracks.

BETH CASTLE: Oh, really.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Railroad tracks and forms with cement, concrete forms with 00:41:00railroad tracks. They used to tell us, "No matter how big an earthquake, your home will never--."

BETH CASTLE: It won't move?

FRANK SHUTIVA: That boxcar will never break down, or fall off the foundations. They put railroad tracks in those foundations. They were painted red, and the inside, they asked what color we want, what kind of paint we want on the inside. So they did all that painting of the inside.

BETH CASTLE: This is the railroad company provided all these things as part of the agreement.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, the railroad provided everything for us there, electricity, steam heat, like I said, steam heat and electricity. They furnished all that. 00:42:00Later on what they--well, when the Lagunas moved out there, then they, too, moved into theirs. Theirs was painted yellow, light yellow, the boxcars. Ours was all in a row, two rows, the Acomas, but theirs was all this way [demonstrates], and maybe about thirty houses out there when they put in the Laguna village. They put in buildings, oh, maybe about thirty-by-fifty-foot buildings there they let us use for meetings, meeting halls and for whatever recreation purposes.

BETH CASTLE: Did the Acomas meet at different times or in different buildings 00:43:00than the Lagunas? What kind of things did you get together for as a group?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, mostly we'd keep to our--the Lagunas have their own, what you call, meetings, separate meetings. We had our own meeting halls. Sometimes they carried on with their tradition of these feasts, like certain saint feasts, you know, and they carried on over there. But most of the time they were separately; that was all their own, their way and our way. Not that much because we're almost the same thing, carry on the same way traditions, Acomas and Lagunas.

BETH CASTLE: Did you have feast days, as the Acoma tribe?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. I don't know if you ever heard where they, on some saint's day, like St. Lawrence Day, August tenth. And the family, like, myself here, Lawrence, I'm a Lawrence, so the women they make homemade bread, these oven breads, outside oven bread, and like fruits or things like that. Then they'd get on the rooftop and throw them out to the people. The people all come.

Long ago when my father built our home for us down the road a ways from here, they used to come on horsebacks, the men. They used to ride up on horseback and be hollering, "Lorenzo! Lorenzo!" And then after they'd all get together, the 00:45:00women would start throwing food to the men on horseback.

BETH CASTLE: And this was part of the feast-day celebration?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Part of that.

BETH CASTLE: And you did that in the village?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. They used to do that in the village.

BETH CASTLE: So the men, did they have horses, or did they just come and they walked?

MARY SHUTIVA: Just walked.

BETH CASTLE: No, go ahead and explain.

M. SHUTIVA: We just walked, because we were right close together, so we would gather at the houses and just threw from the porches, because we couldn't get on the roof.

BETH CASTLE: Right. Right.

M. SHUTIVA: So that was one of the feast days.

BETH CASTLE: Do you remember any traditional dancing that you did as Acoma people, and did you participate in that, or observe it?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, I myself didn't take part in any of it, but they did have 00:46:00like what they call buffalo dancing, deer dancing, and what were some of the other dances they held? Most of us down there at the {Akimita?} Village where most of the celebration, the fiestas, feasts took place. Gradually they started doing away with that where they come on horseback to go around to different homes, they gradually did away with that. Now they go drive to different homes. What do they call it? Grabbing Day. [laughs] They throw the--

BETH CASTLE: I see.

FRANK SHUTIVA: So they carried it on like that, after that, after they quit riding on horseback, because that was kind of dangerous to the little kids who went out there to get some of the foods that were thrown up.

BETH CASTLE: But you managed to continue a lot of these--traditions happened in Richmond, so you really kept a sense of being Acoma alive there.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. The Acomas were doing that, and both the Lagunas. They'd wait till the men got off work at four in the afternoon when they'd start throwing up the food.

M. SHUTIVA: Don't forget, you guys elected officers, too. Don't forget, you had elections like the governors.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Oh, yeah.

BETH CASTLE: Could you describe that to me? Do you remember how the social structure--?

FRANK SHUTIVA: [talk over, unintelligible] on out there who were just 00:48:00like--well, they call them satellite villages from here, and so we had to have our own officers from different railroad camps, Richmond, Fresno, Calway, Barstow. We had our own. Lagunas had their own government, and we did, too, Acomas had our own government. And then the railroad, they knew about that. Well, they were glad that we had our own form. But I was surprised that some of the people, like the police department didn't know we had a--"I didn't know you had your own form of government here in the village." The police chief one time came down to the village to see what it was like. "I never knew, and I don't think most people in Richmond here know that there's an Indian village. I had 00:49:00never heard of it myself," he said. "That's real nice. You have your own government here."

"Yes, our own government here to watch over our people," officers, and we all took turns being elected. It was like governor and lieutenant governor and all this.

BETH CASTLE: Did anyone in your family--did you know anybody who was the governor and lieutenant governor?

FRANK SHUTIVA: [laughs] I was elected governor then one time.

BETH CASTLE: What were your responsibilities?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I was like a liaison officer between the railroad and the Acoma tribe. Then we keep in touch with the governor back here, the governor's office back here, to let them know how we were doing, or if there's anything that we think that the railroad should do for us while we were out there, to let them 00:50:00know over there.

B. FUREY: And they're also ditching dues that you'd pay back to the council here, correct?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, there was no--

B. FUREY: There were no kind of taxes or monies that would be sent--

FRANK SHUTIVA: To the tribe back here?

B. FUREY: From the village back to--

M. SHUTIVA: Ditch dues.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Just right here, right here, while we were back here, yes.

B. FUREY: Well, during World War II was any money sent back?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, not that I know of. The only thing is to keep in touch with the main government here that how we were doing, how our people are behaving out here, and to always remind them of our Indian ways. Well, the Indian people 00:51:00always give advice to their people. "While you're out there--," for instance they tell us, "while you're out there behave yourself. The railroad hired you to work for them, and that's what you do. You do your best for the railroad. They're paying you good pay." [laughs] But compared to now we made about a dollar.

Well, I started working at eighty-five cents an hour, and that's what those older men that would work maybe thirty years, that's what they were getting paid, eighty-five cents an hour. And they didn't want to retire. "How can we retire when we only get eighty-five cents an hour? We can't save anything."

BETH CASTLE: So you started at the same wages that somebody who had been working a long time was making?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: Why was that, do you know? Why was it so high for you, or so low for them? Do you know why that was?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, I don't remember. That's what they started us. I don't know why they kept them at a low wage. Probably because there was no union organization among the working men till later on.

BETH CASTLE: When did you join a union? Did you?

FRANK SHUTIVA: 1948, '49. About 1949 they asked me to join a union, so around 1949 I became a union member, paid dues and all. Most of us were all union 00:53:00members then, Indians that were working out there.

BETH CASTLE: Do you remember when your dad was working for the railroad, did he earn enough so that you were comfortable? Do you remember what life was like in terms of comfort level and material--and did you have enough of what you needed, or what do you remember from then?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Just barely, most of the time. They had a place that they--I don't recall the name of that--

M. SHUTIVA: Homes.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Home Supply, yes. It's run by the railroad, and my father used to charge clothes for us, school clothes for us, and we just barely got by, even though grocery at that time wasn't high. For instance, I can remember as far 00:54:00back as when bread was about ten cents a loaf. I remember that far back, and a quart of milk, things like that.

BETH CASTLE: Where did you shop for your food, do you remember?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. We had to go into town. The closest one was about five blocks away. These Italian people that run the stores became friends of my father, and they used to let him go ahead and charge them every payday.

BETH CASTLE: So he would be able to buy stuff on credit at both--and Home is what you said?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Home Supply, yes. It was mostly like we bought some clothing, and not too much groceries there. We had to get it from the regular grocery, those 00:55:00small grocery stores in town, and just barely get by. My father didn't make too--in two weeks he made about seventy dollars, ninety dollars for two weeks work, so we just barely got by at that time, till the union come in. Then they started making a little bit better wages.

BETH CASTLE: When you were growing up do you recall, what are the kind of things that you did for fun? What were the social things that you did? Especially, did you leave the village and go anyplace in Richmond like Nichols Park or to the movies, and could you describe--do you remember any of those times, anything in particular that was fun or exciting or scary?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, as Indian people, our families with the whole family would go to the park. They have all those recreational, like, swings and slides. So our father would take all of us. We'd walk, no car. We'd walk from the village up into town, maybe about thirty or forty blocks away. That's most of our--it was fun. Didn't go too far away or--well, remind you that the way that we were brought up, you know, is to stay close together. The family stays close together, and we didn't go too far off by ourselves, us kids.

But we did sometimes go and visit with our school friends, elementary school, at 00:57:00the elementary school. Sometimes we'd go and join them, mostly like going to the store and buying ice cream or something like that. Then we'd go back to the schoolyard and sit there, and we'd just have fun talking, or they used to have a game called kickball. It looked like a basketball, and it's played on like a baseball field. That's the only thing I remember, but most of the time we'd just stick to ourselves.

We were brought up real strict, most of us children, to stay close to your father and mother, and don't do anything wrong. It was really a strict upbringing for us, but us kids didn't seem to mind. We had fun. Our parents 00:58:00would sometimes, if they can have the money, they'd buy us--like my dad bought me an airplane made out of metal, not plastic at the time. Remember, toys were made out of metal. We didn't see no plastic toys. I had a lot of fun with that. He bought a little wagon that we used to play with. I had a dog named Peter, and we'd tie a rag around the handle. Then he used to pull us around in that thing. Sometimes he'd go so fast the wagon would tip over. [laughs] But that's what we used to do, and the girls would have their dolls that they played with, you know. I wasn't too much interested in going into town or doing this or that. We 00:59:00just stayed right around close to the homes we were living in.

BETH CASTLE: As you got older--

FRANK SHUTIVA: --place there, and then when it really rains that's when the land floods in there.

M. SHUTIVA: But not the village.

FRANK SHUTIVA: So there was a lot of wood, scrap woods available, and I made a little raft and got a long pole. The water was only maybe about two feet deep, but I had a lot of fun going out there with that raft, only about two, three hundred feet away from the dry land. That was my favorite pastime, going out there on that raft.

BETH CASTLE: Was this the area--I've heard other people call it the swamp.

M. SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: Was it just one specific area that got quite deep and full of water 01:00:00that you could play in?

M. SHUTIVA: They used to call it the swamp.

FRANK SHUTIVA: I never heard of it, calling it that.

BETH CASTLE: Were there a lot of children playing over there at that time, or was this when there was just a few of you?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Just a few of us. There was then just me and my sisters, and like I said, those Hunt children, two of them. That's all there were.

BETH CASTLE: So you had to entertain yourself a lot, didn't you?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: But there seems to be--I've talked to other families where they were--when a lot more people came out, so it sounds like you really were the first families there. When you grew older, do you remember--we were talking about as you grew older, did you play on any sports teams? Because we've kind of been talking about elementary school and going to Peary's Elementary School, and then as you grow older and you become a teenager, did things change for you 01:01:00socially? What other things did you do? Do you remember playing on any sports teams, or doing anything locally?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Not very much, no, through my elementary especially, and then junior high school. I didn't participate in--in junior high school they didn't have no athletic programs, so there was nothing till we got to high school, and even then I wanted to join their track team. I was too small for any of the other, you know, basketball. I tried out for them. They told me, "Oh, you look like an ant hill beside a mole hill. You play pretty good." Said, "You're pretty good."

BETH CASTLE: For basketball?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. Most Indians are sports-minded.

BETH CASTLE: Did you play basketball in the village? Was there a hoop to play?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, I didn't. I played softball and joined--the Lagunas formed a softball team, which they the Laguna Redskins, so they asked me if I wanted to play for them. I was in high school, I believe, so I did.

BETH CASTLE: You played for them?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Then I played for them, played short stop, of course. [laughter] We had a lot of fun.

BETH CASTLE: Tell me about that, the memories of playing softball.

FRANK SHUTIVA: We played a city league, and the Santa Fe also had a softball team, too.

BETH CASTLE: The railroad did?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. A lot of our friends played.

M. SHUTIVA: And the Chevron station--was it Chevron--or the Standard station had a team.

FRANK SHUTIVA: No. No, just I remember--then the others, like the shipyard had a team, and yes, Standard Oil had a team. The different industries around there had softball teams, but ours was right from the village. Maybe it was after they came out of the service. Yes, I think it was mostly when they came out of the service, yes.

BETH CASTLE: An all-Indian team?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. We had enough to field a softball team, and our team was the only one that had a band, some of the Indian boys that used to play in their high school. Back here in Indian school they used to play for the band, take 01:04:00part in the band, and they still carried on whatever they played, trumpet and all. So they used to come out there when we had a softball game, and they would play for us. Most of us were short guys. We had only one fellow that was--he was about six-foot tall.

BETH CASTLE: He really stood out, then.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Most average height was about maybe five-foot six.

BETH CASTLE: How did you do as a team? Did you win any games?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Oh, about average, usually win the same amount as losses. But we 01:05:00didn't mind. We wanted just to have fun out there, because there was nothing else to do. After you get off work you want some kind of recreation, so that was real nice, just so we had a little bit of fun out there.

BETH CASTLE: I wonder if people liked playing you, because if they got to play you they got to hear the music, too. The bands came.

FRANK SHUTIVA: We had a lot of people that supported our team, since we were Indians. They'd say, "Oh, support the Indian team." A lot of people from the church I used to go to out there, they came out to attend our games.

BETH CASTLE: Where were the games? Where did you play?

FRANK SHUTIVA: They used to call it Nichols Park. They had about two or three playing fields, and they were using all of them at the same time in the city league.

M. SHUTIVA: I was one of the spectators.

BETH CASTLE: We'll have to ask about that.

B. FUREY: You mentioned the church. Could you tell us what church you went to, and tell us a little bit about the congregation that was there, the people that were coming to the church? Was it mostly Indian people? Were they Mexican people, Italian?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Mostly white people that were coming to that church there.

BETH CASTLE: What church was it?

FRANK SHUTIVA: The one we went to is Full Gospel Assembly. My father and mother were at first Catholics. Then when they moved out there, then these people from a Spanish church came out and talked to them. At that time there were only two or three, two families, so they changed over to their church there.

BETH CASTLE: So was it Baptist?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No.

M. SHUTIVA: It's called Full Gospel Temple.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Pentecostal church. It was mostly Pentecostal church, they call it, or Church of Christ, something like that. Then we started going to a church that was close by, about two or three blocks away, and then they moved that church further up to one big building that they got a hold of. It was about, oh, maybe ten more blocks farther. Since we didn't have no car, we used to all walk to church from the Indian village all the way up to that church.

M. SHUTIVA: It's on 14th Street in Richmond.

FRANK SHUTIVA: But the people that were going to that church, they really liked our families because we were the only Indians they knew, and they were real good to us. Some treated us as part of their family.

M. SHUTIVA: As a matter of fact, there's a picture of that lady that used to take care of them.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Used to take us up to her home. Her husband was working for the Standard Oil company, and they treated us like we were part of their family. They had a boy and a girl, and we all used to go to church together. They had a car and sometimes they'd pick us up. Where the Indian village was located, we had to go through the shops, then cross a bridge over maybe about sixteen rows of tracks. They had these, what they call a viaduct, and we used to go across there and come back. They'd meet us at the--on the other end was the passenger depot, and that's where sometimes they'd pick us up and take us to the church. 01:09:00But we were treated real well.

BETH CASTLE: What was the name of--you described a couple of different churches that you went to before this church, or was this the same church? What's the name of the church that you went to, and you were a member of that church for a long time?

M. SHUTIVA: Yes.

FRANK SHUTIVA: All I remember, they called it Full Gospel Church. As far as I know, that was the only name that they went by.

BETH CASTLE: What was the name of the family that you became so close to, the woman in the picture?

FRANK SHUTIVA: There were several families that we were all--

BETH CASTLE: That were mostly white, the congregation was mostly white?

FRANK SHUTIVA: There were some Portuguese families, and the white people.

M. SHUTIVA: What's the name of the--

FRANK SHUTIVA: {Coryell?}. That one was--

M. SHUTIVA: Hazel.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Hazel {Coryell?}, and I can't remember her husband. Their son was Eugene and their daughter was Florence. She came out here one time to visit my sister down here.

BETH CASTLE: Okay. So you formed some really close relationships with some of the families you met in Richmond.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. We were all real close, close friends. And after that some of the new members came. Then even one of my classmates, Bud, his family. We all went to the same church, and it was kind of strict, that church. They wouldn't let us--no smoking, no drinking, no--

BETH CASTLE: What about dancing?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yeah, it was kind of strict.

M. SHUTIVA: No dancing, no movies.

FRANK SHUTIVA: In a way we used to like it. Our high school friends used to tell 01:11:00us on the weekends, you know, "What are you guys going to do over the weekend?"

"Nothing."

"Me, I'm just going to go into town, walk around town, go to a soda shop or so."

"Is that all? Aren't you going to the--?" They used to call it the show. "Aren't you going to the show and see something, film?"

"No. Our church won't allow us to do that."

"Oh. What kind of fun do you have? Do you have any fun?"

"Yeah, we have fun." Like go to the park and watch people play tennis, or watch a baseball game in town."

My friend, he said the same thing. "Oh, I go out with my other friends. We go out to the bay there. We have a rowboat and an outboard motor. We go out there, 01:12:00go fishing, or just riding around. Well, we have fun," he said. I don't miss any of those.

BETH CASTLE: I wonder, is that very different from--we've talked to a lot of people who, most of them were members of the Catholic church, and they combined that with traditional religion. The same rules were for my grandpa's religion, where there was a lot of social things that a lot of other people would do that you couldn't, like dance, or the girls couldn't cut their hair, things like that. Was this different, this religious path, than a lot of other Acomas or Lagunas, that you were on, would you say?

M. SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: She's saying yes in the background.

M. SHUTIVA: Yes, because you don't do the religious things like they do around here.

BETH CASTLE: Like participate in {kiva}?

M. SHUTIVA: No.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, for myself, take part in like the tribal dancing.

BETH CASTLE: So you wouldn't participate in those kind of dances because of your church relationship.

FRANK SHUTIVA: In a way, yes, and sometimes the people here, sometimes they would say, "Why don't you take part in the Indian ways?" And it's kind of hard to explain to them why. "Well, aren't you glad you're an Indian?"

"Yes, I am. I'm glad I'm an Indian, and I'm proud to be an Indian."

But sometimes, well, even my great-grandfather--my grandfather, my grandmother, they would advise me, "Well, don't take part in all of them, because it's really got to be done by faith, and you really have to go through the rituals from a long time ago, where you have to fast and where you have to do certain things, you know, in order to take part in them. You've got to really have faith for what the dances stand for," and they at that time told me that sometimes it's not done the right way. You could tell; sometimes we would have no rain, or 01:15:00sometimes we have a lot of dust storms.

BETH CASTLE: So you're talking about traditional ceremonial practice here.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. So that's why--not that I don't want to take part in the thing, but you have to go through things, the way I understood it, the way they told me. And then being out there for most of my life, out there in California, I didn't know how to do all those things that they go through. That's what they said. You have to really be faithful and true to doing the right way, carrying on those things. That's what the old folks told me, and I guess they know. My 01:16:00grandfather on my father's side, San Juan Shutiva, they told me that he lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old, and my grandmother on my mother's side lived to be a hundred and thirty-four years old.

They sent me a newspaper clipping about them, because the government wanted the oldest people they can find here in Acoma. At that time the Acomas had a land-claims hearing in Albuquerque, I guess, with the government, and they wanted the oldest people they can find. So they called my grandfather and my grandmother to testify if they can remember how much land the Acomas used to have. So they did, at that hearing, and they printed it in the newspaper. At 01:17:00that time I was stationed with the marines up in northern California at--they used to call the place Pickle Meadows [phonetic]. It's up in the--where is that place--close to Lake Tahoe. They had a marine cold winter camp up there. We trained for cold weather training. I was stationed up there for a while, and that's where I got that newspaper clipping about my grandfather and grandma.

BETH CASTLE: Did you have any idea that they were that old? I mean, that's pretty tremendous, so they were still around at that time.

FRANK SHUTIVA: I kind of, because one time my sister and I--I was about eight and my sister was about seven, and we were down at my grandmother's house. We 01:18:00were outside playing in the front yard, and then some old car drove up, and then some old woman came out, a Spanish woman from a little Spanish village over here. She got out and come up to us and said, told us, "Hello. I'm so-and-so," her name was, "and your grandmother, we were friends for a long time. Today I'm celebrating my hundredth birthday," she said. "I was just, out of curiosity, I was just wondering if your grandmother is still--she's probably gone."

"No, she's inside the house."

And she just didn't say anything. "She's still living?"

"Yes, she's inside."

"Do you young kids know that your grandma must be over a hundred and thirty years old? Because when I was a little girl she was already a grown woman," she told us.

My sister and I just sort of looked at each--"Over a hundred thirty, our grandma? You can go in." So she went inside, and we just stayed outside, so I didn't know what--. She was active, my grandmother, always had a little worn-out hoe, always working in her flower garden.

When I was out there in California, when I had to go back out there one time, later on, then my mother wrote a letter saying that, "Grandma passed away." Oh, 01:20:00my grandma. She was a real--I'll never forget her. She was a real kind person, would have us sit by her, you know, old, old lady, and she would tell us, give us advice. That's part of the Indian way.

And she'd clap her hands, and then one time she promised us, "Grandson, I don't want you to ever do like these other men do around the village. I don't want you to do no drinking. I don't want you to do no smoking. I just want you to live right. Do you promise me that?"

"All right, Grandma. I'll do that for you. I'll behave myself."

"That's what I want you to do." She'd grab my hand. "That's what I want you to 01:21:00do, Grandson. I don't want to worry about you or anything. After I've seen the way some of these men--." At that time it wasn't real bad like now, but [laughs] every once in a while they'd want a good time. So then--

BETH CASTLE: Did you do that? Did you keep that promise for your grandma?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I sure did. It was hard at times.

BETH CASTLE: I was going to say, was it hard at times? [laughing]

FRANK SHUTIVA: Especially when you were going into the service, you know. Oh, it's hard. My friends, my buddies, we'd go like maybe in San Diego--that's a strange town to me. I'd never been to that place before.

B. FUREY: Before moving on to your service, can you talk a little bit about, in general terms, how Richmond changed during World War II? Because you were there prior to the war, and many people came during the war. It turned from a city of 01:22:0025,000 into 100,000 people. Those are big changes. The three shipyards came in. You had people coming from the Midwest and the South. Could you talk about some of these big changes, how you saw Richmond transform during the early war years?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, as far as us, the school kids, we got along together, those that come from different, out of state. I don't think there was too much, you know, resentment from other people coming into our town. Our town, Richmond, was a real nice town where everybody knew each other, where it was safe to walk down the street, a quiet little town. Then when the World War [II] came, then there 01:23:00was more people, and things started to--well not that I saw, not too much changes. People seemed to welcome others, those that come from out of state.

Then working together, the shipyards, when the shipyards come in--when the shipyard came in that really kind of changed, because it got more noisier with all those shipbuilding going on, and all those riveting and welding, and where you come and ask for work. "Okay, come to work." That was not much, to me I didn't think much different. People all got along, but it was just there were 01:24:00more people.

BETH CASTLE: Did you have to wait in line for things? Do you remember just the fact that so many more people were there, that more people on the streets, or more people waiting for food or restaurants?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Not that I recall. No, no, not changes of that kind. But it looks like maybe a little bit more automobiles then on the streets than before, and sometimes maybe there would be some shortage of certain foods. But other than that, myself, I didn't see much change.

BETH CASTLE: Do you remember the ration coupons?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Oh yes, yes.

BETH CASTLE: What do you remember about that? Do you remember your mom working with them, or how did it affect your family?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, we had to economize or save a big--share our food, and to 01:25:00not to use too much till the next issue of the ration stamps. The gasoline rations didn't bother us too much. I don't remember if we had a car then; my father had a car later on. But I think by the time he got a car--I'm not real sure. I think the gas rationing was up. But I didn't see too much change of the people or how they feel about other strange people moving in.

BETH CASTLE: Do you know who the people were? Like you've mentioned kind of out-of-state people, or people outside of Richmond. Were there new races? Were there more, like, black people, colored people moving in, or Mexican, or do you remember a change in just the experience of Richmond?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No. I don't remember anything, and I never did see anything like that happen. Everybody seemed like they got along together.

B. FUREY: Is that maybe due to the fact that the Indian village was in private Santa Fe property, and it was sort of removed from the town of Richmond? Do you think maybe your experience was slightly different than other people living in Richmond?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, I don't think so. Like I said, most of the old timers over there in Richmond were people that, you know, friendly people, just like they 01:27:00welcomed these outsiders. There were not too much--affect us Indian people in the Indian village. We Indian people, we got along well with everybody else. No, I don't think it, too much. Well, personally, I'm speaking, but others, I don't know how the others feel about it.

B. FUREY: I heard stories from other interviewees who were Native American. They said when they first entered school that there was some discrimination because of the western movies, the cowboy movies where the Indians were the bad guy, and he said he was discriminated against for being Indian.

FRANK SHUTIVA: I didn't see anything like that. I didn't see nothing like that. Yes, they had those kind of movies, but it didn't affect us, you know, the 01:28:00Indians. Everybody was good to us. That was a real nice town, a friendly town. No, I don't think so. But then many of us Indians anyway around there, so we didn't, us Indian people didn't resent anything like that. I never did hear anything like that about Indians. [clock chimes]

B. FUREY: Did outsiders, non-Indians come to the village? Did you have friends from school or church that would come over and maybe eat Indian food?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No. I had one black friend in elementary school that I'd invite him to come and, you know, they used to have this game called marbles, and we'd 01:29:00go out in front of the house there and we'd play it.

B. FUREY: What was his name?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Thomas Robinson, his name was, but they later told me that--he used to always, since I was a little guy, he used to always take care of me in elementary school. "You let me know if anybody picks on you," he said. "Okay, Thomas."

And then later on, about maybe after he got out of school, Peary School, junior high school, about after junior high school, I saw some friends, some Mexican friends that were real good friends, brothers. They one time asked me, "Do you remember your bodyguard, Thomas Robinson?"

"Yes, I remember him, a good friend."

"Do you know what he's doing now?"

"No, I never heard of him after that."

"He's doing time over at San Quentin."

"Oh, my friend!" Well, in a way, now that you mention that, that was the only time I'd ever seen him get--like one of the teachers in junior high school, I don't know why he picked on him and hit him and knocked him down.

BETH CASTLE: A teacher?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, in junior high school. I don't know why. He was kind of a stern person. But the rest of us, he didn't treat us mean or anything like that. But he was just this one black boy that, I don't know why. After that, I think that boy, then he kind of didn't like white people, and he, watch you call, I 01:31:00guess, just turned the wrong way. But he had an older brother, and his older brother was more a quiet person. But he was the only one, and there was one Mexican boy, too, that his own sister told me that he didn't end up very well, that he's always getting into jail and he's always doing something wrong, oh!

B. FUREY: Now, there are Mexican nationals who worked for Santa Fe. They called them nationals.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

B. FUREY: Could you tell us a little bit about them and where they lived?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Let's see. I think right on the Indian property, next to the Indian village they put up housing for them, and we got along, and as far as I 01:32:00know they got along well with everybody else. We all became friends, and sometimes we--

BETH CASTLE: Did you ever do anything together, or were they kept to themselves, or was there any kind of relationship?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, after work sometimes a lot of them brought their guitars with them, or accordion, and they put up dances and things like that. But I used to go and visit with them, and then they asked me, "Do you want us to--we brought along our guitars from Mexico. You want us to play anything?"

"Yeah," I said. "I would like to hear--."

BETH CASTLE: Was this just outside? Were you outside, or were you--

FRANK SHUTIVA: Inside their quarters where they stayed. I had a lot of fun listening to their music and their Mexican folk music and things like that. That was real nice.

B. FUREY: And you'd speak to them in English.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. Most of them speak, not very good, but they knew what the English language was about.

BETH CASTLE: You spoke enough English to talk to each other, kind of basic communication.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: And music, you know, you don't need to speak English that well to enjoy good music, right?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: Who else would be with you? How old were you? Were you a young man when you would go over into the quarters of the Mexican nationals?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I was about maybe eighteen or nineteen years old when I started visiting with them. I worked as a laborer, probably around sixteen, seventeen, 01:34:00something like that, because I was still in high school, and I worked for the railroad as a laborer there, working along with these Mexican nationals, so we all got along.

BETH CASTLE: So you started working before you graduated high school.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: And why was that? Why did you start then?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Because, like I said, the men were all called into the service, so that's what they hired us to take their place, even though we were just, well sixteen years old.

BETH CASTLE: You were younger than you should have been, right?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. During the summertime only, though, because I had to go back to school. But after I finished school then I think I worked for a while.

BETH CASTLE: And you were a laborer?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, a laborer.

BETH CASTLE: Tell me about a day. What was a day like working as a laborer for the railroad? Tell me, like start with getting up in the morning, and describe your day for me.

FRANK SHUTIVA: We got up at six o'clock every morning and our workday started at 01:35:00seven-thirty in the morning, until four o'clock in the afternoon, and we had a half-an-hour lunch break, twelve to twelve thirty. My work as a laborer was to roll these steel wheels, boxcar wheels, from the--they had another shop called back shop where they turned these wheels down on lathes, smoothed them all out. They were all cast-iron wheels, and then the boss would tell us, "We need two wheels on track three," and then he would name the man that's working on that boxcar.

Yes, like I said, I was a little kid and I still knew these men already because they were still my father's friends, and he told me who they were. So, "All 01:36:00right," and I'd go back, sometimes just by ourselves, like myself, I'd go back and, "They want two sets of wheels down to the rep track," they call it, short for repair track.

And, "Oh, okay. There's one right there." Then so we'd take that railroad track; I mean on the railroad track we'd bring the wheels this way, and then they have turntables that you have to turn them and then put them on that track going to the repair shop. Then they have another turntable there where we'd pick the right, appropriate tracks where we're supposed to take them to, and then take them to the person that wanted the thing. That's why my--most of that, I would do that also, even as a little skinny kid.

BETH CASTLE: Was it tiring work, physically tiring?

FRANK SHUTIVA: It was, yes, at times. And mostly picking up trash, cleaning the shops, grounds, clean--that's what us school kids were doing, or they had some women that they hired to clean out, sweep out the boxcars, clean all the trash. Then we'd put them in wagons, and they had big incinerator where we'd take those trash to. There was some man there that what you call his job was to burn those, throw those trash into the incinerator.

BETH CASTLE: Do you remember working with women? You just mentioned you worked with some women who were hired to clean out the boxcars. Were women hired to do other jobs that maybe you hadn't seen women doing before? Do you remember that, in your experience?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. There were some women, what they called the coach yard, 01:38:00passenger trains, passenger cars, and they used to clean out those cars when they brought their train in. Most of them were troop trains, from troop trains. They would clean those out, and that's what most of the women did, clean, sweep, and mop, and vacuum the upholsteries on the benches, and clean windows. The men would be outside, and they would be cleaning the whole outside of those passenger cars, and washing the windows. That's what mostly the women, though, they were cleaning, even in the repair shop, sweeping out the boxcars.

BETH CASTLE: And that's hard work, too, though.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. There was a lot of cars that needed to be swept out, but they had a lot of--mostly they were black and Mexican women that were doing that 01:39:00kind of work.

BETH CASTLE: When I talked to Nellie Arkie, she was an oiler, so I have a picture of her with a big--I've seen the picture with the big oilcan, and she would help oil the wheels when the train came through. I just wondered if you saw women doing that kind of thing, too.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. I remember there were two or three women that did that kind of work. At that time they used, they called them trucks, and where the wheel 01:40:00axle ends they go inside these little boxes, and then they--yes, Nellie was one of them, and there were two or three other women that did that same kind of work. She used to change those--what did they call them--they looked like strings, a bunch of strings, pack them in there.

BETH CASTLE: She called it waste.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Waste, yes, and then fill it up with oil. There was one--

BETH CASTLE: There's a woman named Daisy Beardsley, too.

M. SHUTIVA: Oh yes.

FRANK SHUTIVA: I think she worked at what they call the coach yard. Oh, this one I remember was Helen Johnson, the one that married Eddie {Damonte?}?

M. SHUTIVA: I don't know her last name.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Helen Johnson, I believe it was. She was a Laguna woman, and married this fellow. He was an Italian guy. They used to do that, repack those boxes.

M. SHUTIVA: Was it Helen Henderson?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Johnson. She's a Laguna woman. So packing boxes I guess they fell 01:41:00in love, because they got married. [laughs] So they married each other. She passed away not too long after that.

BETH CASTLE: It sounds like it brings people of a lot of different cultural backgrounds, come together and work in spaces, you know, work close to each other or with each other in a way that they might not have before. At what point did you start dating, or found the person that you eventually married? Was that during this period, or how old were you?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Let's see. After I was working for the Santa Fe, after I'd come out of the army, then I knew I was going to get called back in, so I never did think about getting married. I thought, I'll probably have to go back in the 01:42:00service again, and I don't want to get married and what if I get killed in the war, Korean War? I don't want to leave no family behind. I'll get married later.

Well, so after I come out of the service the second time, then I started thinking, well, maybe I might get married or start a family. So we started going together. She was about six years younger than me. So we started going together, but we didn't think about getting married till later on.

BETH CASTLE: When did you first meet?

FRANK SHUTIVA: What year? [laughter]

M. SHUTIVA: I graduated in '52. I was twenty-three then, when we got married. So we went about two years engaged.

FRANK SHUTIVA: I was twenty-nine then when we got married.

B. FUREY: So '56? What month did you guys get married?

M. SHUTIVA: June.

B. FUREY: In June? So June of--

M. SHUTIVA: June thirtieth. I had to be a June bride, June thirtieth.

B. FUREY: And when is your birthday?

M. SHUTIVA: January 19th.

FRANK SHUTIVA: January 19th.

B. FUREY: And you were born in 1928?

FRANK SHUTIVA: '27.

B. FUREY: '27, so then it would be 1955, June of 1955.

BETH CASTLE: It's good you're good at math. [laughs] Well, I was trying to get a 01:44:00sense--I wondered when you started to, you know, when people met each other. I mean, I'd like to move on to that a little bit later, but you were describing your job as a laborer on the railroad when you were still in high school, so this was a summer job?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, this was in--

BETH CASTLE: Did you ever work after school?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, I didn't, because the shops were never open after four.

BETH CASTLE: I see. Were the wages good for you? I mean, what was it like to be sixteen and earning money? Did the money go back to your family?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: Did you get to spend any of it?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I didn't get to spend much of it. My mother took it and she said, "Your daddy needs help to get us groceries, and I've got to put the money away 01:45:00for you to buy your school clothes." So I didn't get to see much of that. And they used to deduct for--it was voluntary--war bonds they used to call it, war bonds. So I used to get that taken out of--even though I wasn't making much, but I think every three months I would get a war bond, pay for it in three months. But they'd just deduct it from our paychecks. Both me and my sister were doing that.

BETH CASTLE: What was your sister doing, what was her job?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Right after she graduated from high school the company asked my father if my sister can come to work for them, so they said, "Yeah. Yes, she 01:46:00wants to come to work."

"All right. Tell her to come over to the depot and we'll hire her. We need some clerks over there." So she got hired right from--oh, maybe less than a week. That's how bad the shortage was. So they hired her and she took up mostly office work, office training. So she got hired as what they call {demerage?} clerk, keeping records of the boxcars and where they're located, and where they're going, and how to form the freight train, where this boxcar with certain goods on it, where it should go, which freight train it should go to get on. That's 01:47:00what her job was then, and she worked there for a long time, and retired from there. That's all she did. Her education paid off for her, what she studied in school.

BETH CASTLE: That helped. Now, she had graduated from high school?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, she graduated from high school and went right to work. They put her right to work. Same way all of us, too. At that time, that's--sometimes I tell my wife, "You know, we were born in the right time, when jobs was plentiful." Sometimes I feel sorry for the young people now, that they have a hard time finding work.

But during our time, at that time when we finished school they'd say, "Come work 01:48:00for us." And when I was in high school and I took up machine shop and what they call drafting, like blueprints, I took that during junior high school and high school, for six years. That's what I thought I was going to become, a draftsman or a machinist, because they needed a lot of those during the wartime. They--Standard Oil, the Pullman Company, the Santa Fe Railroad--you remember Mare Island Naval Station?

BETH CASTLE: Yes.

FRANK SHUTIVA: They came to the high school and they talked to my teacher, and they wanted to know which students they could talk to that have good grades. So 01:49:00my teacher would always send them to me, and they would ask me, "Do you want to come to work for us? We need some machinists," or, "We need people that draft."

And the Pullman, or at the Standard Oil Refinery, "We need people over there."

And Santa Fe, "You live close by. Why don't you come work for us?"

I told them, "No. I want to finish high school. I want to get my diploma. I don't want to quit school right now."

"You're sure?" they said. "We'll pay you a good pay." It was kind of hard to make a--

BETH CASTLE: You stuck to your guns there.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: So all those different wartime industries all around Richmond and the Bay Area came to the high schools to try and recruit, to try and get you to drop out of school and take a job?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. I didn't want to do that. I just wanted to finish high school.

BETH CASTLE: Do you remember the Kaiser shipyard? Did the representatives from Kaiser also come to the schools?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Shipyards? I don't think they came around. Just those--

BETH CASTLE: You just remember Mare Island and Standard Oil.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Then afterwards, after I graduated, then I went around to these same companies to look for work, and they said, "Oh, I'm sorry. War is over. We're laying off. We don't need nobody now." I wasn't sorry that I stayed in school, but I couldn't find a job then; it was hard to find.

BETH CASTLE: So the wartime boom they were recruiting you, and then as soon as that's over it was difficult.

FRANK SHUTIVA: But I was lucky that the Santa Fe Railroad wanted to go ahead and hire. That's why I worked for them for thirteen years.

BETH CASTLE: So once you graduated and you continued to work for the railroad, what year did you graduate, do you remember?

M. SHUTIVA: '46.

FRANK SHUTIVA: In '46 is when I finished school then.

BETH CASTLE: So the war industry is on the decline--

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: --and now you've got your degree and you've taken all these classes to be a draftsman or a machinist. What happened? So you continued to work for Santa Fe Railroad?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. Even then I--

BETH CASTLE: What did you do? Did you do the same thing for them, or something different?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No. I started out again as a laborer, and they put me to work in 01:52:00what they called a sand house. There's a big tower there and they would bring in the sand, like you find at the beaches, and it was all kind of damp sand. They would unload it into a trough, the one trough like that, and my job was to start up some kind of machine that picks up that sand and then puts it into that tower.

Well, at first when they'd first bring the sand in, I'd put it in a big tank. They dried the sand by steam, steam heat, and then when that sand dries, then I start up another thing, the machinery that dumps the sand into a big tower. 01:53:00Then, when the locomotives come in they use sand for brakes, too. When the brakes come together like that, the sand would come in there, so it would get more traction, I guess. That's what was my first job there.

Then I worked there for maybe about--not very long at that place, and then a shop foreman or general manager came around and asked me, "Frank, how would you like to change jobs?"

"What kind of job?"

"How would you like to work at the paint shop?"

"All right," I says, "Okay."

"You'll start as a laborer and work your way up."

"Oh, all right." So then I moved to a paint shop after that.

BETH CASTLE: Was that a good move for you? At that time did it seem like a vertical move? Was it moving up a little bit from what you were doing?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, a little bit. It's still a laborer's job.

BETH CASTLE: Okay. The pay was the same?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Pay was the same until they asked me if I ever heard of the G.I. Bill. I told them, "Yes." "How would you like to take up the G.I. Bill and start a four-year apprenticeship." So I did. "All right," I said, "I'll take that."

They said, "It will be a four-year apprenticeship, and then after that you'll get a diploma from the railroad." So I did. Then I really started--then the other older persons working in the paint shop, then they started teaching me how 01:55:00to do the spray painting. At that time when I first started, they still had the steam engines, and when these steam engines come in I would repaint them, help the man who was teaching me how to paint those.

BETH CASTLE: So you were just painting the entire--I mean, did it need repainting often, the whole engine? Describe to me what you had to do.

FRANK SHUTIVA: I just, from the cab forward, that's all we used to do, because the back, the cab and the water tank were a different kind of paint, so we didn't do too much of that. They didn't teach me how to paint that till later on in years.

Then after that, too--well, I started out with boxcar painting, sandblasting the whole boxcar, those steel boxcars. Then I'd--what they spray it with, primer, 01:56:00red lead. That's where I think my hearing, all my things started. They didn't tell me that you should wear--they come in fifty-five-gallon barrels, and then we had to mix it by hand with paddles. And they didn't tell me that you should wear a mask, you know, while you're doing that. But I never did.

BETH CASTLE: So you had to sandblast first, and then you had to mix open barrels of lead-based paint?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: And you didn't have any mouth--did anybody have protection? Did the railroad--I mean, was there any knowledge that lead-based paint at that point--?

FRANK SHUTIVA: When we sprayed the red lead on, that's when we'd wear a mask, 01:57:00but even then I complained one time to them that we had those cotton filters, round filters in front of the mask, and behind that cartridge, charcoal cartridge. But when I'd take off the thing I could still see it, feel, look at the what you call it, thing that come through, paint of whatever come through this, black on the inside. I would take it to the union and say, "I've got good cause to go up to the main office and complain about this. Look at this. The odor of the paint must be coming through, and I'm breathing that red lead."

They didn't give me much help and same way with the railroad, "That's good enough for you. You guys use that, what we give you."

BETH CASTLE: So the union representative wasn't helpful either.

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, they didn't help me out. So all I did was put more filters in there and go ahead and do the spray painting, put on the red lead, and then that boxcar red paint, then put all those emblems and the Santa Fe ATSF initials back on that boxcar, and the numbers and all of those, the capacity and those. We had to do that. And from there, then I went into the locomotive painting, those red ones, red engines. Now that was a hard job. They use lacquer. We had to use lacquer on that. On that lacquer, you couldn't stop painting. You had to finish 01:59:00the whole engine, because if you stop then it'll show where you stopped and where you started again.

BETH CASTLE: I see.

FRANK SHUTIVA: So I had one old fellow that we had a stand, like a scaffold with wheels, and he used to tout me around all around the engine. I'd start at the top and paint that, and then paint around the sides, but we'd have to do a lot of taping, too, tape off that emblem in the front of the red engine, locomotive, and all the numbers. We had to tape those off so that it won't be no problem to paint right over it.

BETH CASTLE: So you'd tape them first, and then when you started to spray paint, how long did it take to do it, and was it hard on your arms, or how long did it take to do it all at once?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I really don't remember how long it took, maybe about twenty to 02:00:00half of thirty minutes to go all the way around.

BETH CASTLE: Long enough to make you tired? Was it hard to do?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, because you'd have to just keep on going, keep on doing all the paint till you finish. That was a lot, to cover the whole thing. I guess I learned what they told me how to do it, because the foreman's always come around check on you to see if you did the job right.

B. FUREY: The tape is now complete.

BETH CASTLE: Oh, it is? Okay.

Begin Audiofile 3

BETH CASTLE: I'm going to ask you a few more detailed questions about the life 02:01:00in the village, and then close with a few questions about kind of the whole meaning or the experience, what it was like for you and what it meant for you later on in your life. But you spent a long time in the village, more than most people. A lot of the people that we've talked to really came in during wartime, and you had explained to me a little bit about the viaduct and how one got to the village. If you could kind of just take me through once more when you left the village, for example, when--first, when was that? Right now you just finished telling me about painting, your job as a painter. When did you finally leave the village, you or your family?

FRANK SHUTIVA: After I got sick and after I couldn't work anymore.

BETH CASTLE: And how long were you a painter before you got sick?

FRANK SHUTIVA: About thirteen years, thirteen years as a painter. Let's see, what year was that? 1960, around 1960 we came back this way. Then I quit my job over there and we had a car where we--then we called my brother next door. He was in the cattle business back here and he had one of those stock trailers, so we asked him if he can come out here and bring our furnitures back, and that was in 1960.

Prior to that we were supposed to come back, but they told us not to because back here in '59 they had a big snowstorm here and everything just shut down. 02:03:00They said there was about two feet of snow back here, and all the highways, railroads, everything closed down, so they said, "Don't come back here. There's too much snow on their highways." So we waited then and the Santa Fe Railroad Company was kind enough to let us stay at one of those housing. After we moved out of the boxcars they built nice homes for the family there, so that's just before we left and we moved into one of those homes there, real nice homes. So they let us stay there till we can make it back here.

BETH CASTLE: So at this point I want to make sure, so you had met and married Mary in 1955.

M. SHUTIVA: Six.

BETH CASTLE: Six. Prior to when you two got married, were you still living with your mother and father in the boxcar home that you'd grown up in?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. We still just--my mother moved back. My father was gone then. He passed away, and my mother came back here with my younger brother, and just me and my sisters were still out there. But then they moved into town and got their own apartment in town.

BETH CASTLE: So where were you living?

FRANK SHUTIVA: And then I stayed back alone in the boxcar there.

BETH CASTLE: When did your father pass away?

FRANK SHUTIVA: 1948 he passed away, just when I--I got back in 1946. Yes, it was a few years after. I think he was kind of worried about me going away overseas, 02:05:00you know, a little guy, and he was kind of worried about me. Then I think that's why he--too much worrying. And then what made it worse is that I was supposed to meet some of my buddies. We were going to take me back to camp, and I was supposed to meet them at the railroad depot, and two of them came. One was about six-foot-six, and the other one was about six-foot-four, and my father saw them. "Oh, my poor little son." [laughter] He got real worried, you know. I didn't have no hard time in the service then. There was no reason for him to worry.

BETH CASTLE: Did your mother take a job, or did she work for the railroad at all?

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, she didn't work at all. She didn't work anyplace. She just 02:06:00took care of us, the family, did our cooking for us and everything.

BETH CASTLE: When did she move back to Acoma? After your dad passed?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Afterwards, after my father--it has to be after 1948 that she came back here. Then after that--

BETH CASTLE: So you were in the military service and you were telling us you were interested in sharing with us what it was like. You ended up in Tokyo at some point?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. I took my basic training up in Fort Lewis, Washington, and then after we finished that was during the wintertime. But oh, it was cold and snow up there. I don't think we ever saw sunshine any time for the three months we were up there. Then after that, then we moved back down to Camp Stoneman, and 02:07:00they let us off for one week, and I came home.

Then my father and mother, my father then had a car and he took me back to Camp Stoneman, and they did never did tell us, you know, what we were going to do at Camp Stoneman. So they told us not to go anyplace, go into town or anyplace, just to stay right there. So we did, and then they, oh, maybe two, three times during the night, then they called out our name. They tell, "If you hear anything, that means you're going overseas." So they wake us at eleven, two, three o'clock in the morning, and then, "Anybody's name called?" We said, "No." "Okay." They turned our lights off in the barracks and we'd go back to sleep. I 02:08:00stayed there for about, oh, most of a week, and then all of us, we were lucky to be all together, the same ones that took our training, basic training. Then finally one day they said, "Frank Shutiva, Frank L." They called out my serial number. Oh!

BETH CASTLE: How did you feel when you heard your name?

FRANK SHUTIVA: "Where am I going? What am I going to do?" Then they called most--I was glad that they called the rest of us, you know, my friends, that we were all going to go together. We were all going to go together, and so there was nothing to worry about. So they put our bags on the truck, and we had to 02:09:00walk about, maybe about five miles down to the pier, get on a ferry boat from that Camp Stoneman. That was in Pittsburg, California, and from there we got to Oakland. Then we got on a troop ship over there, and that was during December.

Going overseas, that was the worst. Oh, December, when they had storms out there in the ocean. You couldn't tell where the horizon was. Everything was all black, and waves maybe about twenty-feet high. We had a small boat. It just goes like this [demonstrates] and comes back down, and when the back end, the propeller gets out of the water, it spins and the whole boat vibrates. I went outside to 02:10:00lean on the rail, look at those waves, go back when the water washes down on the deck, and I could have got thrown overboard. I don't know why I did such a crazy thing like standing out there during that storm. We had a good captain. He knows how to run that ship, just a small ship, and load it with about 500 of us in there, in the little--maybe more, because in one little room about this size here, but those bunks were packed, about that far apart. Then they told us to come out one time for roll call. There was about a hundred guys coming out of that little place. [laughs]

BETH CASTLE: Maybe it's better to be not as tall, you had more room to stretch out.

FRANK SHUTIVA: We were out there during Christmastime, out in the middle of the 02:11:00ocean someplace. They said, "We posted the menu for this Christmas." Oh, it looks nice, everything, pumpkin pie, turkey, ham and all the ice cream, so we had that for our dinner. We had to stand up at these tables that were about that high. They got our tray full.

"Oh, that looks nice." Here the boat starts to--our trays start all going, sliding back and forth on the tables, and everything got all mixed up. We didn't know which is our tray. Everything, gravy and ice cream all mixed together. We managed to enjoy our Christmas dinner.

BETH CASTLE: How long did the trip take, on the ocean? How long were you on the boat?

FRANK SHUTIVA: About a week and a half it took us to get over, and we never did know where we were going. But the captain was nice. Over the loudspeaker he always tells us what the weather's--how long we've got going, and explained, you know, "It's like this during December, so just try to do your best."

BETH CASTLE: Is this when you later found out you arrived in Tokyo?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. When we got there to that port in Tokyo, then that's when we knew where we were. When we got there, though, we had to stay on the ship, because the Japanese labor people, they were on strike. They couldn't unload our boat, so we had to stay about two or three days on the ship. Finally we got off. 02:13:00That was at night about seven o'clock in the evening, and they had some army trucks there. So we'd load up on those trucks and, oh, they're high off the ground, those beds. So we threw our bags to the truck person, and, "Okay. Come on!" they said, "Come on, Shutiva." They got a hold of me. They just picked me up and threw me in, because I couldn't reach.

Well, in a way we were lucky. They said their truck driver got lost, and then he took us to Tokyo. We were supposed to go down south towards Yokohama. Then they 02:14:00took us to a place with a big building there, like O-shaped building, and then there was another building down the center. Then when we got there they told us that, "Well, you men weren't supposed to be here. You were supposed to go down south, but since you're already here, go ahead and you guys will be stationed here. This used to be like the West Point Academy in the United States. That's what they trained officers over here," he said, "Japanese officers. So you're lucky to be stationed here. You're going to have nice barracks here, buildings with nice rooms." So, yes, after that we were assigned bunks and which rooms we were staying. Most of us were all in--we were lucky to be all of us that went from Richmond.

BETH CASTLE: All together, you were still together?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, we were all still together. There's this one fellow, though--two of them. One of them did go down south, and the other one--there were two of them named Alexander, and this guy wanted to stay with us, so he didn't go. He took that other guy's name that was supposed to go the other way. Yes, some way he turned things around so he stayed with us. When they didn't call his name they said, "What's your name? How come you didn't answer?"

"Well, my name's Alexander, and he called an Alexander. I'm here."

"Is your name Harold?"

"No. No, Alexander Lang. My name is--."

"Oh. There's another guy, they went south. His name is Lang, too."

"No, no. That's where your records went to."

"Oh no, I'm Alexander Lang, and I come up this way over here."

"Well, since you're here we'll go have your records sent up here." So he stayed with with--

BETH CASTLE: He got lucky?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: So what did you do while you were in Tokyo? What was your assignment?

FRANK SHUTIVA: My first job was taking care of prisoners. I was a guard over prisoners, and they behaved themselves, treated me nice. But there was about 500 prisoners in this compound, and that was my first job. Then after that we just waited around, and sometimes we'd pull guard duty right around the base there. 02:17:00Then one of these sergeants, he became real friendly with me, and he went through the war all through the Pacific. He gave me a lot of good advice. "I'm glad you come here to our camp, because it's not too bad now."

"I only wish that I could have come earlier, so you guys could go home to your families, go through the war."

"No, you don't want to do that. It's awful out there going through all that war. No, you wouldn't want to. To me you're a hero," he said. "Me? I'm a hero to you? How is that?"

"Because now I can go home and see my family after four years out there, and now I'm glad to finally get to go home. You're like my replacement," he said.

BETH CASTLE: So you showed up and replaced people who had been there through the war.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.

BETH CASTLE: And so you allowed people to go home finally to their families, and gave them a break.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes, they were sure glad to see us get over there. And by coincidence, one of the fellows that came back, the day after I got there, he come back here, and he was from here in {Grants?}.

BETH CASTLE: Oh, really.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. He was working for the school where my wife--superintendent's office as a janitor over there. Then when I went to work over here for a while, for the schools, and then we got to talking--I don't know how we got to talking about the service--I asked him where he was stationed. "I was stationed in Tokyo with the First Cavalry, G Group," he said.

"You were?!"

"Yeah, I was stationed in Tokyo, G Group, George troops."

"That's where I was assigned to. When did you come back?" And he gave me the date. "Well, I got there the next day," I said. And here we--

BETH CASTLE: Here you meet each other at Grant. That's how small the world is.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes. We put our arms around each other. But anyway, my job over there was then mostly guard duty. That's where I was with the First Cavalry. The best part of being over there was being assigned to guard duty right in the capital, Tokyo, where the government, the army took over these Japanese government buildings, office buildings. Then some of those men and women that 02:20:00got discharged or ready to come back, they said they didn't want to come back. They wanted to stay there and work at those offices, so that's where I was then assigned to guard those buildings the first time.

I was supposed to just, after everybody left--my job was to check the Japanese workers that came to work in the office building, the janitors and things, to make sure that they didn't steal anything. That was an interesting job, because it was a lot of officers from different countries that came there for meetings. For instance, I met a Russian colonel, they told me. He had a white mustache and a goatee, and when I'd stand in front and he comes, he always gives me a salute. 02:21:00I saluted him back, and he asked me how I am. "I'm fine, thank you, sir."

"I'm going to go back here. We have a meeting."

"Oh, all right, sir." So he goes, and other Chinese officers would come around, Australian officers with their cowboy hats with one side up.

BETH CASTLE: So you just got to see officials coming in from all over the world, it sounds like, military people.

FRANK SHUTIVA: No, I didn't meet any--I didn't see any. Most of it was people that were already stationed in that country, high officers. That's what I saw over there. Well, anyway, that was my job. This sergeant I was telling you about, he kind of got real friendly with me, and every time something comes up he says, "Why don't you get away from the camp, because they want somebody as 02:22:00guard duty over at this other, at this hotel that the government took over."

My next assignment was guarding this hotel where the army officers were; mostly the women army officers were stationed or had their rooms there, so I was supposed to be a guard over there. Then the sergeant that came over. That was during the winter. It was January, something like that. Then it was real cold over there. It was cold, but I just had to stay there till four o'clock in the morning. Then they'd come after me and take me back to the base. The next time I come out, I put on about two pairs of underwear, and my overcoat, and my sweater. That night then the sergeant that was in charge came out, said, "Are 02:23:00you okay?" "No, I'm not. I'm cold out here. Why don't you build a little sentry shack here for us?" "All right, I'll see what I can do," he said. "If I get it done, well then you'll have it out here tomorrow when you come back."

The next night it was, then there was a little shed there for me to stand in. I was standing four hours just in one place on the concrete sidewalk, and oh, it was cold. I'd never been that cold before. But after then I would stand out there with my rifle.

The next time then the same sergeant told me, "How would you like to go to a war 02:24:00crimes trial?"

"Oh, yeah? When is it going to be?"

"It'll be--," he named the date.

"Oh, well you've got me out on guard duty that day, out in town."

"Oh, that's right. Oh, then there's no way I can change it," he said. "You would have seen history in the making. They're having that war crime trial right in Tokyo, in one of those government buildings." So I didn't get to go there. I didn't get to go see it.

BETH CASTLE: Oh no, so you got teased with it, but you didn't get to go.

FRANK SHUTIVA: But maybe that's what my job was over there. I stayed there for five months, till one day they had roll call and they said, "We've got an announcement here to make. All draftees will be going back to the States in one week." "Oh, good."

BETH CASTLE: Were you ready to go back?

FRANK SHUTIVA: I was ready to come back.

BETH CASTLE: So after you came back, how soon did you move back to Acoma? Did you come back here soon?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, after I got my discharge back in Camp Stoneman, then I came back. I went back to the Indian village in Richmond, and just my father was there. Then he saw me coming, I guess. He was over at the repair shed. He was getting some scrap wood, I guess. So he saw me coming and he come running over there to me, gave me a hug. I was glad to see him, too.

Let's see. After that I stayed there most of the time, but then that's when he 02:26:00got sick. That was 1946 and '47, and the following year, then that's when my father passed away in March. I just saw him through for one year. We brought him back before he passed away, and he died back here, and after he passed away then I went back. My sisters were still working out there. My younger sister was working for an insurance company in San Francisco, and my older sister was still working for the Santa Fe, so I just stayed around over there for a while, till 02:27:00that's when they asked me if I wanted to come to work. So after that I just stayed around, did nothing, didn't work anyplace.

BETH CASTLE: Well, since we've been talking for a long time, I'd like to ask you kind of one last question about now that you're living back here, your home in Acoma, and in thinking about what life was like in the Richmond village and your experiences there, what would you say--how did this experience impact your life? I mean, it really was--you know, you were born there and you spent most of your early times there. Was it a good experience? Was it something that really, as you look back over it, allowed you many opportunities? How would you describe the experience of having grown up in a rather unique situation, and what it 02:28:00means to you now living back home in Acoma?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, it was a big change after being born out there and have all your friends living in the city with all the lights, coming back here then everything seems to change. You don't see no more--

M. SHUTIVA: Neon signs.

FRANK SHUTIVA: --neon lights or no big crowd, no automobile traffic. It's quiet, quiet back here, compared to out there. The change didn't bother me too much. I can get along with wherever I am, just like going overseas or being here, be from here after living in the city, born out there. The change didn't bother me 02:29:00too much, but after I learned the people here, who they were, and oh, maybe about two or three weeks after I was here my brother had, oh, about 300 head of sheep at that time when he came back, and he had 300 herd of sheep out south of here. So he had to go to work, so they sent me out there to sheep camp. I didn't know nothing about no sheep. "What do I do out here?" I asked my grandfather.

"Just take care of the sheep. Don't let them wander off too far, and we have some watering places. Maybe every other day go water them." Then they left me out there and I just looked around. It's so quiet out here. You don't hear no 02:30:00more auto horns, no more neon lights at night. Oh, it's too quiet. How can I stand it out--

B. FUREY: Looking back over your life, what role do you think the railroad played, not only in your life but in the Acoma and Laguna pueblos? How did the opportunity to go work for the railroad in these colonies, how did it affect people's lives?

FRANK SHUTIVA: After coming back?

B. FUREY: No, just in general. The Santa Fe Railroad and the employment opportunity, and the verbal agreement that they had with the railroad, working during World War II in Richmond in these colonies, how did the railroad affect the people's lives here?

FRANK SHUTIVA: Well, in a way it was good for the people, and something 02:31:00different. It changed their life from the quiet, and to be out there in the city. Some of them had never been out there before. To me, I don't know, I didn't see much change in their lives. Same quiet people, how Indians are. The Indians live quiet. That's the way you're brought up. I didn't see much change.

BETH CASTLE: So you maintained a strong sense of yourself. Even in the colonies you still got to keep your Indian ways, to a certain degree.

FRANK SHUTIVA: For me.

BETH CASTLE: Yes. But you got a bigger picture of the world also, at the same time, with the opportunity of being there.

FRANK SHUTIVA: I don't know how to explain it. For me, I can get along with 02:32:00different changes. Not too much--it didn't affect me too much.

BETH CASTLE: Well, if you're able to go to Tokyo and guard prisoners, and then you can come back here and guard sheep, you know, you can make that transition, then you pretty much can handle anything.

FRANK SHUTIVA: Yes.