<Begin Segment 6>

PW: Okay. I know I'm skipping so much, because your father's story is so devastating and long. He's captured, he's a prisoner of war. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

PY: Well, he goes into great detail at Densho. But what I will say is that the impact on the family -- because he was missing in action, family had no idea for several months whether he was alive or dead. My grandfather carried in his wallet, or on his person, for as long as I remember him pulling out and showing the telegram that he received saying that they had, that he was alive, that there was a record of this thing. So both for my mother and just like it, to me, that was just evidence of how big of an impact that had in their lives.

PW: When did he come home to the United States?

PY: So probably the summer of '45 because he didn't, there was a whole process of who got to go, because we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people to try to come back from Europe to the United States.

PW: Was he injured at all during that whole ordeal?

PY: He's never laid claim to that, but once he registered with the VA, they researched his, all his records. And so I come home, visited Los Angeles, Van Nuys, at a certain point, there's a Bronze Star, Purple Heart that my mother made a display case for. And he wouldn't be specific about, because, "I don't know why they gave me his stuff." And I guess at some point I'm going to have to maybe go to get an FOI on him and see what papers exist. Because all those citations generally have some paperwork behind him saying why this was... but he would never say, "No, I wasn't wounded," "I don't know why I got a Purple Heart." "I don't know why I got a Bronze Star."

PW: So once your mother and father reunited, where did they settle down initially?

PY: Philadelphia. So that he was doing his residency there. He was at Philadelphia Children's and then later transferred to Cincinnati Children's.

PW: Was that about a year later maybe?

PY: Two years. I think they were eighteen to two years in Philadelphia.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.