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LH: And this was immediately after the war that you started doing this?

GU: Yes, (during and after the war). After getting over there, all because the War Relocation Authority needed that kind of help. They needed help in terms of finding housing and employment and things like that, meeting trains, they just didn't have enough paid personnel. And so, I guess both of us, the fellow that I married and myself, we are that, we just both thought that way, that we should help our community. So we met trains and did all kinds of things to help people get established. Eventually a family came from the Arizona camp and I don't know which one, but they were more rural kinds of people, and just because they knew my parents, they came out and that was really a big mistake for very simple people to come to a big sophisticated city like Philadelphia. And within a year, the mother had a mental breakdown, and I had to make arrangements to have her placed in a mental hospital, you know, right outside of Philadelphia. So there were tragedies taking place, too, family breakdowns, and at the same time there was opportunity to do things that made life easier for other people.

And it was all taking place at the International Institute of Philadelphia where the director herself was concerned about what was happening, because International Institute is the organization in the United States that is set up to help with immigration and with displaced people, and we were displaced people. And so the director -- and I've just gone blank, and this is the kind of things that happen lately. But she was so wonderful in getting other community social service agencies, to form a counsel of social service agencies, so both my -- and again he was not my husband (then), but he became my boyfriend -- but he became the president of the Nisei council and we became members of this city-wide social service council that worked to help the Japanese Americans. And that got us very much involved. One of the first things that I did was to form a club of teenagers, kids that were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and then another group that was older and they were called the Club Jesters -- they picked their own name. I don't know what it meant, but nonetheless that was their name. So I planned outings and, you know, Philadelphia has a beautiful, the biggest city park of any place in the United States, and we'd go for outings there and have cookouts and things like that. And then I would follow through, there was some bright kids including my kid sister, where they were able to get into the (Philadelphia) Girls High School, which is like a private academy, actually, for all the brightest kids. So there was so much to do at that time that one just kept busy and we tried to bring in as many organizations and agencies to help our people get settled and to advance.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.