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LH: Well, given your sort of work with immediately after the war, and all these social welfare programs for the community, how did that eventually sort of dovetail into the redress movement for you?

GU: Before it dovetailed into the redress movement, all of that work led our, the director of the International Institute -- her name was Marian Lantz -- okay, it comes back, that's what usually happens -- then arranged for a scholarship for me to go the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. She told me that I was a natural born social worker, that she saw that I had capacity to be a leader, and so that the board of directors felt that I would make a difference in the community. And so that was a real great opportunity that almost turned my life around, because with proper credentials... and it also opens fields for you and it also makes, it helps you to get the right contacts, you know, in terms of the helping process. And so if, once you become a social worker, and the Penn philosophy is a functional one where you involve the individual and use, you use the individual's strength and help them to see options and be able to make choices and help them to go through the process. And I thought that that was also the right school for me. And so I eventually helped women who came from Japan married to American GIs, half of them were married to blacks, and there was division and separation among, between them and to bring them together. So that was another skill that I learned that I eventually, when I worked for the educational school system, I ran conflict resolutions for the whole school district and in two districts that I ran, it was a topic that no one else wanted to take. So personally, there was an evolvement that I was not consciously doing, but I somehow changed from the way I was brought up, that as a female I was to stay in the background and not to open my mouth too much. But I guess I was already doing that when I was back in Stockton, because my uncle was the elder of the church, and on some Sundays he would appear at our house and tell my mother that she really had to clam my mouth. Those were not the exact words, and so I guess I was already that way. But I learned that I had to speak out and that you got nothing by being a "quiet American."

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.