Densho Digital Repository - Angela Noel Gantt Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-4-4)

<Begin Segment 4>

EK: Can you talk a little bit more about how your role evolved over the time? So you were there for how many years?

AG: I came in '91, so it was '91 to '95, and then I came back '96 to close, so '96 to 2000, 2001. And I did, I started as a college student, it came down to, I started in January, I graduated in May. It was pass Math 110, which was baby math, for which I have much phobia, or look for a job. And so I'm like, "I've got to pass math," so I spoke with Aileen Fukuda, who was my first line supervisor in the Special Verification Unit. She talked to Alicie, Alice talked to the administrator Bob Bratt, they were like, "Oh, she's a good kid, yeah, she can stay." So then I became a federal employee at that point in time, still working, then I think I was a program analyst. So we would do the research, we would go to the archives, we had an archivist, Cora Beaver Shelly, we would go with her to look out at Suitland, Maryland, to see the records, to look through the books. And moving through that, really pulling in all the research, and that was the time when we were starting to say, well, wait a minute, what about the Hawaiians, wait a minute, what about the children, what about the Japanese Latin Peruvians, how are we going to accommodate these different groups? So it was behind the scenes assistance, still dealing face to face with clients. As people came in... as people called in for their applications, helping them, answering questions. And we had some basic answers, you know, if you're applying for your parent and they were not alive on the tenth of August, unfortunately, they would not be eligible. If you all moved from the West Coast to New Jersey in September of '41, '42, as opposed to -- if you moved too early, or you just didn't have anything, you had no documentation, and giving people suggestions. Well, have you tried this? Were you affiliated with a church? Did you do a Cub Scout troop? You know, just trying to get people to figure out where the documentation was. And it was always impressive how many people still had an envelope from their house in California. And that was just something that some people did have, or even if it was a letter where it went from California to Chicago and it mentioned you specifically by name.