<Begin Segment 6>

HH: Now, when you left, eventually you left Gila. Where did you go?

GO: From Gila, in the meantime, while we were in Jerome, my brother-in-law and two others came out to Seabrook to Seabrook, New Jersey, frozen food plant to see whether that would make a good place for evacuees to come out to. And they went back, they looked into public sentiment, school situation, housing, employment, all aspects of the community life. And they went back with a very favorable report. As a result, many came out to Seabrook and just recently they celebrate the fiftieth year. And then I'll have a center showing all the resource materials in those days.

HH: So when your sister and brother-in-law moved to Seabrook, New Jersey, did you go with them to Seabrook?

GO: I wanted to be near them. So I went to Seabrook but I had no desire to work there, and so I was looking for employment in Philadelphia.

HH: And what kind of employer did you eventually find?

GO: At that time, the WRA office thought the most suitable job for me was to teach Japanese, or be a Japanese instructor because they had a special Japanese language school at the University of Pennsylvania. So I started to work as a Japanese instructor, but working with a linguist. And that was the army's special training course so they were very bright kids.

HH: So how many years did you do that?

GO: I was kept until almost the end. Because as the war ended, that program ended also that year. But it was an interesting time.

HH: And what did you turn to after that period in your life?

GO: Well, while I was working at the University of Pennsylvania, I didn't like to stay in a rooming house. So I was looking for some family I could earn room and board and then commute. Because the workload wasn't heavy, and just at that time there was a couple looking for someone like me to stay, because they did a lot of traveling and his wife's house wasn't too good, so he felt that somebody could help her around the house, help her with the housework and do some garden work. So one weekend, they invited me to come. So I stayed overnight and they felt that they could stand me, and I felt that might be a good place for me to live. So I started to live in Wallingford, of all places, which is a very nice living community, and commuted from there to the University of Pennsylvania until I got married.

HH: Oh, [inaudible] that needed to be gone into. One is you said that your position at Penn ended when the war ended, and you did something else after that.

GO: Yes.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.