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HH: And then you got married. Let's take them in that order. About your career, what happened there first?

GO: The person, the family with whom I lived, was Homer and Edna Morris and he was the, one of the administrative staff of the American Friends Service Committee. And while there, I started to attend the Quaker meeting and I immediately felt that this is my future home, religious-wise. And so I was aware of the work of the American Friends Service Committee. And just as my work at the University of Pennsylvania ended, there was a job at the American Friends Service Committee to do the record-keeping for all the relief shipments, which was a tremendous job at that time for the Quaker organization. So I started to work as the bookkeeper for the material aids program of the American Friends Service Committee, which as you know, I expected that not to last too long, but it lasted until my retirement.

HH: Which was how many years?

GO: I was there for thirty-four years until my retirement. And after retirement, I went in part-time to manage the credit union office for another nine years.

HH: That was a long time for a temporary job.

GO: I know. The nature of the work is emergency relief, so I never thought... so in the meantime, from bookkeeper, I ended up as an assistant director, and I think it was 1958, they asked me to direct the program when the director left. And thought a bad thing, that wasn't what I wanted to do, so I ended up directing that program.

HH: Were you director of the material aids?

GO: Yes. And toward the end of that, my period, business manager of the national office had a heart attack, and then he died. So I was also [inaudible] manager of the American Friends Service Committee as well.

HH: That was a very busy part of your life.

GO: Very challenging at the time. And while I had a chance to visit the distribution areas of the American Friends Service Committee, so in 1966, I took about, over twenty thousand mile trip. At that time it was [inaudible] was the main area postwar, and Belgian Congo and the Middle East, and on the way back to America, I came back by way of Japan and I visited Japan, what is that? From 1932 to '66, so thirty-four years without seeing anybody, any of the relatives. So that was a very moving experience.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.