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RB: And can you tell me a little bit about the work that your father did? His profession?

PU: Well, he was trained as an electrical engineer, but he didn't do work commensurate with that degree until very late in his career. He started out working before the war at the Los Angeles Power Company. And all the Nisei were fired kind of right after Pearl Harbor. And after he got out of camp, came to Philadelphia. I think he was doing some kind of unskilled work initially. I think it was something about loading paper and machines and so on, because he couldn't get security clearance from the government to get an engineering job. And later he got a job at Westinghouse down in Lester as a draftsman, and did that for many years, became a supervisor of a section of draftsmen. And then late in his career, like when he was into his sixties, he finally got an engineering job at Westinghouse, and did that for the last several years before he retired.

RB: Did your father talk about his career, or did he share any sort of disappointment that he wasn't working in the field that he had studied for?

PU: Not really, he kind of had this attitude of, well, you got to work, make a living and, you know, maybe it's not what you really want to do, but if you're earning money, that's the main point. So yeah, but it was a good thing that he finally was able to make that change before he retired.

RB: And what about your mother, Grayce? What did she do for work?

PU: So she got very involved when she first came to Philadelphia, but she was trained in music. She had completed a music degree at College of the Pacific. And it was just before the war, I guess, or just at the very beginning, like prior to evacuation. And had been thinking that she would be like a piano teacher, and she played at the church and all that in Stockton, but she ended up in Philadelphia. And pretty soon after she got here, it sounds like she got very involved in assisting other people who are arriving in Philadelphia. And she was doing volunteer work for the War Relocation Authority, where they would greet people who were coming in at the train station and help people get kind of set up someplace. And she organized some groups for young people, have social activities and so on, and she started working at the International Institute. So they ended up giving her a scholarship because they said, you know, she was very good at doing that kind of work, it was essentially social work. So they sent her to Penn to get a MSW, which she would have completed, I think, in the late '40s. And so I don't know how long she worked at the International Institute. I do know that at some point, she stopped working because there were kids to take care of, and then she went back to work when I was like, I guess when I started first grade, and I think the first job she had at that point was she established this daycare center in West Chester. And then, I don't know how long she did that, but she ended up being a school social worker to two different school districts for pretty much her whole career.

RB: Great, we'll talk more about what she did post retirement later in this interview, but how did your parents meet?

PU: I'm not sure of the details, but as far as I know, they would have become acquainted at Rohwer. Although, coincidentally, their mothers knew each other from Japan. [Laughs] So I don't know if there, I don't think there was any reason for the families to have come in contact with each other when they were in California, so I assume they met at Rohwer. And they weren't, it's not like they were a couple at that point,  and they came to Philadelphia separately. And they ended up coming into contact with each other because both of them were, ended up involved in activities with resettlement of Japanese Americans coming out of camp. And there's photos of basically, like, recruitment pictures that the WRA took with these young Nisei groups and they would have these very pretty pictures like at Independence Hall or Fairmont Park that they used to kind of encourage people to settle here because there's other people here that were having a good time.

RB: So, before we get to the resettlement, do you know much about your parents' experience in camp? You mentioned that they were both in Rohwer?

PU: Not too much. They were both there and my father was a teacher, I think, in the high school. And what my mom was she, I know she was involved, among other things, as a Sunday school teacher there, but they would have both been kind of young adults at that point and out of college. So, you know, I know my mom, at one point, was able to leave Rohwer to go, I think, to Minnesota, to a teacher's college, because she wanted to get some other kind of credential to help her find work. She apparently didn't stay there too long or complete that program, and she went back to Rohwer and then left later.

RB: So, did your parents talk about camp, or is this something that you sort of learned after the facts? How did you first hear about...

PU: Yeah, strangely, despite both of them being so involved, it's not something that we really heard about at home. So I probably picked up more information from third party sources than from them. Yeah, it was very kind of occasional times when it would come up.

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