ABSTRACT
We returned joyfully to our beloved house in Northampton and spent some time getting things unpacked and reorganized and setting rooms up properly for the children; two rooms were needed now! We also needed to prepare a room for a live-in helper. Before we left California, my husband had met the relocation director for the Japanese people who had been sent to internment camps during the war. He had been superintendent of one of the camps, and was well acquainted with the internees. He told my husband of a young woman (17 years old) who had been a babysitter for his family and needed to be placed somewhere. She had just finished high school (at the camp) before the internees were released. The people at his camp included mainly Japanese citizens who had lost their small farm plots in California and now had nowhere to go. Many of them were being sent to New Jersey, where a Seabrook canning factory was hiring a number of employees. This girl’s family had gone there, but it did not seem an auspicious place for a bright young person. The relocation director recommended her highly and gave us their new address in New Jersey.
