Outline

Yeiichi (Kelly) Kuwayama

I. Segment One The early years -- before World War II

My father was born in Nagaoka, Niigata prefecture, Japan on March 24, 1876. His father’s name was Seihachi Kuwayama. He arrived in Seattle, on the S.S. Monteagh, Canadian Pacific Line on August 9, 1909, but he was working in New York previous to that on a temporary visa and returned to Japan to enter the U.S. as an immigrant.

My mother was born in Nagaoka, Niigata prefecture, Japan on September 5, 1891. Her father’s name was Kinji Kuwayama. She arrived in the U.S. on the Seattle Maru to Takoma, Washington on November 3, 1913.

They were married in November 1913. They made their home in New York City. They produced the following children:

Name                         Sex         Birth date

Yuki Kuwayama         F              8/9/14 deceased 1/2/18
Aya Kuwayama         F             8//28/15
Yeiichi Kuwayama    M             6/1/18
Tomi Kuwayama       F             8/24/19
George Kuwayama   M            2/26/25

My father, before he met my mother, worked as a cook in the W.J. Thompson household. W.J. Thompson was the man who pioneered in the advertising business (J. Walter Thompson Advertising). My father was an entrepreneur and he established the Atlantic City boardwalk enterprises, Japanese restaurants, American restaurants, employment agencies, etc. He finally bought a Japanese art goods and grocery store. From the income from the store he raised his family. The art good store was for walk-in customers, mostly Caucasians. The grocery store was Japanese and provided Japanese provisions for the growing Japanese import and export companies in New York City whose personnel were scattered in suburban New York, New Jersey and Connecticut before World War II. My family owned a home in Woodside, New York. We were not near any other Asians. New York was full of immigrants -- our neighbors were Irish, Italian, Greek, German, Scandinavian, etc.

A. Religion

My mother went to a Japanese Presbyterian Church. The children went to a Methodist Church Sunday School. My father remained a non-participating Buddhist.

My father came to the U.S. upon the advice of my father’s older brother who had gone to Hokkaido. His advice was that - - he and his younger brother Seigoro go to the U.S. where perhaps opportunities for work were greater.

My father’s family apparently had not done too well in the lumber business, although I understand the family was for a long time in the dye business; so, the sons scattered to various places, Hokkaido, Taiwan and the U.S.A.

My father made several trips to Japan because of business and to meet my mother.

As far as education is concerned, the Kuwayama children went to the local public

elementary and high schools and they went to private colleges. In New York City, public schools, at that time, were segregated as to sex, although many became co-educational. I went to P.S. 59 and I was then transferred to an all boys school, P.S. 74. My high school in Queens, Newtown High School was coeducational. It had about 9,000 students (population was exploding in New York City) with majors in agriculture, aeronautical mechanics, music, etc. It had 15 class periods a day. You took your 5 courses and the rest of the time you spent in study hall or went home. Class size was more than 40, we would sit double in seats. There was physical education, but little organized athletics.

Social life was limited. We produced many students for college. Columbia University was the college of choice but there was little proselytizing from other colleges . Queens was a growing borough and population pressure was great. My sister Tomi went to an all girls high school, Julia Richman in New York City where she was class president, etc. She was very active in various school activities..

Japanese language schools were run by the Japanese churches. But they were not formal and they were conducted on Saturday mornings with church women.

My mother, also taught us on Saturday, but Japanese school was not disciplined and we forgot what we learned from one Saturday to the next.

All the children in our family went to college. It was expected of us. My parents rarely discussed college as such. My mother was a Japanese high school graduate. My father finished compulsory schooling in Japan. There was very little educated discussion in a philosophical sense. Therefore, there was little discussion about life goals or occupations. They really left it up to the individual child to set his own goals on what he or she wanted to do or be. My older sister went to college, New York University in New York in the middle of the depression. The rest of us went to the college of choice as economic recovery set in. My sister Tomi went to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York on a scholarship. My brother worked his way through Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. and I went to Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. We were not given any parental guidance as to school or as to curriculum. I was ready to go to the free city college and I asked my father if I could go to a college outside of New York City. I knew it would be expensive. I said to my father, can you afford it and I said that I could not probably after college afford to pay for his livelihood in his old age; so, he would have to provide for himself. Even under those conditions would it be alright to have me go to a college outside of New York. He said yes.

As to religion, we were not particularly a religious family. My father was a Buddhist, but he was not a practicing one. My mother became a Christian because the Japanese church was in the neighborhood in New York City and it was Presbyterian. The children went to the neighborhood English speaking Methodist church. As far as the Christian churches were concerned, we fully participated in all their activities. The children went to Sunday school, to summer camps and to the various activities and clubs which they had. I attended the Woodcraft League, etc. at church. If there were any moral guidance, we were so guided. I later became a Boy Scout and abided by their tenets and rules. My church was Caucasian and mostly Anglo Saxon.

As to environment or community, my father was engaged as a merchant in Japanese goods - lacquerware, chinaware, kimonos, jewelry, Japanese prints, vases, etc.; In the art goods store, the customers were walk-in Caucasian Americans. In the back of the store, he sold Japanese provisions and to reach that essentially transient Japanese community, who were the employees of Japanese companies, banks, government, etc.; he would send Japanese speaking salesmen out and they would solicit orders and the orders would be filled out and delivered by Kuwayama & Co. truckmen the next day. This was not a walk-in business. The provisions sold besides canned goods, rice, shoyu, would be such things as vegetables, cabbage, daikon, etc., tuna fish, fresh noodles, tofu, manju, etc.

My father’s business was Japan related. The family lived in New York City around 114 East 59th St. between Park Avenue and Lexington Ave. until I was twelve years old. After my twelfth birthday the family moved to Woodside in Queens, New York. The names of my friends would reveal the makeup and nationality of the neighborhood.

Before twelve in the New York City neighborhood, my friends last names were:

O’Connor
Grabere
Osborn
Nicholson
Rick

Church friends were mostly Anglo-Saxon. After 12 years old in Woodside, Queens, N.Y., my friends names were:

Reidy
Cussinelli
Myer
Miele

In general my friends were Caucasian. In Woodside, I would say my friends were second generation Irish, Italian and German stock. In the Japanese church which was small, I knew other Japanese families. They came from all over New York, but most of them were daughters. The sons, male friends, I have more or less kept in touch with but most of them have passed away. They also did not live in the neighborhood; so, the only time I would meet them was at church, but not on a daily basis.

I went away to college, so my friends became college friends after 18 years old. We maintained some contact in a desultory way, from reunions and natural mellowing we kept in touch. All of them were Caucasians.

My family’s outlook and planning were that we were free agents. My father bought the cemetery plot in 1918 when my oldest sister died, so he expected that he and his family would be buried in the U.S.A. He also did not expect his children to take up his business after him. New York City was a city with people from all over the world who were constantly changing occupations and lifestyles; so, he was permissive as to what his children did.. My younger sister married a Caucasian. We accepted him. My father had no feelings of ethnic purity. We as a family were not conscious of racial ties at that time during pre-war and wartime. I begin to feel it now in my old age, but that is another matter.

The great depression did affect us in the sense that my father was always from the beginning of his life in the U.S. interested in the stock market and he was therefore hit hard. His business was also hit. The art goods dwindled. There were not too many Caucasians coming into the store.

He lost much of his capital with the stock market crash; so, that was the basis of my question if he could afford to send me to college outside of New York City. The Japanese companies, however, were in NYC and during the depression they did not cut down on personnel. The Japanese had devalued the Yen and that led to an export boom for Japan. The Japanese employees had to eat, so the Japanese provision business maintained itself. Japanese tempura and sukiyaki were also still popular. The U.S. was not yet at war with Japan. In fact Miyako at the end of the 1930s was booming when it moved to West 56th Street in midtown New York City. One floor of dining space was not enough - - it expanded to three floors.

II. Segment Two: The onset of World War II

The war clouds were gathering. Japan’s invasion of China and the takeover of Manchuria were increasingly greeted by U.S. hostility. My mother and father did not discuss the impending war or was there any political discussion. There were, however, many Japanese visitors from Japan to our home and, of course, most all of the customers were the families of employees of Japanese companies; so, my parents were very aware of the tensions in U.S. - Japan relations. I was probably 11 or 12 years old, before we moved to Woodside. I was asked by a Japanese visitor in case of war what country would I fight for. I said the U.S. I had been saying the pledge of allegiance at school and even at that young age I knew my deficiency in the Japanese language. My parents made no comment either way when I responded. I think they expected it, since, my father had bought his cemetery plot in the U.S.

Sunday, December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor Day, I was already in the U.S. Army and I had returned with the Quartermaster Co. to Madison Barracks, N.Y. from maneuvers in North Carolina. I woke up that Sunday morning to the radio blaring the news that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. We did not believe it,, at first, but the continuous announcements on the radio convinced us. We then admitted to each other that we were in the U.S. Army for the duration. We had previously thought that we would serve for only one year. There was no doubt in any of us that the U.S. would be the victor; so, we took the news calmly and went about our duties. My family was in Woodside, Queens N.Y. that Sunday and although I was not there, reaction must have been quite strong. My sister’s friends called and they were concerned about her safety. My parents felt, I suppose, "shikataga nai" - - it just can’t be helped. My father knew his business couldn’t exist anymore; since, there were no supplies from Japan. His business had been dwindling. Many of the employee families of Japanese companies had been returning to Japan. Walk-in trade from Caucasian customers ceased.

I don’t think there was much fear about personal safety; since, our neighbors were in many instances German or Italian. There was concern about our economic well being.

III. Segment Three (Military service)

Enlistment and family history

In 1940, the year I graduated Princeton University, and while I was working in the Japanese Chamber of Commerce located in Rockefeller Center, New York City, the first peacetime draft of U.S. citizens for a one year period was inaugurated. I was drafted in that draft and reported for duty in January 1941. There was a strong isolationist sentiment in the U.S. and the feeling was that the U.S. would not get involved in Europe where Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy were on the move and there was revolutionary war in Spain. President Roosevelt, however, felt otherwise and he gave to Churchill fifty U.S. destroyers and was willing to send U.S. troops to Greenland.

My Japanese ancestry was not a question before, during and immediately after my induction into the U.S. Army. I did not expect or want to be treated any differently from any other American citizen of my age which was then 23 years. The group to which I was attached was more than half college graduates, engineers, chemists, etc. as well as cooks, salesmen and employees of various companies. They were not 18 year olds but rather between 20 - 30. When we were inducted, they did not have uniforms, so we were given World War I uniforms and equipment such as wrap around leggings, riding pants, etc. We lived in tents in January, freezing weather, with a pot belly stove in the center of the tent. Due to shortage of personnel etc., I think we had two meals a day which improved rapidly.

I was taken out and sent to the 248th Coast Artillery, a Brooklyn, N.Y. National Guard outfit. There I met for the first time reaction because of my Japanese ancestry. I was placed in group station or something similar to that and I found myself in a tower with a map of New York City harbor with locations of Coast Artillery batteries and cross fire into the ships channel. We had a general inspection and the General asked my name and I said "Private Kuwayama, Sir." The next day I was shipped out to a Quartermaster Company located in Madison Barracks, N.Y. and assigned the job of requisition clerk. Although we were not at war, and Pearl Harbor was still about a year away, I was quite sure that because my name was Japanese I was shipped out from the New York Harbor Defense and to a job of requisition clerk for auto parts in northern New York near Lake Ontario.

My family accepted the draft as part of my American citizenship. They visited me at camp when I was around New York. They did not visit me when I was transferred out of the New York area. After Pearl Harbor, they were restricted as to any movement outside of NYC. We were not restricted as far as I know previous to Pearl Harbor. My family continued to live in Woodside before, during and after Pearl Harbor.

My family was outside the jurisdiction of the Western Defense Command. They were restricted as to movement by the pronouncements of Mayor La Guardia that they should stay close to their homes. After Pearl Harbor the FBI did visit the family and confiscated my father’s Japanese archery equipment (bow and arrow) and radio. Never returned them.

Career Interviewee’s Military

Since I was transferred so many times and to different units, most of which were service or administrative units, to run the military post or Fort, etc., where I happened to be, I did not receive a formal, scheduled basic training. My training was based on whatever they could give me,, and what was available from my fundamental job whether Coast Artillery, Ordinance, Quartermaster, Operating Room Station Hospital, etc. None of these units were Japanese American. After I was in the Station Hospital at Ft. Ethan Allen, VT. And assigned to teach other soldiers about operating room procedures from knowledge gleaned from the Army manual, Chaplain Yamada of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team came around and asked if I would like to join the 442nd. There were two Japanese Americans in our Station Hospital who came from other units and segregated from them in Ft. Devens, Massachusetts. These two were also asked. We all agreed to go. I was a T/4, a surgical tech. I found that when I got to the 442nd, that there were too many T/4 and sergeants. Apparently across the country other Japanese Americans were placed in medical units after Pearl Harbor; so, there were too many medical sergeants. I was sent to a Texas evacuation hospital and just before the 442nd was to go overseas I was reassigned back to the 442nd and attached to Company E. as a medic and as a T/4. I stayed with Co. E. all the way through the war from June 1944 when we went into combat, to May 1945 when the war with Germany ended and I returned back to the U.S. due to the accumulation of points and discharged. I had accumulated many points due to length of service and various decorations which I received, Purple Heart, Silver Star, Croce al Valore Militare. There were no promotions in the 442nd for me since there were medical sergeants in excess.

My work overseas was confined to the 442nd. I did not go to Camp Savage/Fort Snelling. I did no intelligence work. My main duty was to answer the call for help "medic". I would pick up my Red Cross flag which I kept furled. I also did not wear the Red Cross on my helmet since that would give our position away. I was a platoon medic. I would then go out in no man’s land and administer to the wounded. My principal job was to stop the bleeding, by tourniquet or pressure. Put sulfur in the wound and get a litter bearer or push or pull the wounded to a safe area from mortar fire, etc. and go on to the next man. The 442nd was in constant combat in Italy to take one hill or mountain after another. The casualties were so-called light, but they were casualties. The big battles were Hill 140, Bruyeres, Biffontaine, the rescue of the Lost Battalion, etc. Anytime we were held up in our push forward for several days, casualties were heavy. Our route was up the Italian boot from Rome to Pisa, the push up the Rhone Valley in France to Bruyeres from Marseille, the holding of the Maginot line in Sospel and Peira Cava in the Maritime Alps, and the return to Italy and the push into the Po Valley from Spezia.

I think each time I went out into no man’s land was an event. I had to trust that the Germans or Fascist troops would honor the Red Cross flag and would not shoot me. They did not shoot until I came to the German border in France. At that time they shot me and I was wounded and I received my medals, Silver Star, Purple Heart, Croce al Valore Militare.

As I said, I was high point man so I was discharged before the war ended. The Germans had surrendered and I was sent home and immediately honorably discharged at Fort Dix in New Jersey. I returned home and immediately heard about Hiroshima. I went to Times Square in New York City and witnessed the announcement that Japan surrendered. I was there, a discharged veteran in civilian clothes. It was a momentous occasion. The war was over.

IV. Segment Four (Family History During the War)

My family was not evacuated. They were in New York City, and not under the Western Defense Command. My family were in the art goods, Japan provisions, and Japanese restaurant business and all were affected by the war. To the extent that art goods, Japanese provisions could be sold, they were sold. The restaurant had no customers. Employees were told they could eat and stay in the restaurant but there was no employment. My father started to sell "arare" - - Japanese rice crackers. My sister was a nutritionist and worked at New York City hospitals and was involved in working for the Visiting Nurses Association. The family essentially lived on savings.

There was, as a result, no experience with internment. They just had to see their savings disappear.

V. Segment Five (Post Military Activities)

Following discharge, I started looking for a job, I had an AB degree from Princeton University from the School of Public and International Affairs, class of 1940. I was a generalist open to anything that would pay me a salary. I scoured the newspapers, the employment agencies, went directly to banks and companies, and finally I started to send my resumes to companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. This was after the war and I was a veteran, aged 27. I was unsuccessful. I decided to take advantage of the GI Bill and applied to Harvard Business School. There I was accepted and graduated with an MBA degree in June 1947.

I went through the same procedure for trying to get a job as I had in 1945 after discharge from the service, but with the same results, no job. Although I had sharpened my resume to stress finance, there was still no response. I finally got a job with Western Electric Co. doing statistical work.

At about this time in 1949, the Japanese from Japan were coming over to reestablish connections in the U.S. A Mr. Wakimura of Mitsubishi Bank was here and Mr. Segawa of Nomura Securities was here. My father arranged to meet them and I was introduced to Mr. Segawa. Mr. Segawa said that there was a shortage of English speaking employees in Nomura and he was planning to reopen offices in New York City. He asked whether I would be interested in a job. I told him I would be. He told me that before the war that Nomura had underwritten a number of Japanese utility bonds in the U.S. and they would like to revive that interest again in the U.S.A. I told him that I would be interested, but that I would not like to have my opportunities restricted as to promotion activities as they had, I understood, been pre-war. He said that he could not promise anything, but if I accepted, that my opportunities would be unlimited provided that I would work in Japan. I asked for how long and he said for at least a year in Japan, and, then, I would be assigned to New York. I asked about salary. He said they could only pay the going wage for my rank and experience in Japan, but when I was returned to the States, I would get the going rate here. I accepted. After all, I had lived a year in Italy and France in fox holes. He was delighted and I returned with him to Japan where I worked in a building behind Maruzen bookstore. The Nomura building in Nihonbashi had been occupied by the Allied Forces. It was an experience, here I was an American, a U.S. veteran, working for a Japanese company in essentially occupied Japan. I commuted by subway and I used to see the front subway car reserved for occupation personnel practically empty, and I would go with the Japanese, stuffed like sardines in the succeeding subway cars. Food notably improved while I was there. I met a classmate of mine from Harvard B School who lived in Pershing Heights (a U.S. military compound) and he fed me an American roast beef dinner. It was the first beef I had in quantity in months.

My work in Japan was writing English letters and meeting U.S. and European bankers who were coming over to Japan in droves. It was also important for me to meet my peers and people above and below me in Nomura and establish rapport with them.

Mr. Minoru Segawa who hired me to work at Nomura Securities, was later to become President and then Chairman of Nomura Securities Co., Ltd.

VI. Segment Six: The Post-war civilian life

Marriage and family are perhaps the most important decision and matter in a person’s life. Racial and ethnic considerations did play a role in my subjective life. I do not know if it played the same deep role in the dates which I have had. If I dated a blonde woman I felt self-conscious and I do not know if she did; with brunettes, perhaps, it was not so self-conscious. When I got to Japan, there were many "miais" so called meetings leading to arranged marriages. They did not pan out. When I finally did get married in 1962, it was with a Japanese American, my present wife, born in New York City, but educated in Japan. She spent the war years in Japan and did not come to the U.S until late 1950.. It was with a family to whom Kuwayama & Co. sold groceries to while they were in New York City pre-World War II. Her father worked for a Japanese company. We were married in New York City. We do not have any children.

With our marriage, which was suitable for a person working for a Japanese company, since, my wife was completely bilingual; my thoughts were to remain in the Japanese company environment for the rest of my working life. But my wife saw an advertisement in the Wall St. Journal for a person with international finance experience to work for the Office of Foreign Direct Investments in the U.S Department of Commerce, whose personnel were recruited half from the private sector and half from the U.S. government. She encouraged me to answer that advertisement. I went to Washington, DC and was interviewed in the evening. They asked me what I did at Nomura Securities. I talked for about 20 minutes. They asked when I could come down from New York. This was unlike any experience I had in the past. In 1968, a year after the race riots in Washington, DC I was hired right away as a Senior Authorization Officer to Examine applications by U.S. companies to invest abroad and to keep in mind parameters to protect U.S. gold reserves, maintain the monetary exchange rate, etc.

Although I became General Manager of the New York office at Nomura Securities, Inc. I knew that there were in Japan, others who would want to come here or that I would be reassigned to Japan. I accepted the offer by the U.S. Government to work in Washington, DC in 1968. We have found living in Washington pleasant.

I found the work stimulating. Each case for the various U.S. companies posed various nuances which were interesting. It was challenging to present the case and obtain some resolution to the problem by the give and take of discussion in the OFDI meetings. But the U.S. government decided to permit the exchange rate to float and the need for us disappeared. Although I could have remained with the Department of Commerce in another capacity i.e. trade arbiter for protective tariffs and the maintenance of viable alternatives to areas in the U.S. impacted by foreign trade competition, I found an opening with the Securities & Exchange Commission as an economist.

At the Securities & Exchange Commission, my main job was to describe and find means to ameliorate difficulties to U.S. investment abroad i.e. U.S membership in foreign stock exchanges, etc. I was later assigned to Public Affairs where I acted as liaison for foreigners interested in U.S. securities markets and to edit press releases for distribution to the media.

I left the Securities & Exchange Commission in 1985 to retire.

Most of my time in retirement is to follow the securities market and to work on estate planning. I was appointed by President Clinton in 1996 to work on the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund Board where I was a director. The Civil Liberties Public Education Fund was an independent federal government agency authorized under Public Law 100-383 (The Civil Liberties Act of 1988). I am, currently, a director on the Board of the Washington Volunteer Readers for the Blind (an arm of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in Washington, DC), and a Governor on the Board of the Asian American Alumni Association of Princeton University.

I am a member of the National Press Club and the National Economist Club and I attend their lunches to keep up with current happenings in the world and in economics.

Membership:

National Press Club, Washington, DC

National Economist Club, Washington, DC

Harvard Business School Club of Washington, DC (past Board member)

Princeton University Club of Washington, DC

Japanese American Veterans Association, Washington, DC

100th/442nd/MIS Club - Los Angeles

442nd Club of Hawaii

Japanese American National Museum - Los Angeles

National Japanese American Historical Society - SF

Japanese American Citizens League, Washington, DC

Japanese American Association of New York, Inc.

Japan America Society of Washington, DC. (past Board member)

Toastmasters International (past Area Governor)

I am a member of the Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church of Washington, DC and Christ Church/Methodist in New York City.

I would like to spend time in reading, writing and reminiscing, but I find time and physical constraints. I read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times of London and the Economist. I cursorily read Business Week, Forbes magazine, the New Yorker, Newsweek, Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street, The Kiplinger Letter, and various special publications on the stock market.

I also try to maintain an old house if there is any energy left to paint, to clean up the garden. I golf for exercise. I attend aerobic classes.

VII. Segment Seven: Reflections

I think it is a given that we are citizens of the U.S. A must in wartime is to protect our country; although, in a globalization of the world whether we should go to other countries is a matter for our consideration. In the end, our country right or wrong must obtain. That is prime.

On a more personal and individual note, I think marriage, selection of a spouse and children are the most important components of a life. Ethnicity to a certain degree enter into it, but as time goes on, it becomes less important as America diversifies. It is easier to live and get along if you have similar ethnicities and cultures but it should not be paramount. We have in the U.S. ethnic and cultural mafias which determine our cultural and economic well-being How strong those mafias are whether Anglo-Saxon or Jewish or Italian may in the end determine how Japanese Americans can fit into the mosaic which is the U.S.

It is the luck of the draw, but I am all for early determination of marriage, children, etc. since, those biologic clocks ticks on. I would say by thirty, decisions should be made even though you or your spouse may feel economically or socially unready.

If the trend continues where Anglo-Saxon dominance recedes, Japanese Americans will have to become chameleons and adjust to whatever society they may join. That society may be Hispanic, other Asian groups, Greek, Irish, etc. They will join other minorities. If an all encompassing fair general American society evolves; then Japanese Americans will become part of that society. The Japanese American National Memorial, JACL, the Japanese American National Museum, etc. will be of historic importance, but not relevant culturally or economically unless there is an increase in Japanese population. With increasing intermarriage and decrease in pure Japanese Americans, a great deal will depend upon what culture will become dominant in their lives and to what economic forces they will owe their subsistence. As Americans with Japanese faces, Japanese Americans will have to play a game of adjustment to whatever group they attach themselves to and that acceptance by the group will take time, energy and commitment. It may also mean denying their nationality and of a culture which they do not understand or accept. This could happen without disruption of emotional ties; since, many fourth and fifth generation Japanese Americans have no ties to Japan culturally. Physically since they, as a race are smaller and numerically since they are few in numbers; Japanese Americans may find adjustment difficult, but being a minority within minorities, they will have to acclimate.

My family and I were not evacuated or interned, although, my family suffered economically for the five-year war period. There was also in New York City, no strong outward signs of hatred toward Japanese Americans; since, there were so many Germans and Italians as well as other Europeans affected by World War II living there. One lesson is that you have to be innovative, flexible to adjust, to give up old patterns of behavior and adjust to new ones.