Current data for Contributor

Smither, James (Interviewer)

Current data for Creator

White, Pia

Current data for Date

2016-05-19

Current data for Description

Pia White was born in 1926 in Rome, Italy, to a Japanese father and an American mother. Due to her father's job with the Japanese government, the family traveled all over the world, and she lived in the United States, Japan, and various other countries. In the late 1930s, Pia, her mother, and her siblings returned to Japan. She lived in Tokyo and attended school there. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, she and her family moved to a summer cottage in a mountain village near Tokyo. In 1942 her father, who had been in Washington, DC, at the time of Pearl Harbor, returned to Japan as part of an exchange of diplomats and he lived in Tokyo until he joined the family at the cottage. During the war she helped gather food and worked at the village's police station as a translator. In 1945, her older brother, a pilot, was killed in action during a bombing raid on Tokyo. After the war ended, she worked closely with the American Army of Occupation by helping manage the village as an R&R location for American troops. She befriended one Lieutenant Ken White and they eventually married, returning to the United States in December (1947 or 1948). They started a family and lived in Ohio and various cities in Michigan before settling in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Current data for Source

Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)