Oral History Interview with William Kelley Tuttle

Caucasian male was born 07/16/1913. His father was a businessman managing a chain of Harts hotels and restaurants in Sacramento. He graduated from Stanford University in 1936, but was unsatisfied with a job in the business world. William got a Master's Degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago in 1942 and accepted a teaching job at University of California, Berkeley. For three days in Vallejo, he interviewed long lines of Japanese Americans in the spring of 1942 to prepare them for evacuation. Throughout his childhood his family had extended aid and hospitality to Japanese. He was so angry at what the government did to the Japanese that he quit his teaching job and by November 1942 at age 29 he was Director of the Department of Welfare at Gila River, Arizona Internment camp. He adjudicated cases such as an elderly couple seeking repatriation to Japan with a grandchild for whom they had no legal rights. William left Gila River in 1945 and opened a relocation office in Oakland, CA. The office's mission was to find housing and jobs for returning internees. He retired from the federal government in 1973 and moved to Nevada City where he was a radio announcer for a program about aging. The appendix in the bound copy includes an essay by his grand daughter: "A Case Study of William Tuttle, Jr. and Impact on Japanese Americans in Gila River Relocation Camp, WWII."