Azalia Emma Peet

Peet was born in Webster, New York,{{Cite web |title=Well Known Websterites |url=https://www.webstermuseum.org/overtheyears.php |access-date=2022-11-06 |website=The Webster Museum |language=en}} the daughter of James Clinton Peet and Marion Keeler Green Peet.{{Cite news |date=1940-06-10 |title=J. C. Peet Dies in Homestead Near Webster |pages=12 |work=Democrat and Chronicle |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/112630027/j-c-peet-dies-in-homestead-near/ |access-date=2022-11-06 |via=Newspapers.com}} She graduated from Smith College in 1910; during college she was a member of the "Oriental Society" with Smith's first Asian student, Tei Ninomiya.{{Cite book |last=Smith College |url=http://archive.org/details/class1910smit |title=Class of 1910 Classbook |date=1910 |publisher= Smith College|pages=91}} She took graduate courses at Boston University during a furlough in the early 1920s, and earned a master's degree in 1923.{{Cite web |title=Collection: Azalia Emma Peet papers |url=https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/2/resources/868 |access-date=2022-11-06 |website=Smith College Finding Aids}} Her master's thesis title was "The application of certain American labor legislation to the industrial life of Japanese women and children" (1923).{{Cite thesis |last=Peet |first=Azalia Emma |date=1923 |title=The application of certain American labor legislation to the industrial life of Japanese women and children |url=https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/5599 |publisher=Boston University}}

Peet became a missionary in 1916,{{Cite news |date=1916-09-04 |title=Going to Japan to Teach in Mission |pages=15 |work=The Oregon Daily Journal |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/112629525/going-to-japan-to-teach-in-mission/ |access-date=2022-11-06 |via=Newspapers.com}} after her widowed father remarried, and sailed for Tokyo under the auspices of the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.{{Cite news |date=1936-04-30 |title=To Address Women |pages=15 |work=Star-Gazette |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/112628879/to-address-women/ |access-date=2022-11-06 |via=Newspapers.com}} She worked in schools from kindergarten to high school level in Kagoshima, from 1917 to 1921.{{Cite news |date=1923-08-03 |title=Newark Young Woman Stars for Japan to Aid Factory Workers |pages=23 |work=Democrat and Chronicle |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/112630278/newark-young-woman-stars-for-japan-to/ |access-date=2022-11-06 |via=Newspapers.com}} From 1923 to 1927, she taught women and girls at a hostel in Fukuoka, preparing them for higher education. The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society bought and shipped a piano to Peet in Fukuoka.{{Cite journal |date=June 30, 1923 |title=Mehlin Piano Shipped to Japan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p5lQAAAAYAAJ&dq=Azalia+Emma+Peet&pg=RA25-PA11 |journal=Music Trades |volume=65 |pages=11}} In 1927 she supervised two kindergartens in Hakodate. She had a furlough in the United States for health reasons from 1928 to 1929. From 1929 to 1935 and from 1936 to 1941, she was back to teaching in Japan, until World War II, when she was evacuated along with other American citizens.{{Cite book |last1=Crowley |first1=Mark J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kkI3EAAAQBAJ&dq=Azalia+Emma+Peet&pg=PA15 |title=Women's Experiences of the Second World War: Exile, Occupation and Everyday Life |last2=Dawson |first2=Sandra Trudgen |date=2021 |publisher=Boydell & Brewer |isbn=978-1-78327-587-8 |pages=15–16 |language=en}}

In the United States, she worked with Japanese immigrant families and students in Oregon. She testified before the House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration,{{Cite book |last=United States Congress House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f1ItAAAAMAAJ&dq=Azalia+Emma+Peet&pg=PA11386 |title=National Defense Migration: Hearings Before the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, House of Representatives, Seventy-seventh Congress, First[-second] Session, Pursuant to H. Res. 113, a Resolution to Inquire Further Into the Interstate Migration of Citizens, Emphasizing the Present and Potential Consequences of the Migration Caused by the National Defense Program. Pt. 11-[34]. |date=1941 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |pages=11386–11387 |language=en}} voicing her opposition to the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese-American residents of the West Coast.{{Cite journal |last=Shaffer |first=Robert |date=1999 |title=Opposition to Internment: Defending Japanese American Rights during World War II |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24449883 |journal=The Historian |volume=61 |issue=3 |pages=597–619 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-6563.1999.tb01039.x |jstor=24449883 |issn=0018-2370}} “What is it that makes it necessary for them to evacuate?" she asked the committee. "Have they done anything? Is there anything in their history in this area to justify such a fear of them developing overnight?”{{Cite journal |last=Eisenberg |first=Ellen |date=2003 |title="As Truly American as Your Son": Voicing Opposition to Internment in Three West Coast Cities |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/831676 |journal=Oregon Historical Quarterly |language=en |volume=104 |issue=4 |pages=542–565 |doi=10.1353/ohq.2003.0012 |s2cid=159603857 |issn=2329-3780}}{{Cite web |title=World War II - The "Japanese Question" Confronts the State |url=https://sos.oregon.gov/archives/exhibits/ww2/Pages/threats-question.aspx |access-date=2022-11-06 |website=State of Oregon}} "Progressive Christians like Peet were among the few dissenting voices," noted Buddhist scholar Duncan Ryuken Williams.{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Duncan Ryuken |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hRN-DwAAQBAJ&dq=Azalia+Emma+Peet&pg=PA75 |title=American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War |date=2019 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-98653-4 |pages=75 |language=en}} Historian Ellen Eisenberg observed that, unlike clergymen in other cities, "Peet spoke as an individual, without any organizational support."{{Cite book |last=Eisenberg |first=Ellen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k4hPFE2c8IwC&dq=Azalia+Emma+Peet&pg=PA79 |title=The First to Cry Down Injustice: Western Jews and Japanese Removal During WWII |date=2008 |publisher=Lexington Books |isbn=978-0-7391-1382-0 |language=en}}

Like some other former missionaries with useful language, pedagogical and cultural skills, Peet worked at internment camps in Nyssa, Oregon{{Cite news |last=Fowler |first=Mary |date=1944-06-07 |title=Women in the Church |pages=1 |work=The Lamar Democrat |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/112630118/women-in-the-churchmary-fowler/ |access-date=2022-11-06 |via=Newspapers.com}} and Minidoka, Idaho, mostly supporting teen students in their preparations for college.Hessel, Beth Shalom. [https://books.google.com/books?id=kkI3EAAAQBAJ&dq=Azalia+Emma+Peet&pg=PA11 "Exiles Serving Exiles on the Homefront: Protestant Missionary Workers and Japanese Americans."] Women's Experiences of the Second World War: Exile, Occupation and Everyday Life (2021): 11. She returned to Japan from 1946 to 1953, to help with postwar reconstruction. She was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure (5th Class) by the Japanese government in 1953, for her lifetime of service.

• "Pinafores and the King's Daughters" (1919){{Cite journal |last=Peet |first=Azalia Emma |date=September 1919 |title=Pinafores and the King's Daughters |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y6zNAAAAMAAJ&dq=Azalia+Emma+Peet&pg=PA312 |journal=Woman's Missionary Friend |pages=312–315}}
• "Fragments from a Devotional Diary" (1935){{Cite journal |last=Peet |first=Azalia E. |date=March 1935 |title=Fragments of a Devotional Diary |url=https://archive.org/details/womansmissionary6870unse/page/n79/mode/2up?q=Azalia+Emma+Peet |journal=Woman's Missionary Friend |volume=68 |issue=3 |pages=90–92 |via=Internet Archive}}

Peet lived in Rochester, New York after she retired from the mission field.{{Cite news |date=1954-05-30 |title=Smith Alumnae Map Picnic |pages=55 |work=Democrat and Chronicle |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/112629393/smith-alumnae-map-picnic/ |access-date=2022-11-06 |via=Newspapers.com}} She moved to a retirement home in Asheville, North Carolina in 1961. She died there in 1973, at the age of 86. Her papers, including photographs, diaries,{{Cite book |last=Rosenzweig |first=Linda W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WoPsjMVBleoC&dq=Azalia+Emma+Peet&pg=RA1-PA59 |title=Another Self: Middle-class American Women and Their Friends in the Twentieth Century |date=1999 |publisher=NYU Press |isbn=978-0-8147-7486-1 |pages=58–59 |language=en}} and correspondence, are at Smith College.

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Category:1887 births

Category:1973 deaths

Category:American educators

Category:American expatriates in Japan

Category:American Christian missionaries

Category:American activists

Category:Smith College faculty

Category:People from Webster, New York