Sue Kunitomi Embrey dating history

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Sue Kunitomi Embrey (January 6, 1923–May 15, 2006) was a teacher, activist and long-time chair of the Manzanar Committee, which established the annual Manzanar pilgrimage and obtained National Historic Site status for the former concentration camp. Born Sueko Kunitomi, the sixth of her Japanese immigrant parents' eight children, Embrey was delivered by a mid-wife at the Kunitomi family's home in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. She attended the (largely Japanese American) Amelia Street School, and like many other Nisei she would go to Japanese language school each day after her regular classes. At fourteen, her father was killed in a truck accident. The family got by on the debts owed to Mr. Kunitomi, which Embrey's mother would collect from friends and neighbors. This went on until Mrs. Kunitomi took out a loan and opened a small grocery store in 1941. Embrey graduated from Lincoln High School later that year and postponed going to college to help her mother with the family business. She was working at the store when news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came over the radio on December 7, 1941.