On Christmas Day 1941, my then-7-year-old father, along with his siblings and mother, fled Honolulu after Pearl Harbor was bombed, leaving my grandfather behind. They had only recently moved to Hawaii from the Philippines, looking over their shoulders at the gathering clouds of war. When they arrived in San Francisco, they were met by International Red Cross volunteers, who helped them find a place to live and gave them warm clothes to wear (they were shivering in their Hawaii cottons). When my grandmother became ill, my father and his siblings were cared for by strangers for months. My family’s enduring gratitude, and their fascination with global cultures, were communicated to me. I grew up wanting to travel the world, speak a foreign language, and live in faraway places.

Here’s my essay on the gifts of helping newcomers to our communities in this month’s Colgate Magazine: Colgate Magazine November 2023 Voices