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| Georgia Day Robertson |
Georgia Day Robertson born October 9, 1886 in rural Iowa. After her graduation from Iowa State College, she went to China as a missionary teacher. While in China, she met a mining engineer named John A. T. Robertson, who was born in Canada and immigrated to the U.S. in 1917. They were married and their first child, Angus, who was born in China. A second child, David, was later born in Missouri.
Unfortunately, Georgia lost her husband early; but she continued her education and received advanced degrees in mathematics and education and then employed as a teacher at many institutions of higher education in the U.S. In the late 1930's, Mrs. Robertson earned her living in Orange County, California with running a poultry farm, while teaching in an adult education program, and writing short stories for publication.
When the war broke out in December 1941, Mrs. Georgia Day Robertson had been employed by the USO Club which was managed by the Salvation Army in San Diego, California. Within the year, she was hired by the War Relocation Authority to supervise the Nisei mathematic teachers in the three camp high schools located in the Poston War Relocation Center outside of Parker, Arizona. There she gained the information and insight into the Evacuation found in The Harvest of Hate. Mrs. Robertson taught Trigonometry and became the Vice Principal of Poston II High School, and also taught math at the Poston III High School.
It was the postwar return to her native Iowa and the discovery that many Midwesterners had never heard of or refused to believe in the reality of the Evacuation that impelled her to put pen to paper in the service of civil liberties and social justice.
In the postwar years, Georgia Day Robertson continued for a number of years to teach school, not only in her adopted Orange County, where she has stayed in contact with many Japanese American friends from Poston days, but also in Japan (during the Korean War). She has also continued to write professionally, though The Harvest of Hate was her first published novel. On October 9, 1986, she celebrated her 100th birthday.
Georgia Day Robertson died on December 6, 1991 in Orange County at the age of 105 years.
