On Fathers’ Day, we feature Tracy Takayanagi Hui’s remembrance of her father, Tadao, or “Toddy.”
Toddy’s grew up in West Berkeley, where his family had a nursery business. Forced to drop out of U.C. Berkeley in the spring of 1942, Toddy ended up in Topaz with his family, where he worked for a while as an ambulance driver.
Eager to get out of camp, Toddy found work as a busboy in Salt Lake City before moving to Ann Arbor, where he worked as a butcher. From there, he and a group of friends from Topaz enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Toddy eventually found himself in India, working for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the precursor to the CIA.
From incarceration to OSS agent, Toddy was well acquainted with life’s ironies and gave sage advice to his daughter. Read “Toddy’s Story” by Tracy Takayanagi Hui.