Peet, Azalia Emma, 1889-1973

Azalia Peet in Orange, California, 1945

Azalia Emma Peet was born in Rochester, New York, September 3, 1887, daughter of Marion K. Green and James C. Peet. She graduated from Smith College in 1910 and returned home to New York. After much spiritual and personal self-examination and following her mother's death in 1913 and her father's remarriage in 1916, Peet decided to become a Christian missionary.

She left in September 1916 for Tokyo, Japan, under the auspices of the United Methodist Church. Between September 1917 and May 1921 she did evangelistic work with high school students, supervised kindergarten work, and organized clubs for nurses and working women. In June 1921 she returned to the United States on her first furlough, speaking in churches and doing graduate work at Boston University. She received a master's degree in 1923 and returned to Japan the same year. Peet worked with women and girls in Fukuoka, living in a hostel for working women and teaching women at the government high school and college. In 1927 she moved to Hakodate, supervising two kindergartens. She became ill in January 1928 and was sent back to the United States on her second furlough which was spent in Portland, Oregon and Rochester, New York. Returning to Japan in September 1929, she supervised kindergartens and did missionary work with students until June 1935. During her third furlough (June 1935 to August 1936), Peet did graduate work at Cornell University and at Merrill Palmer Training School in Detroit. She returned to Japan in September 1936 and was evacuated in March 1941. During that period Peet did social welfare, childcare, and kindergarten work in Kushikino and taught high school in Nagasaki.

During the war she lived with Japanese-Americans in interment camps in Gresham and Nyssa, Oregon and Wapato, Washington. Peet was among the first women to be asked to return to Japan after the war. Between December 1946 and December 1953 she did rural reconstruction work. Peet was awarded the "Fifth Order of the Sacred Treasure" by the Japanese government in 1953.

Returning to the United States in January 1954, she cared for her sister-in-law in Webster, New York, and occupied herself doing fulltime parish visiting and religious education for the Monroe Ave. United Methodist Church in Rochester, New York. Peet entered Brooks-Howell Home in Asheville, North Carolina, in September 1961. She died September 21, 1973.

From the guide to the Azalia Emma Peet Papers MS 120., 1902 - 1974, (Sophia Smith Collection)