Pearl Mitsu Sonoda (1918–2015) Lynne R. Parenti 1 and Tomio Iwamoto 2 P EARL MITSU SONODA was born in Imperial, Califor- nia, on May 17, 1918, the third of four daughters of Japanese-born parents, Tomoji and Sachi Sonoda. Her father, Tomoji, was an ambitious farmer: he owned an asparagus ranch and was exploring an expansion into rice farming. Pearl once said that her family owned and lived on a farm of some 40 acres and leased another 160 acres. Soon after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were evacuated from their homes and relocated to internment camps by the War Relocation Authority. Tomoji was considered an especially high risk because he could speak English as well as Japanese and was a leader in the Japanese-American community. Tomoji was arrested by the FBI in early 1942 and ultimately sent to a camp in Arkansas. Sachi and her four daughters were sent to the Poston relocation or internment camp on a Native American reservation close to the Colorado River, near Parker, Arizona. This was a particularly traumatic experience about which Pearl spoke little except to say that she wished no one to ever again have to live through what she and other Japanese Americans were forced to endure. TI once asked Pearl about her experiences during the war. She was attending Pomona College when the US entered the war in December 1941. Pearl had to drop out mid-semester, probably in her third year, and make her way home alone with her few possessions when the relocation orders were issued in late March 1942. She, her mother, and three sisters had to sell off their home, ranch, and almost all their personal possessions at pennies for the dollar (they were given less than a week to do this). They could bring to camp only what they could carry. Pearl said that it was because of the trauma of losing most of her treasured possessions that she thereafter never accumulated many cherished belong- ings. Pearl had a strong interest in natural history and had studied biology as an undergraduate at Berkeley (she is listed in the University of California Catalogue of Officers and Students for 1936–1937) and then at Pomona College. She also took classes at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Pearl was a dedicated student despite another indignity, likely experi- enced in grammar school: she told southpaw LRP that she too was naturally left-handed but forced to switch to writing with her right hand as was once the custom. While in internment camp in Arizona, her interests in biology became known to renowned Chicago Museum of Natural History (now Field Museum) herpetologist Karl P. Schmidt who followed the ideals of Quakers and the American Friends Service Committee—probably the most supportive organiza- tion of the incarcerated Americans of Japanese ancestry during the war. Starting in 1943, many of the internees were allowed to leave the camps to join the US work force outside the West Coast. Schmidt, who was Chief Curator of the Department of Zoology, sponsored Pearl’s move to Chicago to work in his department. From 1943 to 1955 she served as secretary and assistant in the Division of Mammals and from 1955 to 1967 as the assistant in the Division of Fishes in Zoology at Field Museum. There she met Margaret Bradbury, who became Staff Artist of the Department of Zoology in 1947. In 1967, Pearl returned to her native California to become Senior Curatorial Assistant in Ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS; Fig. 1). She was hired by William N. Eschmeyer to fill a position that was funded by an NSF grant that brought the George Vanderbilt Foundation collections to the Academy. Margaret Bradbury had moved to the Bay Area in 1963 to become an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at what was then San Francisco State College (Iwamoto et al., 2011). Pearl and Margaret lived together, first in a house off Skyline Drive in Daly City, and then later in a house they purchased together in the Pacific Manor district of Pacifica. Pearl’s job title conveyed little of her passionate involve- ment in and dedication to the day-to-day life of the Academy. For 30 years, Pearl was the heart of the Department of Ichthyology (Fig. 2). She had a mature sense of humor punctuated by a delightful, spontaneous laugh. She main- Fig. 1. Pearl Sonoda in the Department of Ichthyology, California Academy of Sciences (the late 1960s or early 1970s, likely between 1967 and 1971). 1 Division of Fishes, NHB MRC 159, P.O. Box 37012, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20013- 7012; Email: parentil@si.edu. 2 Department of Ichthyology, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California 94118; Email: tiwamoto@calacademy.org. Ó 2017 by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists DOI: 10.1643/OT-16-531 Published online: 14 April 2017 Copeia 105, No. 1, 2017, 161–163