Willis Carl and Pearl Graul Nugent photograph collection, 1927-1957

Willis Carl Nugent was born in 1892. He studied at the Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and was ordained as a Protestant minister in 1920. Nugent married Pearl Graul in 1920, and the couple sailed to Japan, where they lived until 1930. The couple's four children were all born in Japan. After a brief period of education in the United States, the Nugents returned to Japan. Reverend Nugent worked as an evangelist in the countryside, and Pearl helped to develop kindergartens. In 1940, the Nugents returned to the United States and lived in San Francisco.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Pprisoner Franklin D. Roosevelt’s issuance of Executive Order 9102 targeting Japanese American citizens, the Nugent family continued to work with the Japanese community. Nugent ministered at Tanforan Assembly Center, the former horse tracks in San Bruno, California, where Japanese Americans from the Bay Area were imprisoned in the spring and summer of 1942 while the War Relocation Authority (WRA) constructed concentration camps to hold them. In the fall of 1942, the Nugent family moved to Delta, Utah, to be close to the Federated Church in the Topaz Relocation Center. The Nugents ministered at Topaz and built close relationships with prisoners at Topaz, including Dave Tatsuno, who filmed them taking Japanese American students to Salt Lake City to speak at churches. After Topaz was closed, the Nugent family moved to Illinois before returning to Japan. In retirement they lived in Ohio. Reverend Willis Nugent died in August 1971, and Pearl Nugent died in February 1986.