Volunteers for Japan
Diocesan Press Service. March 11, 1963 [VIII-5]
NEW YORK, --- A Peace Corps trainee who exercised a woman's prerogative to change her mind arrived in Japan Monday, Feb. 4. Instead of accepting a Peace Corps assignment to Africa, Miss Patricia Murray of Cambridge, Mass., chose to be the third Episcopalian to accept a Volunteers for Mission overseas assignment.
Under the auspices of the Home and Overseas Departments of the National Council, Miss Murray will teach conversational English and lead recreational activities for youth at the community center sponsored by St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Yokkaichi, Japan. Her assignment will be for two years.
The 22-year-old graduate of Radcliffe College completed in December a rigorous 12-week study course at Columbia University for Peace Corps assignment. Along with 70 other enthusiastic trainees, she absorbed courses in United States history, foreign policy, Communist ideology and practice, nutrition and health, and first aid. In addition to this was a physical fitness program and 14 inoculations.
Though not premeditated, all of the Peace Corps training will greatly help her discover ways in which she can be useful to the Japanese community and relate the Church to the community and vice versa, she hopes.
Originally, Miss Murray continued, her aim was simply to find a way to get to Japan. She had studied the culture and its people in school to the extent of writing a thesis on Christianity in Japan. Further research still interested her. But--just prior to her departure on January 31-- she voiced the desire to participate in Japanese culture rather than merely to observe it.