Growing up, I would hear casual mentions of “camp days” spoken in hushed tones. Sometimes, the grown-ups would switch to broken Japanese when they talked about things they didn’t want us kids to understand.

Mom was a Buddhist… then one day, when she was 92 years-old, she announced that she wanted to get baptized.

I hated being different, looking different, being Japanese. Why was Meiko so happy? She flaunted her Japanese-ness like it was a mission. Didn’t she see we were freaks in this school?

Mom loved all her children equally, but her expectations were uniquely different for each of us. I was her little princess who she indulged to no end, but for John, her special miracle child, she devoted a special kind of attention.  

When I was around 12, Mom wanted so much for me to learn Odori. It was a dream for her to have a daughter she could share this passion with.

They were all rounded up for the same simple reason that they were people of Japanese ancestry.

Painting by Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz

Mom’s father, my Ojīchan, was an ambitious, hard working, and generous man who ran the local produce store in the once thriving Japan town area of Salinas, California.

It was February 1942 when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing military commanders to remove all Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes. Mom was just 18 years-old.

It was her 99th birthday, and her great-granddaughter took it upon herself to blow out the birthday candles.