Saburo and Marion Masada recount their story growing up in the incarceration camps during World War II and life before and after the war. They also tell the larger story of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II in general.
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Robert Ogata talks about his family, how his father’s side came from Fukuoka in Japan and his mother’s from Hiroshima and how they immigrated to the United States, how his parents met and married, first farming strawberries in Anaheim before moving to Selma. He discusses how his mother lost her citizenship by marrying an Issei, […]
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Ken Taniguchi talks about being born in Fresno in 1951, attending Roeding Elementary, Cooper Junior High School and Fresno High School, then UC San Diego, UC Davis and then law school. He talks about his siblings, then about his paternal grandparents and how they immigrated from Wakayama Ken in Japan, and where his maternal grandparents […]
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Ralph Kumano talks about his family origins in Japan and being born in the Gila River Relocation Center, working in the farm industry growing up, before working for the National Park Service and as a teacher. He discusses teaching in Southern California for 18 years before moving back to Fresno and teaching at Kings Canyon […]
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Debbie Ikeda talks about her family and educational background, the Valley’s educational needs, how her grandfather immigrated to the United States, settling in Santa Monica and starting a nursery. She talks about how her family was sent to the Manzanar War Relocation Center, the photographer Toyo Miyatake, and Mexican American Ralph Lazzo who decided to […]
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Yutaka Yamamoto talks about his grandparents immigrating to the United States from Hiroshima, Japan, how his grandfather was a carpenter who fixed the doors of Fresno’s Chinatown’s gambling dens after police raids, Alien Land Laws and how they affected his father being able to buy a farm, the family’s laundry business, the Pearl Harbor attack, […]
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Paul Saito talks about his family history starting with his grandparents and their immigrating to the United States, where they were from in Japan, how some of his uncles were educated in Japan as Kibeis, the Pearl Harbor attack and the subsequent evacuation, his experiences in the Santa Anita Assembly Center, the journey from there […]
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Ted Shigyo talks about the different generations of Japanese Americans in the United States, being born in the Tule Lake camp, the state of the camp in the present, his education and work as a medical doctor, his family’s history of immigrating and living in the United States before the war. He discusses the incarceration, […]
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