July 25, 2008

Dear Michelle & Carly,

Steve Koga and Jennifer Baker, teacher, who attended the big JANM conference in Denver introduced me to your amazing project. I also viewed your DVD, “Art of Topaz.” It blew me away. The amazing thing is that you have no personal ties to the Japanese Americans. You started this amazing journey on your own to make the wrong right and you are only in junior high. This is an incredible story. No wonder JANM picked your story and wanted you to be involved in their project. I give you my many thanks.

I was 2 ½ years old when our family was forced to move to Tanforan and then to Topaz, Utah. I left Topaz when I was five. I grew up knowing I was in Topaz, but, so what? No one ever talked about it. Now that I am researching and learning more about it for my Topaz presentations I give to schools, universities, and civic groups, I finally realized, indeed, horrible things happened to us.

People ask me if I remember any painful experiences, but what I remember about Topaz is only memories of a normal childhood. But that in itself is an incredible story because of the tremendous job my parents did in protecting my brother and I from harm.

They suffered a great deal but didn’t show it. We were escorted from our home to the bus, to Tanforan, then to the train to Topaz with military guards pointing their bayonets at us. My parents never told us that.

My mother did share one incident that traumatized her. On our train ride to Topaz, our family had to walk through the white persons’ car. As we walked through, they spat on us and called us “dirty Japs! Go back to Japan! We don’t want you here!”

All 129,000 Japanese Americans were homeless after the gates of all ten camps were closed. We were given $25 each and we didn’t know where we were going to get our next meal and we didn’t have a place to sleep that night. I didn’t know that.

I cry now because of my deepest appreciation for my parents and that generation who valued children. They taught us to hold our heads up and live our lives with dignity and grace, O-jyo-hin, the Japanese way.

Most of us have become successful…..not with big cars, big homes, etc. We are successful because we have become responsible citizens and we pay our bills on time. We are successful because our parents left us a wonderful legacy. As a grandmother I want to pass on this wonderful legacy to my grandchildren and future generations.

With your amazing project and passion you are helping us leave a wonderful legacy for everyone, not only the Japanese Americans, but all citizens in our wonderful nation.

You are leading us on an incredible journey to make the wrong right and to make sure this does not happen again.

“If we the living, the beneficiaries of their sacrifice, are truly intent upon showing our gratitude, we must do more than gather together for speechmaking and perfunctory ceremonies. We must undertake to carry on the unfinished work which they so nobly advanced. The fight against prejudice is not confined to the battlefield, alone. It is still here and with us now. So long as a single member of our citizenry is denied the use of public facilities and denied the right to earn a decent living because, and solely because, of the color of his skin, we who ‘fought against prejudice and won’ ought not to sit idly by and tolerate the perpetuation of injustices.” Sparks Matsunaga, veteran of the 100^th Battalion and later U.S. senator from Hawaii

With Deep Appreciation, Alice Hirai