"When Ameya Desai won the fourth grade prize of NPR's Student Podcast Challenge last year, something surprising happened: A neighbor reached out asking if the 11-year-old journalist would interview his grandmother, a survivor of the Japanese incarceration camps. Ameya was amazed, shocked that she had never learned this history before, one that takes place in her hometown, San Jose, Calif."
"The story begins in 1940, on a berry ranch in Cupertino, Calif. "We had boysenberries, blackberries and strawberries," she tells Ameya. "We were very happy there." But those happy times at the family farm were soon upended, when Horikawa was 2 years old. "Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a growing resentment towards Japanese Americans, many of whom were questioned about their loyalty to the United States," Ameya explains in the podcast."
An 11-year-old student interviewed an 85-year-old Japanese American incarceration survivor after a neighbor requested an interview. The survivor recalled childhood on a berry ranch in Cupertino, California, and the family's forced removal following Pearl Harbor. In 1942 roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced from West Coast homes. The survivor described arrival at Heart Mountain, Wyoming: guns pointed at the family, tar‑paper shacks, one shared room without running water, a single stove and communal toilets, and three years of confinement. Return to California brought continued prejudice and difficult reintegration for formerly incarcerated families.
Read at www.npr.org
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