by Ruth Sasaki
Once West Coast Japanese Americans were dispersed and more or less settled in ten concentration camps throughout the interior, letters reached out for reassurance like fragile threads to and from the outside world. A telegram, forwarded by the Red Cross, found its way to my grandmother in Topaz, sent by my father’s mother in Hiroshima (my Hiroshima grandmother who would not survive the war herself, buried under her house in Hakushima, a few miles from the hypocenter of the atomic blast):
Is everyone all right?…
Where are you? …
We are so worried …
About the contributor: Ruth Sasaki was born and raised in San Francisco after the War. Her mother’s family, the Takahashis, were incarcerated in Tanforan and Topaz. A graduate of UC Berkeley (BA) and SF State (MA), she has lived in England and Japan. Her short story “The Loom” won the American Japanese National Literary Award, and her collection, The Loom and Other Stories, was published in 1991 by Graywolf Press. She shares her more recent writing via her website: www.rasasaki.com.
Copyright 2017, R. A. Sasaki. All rights reserved.