Setsuko Asano Ogami (The Topaz Japanese Library)
Sets was born and raised in San Francisco until her family was sent to Tanforan and Topaz. After the War, she returned to San Francisco and graduated from George Washington High School and UC Berkeley. She then spent one year in Chicago and met her husband, Sam. They were married in SF and moved to San Mateo, CA, where they raised four children. Sets worked as a medical transcriptionist and Registrar of Mills High School in Millbrae, CA until retirement.
Keisho Okayama (Portrait of an Artist)
Keisho was a painter who was born in 1934 in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. His father’s position as a Jodō Shinshu (Pure Land) Buddhist priest brought the family to California in 1936. The family was incarcerated in Tanforan and Topaz detention camps during WWII. Keisho studied art at UCLA in the 1950s and 1960s and taught part-time at the College of Creative Studies, UCSB; East Los Angeles College; and UCLA. Written when Keisho was in high school in the early 1950s, his memoir is a faithful account of his memories of being a young boy behind barbed wire. He and his wife, Lauren, were based in Los Angeles, where he passed away in 2018.