In the summer of 1941, five Nisei friends enjoyed a beach outing in Santa Cruz.
Little did they know that their sunny, carefree days would come to a shocking end a few months later.
In a matter of months, they would need to step up and become breadwinners and community leaders as they and their families were forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated behind barbed wire. Their parents’ generation became disempowered by government policies that penalized non-US citizens (even though the Issei generation was prohibited from obtaining citizenship by US law) and Japanese-speaking, Buddhist elders.
My mother, Tomiko Takahashi Sasaki, became the director of Topaz preschools, one of many young Nisei women who dedicated themselves to preschool children in Topaz. Read about her work in the camps in “Structuring Chaos.”
The Topaz Stories Team
Join us for two upcoming events about the Topaz Stories project in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Plan to visit the Topaz Stories Exhibit in Salt Lake City.
Contact us if you have a Topaz Story to share.
Follow us on Instagram @topazstories
Media coverage:
Watch abc4’s news segment, Topaz survivors tell their stories
Listen to KCPW’s “In the Hive” podcast with interviews with Ann Dion, Jonathan Hirabayashi, Jeanie Kashima and Joseph Nishimura
Read ksl.com‘s coverage of the Capitol exhibit: How a Utah exhibit about Topaz Camp looks to find empathy in ‘an ugly stain on American history
Read “Topaz Stories: Voices rise from the dust” (Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement, 4/2022)
Listen to KQED Forum, Day of Remembrance interview with Ruth Sasaki, February 15, 2022
Listen to Max Chang and Ruth Sasaki interviewed on KRCL RadioActive, February 9, 2022
Read the Discover Nikkei interview with Ruth Sasaki: On Topaz Stories and ‘Authentic Voice’, October 2021
Listen to the Topaz Stories podcast with Ruth Sasaki and Jonathan Hirabayashi: Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration, June 2021