This week we bring you a loving tribute to a Nisei father.
Growing up, Sansei artist Naomi Kubota Lee, when asked what her father did, would reply, “Oh, he’s an industrial designer” although she wasn’t exactly sure what that meant or what he did. What she knew was his silence at dinnertime, the wordless way he worked in his beautiful garden, the careful craftsmanship he displayed in everything he made.
As an adult, she traced his path, filled with opportunities denied and seized–a path that took him from Berkeley through the war years with a stop in Topaz, Utah. And she found the markers that guided that path, the runner that survived the Utah dust and bloomed in her own life–the life of an artist.
Read “Tsugio’s Dream” on our Topaz Stories website
The Topaz Stories Team
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Media Coverage:
Watch “Utah Historians Run Exhibit on Japanese American Internment,” abc4 News, 2/19/2025).
Read “Utah Once Said ‘Never Again’–Do We Mean It? Deseret News, (2/26/2025).
Read “Topaz Stories Exhibition: A Way to Remember the Past.” SUU News, 2/7/2025.
Read ‘Topaz Stories’ exhibit travels Utah showing human side of WWII internment (KSL.com, May 24, 2024)
Read ‘Topaz Stories’ mines the history of a Japanese American internment camp (ParkRecord, May 18, 2024)
Read Remembering Japanese American Internment–Day of Remembrance (Rosie the Riveter Trust blog, March 24, 2024)
Read Internee’s story told with ‘Topaz Collages’ (Wheel of Dharma, Vol. 5, Issue 3, March 2023).
Watch Topaz survivors tell their stories (abc4 News, 4/22/2022)
Listen to the “In the Hive” podcast with interviews with Ann Dion, Jonathan Hirabayashi, and Topaz survivors Jeanie Kashima and Joseph Nishimura (KCPW, 4/28/2022)
Read How a Utah exhibit about Topaz Camp looks to find empathy in ‘an ugly stain on American history (ksl.com, 4/22/2022)
Read “Topaz Stories rise from the dust,” (Department of Culture & Community Engagement, 4/2022)
Listen to KQED Forum, Day of Remembrance interview with Ruth Sasaki, 2/15/2022
Listen to Max Chang and Ruth Sasaki interviewed (KRCL RadioActive, 2/9/2022
Read On Topaz Stories and ‘Authentic Voice’, the Discover Nikkei interview with Ruth Sasaki (10/14/2022)
Listen to Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration on Brad Westwood’s “Speak Your Piece” podcast featuring Ruth Sasaki and Jonathan Hirabayashi (6/2/2021)