by Ruth Sasaki
“‘The recreation halls where we held the school were empty barracks.'”
After my mother died in 2011, my sisters and I were clearing out boxes in the basement of her house in the Richmond District in San Francisco when we found a dusty old box labeled “Topaz.”
In it was a worn photo album, along with papers, letters, a few mementos, and simple paper scrapbooks of paintings and drawings that had been done by preschool students in camp.
We knew that my mom had been in Topaz, and that she had worked in the preschools.
(Berkeley, CA), 1939
We knew that she had graduated from UC Berkeley in 1939 with a degree in education.