But then, she said, “if the kids thought camp wasn’t so bad, maybe we did a good job.”
Many of the photographs of classes, classrooms, and preschoolers are from the collection of Eleanor Gerard Sekerak, a beloved Topaz High School teacher. Courtesy of the Topaz Museum. Artwork is reproduced from scrapbooks given to Tomiko Takahashi Sasaki by one of her preschool teachers, Alice Okita Abe. Takahashi and Sasaki family photos are courtesy of the Sasaki family.
About the contributor: Ruth Sasaki was born and raised in San Francisco after the War. The Takahashis, her mother’s family, 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 2018, R. A. Sasaki. All rights reserved.