One day in 1992, I received a letter from a woman in Michigan named Grace Kikuchi. Grace had written to my publisher in Minnesota, asking them to forward the enclosed letter to me. She had read my book, The Loom and Other Stories, which had been published two months earlier, and wondered if I was related to her old friend from Topaz, who was a Sasaki. They had worked together in the preschools, she said, but had lost touch after the war.
I showed my mom the letter, and sure enough, it was her friend Grace, whose maiden name was Fujii. They began corresponding, and a few months later, Grace came out to San Francisco and we had lunch. As a testament to Nisei modesty, I came away from the lunch with no idea how instrumental Grace had been in getting the camp preschools set up.
I imagine, like my mom and so many other Nisei women of the time, she went home after the war and packed all those memories away in order to get on with her life.