Japanese Americans recount experiences of internment

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, which sent people of Japanese descent – many of them U.S. citizens – from their homes to “relocation centers,” resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.  Every two years, people come from all over the country to Klamath Falls to remember the Tule Lake internment camp, just south of the Oregon border. Today, we listen back to a conversation we recorded at the Tule Lake Pilgrimage in 2016. We talked to Satsuki Ina, one of the organizers of the pilgrimage and a former resident of Tule Lake. We also spoke to former resident Jimi Yamaichi, and Akemi Yamane, whose parents were incarcerated there.

Also today we listen back to a conversation with Oregon author Mitzi Asai Loftus, who was born in Hood River on a fruit orchard and spent years of her childhood in several different internment camps. After leaving the camps, her family returned to Hood River. Asai Loftus spent much of her adult life in Eugene and Coos Bay and now lives in Ashland. She wrote a book about her experiences called “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace.”

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