Interviews

1. Family’s Japanese roots and values

2. The lack of discussion about family’s incarceration in Amache

3. Her desire to help at-risk and dependent youth

4. Her motto came from her mother

5. Unique perspective that a judge can bring to community organizations

6. How she transitioned from anthropology to law

7. Mother founded Japanese language school in neighbors’ backyard

Fumiko Hachiya Wasserman

Sansei judge for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in California

The lack of discussion about family’s incarceration in Amache

My family had albums of photographs from camp because my mother, who was fluent in French, English, and Japanese, was hired to work for the military person who was in charge of Amache in Colorado. We therefore had access to even aerial photographs of the camp. And so we as children were able to see what it looked like—we saw the barracks; we didn’t really understand the hardships as children, but there wasn’t a tremendous amount of discussion of camps other than when you were with other people, and something came up that they knew somebody, a neighbor in camp, there was not an extended conversation at the dinner table about the internment camps.

Amache concentration camp Colorado concentration camps imprisonment incarceration photographs photography United States World War II World War II camps

Date: July 27, 2018

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Kiya Matsuno

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum; Japanese American Bar Association

Interviewee Bio

Judge Fumiko Hachiya Wasserman is a Sansei judge for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in California. She was born in Torrance, California and grew up in Harbor City, California. She was the first Asian American female hired by the US Attorney’s office in the Civil Division, the first minority elected official in the Torrance School Board, and the first judge to ever serve on the LA Biomedical Research Institute. She currently serves in the Los Padrinos Courthouse as the site judge. She grew up in a diverse and welcoming neighborhood and felt secure in being Japanese American. She is involved with the Japanese American community, works to promote diversity, and she mentors lawyers and judges. (June 2018)

*This is one of the main projects completed by The Nikkei Community Internship (NCI) Program intern each summer, which the Japanese American Bar Association and the Japanese American National Museum have co-hosted.