Interviews

1. Backstory of Parents

2. Parent’s Marriage

3. Adoption Story

4. Reiko's Name

5. Moving to Torrance

6. Voluntarily Moving to Salt Lake City, Utah

7. Parents in Utah

8. Topaz Visit as a Child

9. Coming back to Los Angeles after the war

10. Finding out about adoption

11. Kent State Shooting, Ohio

(b. 1939) a businesswoman whose family volunterily moved to Salt Lake City in Utah during the war.

Finding out about adoption

And so my theory is if the child looks like the parents or the parents look like the child, they should never tell the child that they’re adopted because little kids don’t understand why their mother gave them away for whatever, right? But I never knew that.

And I found out when I was in my thirties. And we talked about it one time because we had a big argument. My mom and I were very strong-minded, both of us, you know, so we were often at loggerheads and something had happened that it was really a trivial thing. But we sort of went to battle over that.

adoptions identity

Date: May 13, 2022

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Evan Kodani

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

Interviewee Bio

Reiko T. Sakata was adopted from an orphanage in Los Angeles in 1939 at 5 months old by Issei parents. To avoid incarceration, the family moved with other Japanese to Salt Lake City, Utah until 1948. Returning to Los Angeles, her parents ran a laundromat in East Los Angeles, where she grew up. Years later, she and her parents moved to Torrance. Reiko graduated from Torrance High School, then went to the University of California, Berkeley. After Reiko got married, she and her spouse moved to Kent State, Ohio and witnessed the “Kent State shooting.” She received her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in Business Development, and served as a faculty member there in Organization Development and Business. She returned to Southern California to help her parents before they passed away. Prior to her retirement, Dr. Sakata was an entrepreneur and businesswoman in a variety of industries and fields for 32 years. She currently lives in Monrovia, California. (May 2023)