So in eighth grade when we studied American history, we had finished the chapter on World War II, and we were ready to move on. And one time somebody asked me what the boldest thing I’d ever done was, this was an interview of executive women, so most people gave some story about something that had happened in business. And I thought about it, and I said, “The boldest thing I’ve ever done is that in eighth grade, I raised my hand and I asked my teacher, in this classroom of all white boys and girls and me, I said why have we not studied about the concentration camps during” World War II? Not the ones in Germany, but the ones here in the United States where my parents were,” we didn’t use the word incarcerated back then, maybe we said interned, “during the war.” And the room went silent.

And my teacher paused and she said, “Well, what Wendy said is true. They did remove Japanese Americans from the West coast. It was for their protection. And she kind of left it at that. And I remember inside I was thinking, you’re lying, it’s a lie. But I didn’t have the fortitude to really pursue it. I was brave enough to ask why we hadn’t studied it, but I didn’t feel that I could take on my teacher, who said that it was done to protect my parents.

But I’m very aware that throughout my child–, and this is true of a lot of my Sansei friends, similar experiences, that our parents never really talked about what happened during the war. I just knew that it had a major impact on my father.