Lena Newlin
Lena (Sunada-Matsumura) Newlin is Yonsei and a descendant of Japanese Americans incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. She recently left behind a 22-year career in Public Health to focus on writing a book about her family history and is now an MFA student at the University of Wyoming. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Literary Prize and appears in Solstice Literary Magazine, DoveTales: A Writing for Peace Literary Journal of the Arts, High Desert Journal, and Enculturation. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming.
Updated September 2023
Stories from This Author
An Unsent Letter to My Nisei Grandpa–Part 3 of 3
Oct. 3, 2023 • Lena Newlin
Read Part 2 >> Dear Grandpa, On the last leg of our trip in Italy, we went to the capital of the Tuscany region. Firenze–Florence is a gorgeous city, with Renaissance era architecture and art. The city center has narrow, cobblestone streets lined with tall, terracotta-tiled buildings. The Arno River runs through it and colorful, picturesque houses border its shores. Michelangelo’s masterpiece, David, is only one of the many famous pieces of art in its multiple museums. There is so …
An Unsent Letter to My Nisei Grandpa–Part 2 of 3
Sept. 26, 2023 • Lena Newlin
Read Part 1 >> Dear Grandpa, I read that Japanese Americans in the 100th/442nd were credited with breaking through the Gothic Line in Italy. And that the Gothic Line was a defensive boundary built across the Italian Apennine mountain range by the German Army during WWII to maintain control of the area. It was the last great defensive position that the Germans controlled in Italy, and previous American troops had been unsuccessful at breaching it due to the rugged terrain. …
An Unsent Letter to My Nisei Grandpa–Part 1 of 3
Sept. 19, 2023 • Lena Newlin
Dear Grandpa, I remember you telling me a little bit about what you did in the war. I remember you saying it was depressing, that you had to collect your injured and dead comrades from the battlefields in the mountains in Italy. That’s about all I remember you saying. I never asked you about it, and you never offered more. I probably didn’t think to inquire. But now that you’re gone, I wish I knew more. So I went to …
