Overcoming Tragedy at Manzanar: The Story of the Sakaguchi Family
After living in this country for thirty-four years and raising seven children, my mother, who was a schoolteacher in Japan before coming to this country, was doing stoop labor. She carried around the ashes of my brother, father, and sister for several years. When she received the government’s token compensation of $1,800 for the family’s losses, it paid for the gravestone under which the three are buried.
—Dr. Mary (Sakaguchi) Oda at Commission Hearings on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Los Angeles (1981)
The human story that unfolded in the serene landscape where the desert meets the mountains drew …