Return to Japantown, 1945

ceayr
Photo By C. E.  Ayr

Father cautioned that it would not be the same. We were lucky, he said, to have kept the place at all. Mother said nothing, but we all knew that her family had owned that particular block since well before the turn of the century. The only reason we still had it was that the deed was in my great uncle’s name. An Anglo name.

I was so young when we were forced to leave that I had only vague recollections of the place. My childhood memories were all of the internment camp, of barbed wire and cold and incessant boredom.

 

Friday Fictioneers

 

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Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans and Italian-Americans to internment camps.

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  1. Lynn Love

    So many injustices like this were committed during the war and not just in the States – the UK had its fair share of internment camps for Italian and German immigrants. Injustice is the trademark of war.
    A sad tale but very well told and a great choice of voice too – very affecting

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