I was born in the Minidoka, Idaho War Relocation Center — Block 26, barrack 10. It was one of the ten American concentration camps — complete with barbed wire fences, tar paper barracks, and machine gun towers for holding Japanese-American citizens and nationals during World War II. Our crimes were working hard, owning valuable land, and running competitive businesses. The major offense, however, was being Japanese and looking like the enemy during a time of war. The punishment was executed without the commission of a crime and due process. For my parents and all my relatives, this meant three or more years of confinement in the Idaho desert. America did not exterminate us, but some government officials suggested sterilization. My other relatives in Hiroshima, Japan, lived in the family home 1,000 meters from atomic ground zero.

Although these events happened over sixty years ago, the effects still linger. The victims remained largely silent about the evacuation and detention. The Japanese value of “Gaman” or to bear the unbearable with dignity helped fuel the silence. The post-traumatic stress symptoms exhibited were similar to rape: denial, guilt, shame, depression, self-hatred, and anger. Their evacuation and incarceration were encouraged and supported by a diverse group promoting anti-Japanese sentiments on the West Coast: chambers of commerce, “Sons and Daughters of the Golden West,” veterans’ organizations, various farm organizations, local Elks Clubs, local Lions Clubs, candidates for elected offices, the “Oriental Exclusion League,” labor unions, various state granges, Hearst newspapers, some politicians, fraternal organizations, large and small businesses, individual citizens, the“Ban-the-Japs Committee,” the California Preservation League, and many others.

After the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor, it was not uncommon for hardware stores and local businesses on the West Coast to sell “Jap” hunting licenses. Although the individual designs differed, most stated “open season,” “good for the duration,” and “remember Pearl Harbor.” Similar licenses appeared after the terrorist bombing of September 11 in New York, and variations are still available on e-Bay or visible on the web today.

Our biggest enemy during this time was not all the anti-Japanese groups and racist hatemongers. Unfortunately it was the United States Government which so readily stole our lives. My Minidoka War Relocation Authority Resident Number was #11464D. I was named “Yutaka” after my grandfather. Its Japanese calligraphic character means “abundant.” For reasons unknown to me, my mother always told me it was “bamboo,” symbolizing resilience. Rather than living my life with a foreign name that sounded like “Yutakamatsuda” to non-Japanese, I use my middle name, “Larry,” to acknowledge the fact that I am an American. America is my country and my story is an American story.

My first role model was my father, Kiyoshi. For all that I have tried not to be like him, we are similar in many ways. He used his fists when angry and was an amateur boxer when young. Instead of fists, I fight with words and sharp remarks. Anger is our bond that we share. The betrayal by the government consumed him and burdens me to this day.

Before the war, Dad owned and operated Elk Grocery Store on Seneca Street in Seattle, Washington. After the Pearl Harbor attack, his white customers stopped their patronage. Some came to say goodbye, and others who had traded with him for years simply passed by without a word. A few months later, in 1942, when my mother was one month pregnant, the government gave my family a week to pack and leave their home. They could take only what they could carry.

He had difficulty accepting the fact that there were two Americas, and he lived in the one with less justice.

The story Dad never told, however, was that after being born in Goldbar, Washington, his family returned to Hiroshima for several years. He was ten years old and living in Hiroshima when his mother went on a “shopping trip” to Kobe. What she actually did was leave him and his sister with an aunt in Hiroshima for three years, while she joined her husband in America. Being abandoned by his mother was a traumatic event for Dad. Those same feelings of powerlessness were rekindled when the government incarcerated him. He had difficulty accepting the fact that there were two Americas, and he lived in the one with less justice. As much as he wanted to fight someone or something, it was futile.

Since cameras were confiscated before the internment, only two small black and white photographs exist of me in the relocation camp. In one photo, my mother cradles and protects me as she smiles in front of a tar paper barrack. She wears a white knitted sweater with cable stitches. My eyes peek over a wrap of wool folds. I sport a bald head and a toothless grin. If one did not know that the photo was taken in camp, it looked as if it were taken in an average rural setting. Everything appeared normal: a smiling mother, a baby in her arms, a clear sky, and clothes on the line. Looking at that picture now, I cannot imagine my parents waking up every morning in jail with their extended family and friends in the desert. In the barrack apartments, which were separated by nothing more than a sheet, each day would begin with visits to the latrines and the mess hall. All their activities took place in an area surrounded by barbed wire, as soldiers and machine guns pointed in at them.

After the war, my mother’s camp memories would be triggered randomly. She would say, “We had a wonderful grand piano.” That remark would be followed by “But we lost it in the evacuation.” “Lost” meant that they could not sell it before the internment, and when they returned, it was gone. I heard these stories at every family gathering: weddings, funerals, birthdays, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, and Christmas. Consciously and subconsciously, I absorbed these messages and emotions.

Because I was a baby and could not remember our incarceration, some people discount my experience as if it were not authentic. In response I always reply, “I remember a lot.” My poem entitled “Too Young to Remember” from my book A Cold Wind from Idaho, reads in part as follows:

In the French film by Philippe Claudel, Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long), he explores the theme of imprisonment and how prisoners physically begin to look like their prisons. I wondered if Minidoka internees took on the features of the desert, barracks, guard towers, and fences that physically and psychologically corralled them. Ironically when the soldiers removed sections of barbed wire to make clotheslines, no one crossed the void. There was no reason to escape. The desert was a fence and their skin color was their uniform.

My father carried his bitterness back home to Seattle. We lived at 921 Lane Street and shared the house with my maternal grandparents, the Yamadas, and a tenant in the basement. When I was about five, people used to say I looked just like my father. They called me “Little Kiyoshi.” At first, I took it as an honor. Once, some adults at the grocery store said that my brother looked like my father. I thought, “Didn’t they know I am ‘Little Kiyoshi,’ not him?” I moved in front of my father so that they could see that they had made a mistake. But they ignored me and continued to pay attention to my brother.

At Lane Street my brother and I slept in what was the dining area, and my parents shared the bedroom. Two other Japanese families lived nearby, and the Italian landlord had chickens in a fenced area next door. Our two-story rental house was an imitation brick in a semi-industrial area near a sheet-metal factory, a tire warehouse, and other businesses.

We lived near Gatzert Elementary School. Once at recess, I looked down the hill and saw a white ambulance parked at our house. I thought my grandfather Yamada must be ill. After the bell, I returned to Miss Collin’s second grade class where she sent me to the principal’s office. I was surprised to find my older brother, Alan, waiting to escort me home.

My father was in bed, his face ashen. His sunken cheeks made him look dead. Standing there, I remembered my Grandmother Yamada’s death when I was three. She raised eight children and began smoking cigarettes in camp. Her health grew weak in Idaho and three years later, she died of a heart condition. I do not recall much about Grandmother Yamada, except that my brother and I were playing and making noise when she was ill. Our mother told us to be quiet because she needed rest.

For years, I carried the burden of believing that we killed her. Periodically, I would ask my mother how Grandmother died, but she would never answer.

We remained quiet for a while, but resumed playing cowboys and Indians. Grandmother died shortly thereafter. I asked about the cause of her death, but Mother would not say. I felt guilty because I was convinced our loud noises caused her death. For years, I carried the burden of believing that we killed her. Periodically, I would ask my mother how Grandmother died, but she would never answer. When I was about fifteen, I realized that we did not kill her, but might have contributed to her demise by disturbing her peace. Finally, when I became an adult, I concluded that Grandmother was so near death that she probably could not have heard us, no matter how much noise we had made.

So as a seven-year-old looking down at my sick father, I kept quiet for fear of killing him, too. With closed eyes, he rested motionless in bed. Mother said he had a bleeding ulcer and collapsed at work. I imagined his stomach fill with blood and felt a strange sense of detachment almost as if the situation were happening to someone else. I wanted him to get well so things would be normal again. Over the years, he would be in and out of the hospital.

As an adolescent, I found it difficult to adjust to his illnesses and recoveries. It was as if my life was a series of one parental health crisis after another up to my late teenage years. Going to the hospital became routine; I felt caught in a vaudeville show where the protagonist falls dead and then resurrects himself to speak one more line only to collapse and rise again. As if by a miracle, both my parents began to enjoy relatively good health when I was about eighteen, and they remained that way until they passed away in their eighties.

Grandmother used to say she had an advantage because she was small, and it did not take long for messages to travel from her hand to her brain.

After Dad recovered from the ulcer, he spent most of his free time on weekends with his mother, Grandmother Matsuda, a very domineering and shrewd businesswoman. Grandmother used to say she had an advantage because she was small, and it did not take long for messages to travel from her hand to her brain. One of her messages was to attempt to convert my brother and me to Buddhism. My mother took immediate defensive action. She told us to wear our best clothes on Sunday. She brought us to the big Japanese Presbyterian Church building where the older generation worshipped and children did not attend except on special occasions. The minister sprinkled holy water on us, and my mother was happy that our souls were safe.

Baptized as Christians, we remained out of Grandmother’s religious grasp. Nevertheless, she tried to bribe us with money to join the Buddhist Cub Scouts. When money did not work, she told us that there were many pretty girls at the Buddhist Church. We were horrified because in our minds she was asking us to deny Christianity and take a heathen road to hell. Still, she was persistent because her afterlife was in jeopardy. Who would take care of her grave and honor the ancestors if we did not?

Dad never intervened in this struggle for our souls. He did his duty and took Grandmother and his sister mushroom hunting near Mount Rainier, and clam digging in Ballard. On one of these trips to the mountains, I became car sick. My grandmother commented that I had a weak stomach just like my father. After hearing this, I decided that I never would be sickly and weak like my father, for he was also the man I never wanted to be, given his frequent hospital visits and negative attitude. I remember we used to complain about him always saying, “Everything is no good.” He could only see the negative.

Gradually, he grew more and more reclusive. Before World War II, he had a place in the community as an independent grocer working with over a hundred Japanese grocers in a co-op. In camp, he was the manager of the canteen. After camp, he became a “handyman” at a third-rate hotel, which was a hard change for him to accept.

Because crowds made him nervous, he refused to go out and socialize after work. He spent more and more time with his mother and sister until his friends stopped coming to his house. At first, my mother wanted him to take her to the movies, but he always refused until she just gave up. One evening, she was ready to leave for a Japanese movie with her friends. Dad stayed home as usual. We stopped her at the door and begged her to come back after the movie. We made her a “pinky promise” about returning home because we knew what a burden we were as children.

As a youngster, I was accident-prone and very active. In Japanese, my mother described me as “gasa gasa” (rough). I was always rushing around and running into things. I fell out of trees, gashed my forehead twice, and required stitches for another accident. Once, during a family clam digging outing at Alki Beach in West Seattle, I slipped on a slimy wad of seaweed. Trying to break my fall, I cut open my right thumb pad on a sharp rock. It was a large gash that bled profusely. The outing ended, and my mother and her friend took me to Harborview Hospital. In an operating room with doctors and nurses around me, I heard a car start outside before losing consciousness. All I could think of was, “Did they leave me?” I said this out loud several times before the anesthetic took hold. I was more afraid of being left alone in the hospital with strangers than having stitches in my hand. Many of my childhood scars are still visible today, and I remain prone to tripping, falling, and experiencing weird little accidents.

While raising us, duty to her relatives in Japan remained an important value to Mother. When we received nice gifts at Christmas, she would put them aside and send them to Hiroshima. As children we used to complain that all the best went to Japan, and we got leftovers. She explained that our relatives had lost everything because of the atomic bombing. My brother and I concluded that everyone must have had foreign relatives who were bombed during the war. One year after the best presents were sent away, I recall we kept a fruitcake. My mother said it was a tasty treat. To this day, the sight of citron and candied cherries in a sticky loaf sickens me because it tastes so unlike cake and because calling it cake is just wrong. It also reminds me of our trips to the post office when we sent the best gifts to Japan. Mother would tow the packages in the Radio Flyer wagon and the most joyful part for us was the ride home.

The stress and strain of Hiroshima, camp and raising a family took a toll on my mother. In her own way, she left us when I was thirteen. She worked at a grocery store before the War, and injured her back after. She also did laundry using an old scrub board, which I thought was “fun” until I tried it and discovered how backbreaking it was. When she came home to recover after having back surgery, I entered her bedroom and sat down. She had a blank and distant look. I tried to engage her in conversation, but she stayed very disconnected. I attempted to pull her out of her depression by talking to her cheerfully. I even tried my version of hypnosis. I had her stare at a pinhead, relax, and focus. Verbally, she responded positively, but it was clear that nothing had changed. All my efforts failed, and shortly thereafter she was hospitalized at Western State Mental Hospital. The doctors recommended that the family commit her because they were afraid she might hurt herself.

After about a month, my father took us on a two-hour drive to Steilacoom, Washington where she was being treated. She waited for us at the turnaround in front of the hospital during visiting hours. Her arms looked like sticks poking out of a white smock. I would not get near her because she looked like a stranger. Nevertheless, she was happy to see us. During the visit, Mother told my brother and me that girls at the hospital saw our pictures and wanted to meet us. Out of the corner of my eye, two girls with red lipstick peeked around the corner. Why my mother wanted us to meet girls in a mental hospital was beyond me, but she was always nice to others and sometimes put their needs before ours. Even though they were mental patients, I thought the young girls were probably sweet. I concluded it must be a Japanese custom where my mother was just being polite to her friends.

Upon her release, she entered the state vocational rehabilitation program. The only skill she had was sewing, so she took formal courses and became a power machine operator. It sounded like heavy equipment, but it really was a sewing machine. She did piecework sewing jackets at Farwest Garments and got paid by the number of items she completed. The faster she sewed, the more she could make. She, however, found piecework to be nerve racking and extremely competitive. Being new, she was assigned jobs that took the most time, while the more senior workers were given the easier and faster work.

… she was always nice to others and sometimes put their needs before ours… I concluded it must be a Japanese custom where my mother was just being polite to her friends.

A job opened a year later at Roffe’s, a coat factory. It was not piecework, but a union shop that paid hourly wages. She asked me for advice and I urged her to take the Roffe job, and she did. Mother was especially proud of a picture she clipped from a magazine, with President Ford wearing a Roffe ski coat. This job worked out well for her, and she made friends with the only two Japanese women there. Although there were many Asians, she still was a minority since the Chinese dominated the factory workforce. In fact, the Chinese women had their own “subculture”: speaking Cantonese, bringing Chinese food for lunch and sharing it among themselves. In addition, they had their own non-worktime private projects. With the factory’s permission, they purchased coat materials at cost, and sewed the material on lunch hours and breaks. One worker sewed sleeves, another zippers and still another did the serging. After several weeks of passing the materials around, all who participated had jackets for their entire families.

With both parents working, things were going well for our family. At fifteen, I once sat down at the dinner table and asked where my older brother was. They said that he went to San Francisco and would be back shortly. Days and years passed, and he never returned permanently. His space at the dinner table gradually became cluttered until it was full of condiments and miscellaneous items before it finally disappeared as a place. Years later, I asked my brother Alan what happened. He told my parents he was leaving, and they didn’t believe him. My cousin saw him off at the Northern Pacific train station. My parents never went to the station because they thought he would be right back.

A year after my brother left, Dad could not stand up at work and literally fell down on the job. Naturally, he was let go by the hotel. He went to the doctor, and the neurosurgeon gave him one year to live because he was deteriorating so rapidly. My mother and I sat in the living room to discuss the options. She was distraught and confused. I stayed calm and added up what she earned as a power machine-sewing operator plus my check from a part-time job in the supermarket. I tallied our expenses, food, mortgage, insurance, and everything I could think of. We came up about $100 short a month which is equivalent to at least $1,000 today. I lied and told Mother that everything would be fine. We really did not have any options other than to hope for the best. Mother and I were in denial and never told anyone about my father’s prognosis, not even my brother in San Francisco. We also did not tell Dad because he surely would have died — he always followed the doctor’s orders.

To this day I cannot understand how we survived. During that time, I tried to live a normal high school student life. There was no one I could turn to for help.

I knew we were in deep financial trouble, but I kept quiet and waited for the inevitable to happen. I thought for sure we would lose the house and be turned out into the street — a teenage boy, recovering mother, and mentally deteriorating father. To this day I cannot understand how we survived. During that time, I tried to live a normal high school student life. There was no one I could turn to for help. There were no government agencies that would assist us that I knew of. I felt if we could make it until I graduated from high school, I could find a job and support the family.

During that time, I woke up every day wondering if something were going to happen. We took it one day at a time until weeks passed, months passed and finally one year. To our amazement, my father recovered and applied for a job as a janitor, which required that he pass a boiler-licensing exam. He was studying in the living room when he asked me for help. This was the first time he ever did such a thing. I read the textbook, which was full of technical and difficult terms. I tried to explain the boiler operations and concepts to him. We studied and reviewed the materials for hours, but he just never understood it and never passed the exam. I felt frustrated because he could not understand the material, and remained jobless.

Jimmy, his friend from the hotel, arranged a part-time job at Seattle University for him as a janitor in the gym. That was the happiest I ever saw him. He would come home and say that he danced with some pretty girls today. The gym class was short of men, so the girls recruited him to be their partner. Naturally, he would always say yes and routinely swept nearby whenever the dance classes started.

The second time he asked for help was when he was eighty-three and at a nursing home suffering from delusions about Hiroshima. When the drugs wore off and his mind cleared, he asked if I would take him to live in our house. I refused because I had my own family and a small child. There was no way I could take care of him. He kept asking until he passed away a few months later. Before he died, my mother wanted him to convert to Christianity, and he agreed because he wanted to be with her in the next life. This meant that he would break away from Buddhism, cutting his connection with his late mother and all his ancestors going back hundreds or possibly thousands of years.

To save his soul, my mother brought a Presbyterian minister to baptize Dad in the hospital. To my mother’s surprise, the pastor did not baptize him but asked my mother to join him in prayer. Shortly afterward Dad passed, my mother arranged a Christian funeral. When his body was on display at Butterworth’s Mortuary, his sister from San Francisco slipped Buddhist prayer beads over his hands. My mother discovered them and removed them. Over the next hours, Mother policed his body to make sure no more beads appeared, and they did not.

Looking back I think that the realities and the residual stresses of Minidoka, having children, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima exacerbated my parents’ illnesses. Times were hard for many Japanese after the War, and I learned to bend and adjust.

The Japanese-American internment camps also affected my friends’ lives negatively. In high school, my best friend, Richard, had a mother who became depressed. I told him about how we had saved my mother’s life by institutionalizing her. His family decided not to do this to her even though she had difficulty with reality, and her mental health grew worse. She changed churches, converted to Lutheranism, and finally took her own life with an overdose of pills. My other friend, Randy, came home after school and found his accountant father hung in the garage wearing a suit and tie.

Looking back I think that the realities and the residual stresses of Minidoka, having children, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima exacerbated my parents’ illnesses. Times were hard for many Japanese after the War, and I learned to bend and adjust.

Suicides were common among Japanese then. My mother would say that someone died the other day and that it was a suicide. That was all the explanation necessary. There was no need to ask, “Was he or she depressed?” “Why did they do it?” As a result of the numerous suicides and my parents’ health problems, I became more self-sufficient and resourceful. I grew up not depending on adults and not trusting the government. Years later, my wife would revise a famous quote for me, “No man is an island, except for you.”

In 2006, I returned to Minidoka as part of an annual pilgrimage, hoping to make peace with the injustice of the place. I wanted Minidoka to be ugly and cruel so I could say it was a horrible place. Only the broken concrete foundations, deteriorating root cellar, a stone chimney and Japanese rock garden were echoes of the past. There were no ghosts or spirits walking the land even though thousands had suffered, and some had died there. Except for a small bronze plaque, no sign of evil remained. Instead it was beautiful, lush and green. Nature has healed the land. But healing for me is not leaving psychological crutches in a heap on that land, and walking away cured. It is simply moving ahead, knowing that pieces and parts will always be left behind unresolved.

A quotation from Isaiah 2:4-5 brought me some comfort on this path: “They beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” As I gazed at the baby picture of me in the desert, I realized instead of swords and spears that…

Although anti-Japanese sentiments have subsided today, problems of racism persist against Asians. Recently in Seattle, a young Chinese doctor was walking home in the late evening with friends when a stranger called him racist names. The doctor protested saying that this should never happen here. The name caller slammed the doctor to the concrete crushing his skull, which resulted in several surgeries and months of long and painful therapy. My son told me about a similar incident that happened to him. He ignored the name caller and simply crossed the street unmolested.

A second incident occurred when I was traveling with my son, who was then twenty-five. Almost at the gate, we were about to board an airplane. I wore trendy eyeglass frames and a Versace raincoat. In addition, we were flying first class. But no matter how I dressed, we fit some government profile. The airport security person pulled me aside and physically searched me with a pat down. He put his hands on me in silence and felt me like a bag of potatoes. Not only did I get the full treatment, but my son was pulled aside too. A different guard searched his carry-on and made him open his laptop. Again the process was conducted slowly and methodically, with the agent operating in a stern, mechanical and superior manner.

No matter what, I knew I would board that plane. To me this was really just a show by security for all the other passengers to demonstrate how safe they were. It was just as Minidoka had protected America. Even though I was angry, I knew my place, which was to be pulled aside, and made into an example. I thought if I were a real terrorist, these security people would already be dead. But those thoughts fled quickly. I stopped and watched my son being searched. I hoped Matthew would not show anger and that he would not do anything foolish like my father. He handled himself well, and I was proud. My son learned the Minidoka lessons I had taught and modeled.

As Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ I tolerate the indignity quietly not because I believe I am a lesser human being, but because I have a more important goal…

Discrimination is a reality in America. How you react is the important thing. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” I tolerate the indignity quietly not because I believe I am a lesser human being, but because I have a more important goal. I will turn the other cheek because I want to move ahead to better things. Yet there is a cost.

Being part of a minority, I have learned to manage my emotions regarding what America did over sixty years ago to the Japanese. My anger is not a child’s mad hatter chaos, instead it is steel: forged in fire, folded a hundred times and tempered over and over. It is a samurai sword etched with ornamental scrolling lines above silver blood grooves and a razor sharp edge. Over time, I taught myself how to wield this symbolic sword so that innocents are not slashed and no harm comes to me. It represents the energy of the goddess of righteous indignation, and is only unsheathed to inspire my artistic voice. It is the engine that pulls forth the memories of pain and prejudice, transforming them into ink on paper. Keeping the sword sheathed and using it wisely protects me from the corrosive effects of anger. It helps ensure that its energy is used to enlighten and not destroy.

Calvin Tompkins’ memoir, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, has been an inspiration and comfort on my journey. Its teachings move me towards the positive and decouples anger from vengeance. Living well is my message to my son, Matthew. This of course has little to do with material things, but a state of mind. I am proud that he has learned it, and hope he never forgets. Good living is the ironic legacy of Minidoka’s pain. I carry this legacy as a former prisoner who was once an island now transformed into a peninsula. I have learned to live as a minority and manage my anger. Instead of coming to accept the injustice, however, I have come to accept my anger as appropriate. Minidoka, the nine other camps, and other FBI camps left a long and wide wake that far exceeded the event.

If we who have been betrayed do not speak up, then there are no victims, and no crime has been committed… It is not time to forget as some have suggested. Instead it is time to disrupt the silence.

Poetry helps me turn anger into art. Before all the camp survivors are gone, it is my chosen mission to tell the story of the Japanese during the War, a story that must end with us. Minidoka is my curse, and ironically it is my gift to pass on to Americans, reminding them never to let it happen again. “Nidoto nai yoni,” or in English, “Let it not happen again.” But my most important mission, however, is to give my son tools to protect himself from the racist ghosts of Minidoka alive today.

As for my parents, for all their faults and shortcomings, I can love and forgive them for the hard times we endured and survived. Living well is a lesson my father never mastered even though he tried. Mentally, he remained isolated in anger without a positive way to express it. He lived in a psychological desert of his own making, choosing to be another casualty of war and imprisonment.

Anger and resilience are at the core of my writings. America imprisoned 120,000 people, about two thirds of whom were American citizens, and used us. Able-bodied men from the camps were drafted to fight for a country that had imprisoned them, Japanese labor saved the Idaho sugar beet crop, and it was the Japanese who cultivated the deserts and brought the lands to life. Sections of the fertile Minidoka camp lands that the Japanese reclaimed were awarded to returning white soldiers after the War through a lottery. Ironically, Japanese-American vets were not permitted to participate. As a result, most of Minidoka effectively disappeared almost as if it had never existed. The final insult is that the two Supreme Court decisions, which upheld the injustices, are still on the books today.

If we who have been betrayed do not speak up, then there are no victims, and no crime has been committed. Without the stories, the camp internees become faceless statistics like highway death toll numbers. Even though it is socially unacceptable, I remain in anger and will not reach acceptance regarding the internment. It is imperative that I speak my mind to witness the injustice since there is no forgiveness for the unforgivable. It is not time to forget as some have suggested. Instead it is time to disrupt the silence.