I've started researching my next novel, tentatively titled Seventeen Year Cicada. It's a ghost story set in a Japanese internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, about a relocated family of Issei and Nisei and the struggles that go on internally, in the family. And past misdeeds.
Anyway, I was telling my father about the novel and he said "Hold on," and went to the basement, and came back with this photo. It's of his first grade class in Wilson, Arkansas, 1945. They bussed in kids for school, since the Jerome Internment Camp over-ran the Jerome schools.
All my father can remember was the older boy's name was Hank Sano and was quite good at baseball. And he told a story of visiting their tenement house and being amazed at the smoothness of the floors.
Thought I would share because this excites me. I love making connections.
That fine specimen is my father. He is 72 now. We don't call him "Gramps," we call him "Grumps."
Very cool. I look forward to reading this book.
ReplyDeleteHey John, my guess is you've read Otsuka's book, When the Emporer Was Divine? Set in Calif, but gives a nice voice to the families in interment camps. I interviewed a woman once whose father and grandfather were in the Ark camps. They were both doctors and stayed in the Ozarks after their interment, which is how she wound up in Springfield. She's a fiber artist now here in town (and that's what my article was about -- her art).
ReplyDeleteEager to see where you go w/ this!
Karen Culp