Leonard Pitts’ column on April 8 struck a chord with me (“Some of us will never be ‘American’ enough to satisfy the bigots“).
I grew up in a small, rural town northeast of Denver, Colorado. There was a fairly large population of Japanese families on farms there. The names “Hatasaka” and “Horiuchi” were common. Most of these families had at one time lived and farmed in California. Then they were removed from their farms and sent to detention camps.
Once the war was over, the families mentioned above moved to Colorado; their former farms in California having been taken over. These families resumed their farming; we called it “truck farming,” which meant growing vegetables.
My father’s best friend was named Shogo Horiuchi; I went to school with his sister Yayeko, and brother Egoro was a state champion wrestler.
This all occurred in the 1940s and ’50s, and unfortunately it’s happening again. It doesn’t help that the current occupant of the White House encourages such behavior. But we don’t have to follow his lead and do as he does.
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