“They still could do it, which is that they could make farmland out of nothing. That was the ingenuity and the hard work of Japanese.”

Every year my father had to go sign a lease and he’d go to the landlord's house. And I stayed in the car. He was never invited in to a white man's house. The landlord would bring the paper, and then my father would hold it against the door outside and sign it.

One of the comments my mother made was that she never thought that the government would ever apologize. So the most meaningful thing for her wasn’t the money, it was the apology to say that it was wrong, to admit that. 

“I remember my father saying how angry he was and that he would never again vote. And he never did.”

“After her child died, it was like a valve had broken loose. That was a side I had not heard from her. A side I hadn’t seen.”