![]() I want to share this article by Dan Rather about Mitsuye Endo who just received the Presidential Citizens Medal posthumously from President Biden. Like Ruth Asawa, Mitsuye Endo was incarcerated in a detention camp as a young woman. She became the plaintiff in a law suit brought by the Japanese American Citizen's League that challenged the legality of this incarceration. After she won her case, most of the camps were closed. I hope that my book, A Line Can Go Anywhere, brings attention to the injustice of Executive Order 9066 at a time when politicians are talking again about mass detention and the incarceration of families. Ruth was resilient, but she experienced heart rending family separation. Her father was sent to a separate prison from the rest of the family because the government viewed him as suspicious. His leadership in the small Japanese American community of Norwalk was his only "crime." Ruth did not see him for five years. Her mother did not speak English and it was up to the children, Ruth and her siblings, to write to government authorities to try to find her father and reunite the family. Ruth was also separated from her younger sister, who had been sent to Japan before the war to visit family.
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Caroline McAlisterCaroline is an avid reader, children's writer, and teacher. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and dog. Check out her bio for more! Archives
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