So my mother
was nine months pregnant when she had to leave home.
Oh, with you with you, right?
Yeah, because they actually had to get up and
and out of their homes, leave their homes
in late May of '42
and I was born in the first week of June.
Wow.
So, so it was right after
they got into the camp at Puyallup that I was born.
So my mother actually got to leave
the camp to go to Pierce County Hospital.
That's where I was born.
To have you.
So, so your family had to transport a newborn,
to Minidoka
Yes, that's along with my two older sisters
who were like one and two at that time.
Wow.
So my parents and my mother's parents
were our family unit.
So what motivated you to be so passionate
about Minidoka and the pilgrimage
and, and just honoring,
you know, that tragedy in
Asian American history, I mean, why or why is it so important to you these days?
Well, I'll tell you, in 2008,
I went on my first pilgrimage.
And it was it changed
my life, actually, because
just being there.
On on the site
where I had lived.
What, 70 years before it was, I don't know, just.
Just to be there and that environment
you walk on there on the dusty ground and you feel the
the really hot sun was in the nineties because we went in late June.
And
I don't know just.
Hard to describe.
Just feeling connected to something, because
part of it, when you're on the pilgrimage, there are a lot of other people
that are there for the same reason. Right?
Just to honor their
predecessors
and every, every year, it's different
because you meet different people, it's.
This is very emotional stuff
because
I would think that, you know, even though you were a baby
when you went through this,
it's just knowing that your family had to go.
Through this ordeal,
it's important that people know history like this,
especially now in a time when we're like fighting for this democracy
that we have.
Since I was three years old when we were actually released.
I don't have any direct memories of it, I only know
what my ... stories my mother
would tell me and, uh.
So I go just to honor my parents,
because I know, I know.
Superficially, what they went to
and also my mother's, my mother's parents,
and just just to go back there and kind of reconnect and
and honor them is important to me.
And,
the reason I go, I've been going every year is because
I just want to be part of this thing where.
A lot of people, a lot of people who have never experienced that go,
and it's just, by the end of the four days, there's this bond that
that has been created with these people
and just knowing that the.
They're all connected.
It's just, it's just really a great thing.
I was going to read you this quote,
Please do.
That's it sort of jumped out at me.
That sort of
sums up what with the pilgrimage is all about.
But remember last year, last year.
During the inauguration, Amanda Gorman.
The young
youth poet laureate. Right.
She read that poem called "The Hill We Climb," right?
But in it,
right in the middle of it.
You can't have this as part of this thing, because I really
I always get all choked up when I read this.
"It's because being American"
"is more than a pride we inherit."
"It's the past we step into and how we repair it."
I thought that was just perfect.
It is.