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News staff writer
February 14, 2007
Four native Hood River Valley residents
will be among the speakers at Sunday’s Day of Remembrance events:
Sab Akiyama
Sab Akiyama, who will present his experiences living in Hood River
following the Pearl Harbor bombing, was born in Hood River in 1924. He
attended Oak Grove School in grades 1-8, and Hood River High School
grades 9-11.
Akiyama was sent to Tule Lake Internment Center on May 13, 1942,
enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944, and was discharged in 1946. He then
earned his degree in optometry from Pacific University in Forest
Grove, 1946-51.
Virginia Euwer Wolff
Renowned children’s book author Virginia Euwer Wolff was born to Upper
Valley residents who had arrived in 1911. She spent her formative
years in the woods south of Parkdale.
Her book “Bat 6,” which deals with discrimination against minorities
in the Hood River Valley during the mid-21st century, was the “Hood
River Reads” title in 2006.
Wolff writes that her daily life, like that of all children of the war
years, was shaped by hometown as Home Front. With adult hindsight she
remarks on the conversations and the silences of that complicated time
in our history.
Mitzi Asai Loftus
Mitzi Loftus and her family were interned on May 13, 1942, and
returned to Hood River in 1945.
She and her brother, Dick Itsu, were the first Japanese-American
children to re-enter schools in Hood River following World War II.
She said her presentation will be “a firsthand view of events before
and after the Japanese-Americans were removed and later returned home
to Hood River.
“I have participated in at least two Day of Remembrances in Eugene and
am glad to see that Hood River is having its first such, since it is
my hometown and site of particular post-war discrimination which I
experienced in the first person.”
Loftus was born in Hood River, graduated from Hood River High School
in 1950, and earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from the
University of Oregon in 1954 and 1962. She was a Fulbright teacher to
Japan in 1957-58, and retired from secondary school teaching and
English as a Second Language at Southwestern Oregon Community College,
Coos Bay.
Loftus was evacuated from Hood River on May 13, 1942, with her family,
to Pinedale Assembly Center near Fresno, Calif., and then to Tule Lake
Relocation Center and later to Heart Mountain Relocation Center.
Linda Tamura
Dr. Tamura’s topic will be “With Pride They Served: Japanese American
Servicemen in World War II.” She has been a Professor of Education at
Willamette University in Salem for the past 12 years.
“I’ll be including local examples of the service that Japanese
Americans gave our country while their families were incarcerated
during the war,” Tamura said. “Hood River’s my birthplace and where I
call home. I’m an orchard kid who grew up on my parents’ apple and
pear orchard.
“The Day of Remembrance helps us to reflect on the painful past but,
in doing so, we remember, learn and can contemplate a more positive
future.” |
