12/7/41 and 9/11/01 “Because I looked like the bad guy”

Shortly after September 11, one of the leaders of the Muslim community center contacted me because someone had told him about the work I had done with Children of the Camps. And he said, “In our community center we have many children who are being bullied at school and we’d like you to come and talk to the parents.” And I said, I would love to, I mean, for me it had a lot of meaning for me to be able to help children who experienced the same thing I experienced as a kid. Being harassed and bullied because of something that was completely outside of my control, but because I looked like the bad guy. So the stories that the children told us, it made me very sad. That the things that the other children were saying to them were things that clearly came from adults. That they had heard their parents say, that they hadcharacterized the enemy as dark-skinned and wearing turbans and anybody who looked like that. A little kid said, “They’re calling me Bin Laden.” You know it’s totally irrational and inappropriate and all of that, but it seemed to happen so quickly.

Being American “I love being an American”

I love being an American. I’m proud of the democratic principles, I’m proud of opportunity. I feel like it’s a very privileged way of living because of what America is all about. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but we definitely need a lot of improvement and we need more compassion and support for the rest of the world. This can’t last long that we can be so economically comfortable while other people are suffering. And it’s pretty much of an awakening experience to see so much hatred directed toward us and that tells me a lot. That that hatred rises up from some kind of suffering at our hands and that disturbs me a lot.

Fear “Get off my porch you dirty Jap!”

It was pouring rain and I was supposed to take the bus home from school. And to get out of the rain I stepped into a porch area, waiting for the bus to come, and all of a sudden, I looked over and this woman threw her window open and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Get off my porch, you dirty Jap!” And I was like, terrified that I had done something wrong. That something was wrong with me, and that she might hurt me, ’cause she had the ugliest contorted look on her face. Of course all she did then was close the window and go away, but I had nightmares about her face for months afterwards.

Identity “They changed my name from Satsuki to Sandy”

After we left camp we were advised not to go back to the West Coast ’cause they said there was too much hostility and no housing and my parents weren’t likely to be hired for any kind of work, so we went to Cincinnati. And it was primarily an all-white neighborhood, mostly very low income. I was starting nursery school and kindergarten. When my mother came to pick me up I remember the teacher saying that, “You know you have to change her name. Because if you want her to be a real American, she should have an American name.” So they changed my name from Satsuki to Sandy, so I was called Sandy ’til I was 35. And it hit me that I had spent most of my life using the wrong name and I wanted my name back. My mother got very fearful and she said, “Don’t do it. Bad things could happen. They wanted you to have an American name.” So she still had a lot of fear about what could happen. I felt great. It was a very important thing for me to do, because my father was a haiku, he was a poetry teacher and he gave a lot of thought to that name. And so I felt like I had to reclaim that part of myself.