Japanese-American granddaughter questions internment
From: MPR News Stations
Series: MPR News' Youth Series
Length: 06:43
Mara Kumagai Fink, a senior at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN set out on a quest to interview surviving family members who spent years in internment camps during WWII. Growing up, Mara's grandmother had told her that the internment was "fine." Mara didn't believe her. She visited the camps to piece together what life was like and the disruption it caused in their lives. She struggles to understand why she feels angrier than her relatives seem to.
Mara's grandfather worked for the military intelligence so he was free to come and go from the camps recruiting soldiers while his family was locked inside. This fall Congress is expected to approve Congressional Gold Medals for those Japanese Americans, including Mara's grandfather, who helped the war effort.
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Piece Description
Mara Kumagai Fink, a senior at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN set out on a quest to interview surviving family members who spent years in internment camps during WWII. Growing up, Mara's grandmother had told her that the internment was "fine." Mara didn't believe her. She visited the camps to piece together what life was like and the disruption it caused in their lives. She struggles to understand why she feels angrier than her relatives seem to.
Mara's grandfather worked for the military intelligence so he was free to come and go from the camps recruiting soldiers while his family was locked inside. This fall Congress is expected to approve Congressional Gold Medals for those Japanese Americans, including Mara's grandfather, who helped the war effort.
Broadcast History
First broadcast on MPR News 9/20/10
Transcript
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/17/youth-radio-internment/
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:(note pronouncer on Mara's middle name: Kumagai: COO-mah-guy)
Next... a personal story from a youth reporter... that begins in December, 1941.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into World War II. And it also began a devastating period for Japanese Americans in the United States.
In the following months, more than 110-thousand of them were rounded up and sent to internment camps scattered around the western United States. The government was worried they might be aiding the Japanese army, even though many had been in the United States for decades and had children who were American citizens.
One of the families affected was Mara Kumagai (COO-mah-guy) Fink's. The college senior spent her summer visiting the camps and uncovering what happened to her family during the war.
She filed this story for Minnesota Public Radio:
OUTRO:Mara is a senior at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She's received a grant from the college to create a program that teaches elementary students in Minnesota about the history of the Japanese-American internment.
Photographer Ansel Adams took photos of the camp where Mara's grandmother was held. You can seem them at (your station's website)
Additional Credits
Produced by Sasha Aslanian, edited by Bill Wareham
fyi: Photo available from the Post-Intelligencer Collection that shows Mara's grandmother being escorted off Bainbridge Island, WA on her way to the internment camp. email saslanian@mpr.org
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Elena Botkin-Levy
Posted on October 17, 2010 at 04:23 PM | Permalink
beautiful!
I love this piece! It stays personal while offering a real exploration of family history in a larger cultural context. The progression of the piece felt very natural and and it's well written!