This is my great grandmother, Haru Tanaka. She was a teacher, a kendo enthusiast, and a widow who raised two kids on her own. (2)pic.twitter.com/q306yY4dkU
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This is my great grandmother, Haru Tanaka. She was a teacher, a kendo enthusiast, and a widow who raised two kids on her own. (2)pic.twitter.com/q306yY4dkU
Like many Japanese immigrants, Haru was in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She thought it was an American training exercise at first, but soon was taken from her home, from her children, to a detention center on the other side of the island. (3)
Days passed. Weeks passed. She had no change of clothes. No contact with her kids. She learned she was being held simply because she was Japanese, and therefore a suspected traitor. No one listened when she said she was innocent. (4)
After several transfers, my great-grandmother was taken to a Japanese internment camp in Texas, where she stayed until the end of the war. (5)
People have always told me to write her story, but every time I closed my eyes, I did not imagine her poise and pride. I felt my own betrayal, and hurt, and rage. (6)
I did not see a hot, sandy camp in the desert. I saw turbulent, trash-filled seas, and when I imagined what it would be like to be forcibly removed from my family and friends, with no explanation of where I was going or when I would return, I saw riots. (7)
When I pictured who could survive in this world, the answer was clear. She would have to be a pirate. (8)
So that’s what I wrote—a futuristic, climate-changed, pirate story—because this is how I process the world, and this is how I make sense of what happened. (9)
I hope you love PACIFICA. I hope you love Marin and Ross, and their wild adventure. I hope it makes you think about things a little, and even if it doesn’t, I hope it’s a great escape. (10)
But whatever you find inside that lovely blue cover, I want you to know I’m grateful you gave my story a chance. Thanks for being a part of my life in some twisted, fiction-induced way. (11)pic.twitter.com/3rXGeZJC53
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