CCDC JACL hosted (from left) Densho Founding Executive Director Tom Ikeda, Fresno State University President Dr. Saul Jimenez Sandoval and author Daniel James Brown at its DOR event. (Photo: CCDC JACL)
By Marcia Chung
CCDC and San Joaquin Valley Town Hall held its annual Day of Remembrance on Feb. 17. Participants gathered to hear speakers Tom Ikeda, founding executive director of Densho, and author Daniel James Brown, who expressed how two unlikely people had a commonality to share stories of the World War II Japanese American experience on the West Coast.
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Brown remembered traveling through the Central Valley with his dad to visit flower shops they were supplying their flowers to. Many were Japanese Americans, and he couldn’t believe that they were rounded up and forcibly incarcerated upon the signing of Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He decided to tell the JA story in his book “Facing the Mountain: An Inspiring Story of Japanese American Patriots in World War II.”
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Although many Japanese Americans know about the rescue of the Texas Lost Battalion during WWII, there are so many others who are not aware. Ikeda then told the audience of his father’s story as a private soldier in Texas. A woman noticed his button on his uniform was in need of repair. She asked if he was Japanese, and he said yes, not knowing if it was a good thing. She wept and said that her nephew was in the forest in the Vosges Mountains in northeastern France that was rescued by the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and then hugged Ikeda’s dad, saying thank you.
On Feb. 18, Brown and Ikeda once again spoke to a packed house of community supporters as part of a series of world-renown Town House speakers.