It's the Brian Laris Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.

George Decay is with us now. George Decay. You don't have to be a Star Trek superfan to appreciate his work and his activism. He has a new

book that provides a personal account of a dark chapter in American history. Taked was a four-year-old

California kid when the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service struck Pearl Harbor. Just a couple of

months later, his family and many thousands of

other Americans of Japanese descent, were forcibly sent to incarceration camps. You may be more

familiar with the term internment camp, but the preferred term is incarceration camp. To Kay's new book,

My Lost Freedom, a Japanese-American World War II story, is also his debut

picture book, and it tells this story in a manner that is appropriate for readers ages 6 through 9.

So George D.K., welcome to WNIC today. So great to have you on with us.

Good morning. Thank you very much. It's great to be on with you.

The book's title, My Lost Friedman, Freedom, Powerful and Evocative Phrase, obviously. Tell us more of what happened to you.

Well, this is a children's picture book. So we tell the story with lovely pictures, really a gifted artist, Michelle

Lee, who did the drawings. And on the cover, you'll see me as a five-year-old kid with a shaggy,

black stray dog that we found behind the mess hall in the Arkansas camp that we were in.

And he became Henry, my brother, a year younger, he was four, I was five, our pet that made life behind barbed wire fences as livable and fun as

possible. So this is the story of how my parents dealt with the challenges of imprisonment and injustice. With their example, how they showed

resilience and creativity and protected the three children. Our baby sister was an infant, and we survived that

terrible experience as best as we could. And one of the most striking aspects of the book, I think, is the way it captures the

emotional and psychological impact of the incarceration on you and your family.

Can you share any specific memories or moments that were particularly difficult to revisit

and translate into a story that is for six-year-olds to nine-year-olds?

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