Our family originally came from rural parts of Japan, so you could say farming was in our blood.

Our farm is south of Fresno, California, which is right in the middle of the state.

I grew up in this area, ran off the college, but came back to farm with my family.

The first time I heard Sukkiaki, we were in our shed packing peaches,

and it came over the radio, the classic 60s radio station, and there was a song in Japanese.

And I got so excited. I was about 10 years old.

And all of us in the shed, I remember my family, you know, my parents were there, my brother and sister, we all stopped

because it was so surreal to hear Japanese words on this pop 40 rock and roll station and throughout the summer like most

classic rock and roll stations they would play the song five or eight times a

day so we heard it over and over and over and saw and watched it climb the

number one in the charts, and we were so excited.

My grandparents immigrated in the early 1900s, and they came to this part of California as farm workers.

And like most immigrants were dreaming to buy some land and become established to plant roots.

My parents were born in this area area and they followed that work ethic of

hard physical work to pull yourself up, buy a farm, and become farmers.

In December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. And at that moment, anyone who looked Japanese became the enemy.

On February 19th,

1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066,

giving the government the right to incarcerate all Americans of Japanese descent.

My parents and family ended up going to the Arizona desert south of Phoenix and lived in a camp in barracks where 10,000 Japanese Americans were forced to live

for years and years. My mom was only 13 at the time. She was a freshman in high school. This was

swirling around her and she didn't understand at all what was going on.

...