Ameya Desai poses with Linda Horikawa, an 85-year-old grandmother who’s the topic of this 12 months’s profitable center college entry in NPR’s Scholar Podcast Problem.
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Talia Herman/for NPR
When Ameya Desai received the fourth grade prize of NPR’s Scholar Podcast Problem final 12 months, one thing stunning occurred: A neighbor reached out asking if the 11-year-old journalist would interview his grandmother, a survivor of the Japanese incarceration camps.
Ameya was amazed, shocked that she had by no means realized this historical past earlier than, one which takes place in her hometown, San Jose, Calif.
That spark led her to 85-year-old Linda Horikawa, who recollects being “shocked that somebody within the fifth grade was within the relocation of Japanese People throughout World Warfare II.”
Horikawa was hesitant at first. Then she thought: “It was an excellent time to inform everybody what actually occurred.”
The result’s Ameya’s podcast, Shikata Ga Nai, Far From Dwelling: Tales of Pressured Migration.
The story begins in 1940, on a berry ranch in Cupertino, Calif. “We had boysenberries, blackberries and strawberries,” she tells Ameya. “We had been very pleased there.”
However these pleased instances on the household farm had been quickly upended, when Horikawa was 2 years outdated.
“Following the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, there was a rising resentment in the direction of Japanese People, a lot of whom had been questioned about their loyalty to america,” Ameya explains within the podcast.
In 1942, america pressured roughly 120,000 Japanese People to depart their properties on the West Coast.
On the porch at Ameya Desai’s residence in San Jose, Horikawa talks about her experiences.
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Horikawa shares vivid, chilling particulars about life within the incarceration camp in Coronary heart Mountain, Wyo., like weapons pointed at her household upon arrival. They had been put in tar-paper shacks. Her total household shared one room with no working water, only a range for consuming. No particular person bogs, however a good row of bathrooms for everybody to share.
And it was three years earlier than they had been capable of return to California. Even then, it wasn’t simple integrating again to a neighborhood they as soon as referred to as residence.
“There was prejudice,” Horikawa says in a watery voice. “Youngsters would say to us, ‘your eyes go like this.’ Nevertheless it affected my mother and father extra. I noticed that the enjoyment that that they had in life was form of gone.”
Reopening a trunk filled with historical past
Our judges picked Ameya’s podcast from practically 2,000 entries we obtained this 12 months. They had been moved by Horikawa’s story, and charmed by the care and curiosity in Ameya’s voice and in her writing. Adelina Lancianese, senior producer of NPR’s Embedded, mentioned their interview has “Story Corps vibes.”
Within the seven years of the Scholar Podcast Problem, Ameya is the primary returning champion.
Final 12 months, she was among the many winners in our fourth grade class, for her podcast Far From Dwelling — A Story of Pressured Migration. In it, she interviewed her grandfather about his household’s journey from India to Uganda to america.
On this new podcast, Horikawa opened up for her younger pal a black trunk filled with paperwork that had been sitting in her closet.
Horikawa and her household had been despatched to an internment camp in Wyoming throughout World Warfare II. Her mom stored a trunk of artifacts from their keep underneath her mattress, and Horikawa has solely opened it a few instances. The monogrammed towel reads “Coronary heart Mountain,” the place the camp was situated.
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She rigorously dusts off a Ziploc bag holding relocation authority passes, identification playing cards they needed to put on always. There are newsletters and newspaper clippings in regards to the conflict, the incarceration camps and households being despatched again to California.
She holds onto a white towel her mother introduced residence from the camp, with “Coronary heart Mountain” monogrammed in blue.
After the household returned to California, Horikawa grew up in San Jose and have become a kindergarten instructor in Ameya’s college district. She taught there for 40 years and retired.
“I do not assume the Japanese individuals dwell on it,” she says. “Culturally, one thing that is occurred that is distasteful to you, you do not convey it up. It isn’t like an enormous secret. It is simply that you do not need to focus on it, since you felt ashamed that it occurred to you.”
Her mother and father averted conversations about it rising up, and Horikawa, too, hadn’t opened up the trunk in 25 years, till her interview with Ameya.
Desai holds the ID issued to Linda Yamamoto (now Linda Horikawa) by the US Warfare Relocation Authority.
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“Being a instructor, you need to additional kids’s curiosity in several issues,” she continues as she seems at Ameya, “And right here, I discovered a pal.”
Holding her pal’s hand, Ameya says attending to share Horikawa’s story means a lot greater than her large win.
“I’m honored,” she says. “It signifies that one other story won’t be misplaced in time, one other story which will assist individuals not repeat the identical errors.”
You possibly can take heed to Shikata Ga Nai, Far From Dwelling: Tales of Pressured Migration, right here.
