Once West-Coast Japanese Americans were dispersed and more or less settled in ten concentration camps throughout the interior, letters reached out for reassurance like fragile threads to and from the outside world. A telegram, forwarded by the Red Cross, found its way to my grandmother in Topaz, sent by my father’s mother in Hiroshima (my Hiroshima grandmother who would not survive the war herself, buried under her house in Hakushima, a few miles from the hypocenter of the atomic blast):
Is everyone all right?…
Where are you? …
We are so worried …
Continue to Letters to Topaz: Venturing Out
Western Union Telegram. © pingnews.com. Licensed under CC by SA-2.0
Almost reads like a Haiku.