Perspective

I’m mostly jotting this down because I want to remember it and reference it in the future but thought it might also be interesting to share.

On my last stop today on my meals on two wheels route I had a longer than normal conversation with Dorothy Yoshida.  Dorothy is a first generation Japanese American.  Her parents moved here from Japan and her and her 8 siblings were born here in the Portland Oregon area.  Only 12 years separate those 9 siblings.  That in itself amazes me.

Dorothy is 92.  She told me today she was born in 1917.  Among other things I asked her if she remembered World War 2.  Why she sure did.

She spent 4 and 1/2 years in an Japanese internment camp.

She says she thinks about it alot and how hard it was.  She was trying to provide for her two children.  Dorothy said she was 26 when she went.  She said she was shipped to Idaho, specifically to Minidoka, and which I can see from the Wikipedia article. 

This is history alive.  One of only 9,397 people.  She said she had all her possessions taken away.  That is was very cold and hard and dry.  I sort of remember driving across Idaho to get here to Portland and how it was a dry, high desert sort of place.  I remember discussions of this in history class and the history channel but it’s something else to run into someone your delivering a lunch time meal for.

While she was talking I had to hold back for not getting teary eyed in front of her.

She said she lived in the barracks and that she made $12 a month delivering mail as a volunteer.  There were other jobs but the most you could get paid was $18 a month.

Perspective.  I was just thinking about how would i have felt at 26 to lose everything and get sent somewhere for 4 1/2 years and all of a sudden I’m almost 31 with nothing.  I’m amazed.  Something to think about when you’re thinking about your lot in life and how you got here and where you are going.  Doesn’t seem to bad compared to others does it?