Ameya Desai poses with Linda Horikawa, an 85-year-old grandmother who’s the topic of this yr’s successful center faculty entry in NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge.
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Talia Herman/for NPR
When Ameya Desai gained the fourth grade prize of NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge final yr, 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 discovered 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 “stunned that somebody within the fifth grade was within the relocation of Japanese Americans throughout World War 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, Far From Home – Shikata Ga Nai.
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.”
But these pleased occasions on the household farm had been quickly upended, when Horikawa was 2 years outdated.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 direction of Japanese Americans, lots of whom had been questioned about their loyalty to the United States,” Ameya explains within the podcast.
In 1942, the United States compelled roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans to depart their properties on the West Coast.
On the porch at Ameya Desai’s house in San Jose, Horikawa talks about her experiences.
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Horikawa shares vivid, chilling particulars about life within the incarceration camp in 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 operating water, only a range for consuming. No particular person bogs, however a good row of bogs for everybody to share.
And it was three years earlier than they had been in a position to return to California. Even then, it wasn’t straightforward integrating again to a group they as soon as referred to as house.
“There was prejudice,” Horikawa says in a watery voice. “Kids would say to us, ‘your eyes go like this.’ But it affected my dad and mom extra. I noticed that the enjoyment that that they had in life was sort of gone.”
Reopening a trunk stuffed with historical past
Our judges picked Ameya’s podcast from almost 2,000 entries we obtained this yr. 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 “StoryCorps vibes.”
In the seven years of the Student Podcast Challenge, Ameya is the primary returning champion.
Last yr, she was among the many winners in our fourth grade class, for her podcast, Far From Home – Sugarcanes On My Mind. In it, she interviewed her grandfather about his household’s compelled migration from India to Uganda to the United States.
In this new podcast, Horikawa opened up for her younger good friend a black trunk stuffed with paperwork that had been sitting in her closet.
Horikawa and her household had been despatched to an incarceration camp in Wyoming throughout World War II. Her mom stored a trunk of artifacts from their keep beneath her mattress, and Horikawa has solely opened it a few occasions. The monogrammed towel reads “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 battle, the incarceration camps and households being despatched house.
After her household returned to California, Horikawa grew up in San Jose and have become a kindergarten trainer in Ameya’s faculty district. She taught there for 40 years and retired.
“I do not suppose the Japanese folks dwell on it,” she says. “Culturally, one thing that is occurred that is distasteful to you, you do not carry it up. It’s not like an enormous secret. It’s simply that you do not need to focus on it, since you felt ashamed that it occurred to you.”
Her dad and mom 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 War Relocation Authority.
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“Being a trainer, you need to additional youngsters’s curiosity in several issues,” she continues as she appears at Ameya, “And right here, I discovered a good friend.”
Holding her good friend’s hand, Ameya says attending to share Horikawa’s story means a lot greater than her huge win.
“I’m honored,” she says. “It signifies that one other story won’t be misplaced in time, one other story which will assist folks not repeat the identical errors.”
You can hearken to Far From Home – Shikata Ga Nai, right here.
