I grew up with a surprising amount of family archives. Photographs, scrapbooks, and even my Japanese grandparents\u2019 passports, once nestled in old fruit packing boxes in closets and basements, now occupy space in my own home. As a third-generation Japanese American, the fact that I have so many of my family members\u2019 materials is both surprising and poignant. My father and his family were among the more than 125,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Like many, they were forced to burn most of their possessions that had Japanese writing, including my grandfather\u2019s collection of books and most of the family baby pictures\u2014anything that could tie them to the then-enemy nation of Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nAmong the archives is my father\u2019s unpublished memoir, Daruma: The Indomitable Spirit<\/em>, a chronicle of his imprisonment and release from Tule Lake, an incarceration camp in Northern California, where he spent nearly four years, from the age of 10 to 14. When I began to write my own memoir, A Place for What We Lose: A Daughter\u2019s Return to Tule Lake<\/em><\/a>, I knew that I needed to begin with my father\u2019s words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n