A Japanese Name: an American Story

In 1942, when she was 15 years old and a freshman at Garfield High School, Suma (Kato) Yagi and her family were forced to leave their home in Seattle. Executive Order 9066 required that Americans of Japanese decent be imprisoned and Suma's family was sent to the Puyallup Assembly Center, then to the Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho.Through poetry, Suma found a hidden voice that allowed her to share her previously suppressed emotions about being uprooted from her home and being put behind barbed wire. She was compelled to share her experiences so that what happened to her does not happen again.