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BY: So there is this concept of "intergenerational trauma." So the idea being that people who lived through the incarceration experience, so the Issei and Nisei, suffered extreme trauma, but the idea of intergenerational trauma is that that trauma is passed down to the Sansei in successive generations who didn't experience firsthand the incarceration, but that somehow that trauma has been passed down, and sometimes it manifests in things like drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, suicide, those kinds of things. What do you think about that concept? Do you think it exists or not?

SM: Oh, I think it's true. I think it's true, and I remember Dr. Minoru Masuda was, I can't remember if it was psychiatry or psychology that he was a doctor of, but he was a professor at the University of Washington. And he did this study way back in the '70s that showed that the Nisei, his generation, had the same mental health trauma as Holocaust survivors. And we know that Holocaust survivors have passed that trauma on to the next generations. So I have no doubt that it had some impact on our generation. I don't know about the next one after us, but definitely on the Sansei generation. And I feel like I was just lucky to have positive outlets. So it wasn't drug or alcohol or any of those kind of things. It was like, we're going to win a seat in Congress or we're going to get somebody to speak for us. And I had positive role models and grabbed onto those to find justice and success, whereas some of my peers didn't. And it's a tragedy because we lost many people who could have been, who are smarter than me, who could have been much more productive, who would have invented cures for diseases, who could have done all kinds of things, who didn't find those positive avenues to get out of it.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.