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Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Laurie Sasaki Interview
Narrator: Laurie Sasaki
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Richmond, California
Date: April 16, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-slaurie-01-0017

<Begin Segment 17>

RP: So do you remember, there was a couple of very important events that took place in the summer of 1945, actually there was the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

LS: Yes.

RP: And later on in August, the atomic bombs fell. And you shared earlier that your mom was from Fukuoka but she had left from Nagasaki.

LS: Right.

RP: Did she, was she directly affected, not directly, but did she have family or relatives or friends who were affected by those, by those bombings?

LS: Yes, the family lived near Nagasaki. And Fukuoka's right by Nagasaki. So yeah, they were without anything. I mean, they didn't have anything there anymore. And my mother would send them salt and sugar and that's what they needed because they didn't have anything like that. And the clothing that we thought was just like next to nothing, I mean, she would send them everything that we wouldn't wear anymore and they just didn't have a thing so that just kept them going. So, yeah, they were... and even to this day all the men have died because of the atomic radiation. So, yeah, it just, you could just feel it. It was... but because my mother had done that, I remember helping her make up these packages and if she would send them a pair of shoes she always put one in one package and the other side in the other package. She never put them together because, you know, in case somebody went through the packages. She wanted to make sure that they got one pair of shoes so she would always put one in...

RP: And you helped her put these together.

LS: Right. Yeah.

RP: In Poston or after?

LS: No, after we moved to Richmond.

RP: In Richmond.

LS: Because at that time Japan had nothing. And so she used to make up these little care packages.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.