On December 7, 1941 the imperial navy of the nation of Japan launched a sneak attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Hawaii. This led due to wartime hysteria and racial prejudice to the forced evacuation and internment of 120,000 persons of Japanese heritage away from the west coast of America. My family spent from August 1941 through October 1945 in a concentration camp in the southeastern corner of Colorado, a bleak desert-like area of the state. This is my family, and that’s me the elder of the two sons dressed in my patriotic navy uniform…
About journeysofabentmind
Gordon is a Nisei, a second generation American of Japanese descent born in 1938 whose family owned a farm outside of Atwater, California in the San Joaquin Valley. His world was abruptly changed when on December 7, 1941 Japan’s Imperial Navy launched an early morning attack on Pearl Harbor. Thus began a chain of events that resulted in his family’s forced evacuation and internment in a “relocation center” in Colorado during the war.
After the war Gordon spent his teenage years in school and working on the family farm. He attended U.C. Berkeley and graduated in 1960 and went on to the Graduate School of Social Welfare at Berkeley earning a Masters in Social Welfare in 1963. He worked in a number of social service settings and last worked as a case manager for developmentally challenged clients in San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin Counties until he retired in 2000.
When his wife Barbara retired in 2007 they moved to Eugene, Oregon following their children and grandchildren. Gordon lives with his wife of 55 years and close to the four grandchildren and life is just good.