Gil
Asakawa
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 Satsuki Ina with her brother and mother in Tule Lake Relocation Center. |
And personal, too.
"As my son and I turned a corner, there was a big blown-up photo of my father, behind bars in a stockade," she says "I was stunned. My parents talked a little bit about camp, but not much. I just didn't know that much." Ina had been born in the internment camps at Tule Lake, California, and raised during the war along with her brother Kiyoshi, by her mother, while her father was held in a Justice Department prison camp in North Dakota.
"I was deeply stirred by this picture," she adds. "Back home, I went to a therapists' training where they asked us to recreate our family, and I didn't think anything of it. When it was my turn, I stepped into the circle and closed my eyes…. And had an incredible experience that I think was a recovered memory.
"I was a baby, but I wasn't in a crib, and I saw my parents' faces, and I saw fear. I was distressed by this, and I went to my mother. She said we didn't have a crib so we put you in a korii - a willow basket - when you were a baby."
 Dr. Ina today. |
Ina began talking about this memory with other Japanese Americans who were children or were born in camp, and discovered that, "All of them had gnawing experiences but had never talked about it."
The discovery led her to start a series of three-day workshops called "Children of the Camps, which she held for 10 years, during which people who had been children during internment came to terms with suppressed memories and the trauma of their families' experience, and how it had affected everything they had done in their lives.
"I was both participant as well as facilitator," she says. "I cried at every one."
Ina noticed there were consistent patterns of behavior in these former internees, including a lack of memories from that time, feelings of numbness, stress, somatic illnesses and even "a tremendous need to succeed and be accepted." The workshops explored the psychological consequences of internment and the ways internees have coped with the trauma in their lives.
"I was beginning to form this idea of racism as a mental health issue, and seeing the internment camps as racially motivated trauma. And, I realized the trauma for me was being held in the arms of parents who were terrified that they could be shot at any moment."
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After a decade of three-day workshops and hundreds of smaller panels and workshops at which she gets former internees to talk about their experiences, often for the first time, Ina created a documentary film, "Children of the Camps," which has aired on PBS.
She's coming to Denver for a Day of Remembrance event at the Buddhist Temple, in which she hopes to get Denver-area Japanese Americans - whether they were interned or not - to talk about their wartime experiences as a catharsis for themselves and a way to share their family histories with younger generations of Japanese Americans.
She hopes to help them remember their own past, while they make sure that the public doesn't forget about internment.
(NOTE: The Denver event will also be a forum for people who lived through the war years but were not interned to tell their stories. Because Japanese Americans living in Colorado before the attack on Pearl Harbor were not interned, they had had an entirely different experience, during which they faced prejudice and were required to register with authorities.)
Day of Remembrance/Children of the Camps Workshop with Dr. Satsuki Ina - 1-5 pm Saturday, Feb. 22 at Tri State/Denver Buddhist Temple, 1947 Lawrence St., free admission, includes screening of "Children of the Camps" documentary, contact Erin Yoshimura, 303-200-0031 or erin@empowerful.com
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