![]() And, she's become more involved in the San Diego community again. She now lives in what was her parents' home in Chula Vista. As a good parents would, they give their children a small amount of that money."Īfter decades working as a teacher in Los Angeles, Ochi returned to Chula Vista to care for her ailing father. "I don't mind sharing that they were able to put a new roof on their house at that point and do things that people have to do and for which they didn't have a lot of extra money. "It was so token compared to the three years of lost lives, businesses, opportunities, hopes and dreams," Ochi said. "The apology was even more important to our community for the majority than the actual token reparations," Ochi said.īut Ochi said her parents gladly accepted the reparations. In 1988, after more than four decades of being stripped of their dignity and forced to carry the shame of being targeted as the "enemy" because of the actions of Imperial Japan, the United States apologized for forcibly imprisoning 120,000 Japanese Americans and offered them $20,000 in reparations. Eventually they were able to save enough money to buy a home in Chula Vista. Her father worked in the fishing industry and her mother in a tuna cannery. Ochi's parents lived with another Japanese American family for about 10 years. And through the kindness of neighbors, the Nava family, that home and business was protected." And one particular family, Japanese American family, had a home and another had a small market right on Logan Heights. "Everything had been taken from us except for those places that were protected by good people," Ochi said. ![]() Ochi said her parents' ability to eventually reestablish themselves in San Diego was thanks to the kindness of neighbors. "They were proud Americans, so proud to be Americans, that there was a sector who felt that the best thing to do to show our pride and our loyalty to this country is not to make a fuss, but after the war, they were able to return to Barrio Logan." And that would be the theme of our community," Ochi said. In 1942 a traveling minister married them in one of the camp's barracks. They spent three years incarcerated in an internment camp in Poston, Arizona along with many other people of Japanese descent from San Diego. Ochi's parents, Ichiye and Akiji Ochi, were 20 and 21 when they were forcibly removed. Ochi said what she learned from the testimonies of 150 Japanese Americans during the Los Angeles hearing propelled her further to fight for reparations. They added wartime hysteria and the failure of leadership." They concluded that our incarceration was based on (racial) prejudice. ![]() "But the bottom line is the report that they were required to present. They collected over almost 800 testimonies," Ochi said. "The commission went all over the United States, nine different major cities with Japanese Americans. In 1981 the Federal Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, established by former President Jimmy Carter, came to Los Angeles. "The more we learned, it just not only angered us, it filled us with sadness about the stories that we had never learned and heard, because our parents didn't speak about it. "History really didn't talk about what happened to the Japanese people, only that they were removed," Ochi said.
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