Bill Shishima shares how he joined the Boy Scouts as a 12-year-old behind the barbed wire of a Japanese American internment camp, or how he had to work on a rabbit farm to earn his keep when his parents couldn't afford to move the family back to California after World War II.
The 81-year-old retired teacher answers the questions of those who ask -- school groups, news reporters and sometimes his children and 14-year-old granddaughter -- but he's never sat down and recorded his life story or that of his now-deceased parents, who lost the family's grocery and hotel business when they were sent to Wyoming's Heart Mountain camp.
"They just endured," he said. "My parents never talked about it."
Like many survivors, Shishima is now being asked to write down his memories with thousands of others before they're lost to time. (boston.com)
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