Montgomery letter: Minidoka

Jerry Sturgill’s piece caught my eye with the mention of Minidoka. He wrote of “the national heat wave of anger, fear and racial prejudice that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor.” I can only imagine the horror inflicted by that attack on families who lost loved ones, and on our nation as a whole. However, I would like to give a perspective conveyed by my mother. She grew up in the Willamette Valley where several Japanese families had established lovely homes and beautiful farms. She mourned as she told me how they were taken away, their farms abandoned, their homes left desolate. She remembered them as gentle, hard working members of her community. As my father often told us, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his fireside chats, would say, “Eleanor hates war, and I hate war.” Me too.

This story was originally published February 26, 2017 at 7:27 PM with the headline "Montgomery letter: Minidoka."