Parting thoughts: Be kind to all that live
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Helen Tsuchiya's outlook on life can be summed up with the imperative, "be kind to all that live." That's also the title of the song folk musician Larry Long wrote about Tsuchiya and her time in an internment camp.
When Tsuchiya was 18 years old, she and her family were forced to leave their grape farm in California to live in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Arizona. It was 1942, and just a few months earlier Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor causing the United States to enter World War II.
Tsuchiya was an American citizen — she had never even been to Japan — but war hysteria ran high and many feared Japanese-Americans were a threat to the country. She and some 120,000 other Japanese-Americans were incarcerated for three years.
When the war ended, Tsuchiya and her family moved to Minnesota where her brother had been stationed at Fort Snelling. He worked as a translator for the U.S. Army during the war.
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Despite what she went through, Tsuchiya never harbored anger or ill-will. Instead, she practiced understanding and compassion.
In the Twin Cities, she started a new life from scratch. She worked as a medical secretary and, later, developed a knack for golf. She also spoke to students about her experience in the internment camps with the hope that something like that would never happen again.
Tsuchiya passed away on Feb. 4. She was 92 years old. MPR's Cathy Wurzer sat down with one of her sons, Todd, to talk about her life.
Click on the audio player above to hear their conversation.
