Mr. Robert Sandler hosted a speaker this past Wednesday in his AP U.S. History class . Mr. Don Oshima is the grandfather of his current APUSH student Ty Oshima. Below is a bio and pictures. He spoke to students on Japanese-American internment. Many thanks to Ty and Mr. Sandler for sharing this with the Stuy community!
Don Oshima was born on September 18, 1939 in the Bay Area of California, the 7th living child of Japanese immigrants. In 1942, at the age of three, Don and his family of nine were sent to the Tanforan Racetrack Assembly Center in San Bruno, CA, where 8000 Japanese(-Americans) were detained and processed for forced relocation and internment. Don spent his early years at the Topaz War Relocation Center in the desert of Utah. During the war, some of his siblings were able to leave the camp and find work, as long as they did not return to the West coast. Two of his sisters found work as housekeepers in St. Paul, Minnesota and his eldest brother worked in a factory in Cleveland before moving to Minneapolis with another brother. At the war’s end, the rest of the family moved to the Twin Cities and lived in a hostel, having nothing left for them in California.
