When I was in elementary school, my family hosted an exchange student from Japan. Her name was Yoshimi. We were already a family of eleven, so I suppose my parents figured what’s one more?

About a month before her arrival, I saw a scene in some movie while at a friend’s house that slithered into my young, impressionable brain like a snake. It involved a Japanese college girl viciously attacking a Caucasian girl from behind while she was jogging on campus.

Photo by Aleyna Rentz on Unsplash

At the time, my family lived on a small lake on the outskirts of town. I doubt I had much—if any—other experience with Japanese people. So for the next few days and weeks, in anticipation of Yoshimi’s arrival, I was silently terrified. I would lie awake at night thinking up all kinds of worse case scenarios. I became convinced Yoshimi was going to hurt me, my parents, or siblings like the mean Japanese girl in the movie.

I didn’t have the critical thinking skills yet to put it into perspective. That one fictional storyline is all it took to plant a harsh preconception in my brain. 

As it turns out, of course, Yoshimi was a lovely and kind girl (and brave for moving in with our mass, motley crew!). I can still clearly picture her in a beautiful red and blue kimono she’d brought with her. She even let me try it on.

She also brought us presents! Lovely little gifts including chopsticks, coin purses, and folding fans with intricate designs of cherry blossoms, bamboo, and pine. Oh, I loved those fans! And I remember sitting around the table with my sisters as she taught us how to make origami boats, swans, and teacups out of shiny, colorful square papers.

Thanks to a real-life relationship, my distorted fear about a particular ethnic group evaporated.

But what if that fear had never been counter-balanced? What if it had gone unchallenged? What if it had been fed with another false narrative? And another?

Memories of Yoshimi and those early fears came flooding back to me recently while working on a story called “Without Due Process” in Edina Magazine. It’s based on an interview I had with a persevering and gracious Japanese American woman named Sally Sudo.

After Japanese planes bombed the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941—Sally, who was six-years-old—was forced out of her home by the U.S. Government and into a desolate Japanese American internment camp. So were her parents, nine siblings, and 120,000 other citizens living on the West Coast who had even as little as one-sixteenth Japanese heritage in them.

As hard as it is to believe, there was widespread public approval for this mass incarceration. Why? Because of distorted fear and paranoia. Propaganda warned that anyone who looked like the enemy might be spies and compared them to monkeys and even rats.

Sally—now a grandma, retired teacher, and former Chair of the Japanese American Citizens League—is on a mission to help others realize how easy it is for public opinion to be swayed through false narratives. No matter what the topic, no matter which side of the fence, she’s encouraging people to stay on guard, stand up for injustice, and pause to ask important questions, such as Where did this originate from? What is the evidence supporting it?

I invite you to read my full story of Sally Sudo in the November issue of Edina Magazine here.

I’m Julie Jo Severson, mom to three teens, freelance writer, editor, and co-author of HERE IN THE MIDDLE: Stories of Love, Loss, and Connection from the Ones Sandwiched in Between. 

This blog, Carvings on a Desk, is where I reconnect with my own voice swirling around in the middle. Read other recent stories.

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