Leah & Japanese American Incarceration by Inheriting

StoryCorps

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Leah Bash is an avid runner, a dog mom, a wife – and there's a part of her family's history she can't stop thinking about. Both sides of her family were incarcerated alongside 125,000 other Japanese Americans during World War II. Her father and his six siblings spent more than three years behind barbed wire at isolated camps in Manzanar, California and Crystal City, Texas. After Leah learns about her father's struggles with panic attacks and is herself diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she starts to wonder: could those experiences at camp during World War II have far-reaching consequences a generation later? In this episode of Inheriting from LAist Studios and the NPR network, Leah has a candid conversation with her cousin Joya, for the very first time, about their family's mental health and the effects of the incarceration camp.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey listeners, we have something special for you, and it comes from our friends at the
0:05.0	Inheriting podcast, a show about Asian American and Pacific Islander families and how one event in
0:10.5	history can ripple through generations.
0:13.0	In the episode we're about to share with you, focuses on Japanese American incarceration,
0:17.0	which ended 80 years ago this week.
0:19.8	And 80 years might sound like a long time, but as we'll hear in this episode, just because
0:24.3	Japanese Americans could return home doesn't mean the experience ended for them or their kids
0:29.7	or their grandkids.
0:31.4	But before we listen, I'm here with the host of inheriting Emily Kwong.
0:35.6	Emily, thanks for joining us.
0:37.3	It's so good to be here, Jasmine.
0:38.6	Thank you for having me. I have known you for a long time. Yes. You came to StoryCorps as an intern back in
0:43.9	2013, I think. And your desk was like a sanctuary to me. I would go and sit and talk about things
0:53.3	and ask you how you made StoryCorps, how you cut tape. I would go and sit and talk about things and ask you how you made storycore, how you cut tape.
0:57.1	I really genuinely was looking for role models and you were my first. Do you remember this?
1:05.8	No. It's a mobile and it has words hanging down on little like strips of wood that say like remain intriguing,
1:15.2	human, kind, gentle.
1:18.5	I made that?
1:20.1	When you left your internship and this hangs in my office and I look at it every day.
1:24.4	Really?
1:25.5	Jasmine, I forgot that I did this.
1:27.7	Yeah.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -22 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.