At age five, Marielle Tsukamoto and her family were forced to leave their farm in Florin, Calif. to live in an internment camp following the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941. She told her story to an packed audience inside Hinde auditorium Thursday afternoon.

In 1942, President Roosevelt signed a bill ordering that all Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry be removed from the western coastal regions because of fear that they would join the enemy if Japan attacked again. Tsukamoto said that 110,000 people were forced to live in the internment camps.

Nearly 60,000 of those people were children and about 70 percent were American citizens.

“If you remember how people felt after 9/11, that’s how people felt after Pearl Harbor,” Tsukamoto said. “When you base your actions on emotions, you do things that are illogical.”

Tsukamoto was taken to an internment camp in Arkansas called Jerome in 1942. The camp was away from much civilization and was surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

While there, she lived with her parents in a 16 by 20 foot room in a barrack that was furnished with nothing but three cots and a wood burning stove. The community bathroom was outside of the barracks.

It housed toilets that were only 24 inches apart and an eight by 10 foot shower room with eight nozzles to share.

“There was absolutely no privacy,” Tsukamoto said.

After living in Jerome for four years, the Tsukamotos were allowed to leave so that the camp could be turned into a holding camp for German prisoners of war.

In 1988, Tsukamoto’s mother, Mary, was a strong force for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which prompted the U.S. government to apologize and offer $20,000 compensation to surviving internees. Tsukamoto received this compensation and in doing so believes it is her responsibility to educate others on her experiences.

“People like me have an obligation to teach the next generation about our history and to inspire them to preserve civil rights so that injustice for another group won’t be repeated,” Tsukamoto said. “We have to learn from the lessons of the past to build a better future.”

Victoria Teppone, freshman nursing major, was intrigued by the story of Tsukamoto’s grandparents, who weren’t allowed citizenship nor allowed to purchase property after they migrated to the United States.

“As an immigrant myself, it was interesting to hear the experiences of others and the problems they encountered,” Teppone said, who came to America six years ago from Russia.

Andria Geiser, senior criminal justice major, attended the event because it was recommended by a professor and she found the topic interesting.

“Her story was extremely informative and her reason for speaking out was very empowering,” Geiser said. “It is so sad how so many people were treated so poorly.”

Sheila Macias, of the Communications and Engagement Center, helped host the event as part of the One-Book program. She and faculty coordinator Sheree Meyer invited Tsukamoto to speak after hearing her story at a One-Book luncheon.

“She spoke about not only her own experiences, but also universal issues such as accountability and social injustice that are important for everyone to hear,” a teary-eyed Macias said, after hearing Tsukamoto’s story.

Tsukamoto lives by the example of her mother, who was a respected teacher, author and an avid activist for civil rights. The elementary school in Elk Grove that her mother once attended and was segregated in as a child was renamed the Mary Tsukamoto Elementary School in her honor.

Her mother was selected by the California State Senate as a Notable Californian. She has donated her photos, letters, documents and artifacts from the internment camp to the Japanese-American archival collection at Sac State.

Since her mother’s death in 1998, Tsukamoto has been carrying on her mother’s cause and speaking out to vast audiences about social injustice and civil rights. In January this year, Tsukamoto began working with the California Museum of History in the Time of Remembrance program to illustrate the experiences of World War II.

Brittany Bottini can be reached at [email protected].