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I am Daniel Kurland, the youngest child of Mariko and Norman Kurland. I am your grandson. I am married to Karen and I have a son named Joseph. As a baby, Joseph called you “Boom Boom”. Joe is now a 5th year Senior at George Mason University. I became a Middle School Math Teacher and work with students who have learning disabilities. Every year, I explain to young learners how your story inspired me to get serious about my education when I was younger.

In 9th grade, when I learned about how you and your family were sent to Internment Camps after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, I became curious and started to research what had happened. I found it difficult to understand why my grandfather Yunosuke was taken away in the middle of the night by men wearing black suits. My burning question was how you, an American citizen, ended up losing your home and behind barbed wire.

It took me decades to process how, under Executive Order 9066, your family was  ordered to assemble at Tanforan Race Track and given no time  to dispose of your property. Rather than allowing others to take your valuable possessions, you made a bonfire and burned it all.

About 10 years ago, my mom, dad, Dawn, Rowland, and I went to an exhibit at the Smithsonian entitled, The Art of Gaman (我慢). Despite your suffering, you were able to draw from an appreciation of common things, use what you found, and you thrived.

My mom shared the story of how you and she sailed in a terrible storm from Iwaishima to the mainland to seek work with the occupying American forces. By virtue of your gift for subtle flattery, you provided for your family, even if the treasures you brought home may have been meal-worm infested flour. Mariko hates doughnuts to this day, because they remind her of the bitterness of fried meal-worms. Later, my father, a young American commander of a small radar base during the Korean War, would call in his supply orders to you. He learned that you had a daughter, and he later married her.

I’ll always remember how you love to press flowers. Like the “Rose that Grew From Concrete,” as Tupak Shakur once penned, your spirit radiates beauty, despite stormy weather. As the author William Faulkner penned in honor of those who outlasted tragedy with grace,  In The Sound and The Fury, you “endured.”

                            Love, Daniel, Karen, and Joe, and Dolly, and Benny, our dogs