On this date in history FDR ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps. Two-thirds of those imprisoned were American born. This took place from 1942 to 1946.

The government began arresting and incarcerating Italian Americans also, and this before we had even joined the war, and long before February 19. Then Italian Americans came to fight in the war while at home their families were arrested, jailed or beaten. 

Growing up in that Catholic school called Blessed Sacrament we learned to call Italians Wops, Japanese Japs, and Germans Krauts. Long after 1941.

And on this day in 2002, 22 years ago, Joel Lawrence Pinker died. At some point in the evening it occurred. I felt some monstrous grasp reaching into my body and tearing my heart out through my chest. And that was it. Done. I didn’t learn until the following day that he was gone but I was not surprised. The evening before I wondered what I would wear to work the next day. On the day when they would tell me that my son had died.

This is a photo of a card that the girl sent to me for one of the boy’s birthdays after he was here no longer. It looks exactly like him. And he loved dinosaurs in those days. The days when he was young.