No more than five feet tall, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston must stand on a step stool in order to address her audience at Fresno City College, Aug. 25. She wore long sleeves and pants despite the 100 degree weather, lingering just outside the theater.

Upon my adviser Greg Stobbe’s request, I attended the event. I was hesitant to comply because the first football game of the season was held at the same time. But, I realized that this would be a once in a lifetime event.

I didn’t know what to expect. Was she simply going to talk about her book, or was she going to say something that would inspire me? Would this add to my passion for journalism even more?

Her novel, Farewell to Manzanar, was published in 1973 and describes Houston and her family’s experience before, during and after their internment at the Manzanar concentration camp, 226 miles East of Los Angeles.

She explained that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, her father was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as part of the Executive Order 9066. As she spoke the numbers, “nine . . . zero . . . six . . .six,” I could feel and see the emotion hidden behind those four simple numbers.

She continued to share pieces of her time in the camp like mentioning the military guards posted around the corners and being supplied with World War I (WWI) wool uniforms to keep warm. She also shared that her nephew was born while staying in the camp.

Her nephew was the catalyst for the book, as he knew nothing about where he was born or what happened at Manzanar. Houston wanted to write a memoir for her family in oder that the younger generations would remember and be informed of their family’s history.

Co-author and husband, James Houston, would not let her keep her story to herself. So, he pushed Jeanne to publish the book for a general audience. Soon her story caught fame, the book became a hit and in no time, plans for a movie were in the works.

Her story felt so distant to me, yet I felt compelled to listen. As she compared the way she felt after Manzanar to the emotions of a rape victim, I couldn’t help but put myself in her shoes.

What would I take if I was given one week to pack up my life? What would I do if my ethnicity suddenly became dangerous to the country I was born in? How would I feel?

Houston explained she felt guilty for the attack on Pearl Harbor; she felt guilty for being Japanese and she felt guilty for assimilating back into her normal life as an “alien.”

Houston also confirmed that she believed that something like this could happen again, if, we forget what problems it caused. From almost a year ago, stories of discrimination have been prominent in my learning from the Holocaust to the race discrimination after 9/11.

I vowed to never allow our world to forget the mistakes that have happened, to always remember the people that suffered all over the world. And Houston again built upon that same idea of remembering.

We need to acknowledge our mistakes and fix them. The government eventually repaid the Japanese-Americans, an act that is highly respected by the Japanese-American community because our government was able to admit their mistakes and compensate them.

Houston’s story was truly inspirational, she chose to confront her emotions rather than hide them. I learned that if there is an underlying problem, we need to confront it. And if we don’t, will it ever surface? Will the issue ever be solved?

I plan to teach my children this lesson, to admit my own mistakes and to remember my, and my country’s, wrongs in order to “do it right” the next time.

The video below is a documentary dedicated to remembering Manzanar.

For more opinions, read the Aug. 29 article, New York sojourn reveals heart of God.

For photos of the Manzanar concentration camp, visit Fresno Art Museum.