The memorial service earlier this month for Chieko Harano was an occasion 
for a grand gathering of various branches of the Harano family. I went 
looking for the two little boys who rode with Roy and Kaz and Jo Ann and I 
and two of our boys to Los Angeles for a national Jaycee convention in a 
station wagon borrowed from George Harano.

I started to approach some younger members of the gathering, then realized 
they were too young. I would need to look among those dignified-looking 
men with graying beards and balding heads. How did that happen?

Almost 50 years had flown by. Even so, the memory of driving halfway across 
the country with four adults and four small children in one borrowed station 
wagon has not faded.

What good people the Haranos were in our town! It was always hard to imagine 
tiny, gentle Chieko uprooted from her California home and taken to a wartime 
internment camp, a prison for dangerous-looking people who might possibly be 
enemies of our country.

The circumstances are different, but it does not take a prophet to predict 
that 50 years from now we will find descendants of today�s immigrants filling 
vital and respected roles in our communities and our nation.

Meanwhile, what a wonderful project it would be for some high school or 
college history class to record and collect oral history interviews with the 
Americans of Japanese descent living in this region. It is a part of our 
history that needs to be documented and preserved. Maybe the new curator for 
the Lincoln County Museum can get that moving.       
                                 ...