The Abo (Tanaka) Family, Survivors + Descendants

Mary Abo, Survivor

Minidoka is an important part of my family history because we can still remember being imprisoned for just looking like the enemy. If a giant wind turbine project is allowed to be built close by,  Minidoka will become an interpretative center  separated from its essence as a prison camp.   The experience of being  unjustly cast out into the desert for visitors will certainly be distorted by the sight and sound of the 700 foot wind turbines. My family is donating to Friends of Minidoka to continue its efforts to preserve Minidoka National Park Site, a lesson in American History.

Julie Abo, Sansei, daughter of Mary Abo

We are a four generation Minidoka family who have come on pilgrimages here. 

We sense many memories in the hot sand, the howling wind and the black sky.

We donate to Friends of Minidoka to preserve our part of American history.

If not us, then who? On December 8, 1941, my mother's father, Shonosuke Tanaka, was immediately arrested by the FBI as an "enemy alien" and separated from her mother, Nobu Tanaka, and three siblings, Alice, Bill and John, for two years. Later, in 1942, the rest of my mother's family was forcibly removed from the U.S. Territory of Alaska to Minidoka, in Jerome, Idaho where they were incarcerated along with members of the Tlingit Nation and others for three years. My grandfather wasn't reunited with them until 1944, two years and three months later. I grew up hearing the difficult stories of this incarceration and was instilled with a strong sense of civil rights, but I was never active in the post-WWII, post-Redress Japanese American community as a whole, nor the Minidoka community. Now, in my mid-fifties, as the older generation slowly passes on, I feel a deep responsibility to be part of the stewardship of this instructive part of American history. Every day, I feel that we must convey the many histories of this land and be sure the World War II incarceration of Japanese and Native Americans are not forgotten to inform our understanding and implementation of democracy and the future of our country. I think of our family and how that could easily be my daughters and me in this day and age. I hope you will join us and make a donation for the education of current and future generations. It's never too late!