Yukiko Flennaugh shares her father's incarceration experience during WWII.
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What would you do if you had less than a week to pack one bag and leave your home, not knowing if you would ever return? John Nakada was an 11-year-old boy when the US entered WWII. He was torn away from his life even though he was a US citizen. John's daughter, Yukiko Flennaugh (née Laura Nakada), will share her father’s stories and experiences of being incarcerated in US internment camps. Yukiko will share what Japanese Americans experienced and show short videos of her father telling stories. He discusses friends refusing to talk to him, living in a fairground horse stable, the train ride to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, sneaking out of camp into a watermelon patch, and what life was like after camp.
A brief history of Japanese Americans during WWII: All people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast were incarcerated in internment camps just months after America entered WWII. Over two thirds of the 120,000 Japanese American men, women and children were US citizens who were imprisoned, even though no crimes had been committed. The United States government has since apologized, and The Civil Liberties Act was signed in 1988, a bill to acknowledge the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation and internment of United States citizens.
Yukiko Flennaugh (née Laura Nakada) is honored to be sharing her father's story. John Nakada is 95, living in a memory care facility in Portland. He is unable to give his talk about camp any longer, but he was downhill skiing, playing tennis, and bowling until he was 88. In the 70's and 80's, John and Sue Nakada raised their four kids, Chet, Laura-Yukiko, Mitch, and Nori, in Bend, right next to Mt. Bachelor so John could ski every weekend. Yukiko lives in Portland, is a girl's high school basketball coach, volunteers at the Japanese American Museum of Oregon as a docent and leads the Racial Justice Ministry at Sunset Church. She is married to Damon and has adult children, Nicole and Trejan Flennaugh.
Sunriver You is a volunteer organization created to provide learning opportunities for those in the greater Sunriver community. Our mission is to create the opportunity to match up the “people who know stuff” with the “people who want to learn stuff”. The premise is based on a simple idea of tapping into the wealth of knowledge on our doorstep to fill the desire for life-long learning that our community exhibits. Learn more at https://www.sunriveryou.com/
2026 A Novel Idea Book Selection:
Supersonic charts the rise of a boomtown city in the American West where ambition outpaces memory. In the present day, PTA president Sami Hasegawa-Stalworth is determined to rename her daughter’s elementary school after her late grandmother—a beloved music teacher and Japanese internment survivor. What begins as a symbolic family gesture spirals into a kaleidoscopic, multi-generational story of struggle—for and against change, and over who gets to define the future.
Through interwoven lives—an opioid-addicted 19th-century conman, a disgraced Navy seaman building a jet that will fly faster than sound, a stay-at-home dad turned weed entrepreneur, and a family haunted by the ghosts of progress—Supersonic reveals how each era tries to remake the same ground beneath its feet. At once intimate and panoramic, the story channels the restless energy that propels the West.
About the Author:
Thomas Kohnstamm was born and raised in Seattle. He still lives in the same house he grew up in—now with his wife and two children. A freelance writer for over twenty years, he’s been a Spanish & Portuguese translator, travel writer, video & animation producer and has covered subjects ranging from rainforest conservation to quantum computing to backcountry skiing. Supersonic is his third book.
Learn more about A Novel Idea
Questions? Contact laurelh@deschuteslibrary.org
AGE GROUP: | Adult |
EVENT TYPE: | Adult Program |
