Clara Breed Views

General Goods

I found Clara Breed by accident on the internet! I was looking for a Japanese American childhood classmate whom I had not seen for more than fifty years. Thanks to Google, I found myself on the site of the Japanese American National Museum, www.janm.org. It was there that I first read the story of the remarkable Clara Breed, the children's librarian of San Diego, who is 1942 was heartsick that her young Japanese American friends were being treated as enemy suspects and robbed of their freedom and rights as citizens.

As a writer, I recognized from the start that this was a story that had to be told and in the words of those who lived it. I wanted to know what had happened to these young people? Where were they now and how had the incarceration and Clara Breed changed their lives? A few weeks later I found my friend, Ellen Yukawa (at right), thanks to someone at the museum. It turned out that she had been in the same camp as Clara Breed's young friends. Again and again, there would be moments when coincidence, blind luck, or maybe fate carried me along in finding the people who could tell me the stories that enlarged upon the letters, stories about Clara and the young people who lived it.

Clara Breed's story spoke to the idea that one person could make the difference in the lives of many people-including my own. Gathering the story of Clara Breed and her correspondents was to become my passion for the next four years. It sustained me through a bout with cancer, perhaps giving me the strength to see that people do survive ordeals.

Clara Breed was not looking for fame or thanks for what she did. In fact, according to those who knew her, she would be embarrassed that anyone needed to talk about her efforts. Clara Breed was a woman of courage and strong convictions. She spoke out against the injustice of the incarceration- saying boldly that the only crime the Japanese Americans had committed was having the wrong ancestors. But these were no ordinary times. She lived in a city where she risked being despised as a Jap lover and even losing her job in the San Diego Public Library. But, Clara Breed held fast to her beliefs.