Waucoma Bookstore and the Hood River Library host authors Mitzi Asai Loftus and David Loftus on Friday, March 15 beginning at 6 p.m. at the library, 502 State St. The two will present on Asai Loftus’ book, “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace,” in which the 91-year-old recounts her “rich and varied life."
Waucoma Bookstore and the Hood River Library host authors Mitzi Asai Loftus and David Loftus on Friday, March 15 beginning at 6 p.m. at the library, 502 State St. The two will present on Asai Loftus’ book, “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace,” in which the 91-year-old recounts her “rich and varied life."
HOOD RIVER — Waucoma Bookstore and the Hood River Library host authors Mitzi Asai Loftus and David Loftus on Friday, March 15 beginning at 6 p.m. at the library, 502 State St.
The two will present on Asai Loftus’ book, “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace,” in which the 91-year-old recounts her “rich and varied life, from a childhood surrounded by barbed wire and hatred to a successful career as a high school English teacher and college instructor in English as a Second Language,” said a press release.
Above, Mitzi Asai Loftus will come to Hood River March 15 with son David to talk about her new book, "From Thorns to Blossoms."
Contributed photo
Mitzi Asai Loftus will come to Hood River March 15 with son David, above, to talk about her new book, "From Thorns to Blossoms."
Contributed photo
Asai Loftus was born on a fruit orchard in Hood River in 1932 and spent three years of her childhood in incarceration camps in California and Wyoming. She has given public talks about her family’s experience to audiences of all ages for more than 70 years. She has lived much of her adult life in Eugene and Coos Bay, and currently resides in Ashland.
Asai Loftus said in an email to Columbia Gorge News that she is looking forward to seeing family members and old-timers who know here and her family.
“My nephew, Kevin Asai, in fact lives in the house and on the ranch my father bought over 90 years ago,” she said. “Further up the road toward Oak Grove are the orchards of my niece, Marta and Phil Cannell, and my nephew, Sam and Karen Asai.”
Her last public appearance in Hood River was for the first-ever Hood River Day of Remembrance, in which she sat on a panel with Nancy Moller (whose children she babysat) and Dr. Sab Akiyama in 2007.
About the book
Mitsuko “Mitzi” Asai Loftus was not yet 10 years old in the spring of 1942 when President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 sent 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry — about two-thirds of them U.S. citizens — from their homes on the West Coast to inland prison camps. They included Asai Loftus and most of her family, who operated a fruit orchard in Hood River. The Asais spent much of World War II in the camps while two of the older sons served in the Pacific in the U.S. Army.
Three years later, when the camps began to close, the family returned to Hood River to find an altered community. Shop owners refused to serve neighbors they had known for decades; racism and hostility were open and largely unchecked. Humiliation and shame drove teenage Asai Loftus to reject her Japanese heritage, including her birth name. More than a decade later, her life took another turn when a Fulbright grant sent her to teach in Japan, where she reconnected with her roots.
Today, Asai descendants continue to tend the Hood River farm while the town confronts its shameful history. Originally published in 1990 as Made in Japan and Settled in Oregon, this revised and expanded edition describes the positive influence Asai Loftus’ immigrant parents had on their children, provides additional context for her story, and illuminates the personal side of a dark chapter in U.S. history. It’s the remarkable story of a transformation from thorns into blossoms, pain into healing.
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