October 12, 2007

Memories of adopted magpie take flight in print
By Michelle Knight

Author Shigueru "Shig" Yabu has evidently gone where no child's book has gone before.

The Camarillo resident recently published "Hello Maggie!"- a true account about his experience of raising a pet while living in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.

Now 75 years old, Yabu was 10 when the U.S. government forced his family and 120,000 other Japanese, many of them American citizens, to live in 10 so-called relocation centers around the country. His family was sent to Heart Mountain, Wyo., where they lived from 1942 to 1945.

It was during that time that Yabu raised a wild magpie he named Maggie.

"I don't know what possessed me to write a little short novel about my bird," he said.

Yabu will sign copies of "Hello Maggie!" from 2 to 4 p.m. on Oct. 27 at the Pleasant Valley Historical Society Museum.

The book came about by chance. He donated a World War II emblem a couple of years ago to the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, a nonprofit that memorializes and educates the public about the Japanese internment camps.

Yabu's uncle gave him the emblem while serving in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion, the Army's most-decorated unit for its size and length of service and in whose honor the 23 Freeway is named.

Ironically, it was while Yabu's uncle was in the U.S. military that Yabu and his family lived like prisoners in barracks at Heart Mountain. Yabu hung his uncle's emblem in his window.

"I was proud of what he was doing," Yabu said of his uncle.

Wanting to do more for the foundation, Yabu submitted the story about Maggie to the foundation's newsletter. The editor contacted him to say she was so touched by his story that she drove some 35 miles from her Powell, Wyo. office to the barracks at Heart Mountain to lay flowers for Maggie.

Yabu decided a wider and younger audience needed to hear the story. He enlisted the help of longtime friend Willie Ito, a retired Disney illustrator and himself a former camp internee, to publish "Hello Maggie!" They released 2,400 books in August at a cost of $8,000.

"But it's worth it; it's worth it," Yabu said. "It's the satisfaction."

The story has reached the eyes and hearts of people in political and educational circles. The back of the book lists comments from a couple of U.S. senators and a former secretary of transportation.

Susan Uyemura, executive director of the Japanese American Living Legacy project at Cal State Fullerton, said the book moved her to tears.

Uyemura said that most books written about that chapter of American history only talk about statistics. She doesn't know of any book that gives a personal account from a Japanese-American perspective let alone from a child's point of view.

"It's a pivotal part of history that needs to be told to the next generation so it may spark questions," Uyemura said. "It's an important part of our history and they need to know."

Because it's an emotional subject for some Japanese-Americans to speak about makes the book all the more important, she said.

"They took away their pride and that's where it's hard and that's why they don't talk about it," Uyemura said.

After living for three years in the internment camp, Yabu and hisfamily returned to the San Francisco area. He went on to serve in the Navy and graduate from college.

He then spent the next 28 years working for the Boys Club, later known as the Boys & Girls Club. He was the first executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo.

Yabu left the organization in 1986 and went to work for the Camarillo Health Care District, retiring 10 years ago.

He also wrote a brief account of his life for a 2004 brochure for the Manzanar National Historic Site.

Yabu drives cars part-time.

In 1968, he was named Camarillo's Young Man of the Year and 14 years later the city's Man of the Year. He also was selected to carry the Olympic torch in 1984

In 1987, Yabu's first book was published, "Doggone Excuses People Make for Smoking"- a pictorial satire featuring his dog, Brutus.

Yabu said he harbors no resentment against the U.S. for forcing his family to live at Heart Mountain.

"We really are a young country and we have made mistakes," Yabu said. "We'll continue to make mistakes, but we're the greatest country in the world." He and his wife, Irene, have three sons and two grandchildren.