Interviews

1. Backstory of Parents

2. Parent’s Marriage

3. Adoption Story

4. Reiko's Name

5. Moving to Torrance

6. Voluntarily Moving to Salt Lake City, Utah

7. Parents in Utah

8. Topaz Visit as a Child

9. Coming back to Los Angeles after the war

10. Finding out about adoption

11. Kent State Shooting, Ohio

Sakata,Reiko T.

(b. 1939) a businesswoman whose family volunterily moved to Salt Lake City in Utah during the war.

Adoption Story

Around 1939 they learned about a Japanese baby girl that was in an orphanage. I'm not sure which orphanage it was but it probably was a Caucasian orphanage because my mother said when they first saw me, I was wearing these dirty little shirt, tee shirts and, you know, onesie and it was all dirty and I was dirty and they never really took time, I guess, to clean me up.

But I was five months old and they had not been able to have children. They had a dog, Pekinese dog named Chingy, but that was like their child, right? So then they decided they would adopt me.

And so when my dad came to pick me up at the orphanage, he had bought a new 1940 Plymouth. I have to say that that was the luckiest day of my life.

adoptions children families institutional care Japan orphanages

Date: May 13, 2022

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Evan Kodani

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Reiko T. Sakata was adopted from an orphanage in Los Angeles in 1939 at 5 months old by Issei parents. To avoid incarceration, the family moved with other Japanese to Salt Lake City, Utah until 1948. Returning to Los Angeles, her parents ran a laundromat in East Los Angeles, where she grew up. Years later, she and her parents moved to Torrance. Reiko graduated from Torrance High School, then went to the University of California, Berkeley. After Reiko got married, she and her spouse moved to Kent State, Ohio and witnessed the “Kent State shooting.” She received her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in Business Development, and served as a faculty member there in Organization Development and Business. She returned to Southern California to help her parents before they passed away. Prior to her retirement, Dr. Sakata was an entrepreneur and businesswoman in a variety of industries and fields for 32 years. She currently lives in Monrovia, California. (May 2023)