Navigating the complicated terrain of the Japanese American experience, Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation’s board chair Shirley Ann Higuchi patched together her mother Setsuko’s story and came to understand the forces and generational trauma that shaped her own life. Moving seamlessly between family and communal history, Setsuko’s Secret offers a clear window into the “camp life” that was rarely revealed to the children of the incarcerated. This volume powerfully insists that we reckon with the pain in our collective American past.

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​Please join us for the conversation as descendants of incarcerees with different backgrounds, Shirley Ann Higuchi and Aura Newlin, discuss their insights about these books and their intertwined histories. 

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Setsuko’s Secret author Shirley Ann Higuchi, J.D. and Chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (HMWF), will share her transformational journey navigating the complicated terrain of the Japanese American experience and how she patched together her mother Setsuko’s story. A journey that ultimately led Shirley to understand the forces and generational trauma that shaped her own life. 

 

Aura Newlin is a former Cody resident, HMWF board secretary, and interim HMWF director. Aura is the grand-niece of Wyomingite and former Heart Mountain incarceree, Clarence Matsumura of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion. Recently re-published, the book Light One Candle is the incredible first-person account by the late Solly Ganor, a Lithuanian Jewish Holocaust survivor who was liberated from the Dachau death march by Clarence Matsumura of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion at the closing of World War II. Light One Candle is an excellent companion read to Setsuko's Secret.

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