Saturday, March 23, 2-4 PM: Mitzi Asai Loftus, Author of From Thorns to Blossoms: a Japanese American Family in War and Peace. Booktalk, Reading, Signing

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Mitzi’s son, David, writes this about their local connection:

This is David Loftus writing on behalf of my mother, Mitzi Asai Loftus, whose memoir, From Thorns to Blossoms: a Japanese American Family in War and Peace, is being published by Oregon State University Press.

Our family has deep connections to Eugene. In the Sixties, my father gave piano lessons in our home at 14th and Oak, and my mother ran a tropical fish shop called Evergreen Aquarium. There were two stone-lined goldfish ponds out front. Long-time residents of Eugene may have memories of this.

Mom substitute-taught in Eugene schools and also assisted professors with teaching grad students at U of O. My Dad was a music teacher at Malabon Elementary in the Bethel School District in north Eugene in the late Fifties, then at Jefferson Junior High in the Sixties. I recently heard from a former student of his out of the blue via Facebook who spoke of what a deep impression he made on his students.

My Dad also played piano late nights at the Vets Club at East 16th, three blocks away from our house, and at Pietro's Pizza Parlor in Springfield (and sometimes Pietro's Gold Coast on the Willamette).

So there may still be a lot of Lane County residents who remember our family.

The one shows Mitzi with her parents outside a stone shed used for storage on the Hood River farm, in October 1935. She would have been 3 years old.

The second, dating from 1939 and also on the farm, shows Mitzie’s oldest brother Tot, her parents, and brothers Gene and Dick surrounding her at age 7.

Finally, a shot taken in the incarceration camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, most likely in the summer of 1944. A guard tower is visible on the rise to the right, and the mountain that gave its name to the camp is partially visible just over Mitzi’s mother's shoulder.