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“Generous opportunity”

Randy Fish

Clarence Sakimura was just a young boy when his family was forced to leave their business and home in California to relocate to an internment camp in Arizona during World War II.

Once the war ended, the family moved to Michigan to work on a farm, but the conditions were especially difficult. Messiah College President C. N. Hostetter Jr. was passing through the area, heard about the Sakimura family, and offered the father, Harvey, a job as the caretaker and gardener at Messiah.

Clarence, who graduated from and then taught at Messiah, recently told his family’s story to StoryCorps,® one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, when StoryCorps recorded stories from the Messiah community during Centennial Homecoming weekend.  (The complete audio recordings will be stored in the College’s Archives as well as those of the United States Library of Congress along with the other 50,000 other stories that StoryCorps has captured since its inception in 2003.)

Listen to Clarence and Herta Sakimura reminisce about their journey to Messiah and their relationship.

Read more about the Sakimura family as profiled in the Multicultural Century Project and on StoryLink.

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