Remember Who You Are
Remember Who You Are is a story of two families linked by greed, betrayal and redemption. The Hayashida family lost their home, their business, everything when they were interned during WWII along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans. The Wolfe family got rich profiteering on the suffering of the Hayashidas and others like them. Now 75 years later, if Suki Hayashida can survive both legal and personal attacks, she will have the opportunity to right that wrong, not only for her family but for hundreds of others.
A brief excerpt from Remember Who You Are
Suki’s Story – Part 1
“Trent and I were the same age, we grew up in the same city, but our lives were worlds apart.
“The Wolfes lived on Nob Hill, in an extravagant home with a panoramic view of San Francisco Bay. Trent attended the best private schools, spent summers at the family’s Lake Tahoe retreat, and counted among his friends the offspring of the city’s elite and powerful.
“The Hayashida’s rented a two-bedroom bungalow in the Mission District until I was twelve. Then we bought an even more modest bungalow in the new Japantown neighborhood. I attended public schools and spent the summers working in my father’s gardening business. I counted few among my friends who dared to dream of anything more than holding a steady job and, maybe, moving out of their parents’ home when they got married.
“Beyond these obvious differences, there was one more thing that should have kept us apart. Our families despised one another. Well, that’s not completely true. The Hayashidas despised the Wolfes. I doubt that the Wolfes ever thought about the Hayashidas at all. We knew what Mr. Wolfe had done to us and to many other families. He got rich at our expense and left us and the others floundering. My father resented what Mr. Wolfe did, but even more, he felt offended, betrayed by someone he trusted. He worked for Mr. Wolfe for years. They were not friends, but they knew one another well. That meant something to my father. He was a man for whom integrity was everything.
“Mr. Wolfe, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to profit, and he took it with little or no concern for who he would hurt. Once he had stolen everything he could steal from these interned Japanese American families, I doubt that he gave any of us a second thought. He forgot our faces and our names as soon as our money was in his hands.
“With all these factors against us, the odds were astronomical that Trent and I would meet and fall in love. Sometimes the gods have a twisted sense of humor.
