He was only about 5, but Harold Kawaguchi remembers when U.S. soldiers came to their Seattle farm, tossed him and his family into the back of an army truck and temporarily relocated them to a horse stall at the Puyallup Fairgrounds.

His most vivid memory of the ordeal was when the cruel soldiers intentionally drove through the family’s gardens where the vegetation just started to sprout, Kawaguchi said, fighting back tears.

The Kawaguchis were among thousands of Japanese Americans forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated in internment camps across the West following Japan’s Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, which thrust the U.S. into a world war.

The Kawaguchis, including Harold’s parents, Matsutaro and Hatsume, overcame adversity and eventually relocated to the Spokane a

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