When Ameya Desai won the fourth grade prize of NPR's Student Podcast Challenge last year, something surprising happened: A neighbor reached out asking if the 11-year-old journalist would interview his grandmother, a survivor of the Japanese incarceration camps.
Ameya was amazed, shocked that she had never learned this history before, one that takes place in her hometown, San Jose, Calif.
That spark led her to 85-year-old Linda Horikawa, who recalls being "surprised that someone in the fifth grade was interested in the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II."
Horikawa was hesitant at first. Then she thought: "It was a good time to tell everyone what really happened ."
The result is Ameya's podcast, Shikata Ga Nai, Far From Home: Stories of Forced Migration .
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