3. Meet William

William Koyama is my grandfather and the oldest child of the original Koyama family in the United States. As an active, enthusiastic, and inquisitive 14-year-old boy at the time of internment, the sudden relocation forced him to give up many of his close friends in Portland. He soon made new friends while constantly seeking out better opportunities for himself. Before and while at Minidoka, he served in the Boy Scouts and expressed to Teru his desire to serve in the U.S. Army, although at that time he was too young to do so. Teru confided to Kei that if William had been of age, he probably would have enlisted.

With the help of white allies in Portland, William was one of the very few Japanese Americans given permission to leave the camps to attend boarding school. William chose to join Holderness Academy in New Hampshire in 1944, where he completed his high school education by 1946 before serving briefly in the U.S. Army until 1948. He went on to earn his Bachelor of Arts degree from Reed College in Portland and his MD from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. For most of his medical career, William worked as a psychiatrist in the state hospital system of Oregon.