Toshio Mori endured internment camps and overcame discrimination to become the first Japanese American to publish a book of fiction

In a 1949 photograph, Mori works in his family's nursery in San Leandro, Calif. Courtesy of Steven Y. Mori, CC BY-SA

Eighty years ago, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the western United States being moved into internment camps.

At the time, Toshio Mori, a U.S. citizen with Japanese parents, was an aspiring writer who had a contract to publish a collection of his short stories in 1942. As a result of the executive order, however, he was sent to one of the camps, and the publisher delayed the book’s release.