August 13, 2026 3:40 a.m.  

The Roseburg Public Library invites the community to an evening with Mitzi Asai Loftus, author of “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace,” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, September 3rd.

A city of Roseburg release said Mitsuko “Mitzi” Asai was not yet 10 years old in the spring of 1942 when President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 sent 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry – about two-thirds of them U.S. citizens – from their homes on the West Coast to inland prison camps. They included Mitzi and most of her family, who operated a fruit orchard in Hood River.

The Asais spent much of World War II in the camps while two of the older sons served in the Pacific in the U.S. Army. Three years later, when the camps began to close, the family returned to Hood River to find an altered community. Shop owners refused to serve neighbors they had known for decades; racism and hostility were open and largely unchecked. Humiliation and shame drove teenaged Mitzi to reject her Japanese heritage, including her birth name. More than a decade later, her life took another turn when a Fulbright grant sent her to teach in Japan, where she reconnected with her roots.

The release said in “From Thorns to Blossoms” Asai Loftus recounts her rich and varied life, from a childhood surrounded by barbed wire and hatred to a successful career as a high school English teacher and college instructor in English as a Second Language.

Copies of “From Thorns to Blossoms,” will be available for $25. The book also is available for checkout in physical format at the library and as a digital book on Libby.

The event is free and will be held in person only at the library on Northeast Diamond Lake Boulevard.

Learn more about the program by calling 492-7050 or via email: library@roseburgor.gov.