Guest Authors Mitzi Asai Loftus and David Loftus: From Thorns to Blossoms

Born on a fruit orchard in Hood River, Oregon, in 1932, Mitzi Asai Loftus spent three years of her childhood in government incarceration camps in California and Wyoming. For more than seventy years, she has given public talks about her family’s experience to audiences of all ages. Having lived much of her adult life in Eugene and Coos Bay, she now resides in Ashland.In From Thorns to Blossoms, Mitzi 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.

Today, Asai descendants continue to tend the Hood River farm while the town confronts its shameful history. Originally published in 1990 as Made in Japan and Settled in Oregon, this revised and expanded edition describes the positive influence Mitzi’s immigrant parents had on their children, provides additional context for her story, and illuminates the personal side of a dark chapter in US history. It’s the remarkable story of a transformation from thorns into blossoms, pain into healing.