Donna Okimoto has been my dear friend for some 20 years. When she emailed me to tell me that at age 86, her Mom was finally going to get her college diploma, I shared her joy.

I also knew in my heart what a wonderful story this would be to share with all of you.

I suspected though that Donna's sweet, quiet Mom, Yuki Sumoge, probably wouldn't want to do the story. Thankfully, I was wrong.

Yuki had already finished two years at Pacific University on a scholarship before Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Like a hundred thousand other Japanese-Americans on the West coast, Yuki and her parents were taken from their Parkdale orchard and sent to internment camps. Prison camps really. Barbed wire surrounding the desolate tarpaper barracks. Towers with armed guards. All of them in hot desert locations. A far cry from the lush beauty of the Hood River Valley.

Only allowed to take what they could carry they were loaded on trains with blacked- out windows. Yuki and her parents would go first to a camp outside of Fresno, California, then to the infamous Tule Lake camp in Northern California. After passing a loyalty test they would eventually end up at Minidoka in Idaho.

During that time Yuki would be given a short leave to marry her pen pal, a U-S soldier.Harold Okimoto had volunteered for the service even before Pearl Harbor, and was waiting to be shipped out to Europe. He fought with the 442nd, a unit of all Japanese-American soldiers. He would fight to defend our country. The same country that had imprisoned his wife.

After the war, Yuki and Harold would settle in Parkdale, start a family and try to fit in. If any of you are familiar with this part of Oregon's history, you know they weren't exactly welcomed home. While they had many good and loyal friends and neighbors, there was plenty of prejudice to go around. Yuki says they simply weren't allowed to buy things at many stores or restaurants. And at least one Hood River newspaper printed anti-Japanese petitions.

Harold would die too young from cancer, at the age of 41. Yuki would raise their three girls on the orchard determined to put the past behind her. She distanced herself from her heritage and her history.

The girls were given all-American names and were not taught to speak Japanese. It wasn't until the youngest daughter, Debbie, was in High School that she found out her Mom had been in the camps. A history teacher asked her about it.

Luckily an old friend and mentor remembered Yuki's story well. Sylvia Bryan was the wife of Yuki's High School principal. They helped her get a scholarship to Pacific in the first place, and now Sylvia was about to help her get her diploma.

An alumnas of Pacific University herself Sylvia called Pacific and asked if they had heard about a new Oregon law.

A bill championed by Oregon State Representative Brian Clem .It would grant honorary college degrees to former Japanese-American's who were forced to leave school for World War II internment camps.

Then Sylvia told them Yuki's story and urged them to right a wrong.

Last Saturday with a former classmate looking on and her family by her side, Yuki graduated from Pacific University. A school that interestingly enough now has a major Asian Studies program.

When Yuki got her diploma, there were cheers and of course tears.
Yuki said she was so grateful. Donna said it was the proudest day of her life. Granddaughter Julie called Yuki her hero.

Photographer Brian Robertson and I felt so honored just to witness it all.

If you missed it, there's a good chance the story will air again during our Sunday morning newscast and of course you will be able to see it right here on kgw.com . Click on News and then Special Reports.

As always, thank you for watching.
Tracy Barry

Posted by at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have had more response to my blog on Morgellons that any other blog I've written.
You'll find the original blog on this story here.

Blog: Under the Microscope

I'd like to share some of the feedback I've received, and also send out a big "thank you" to "Kathleen", the woman
who shared her story with us on Newschannel 8 earlier this month.
Kathleen described the nightmare of living with the symptoms of Morgellons; the feeling of bugs crawling on or under her skin,
erupting sores, red, black, and blue fibers emerging from her skin.

But the worst part for Kathleen is the skepticism she feels from the medical community about her illness.

The psychiatrist I interviewed in our story described what many in the medical community think is happening to Morgellons sufferers... "delusional parasitosis", a psychiatric disorder where the patient imagines they have parasites.

Many of those responding to my blog were upset with that assessment.
Here are some of their comments.

Cindy C. wrote:
" Many patients HAVE developed psychiatric issues secondary to this illness. Is that any reason to dismiss this blatant physical evidence?"

Dr. Drottar (a Morgellons sufferer in Portland) wrote:
"Morgellons is very real." Good luck to all who are traveling this difficult healing journey."

Rick wrote:
" I have Morgellons and like many others who suffer from this disease, I live in a nightmare. I am disabled now. I only wish this disease was a psychiatric condition."

Others were upset with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I interviewed spokesman, Dan Rutz for my story.

Elizabeth wrote:
"I am appalled that Mr. Rutz and the CDC are giving the same answers that they have been giving for several years.
To say this is not infectious is extremely irresponsible of him. The fibers are a constant (among sufferers) that even the CDC can't deny.

*Note: Mr. Rutz said there wasn't any indication at this time that the illness is infectious, but the CDC is not ruling anything out until it makes a final report.

Karen wrote:
"I believe it's only a matter of time until the medical community as a whole, and the CDC are forced to acknowledge it as a real epidemic."

and Vickie wrote:
"Don't let this story die without doing something."

To Vickie and all those concerned about Morgellons, we plan to follow this story, and keep digging into what causes Morgellons.
As we learn more, we'll report it on Newschannel 8 and here on KGW.com

Please keep the comments coming. I appreciate your responses, and I know other readers of this blog do, as well.

I do hope that one day, this is no longer a nightmare for so many.

Laural Porter

Posted by at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

International adoption is not for the faint of heart.

The rewards are immeasurable. But few would describe the mountain of paperwork and emotional roller coaster ride as easy. In some of the most popular countries it's about to get even harder. And in some important ways, better.

On May 10th at 5pm I'll be looking at some of the changes affecting adoptions in China and Guatemala in a special report we are calling Dreams on Hold. But I wanted to offer a little more detail about what's going on in those two countries.

First China. The China Center for Adoptions is swamped. While there is no "official" numbers but Internet sites that track these things speculate the backlog of adoption requests as high as 20-thousand. China is popular because for the most part the process works.

Ron Beazely of All God's Children International says he loves working with the Chinese because they are honorable. That more and more people want a Chinese adoption because they do it so well.

Ron says another reason for the slowdown is because more families in China are able to pay the extra fees to keep a second child. The economy is booming there.

So the wait for a referral of a healthy infant has gone from six months to as long as two years. The wait for a special needs child is much shorter.

In response to the demand China has also tightened it's requirements for adopting parents. Single parents and people with serious weight problems need not apply anymore. If that seems harsh you should know that many other countries have those same guidelines.

Susan Soon-Keum Cox of Holt International Children's Service is also concerned about what will happen when the bright spotlight of media arrives for the Beijing Olympics. She points to 1988 when the Olympics were in Seoul Korea. Many of the stories were predictably on adoption. Well, turns out this was the first time the Korean public became aware of how many of their children were being adopted by people from other countries. The response was negative. She expects the same thing will happen in China.

To make her point she reminded me of the alarm many Americans felt a few years ago when they first learned that Canadians and Europeans were adopting many children from the United States.

Things are more difficult in Guatemala, the second most popular country for U-S adoptions. The U-S State Department is no longer recommending that Americans adopt children from Guatemala. The advisory stops short of imposing a ban on adoptions from Guatemala but says there are frequent cases of birth mothers pressured to sell their babies and adoptive American parents targeted by extortionists. It's common for private attorneys to handle adoptions in Guatemala. And in the end the State Department concluded that money drives the adoption process more than a desire to protect children.

This of course does not apply to all adoptions from Guatemala. All God's Children has an amazing program there. It runs an orphanage, home and school for children as well as a facility for birth mothers. It's called Hannah's Hope. (Which is another great story all on it's own.)They know exactly where the babies are coming from and care for them until the adoption is complete. In addition, adopting parents often have a chance to meet the birth mother and get monthly video and medical updates on the child they are working to adopt.

Ron Beazely is optimistic that the Guatemalan government will take control of the adoption process to reduce or eliminate the corruption. The question is how soon?

Pressure is intense because of an agreement called the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions. It sets guidelines that protect children and birth families and adoptive families. It is expected to be ratified by the U-S later this year.

Guatemala has also agreed to those guidelines but hasn't been able to put them into practice. If it can't the U-S could cut off adoptions with Guatemala after ratification.

That has many U-S agencies ending their Guatemalan programs now .All God's Children remains committed to its program in Guatemala and is still accepting applications. Plus, Ron Beazely says if adoptions were to end they would continue to run and support the children and birth mothers at Hannah's Hope. It would just be a lot harder.

The Hague agreement may also have another impact on adoption. Agencies must go through a lengthy and expensive process of being accredited with the State Department after The Hague is ratified. Some are unable to do that and will go out of business. So if you are considering international adoption make sure you use an agency you can trust and that will be around a year from now. The rules are always changing and countries are opening and closing so experience counts.

Both All God's Children and Holt International absolutely support the Hague guidelines by the way. And as Susan Cox said so well " We have to remember that our objective is to find families for children, not find children for families."

In the spirit of full disclosure you need to know that I am deeply invested in international adoption. As many of you know my husband and I adopted both of our daughters from China through Holt.

Like most parents our children are our greatest joy. Their resilience and strength take my breath away. Their love humbles me. Everyday of my life I am grateful for the privilege of being their mother. And my husband loves them with equal intensity.

It's not always simple of course. I no longer notice the superficial differences between us but other people do. We are an interracial family. We stand out. We are often asked by well meaning strangers to validate our family as "real". That's hard for the girls especially. There will no doubt be more challenges to come.

And as Mother's Day approaches, I am very clear that my greatest joy comes from what is likely another mother's greatest sorrow. I wish I could thank them for the incredible gift they have given us and let them know their daughters, our daughters, are safe and well and so deeply loved.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you, and as always thank you for watching.

Posted by at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)