Losing Everything: Two Stories.

Last weekend I heard some amazing stories, all of them true.  A couple of them had some striking parallels.

George Takei remembered standing at the front window of his home, watching soldiers coming up the driveway to take him and his family away.  It was 1942, and he was five years old.  Carrying only what they had hastily packed the night before, the family of five was transported to a "holding cell" (actually a stall in the stable of a racetrack) on their way to the first of a series of concentration camps, where he and his family spent the next five years of their lives.

Cora Smith* remembered wading in water up to her chest, clinging to her pregnant mother, as they tried to escape their flooded town in 1948.  The single road out was jammed with vehicles.  Cora, then a grade-schooler, was lifted onto the back of a Red Cross truck to be evacuated with a bunch of other children.  It took three days for her mother to find her again.
* I am not certain I have remembered Cora's last name correctly; I apologize if I've gotten it wrong.

George's memory happened in Los Angeles.  Cora's took place in Vanport City, which is now the Delta Park neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.