Good afternoon my old and new friends.  May I briefly acknowledge Richard Santos for bringing us together here today...we all know how difficult it can be to organize three people for a simple meeting, but to connect everything for such an event as this, is a miracle...so let's have a huge hand for him.  

Now I reach beyond the sixty years that have gone by, two, three decades into the thirties and the twenties, a time when our moms and dads left their respective homes to come to America's shores to look for a better and more peaceful place to realize their dreams and hopes in this land of the free.  We, here today, are the offspring of those dreams and hopes because if it wasn't for them we wouldn't be here in the middle of the camp's swimming pool reconstructing their honor and memories of which we are a part of forever.

The dreams and hopes of our parent dreams and hopes were shattered back in early 1942.  They were the ones that suffered
innocently through those oppressive years, many never recovered.  One everlasting moment was carved into my mind right here in this camp.  One afternoon I asked my dad, "Why is this man fenced in?" while pointing at the commandant's log cabin outside the barbed wired fence. "Son," my dad replied, "It us who are fenced in!"  This was my first lesson in: the moral of a story.

Thus, my friends, in HONOR and MEMORY of our moms and dads, please join me in a minute of  silence.  

Thank you!

Paul Grayber, Crystal City, Texas

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