Retired Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita credits his grandparents for teaching him to persevere. As an article from The New York Daily News profiling his grandparents and his relationship with them explained,
“Fujita’s grandparents, Nagao and Lillie, were dating in junior college in Ventura (Calif.) when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. A few months later, President Franklin Roosevelt issued United States Executive Order 9066, ordering all persons of Japanese ancestry into internment camps. Nagao and Lillie, fearing that they might be separated, quickly married and were soon two of the 120,000 Japanese to be sent to camp. Like most Nisei – the Japanese term for Japanese born in the USA – Nagao and Lillie dealt with the less-than-ideal circumstances the only way they knew how – by making the most of it. While Nagao was away, Lillie taught typing and shorthand to English-speaking Japanese kids in the camp before giving birth to Rod Fujita. Nagao, who spoke four languages, went on to become one of the first bi-lingual attorneys in the state of California.
Lillie Fujita doesn’t like to complain. It’s never been her style. Even to this day, the 89-year-old doesn’t gripe much about being wrongfully imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.
What drives Fujita the most is his grandmother’s fighting spirit. ‘I look at my grandparents and what they dealt with in the Japanese internment in Arizona. That sense of perseverance, of making the best out of an incredibly bad situation, has always been something I drew inspiration from. I always ask myself, what in the world do I have to complain about?’ ”
Reprinted from: “Raised Japanese, New Orleans Saints linebacker Scott Fujita’s tale is the American dream,” New York Daily News, February 10, 2010
Photo: Retired Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita grandparents’ Nagao and Lillie
