I was totally stunned by this letter. First, because I couldn't believe we had found somebody who knew/remembered Nana, and second, because I couldn't imagine the June Suzuki I knew ever saying something so political. But this was a younger June Suzuki—one I never knew. Charlie and I immediately started to plan a trip to South Dakota to try and meet Virginia in person, but also to see if we could find anyone else with information about Nana, or about St. Mary's, or about what life might have been like on the Reservation during or immediately after World War II.

On June 1st, I flew down to South Dakota, and after a day of hanging out with some buffalo and getting lost in the Badlands, we drove to find Virginia. Here is what she looks like. She sat with us for almost 2 hours, chatting about what she remembered. She was only ten or eleven when Nana was at St. Mary's (which is why she wasn't one of her students—Nana taught the older girls), and she didn't spend that much time with her. But she retold the story she had written in her email, and hearing her share it was incredibly special to me. (You can listen to her say it herself, here!) She also gave us a very important piece of information (or "clue," as I like to think of it!). I had always thought Nana was on a Reservation when she was at St. Mary's. And when Charlie had googled St. Mary's, she had found info that suggested it was on Rosebud Reservation. Our plan was to drive around Rosebud after we left Virginia, and see if we could find it. But Virginia told us that when Nana was at St. Mary's, it wasn't on a reservation at all. St. Mary's was originally built at the Santee Mission in Nebraska, but when it burned down in 1884, it was rebuilt in Rosebud. It burned down again in 1910, and again in 1922. The third time, it was moved to a spot across the river from its original home in Santee, to a historical building in Springfield, South Dakota, overlooking the Missouri River. This is where the school was when Nana arrived to it in 1946. So she hadn't been on a reservation. Instead, girls from many different tribes and reservations across multiple states were brought to St. Mary's and instructed by the small staff of non-native teachers, of which Nana was the only non-white person (during her year there). Virginia told us there were Lakota girls from Rosebud or Pine Ridge in South Dakota (which is what Virginia is), but also some Navajos from the west, and Chippewas from Minnesota. It's very possible that Nana did end up spending time on a Reservation at some point, though. For one thing, when I described learning to shoot or prepare deer, Virginia seemed sure that that was something they would not have done at school. The moccasins too, she thought, seemed like the kind of gift that would come from a family, perhaps one that Nana had visited or stayed with during a school vacation. Virginia shared what she remembered of St. Mary's, and these were the details I latched onto most:

• the sleeping quarters, classrooms, chapel, gym, showers, and dining hall were all in the same building, on different floors, so for the most part, they spent their days in the same building, with small trips to town on weekends, or hikes along the river.

• there was only a small staff of 6-7 teachers, only about 40-70 girls in the whole school at once, depending on the year. All the teachers were non-Native, and the only staff members who were Native were Virginia's grandparents, who worked as custodians at the school.

• the girls were required to wear scratchy woolen tights that itched terribly.

• everyone took piano / organ lessons, and many of the girls went on to be organists in their local episcopal churches. (Virginia was one for a while).

• everyone had chores to do, like helping with the cooking or cleaning.

• they almost never interacted with boys, except once or twice a year when there were school dances held with the boys from Hare School, the Episcopal boys school (far away), and Virginia described herself as being very shy, though she felt the dances were fun.

• when they were seniors, the girls were moved to a separate "Senior House," where they learned domestic skills like how to cook and clean and keep house, and also were given a baby to learn how to raise one. You read that correctly: an orphaned Native baby girl was handed over to a house of high school seniors, so that they could learn how to change diapers and bathe and feed a baby. The girls took turns on baby duty, and scheduled their class time accordingly. My mouth hung open for the entirety of this anecdote. This didn't just happen when Virginia was a senior! It happened multiple times, over many different years! The baby that Virginia took care of was named Anne, and was eventually adopted by St. Mary's headmistress Bernice Holland.

Aimed with this new information and these new stories, we googled around until we found info on a Historical Society of Springfield, that housed a museum. We called them, to tell them that we were doing research on St. Mary's school and wanted to see if they had any photographs or documents in their archives, and asked what their hours were, as we tried to change our plans to drive to Springfield. The woman on the other end of the line very sweetly answered, "Oh, well... the museum was actually my father's, and he passed away recently, and I haven't known what to do with it, so it hasn't really been open recently... but if you tell me when you get here, I'll just walk over and open it up for you."

On our way to Springfield, we met with a woman named Davidica who lives on Pineridge, who is a historian and activist, and was able to give us more information and context about the history of Boarding Schools in the U.S. Starting in 1891, there was a “compulsory attendance” law that enabled federal officers to forcibly take Native American children from their home and reservation, and essentially required Native parents to send their children to boarding schools. Parents could be locked up for refusing to hand over their children, and even though over time some parents did find ways to avoid this, this law wasn't formally overturned until 1978. As you might imagine, and maybe already know, many (if not most) of these boarding schools were horrendous, and were sites of a lot of child abuse: physical, religious, and sexual, depending on the school. There is a tumultuous and dark history of Boarding Schools for Native American children. It was important for me to learn about this to give more context to St. Mary's, though based on the testimonies I've been able to collect, it seems like (at least in the 1940's) St. Mary's was perhaps one of the best (if not the best) possible options (given the deeply problematic system). Many families saved a lot of money to be able to send their daughters to St. Mary's, and it had a very good reputation of treating girls well, not using corporal punishment (unlike the comparable Catholic school), being more lenient towards girls who spoke Lakota, and generally being a place that prepared students for a continued education. Virginia spoke about her time there as though it was one of the best things that could have happened to her. She felt that her time at St. Mary's had allowed her to go on to get a college education, and become a published author, and she felt the school prepared her much better than other schools would have, at the time.

Lois told us about the rationing during WWII, which affected what they were allowed to cook, and also prevented them from going home to visit, because of the gasoline rationing. Lois's eyes lit up when she spoke about being top in her class in science, and falling in love with the nursing uniforms of a nursing college that she dreamed of going to when she graduated. But a terrible bout of tuberculosis destroyed that dream, and instead, she stayed close to home. She ended up having five children, one of whom returned from war with terrible PTSD and a schizophrenia diagnosis, for whom she is the fulltime caretaker, even now at 92. She has 16 grandchildren, some of whom live with her in the house she owns. She is as sharp as a tack, and extremely tall, which just made me fall more in love with her than I already had.

After meeting with these three elders, we made our way to Springfield, South Dakota and the Historical Society's Museum. The owner of the museum (who inherited it from her father), Marilyn Stone, was there to meet us, and let us into this unbelievable treasure trove of local history. It is hard for me to describe it in a way that would do it justice. Imagine rooms upon rooms of lovingly-made exhibits: a recreation of a prairie farmhouse from the 1800's, a display of the evolution of the modern typewriter, a wall of Springfield High School's graduating class photos over decades of time. A room of microfiches and physical newspapers, stacked and decomposing, dating back to the early 1800's. Bookshelves of photo scrapbooks donated by local families. Slides in boxes. Varsity sweaters. It was tremendous and utterly overwhelming. I could have spent weeks in there and only scratched the surface. But we didn't have weeks, so we rolled up our sleeves and started digging. The biggest finds of the day, were a photo of the St. Mary's building itself, and a photo taken at a school dance. The museum also had postcards from the 70's, of the St. Mary's building and the view from the school, and I took a few to send you. (I think Ma delivered a little set to each family.)

As the light dwindled on my last day in South Dakota, we hopped in the car, and Marilyn directed us towards the site of where St. Mary's had been. As we drove up, the sun was setting, and I got out of the car to look at the view that Nana would have seen when she taught there. There is a little lookout that someone has built, where you can stand and look across the Missouri river, towards Santee. It looks like a long distance to try and walk or swim, and I thought about Lois trying to run across it's frozen surface, with the ice popping beneath her. I thought about how many more questions I have now. I thought about being a twenty-three year old Japanese American woman arriving here alone, in the middle of winter in 1946, while your parents and brother are so terribly far away, stepping into the complicated world of Native American Boarding schools, and being given a building of young women to take care of, many of whom were also terribly far from home, and feeling alone in the world as well. And then I thought about what it might have felt like to spend five years having adventures, alone and independent, only to be summoned home to get married and leave it all behind. I wish I had asked her more questions when she was still around to ask them.