We are ending Immigrant Heritage Month with Miko Osada’s story!
Miko is second-generation Japanese American. Her parents moved from Japan to the United States in 1982, right after getting married.
In Ohio, where she grew up, Miko stayed close to her Japanese roots by attending Japanese school every Saturday through her sophomore year of high school.
“My parents spoke very little English when they arrived,” Miko says. “They wanted to prepare us for the possibility that we might go back to Japan, so they tried to keep up with our Japanese education at the same time they were navigating our American schooling.”
At the time, Miko’s parents also worried that their kids wouldn’t learn English at home, so they made a habit of taking the children to the local library, encouraging them to read.
At the library, Miko grew increasingly fond of reading and learning, signing up for the Summer Reading Program every year.
Miko loves to work in a community with a large immigrant population. She particularly enjoys coordinating the teen Service Learning Program and working with young first and second-generation Americans.
Miko also assists in selecting SDCL’s Japanese language collection.
“As much as I grumbled through childhood, Japanese school wasn’t for nothing,” Miko says.
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