Reparations mean more than money for a family whose story includes slavery and Japanese American internment
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Her mother’s parents were imprisoned during World War II for being Japanese American. The Yamamotos lost everything — their home, their leased strawberry farm, their dignity — after the government labeled them “the enemy.”
Her father’s ancestors were enslaved at Mount Vernon. Unlike the vast majority of enslaved African Americans, the Syphaxes became landowners, though it took an act of Congress to gain full recognition of their property rights.
The impacts of government-sanctioned racism course through both branches of Robyn Syphax’s family tree. That uncommon lineage shows how even token compensation for historical wrongs can reverberate through generations, affording a chance to heal.
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