Um, so

I, I like experimented so much, um, i very much i was i had such a fire in me to get this story out um eventually i started you know posting carousels where i could kind of express my thoughts in more of like a long form um kind of way to really kind of show my heart and my family and what this book why this book is so important um and they started going viral which was um so um you know incredible obviously it's a double-edged sword because i got a lot of um you know, a lot of hate as well.

But, um, absolutely though, if I think without going viral, Hey would not have had that same success.

Um, and I was shocked, you know, it was number three on the NYT was USA today.

It was in the bestseller.

So it had all three lists.

Um, and I was not anticipating that at all.

Weight is

Mm-hmm.

"Like, you have to stop doing this." And so I stopped writing those stories, but I still had them in my head.

You know, I had a very rampant imagination.

I would say my imagination was very...

Like, I was very afraid of my imagination to a certain degree.

I feel like fear was always, like, a big part, a big presence in my life, especially when I was younger.

Um, and so stories were a way for me to explore that.

Mm-hmm.

What kind of research did you do

Well, you know, as I mentioned before, you know, I took the research for this book so seriously.

I definitely, as I said, you know, I felt like there was a huge weight with this story.

So I, you know, I went to the Japanese American National Museum in L.A. and I studied in their archives and reviewed collections that were not on display that you could only see kind of by appointment studying in the archives.

And I went to like every local site there was.

And as I said, there's like there's so many local sites there.

in the la area because so many families were impacted by this and you know like i went to manzanar and i worked with a manzanar camp ranger who helped me she would answer so many questions like because i had so many and some were you know very you know like very sweeping like you know like oh like what was the sentiment about this you know but then at the same time she would answer my questions like did the doors have locks you know like so it was like very um macro and micro, because I wanted to have every detail possible that would truly recount this history in all its magnitude.

So how was writing this book different from your previous releases?