Last weekend at the River Forest Library, Nicholls, a longtime advocate for Asian-American issues, shared her family’s story of intergenerational trauma in honor of Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Heritage Month. Her mother was born in Manzanar, California, one of 10 camps where the United States Government incarcerated more than 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Lourdes’ grandfather, Kiyotsugu Tsuchiya, who was the curator of the Harding Museum in Hyde Park from 1923-1940, was asked to start the Visual Education Museum for incarcerees at Manzanar. Lourdes’ family is the subject of an upcoming documentary “Belonging in the U.S.A: The Story of the Tsuchiya Family.”
Missed her? She speaks again at 10 a.m., Saturday, Dec. 7 at the Hyde Park Historical Society at 5529 S Lake Park Ave.
Lourdes Nicholls gives a presentation on her family’s experiences during the World War II incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent at the River Forest Public Library May 19. | Todd Bannor 
Lourdes Nicholls gives a presentation on her family’s experiences during the World War II incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent at the River Forest Public Library May 19. | Todd Bannor