touching the past

There's an amazing digital collection of letters from Japanese-American children detained in an internment camp during World War II to Miss Breed, a children's librarian in San Diego. It's an amazing and touching story, and the letters convey a lot about an ugly time in US history.

Miss Breed was the children's librarian at San Diego Public Library from 1929 to 1945. When her young Japanese American patrons were forced into concentration camps with their families in 1942, Breed became their reliable correspondent, sending them books, assisting with requests for supplies, and through her actions, serving as a reminder of the possibility for decency and justice in a troubled world.

Found via the always-surprising Metafilter.