My name is Marissa, and I'm a Girl Scout from south San Jose, California. I am currently working on my Gold Award, which is the highest award a Girl Scout can earn. It requires over 80 hours of work and leadership on a project that helps the community and has sustainability.

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My grandma’s house is full of interesting family heirlooms and weird knick-knacks, hiding in all sorts of nooks and crannies. Every other week, we would visit her and she would show us ancient tomes, detailing hundreds of years of Japanese history, or intricately decorated stones that her mother made as a young girl. I would listen for hours, and as I watched the excitement light up her face, I realized that she had been trying to share our history for years, to uninterested family and friends. Her joy inspired me to bring this history to life.

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For my Gold Award, I teamed up with Angel Island to locate, contact, and interview 6 living descendants of the Japanese who were interned at Angel Island during WWII. I collected and published their stories on the Angel Island Immigrant Voices and Discover Nikkei websites. Their genuine happiness at the preservation of their history and the interest it was garnering in others warmed my heart, and I knew I had to pursue this further. I worked with a team of volunteers from Angel Island to use this information to design 4 unique retractable banners, turning these stories into a professional traveling exhibit for Angel Island that will visit museums and historic sites all over the country.

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But to truly make an impact, I had to take this to a new level. I organized and created weekly 40 minute webinars on Japanese internment and Angel Island for youth and adults, highlighting how the problems of the past are still prevalent today, with the death of George Floyd and similar incidents. By explaining how to take action and eradicate this social injustice, I can made sure participants stayed engaged, and everyone can learn a lesson applicable to their own lives. I refuse to let this generation continue with their eyes on the ground, impervious to the consequences of staying silent. I am proud to be a teen leader, keeping history alive in the minds of the youth and making a difference, one person at a time.

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