>> On the 75th anniversary of the executive order that sent 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps throughout the West, Seattle's normally bustling International District appears calm.

[ §§§ ] But a few blocks away, at one of the region's most iconic businesses, the scene is quite different.

Asian retail giant Uwajimaya teems with eager shoppers lining up for unique foods and trinkets seldom found on this side of the Pacific.

>> Hey, Robert.

>> Hi, Denise.

>> Overseeing this maze of products and people is incoming CEO Denise Moriguchi, the first of her generation to lead the family business.

>> I saw on Valentine's it was like all the lobster was sold out.

>> Denise's grandfather, Fujimatsu Moriguchi, started the company almost 90 years ago, selling fishcakes out of his pickup truck to Japanese laborers around Tacoma.

>> Uwajima is an area in Japan where my grandfather learned how to make the fishcakes.

And "ya" means "store," so it's the store of that area, and that they're well-known for their fishcakes, so it's kind of -- it's all about the fishcakes.

>> But the family's success was also built on a difficult past, a past they only recently began to talk about openly with each other.

>> You were what?

>> Five or six.

>> Five or six.

You were born... >> I was born, yeah, one of the first babies born there.

>> At the assembly camp, no?

>> Right, in the assembly camp.

So when we had to leave Tacoma, my mother was pregnant.

She must have been, what, eight and a half, or even more, months pregnant.

And I guess they had just no choice.

They had to leave.

>> We didn't know where we were going, but I remember we were allowed to carry one suitcase, I guess, and then we were put into a boxcar.

I remember the seats were hard with wood and then the shades were pulled.

But, you know, we got to peek out a little bit.

Later on, the rumor was we were headed for Northern California.

We got there, and I remember it was hotter than heck, yeah.

>> The Moriguchi family arrived at Tulelake in July 1942.

The camp already numbered in the thousands.

>> It was 60 blocks, and each block had 10 or 12 barracks, and each barrack was about 20 feet, so maybe five or six sections.

And each family was given one 20-foot section.

The only thing that I remember my mother saying is they had no clue how long it's going to be.

That was one of the difficulty of this whole experience.

>> Temperatures in winter reached negative 20 degrees.

>> My mother and father were pretty resourceful.

I remember some blankets were cut and made into jackets and things like that.

We survived.

I mean, I don't think we were -- we felt we were going to starve to death.

For the kids, it wasn't as traumatic as it probably was for the parents.

I was too young to concern myself with democracy or freedom of -- you know, constitution rights and things like that.

It's probably mentally more of a stress than the physical hardship.

>> The last internee to arrive in camp was youngest daughter Tomoko.

>> I was the last born in Tulelake.

I had such bad eczema that I had no square inch of skin.

My mother always said that her diet was not good in the camp, so I was so -- I bled everywhere.

>> Despite the hardships, they were determined to look beyond the camp.

>> I kind of remember my father saying, "You know, they did what they had to do.

Just move on.

Just look forward.

Don't look back."

And I always remember that.

So I always say, "Okay, do what you have to do.

Make the best of it."

>> After the war, the Moriguchis relocated to Seattle and borrowed money from friends to purchase a small store on Chinatown's Main Street.

They catered initially to other returning Japanese Americans, but soon became an important fixture for community members of many different backgrounds.

>> The reputation is, well, if you go to Uwajimaya, they'll kind of help you.

>> That's the kind of world that we were lucky enough to be in, you know?

It was global, but it was ... it was human.

>> Today, Uwajimaya is an icon of the Northwest, with four retail stores and a fifth location set to open this year in South Lake Union.

Denise Moriguchi believes that the collective resilience they learned during internment ultimately played a role in the company's success.

>> You kind of didn't talk about it.

It was understood, and you had that shared experience, I think, through those -- the community is how they really got through and were able to persevere and move on with their life and their business.

>> As she takes the reins from the previous generation, she's making sure the lessons of history are passed on.

>> I think, especially in today's environment, it's just really important to remember events like the executive order and the internment of Japanese, and just so people can be aware that it did happen, and just to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

I think the more awareness, the more we talk about it, it's just very timely and very important.