Who are the people who have had the greatest impact on my life? Why?

I have a foster mother who is remarkable. When I met her I was a miserable 15 yr old who had literally been battered by life and it’s circumstances for years. I was nervous, anxious and eager to please ANYONE just to be left alone. Emi was also subjected to a terrible childhood. Personally, she was rejected by her divorced parents, hated by her step-mother and step-siblings and sent to live with her elderly grandfather in Los Angeles. Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The white people in her neighborhood viewed Emi and her family members with hatred and contempt, even though they were loyal Americans. The government came in one day and gave all of them 24 hrs to pack up one suitcase each and at 5 yrs old, Emi and her Japanese family and neighbors were shipped to concentration camps in the desert. For 4 yrs she lived in a bare wooden shack with her grandpa. When they were released at the end of the war, nothing remained. They had all lost their homes, their businesses, their bank accounts and all possessions. Emi was returned to her bitter step-mom and haughty father. Emi married young, to a Japanese Marine, and she followed him all over the United States as he served his country in wars in Korea and Vietnam. Finally he retired in his forties and bought Emi a house of her own in Los Angeles. Months later he died in a car accident. Life had been hard for Emi, but you’d never know it. She was sweet and gracious, kind and loving, full of life and joy. She is my inspiration and my role model. If she can survive and thrive, so can I.