Shame takes different forms in each community. But it always exists with regret and unanswered questions. It can obscure important truths, like when I reported on a rash of nursing home deaths at a Japanese American senior center that housed overflow coronavirus patients. None of their obituaries mentioned covid as a cause of death. In Long Beach’s Cambodia Town, it shut down questions about missing branches in family trees, haunted local politics, and left a piece of ground meant to serve as a Killing Fields memorial undeveloped for decades (it broke ground in 2020). And it was at Yong Yang’s funeral, where his loved ones spoke of him at his best moments, and showed me that to remember is to refuse shame.