Kiyo's Story

This is an incredible book about the life story of Kiyo Sato. It starts out with looking at what brought her parents to the U.S., and then examines her life growing up, her life at the Poston internment camp, and her life afterwards.

The book succeeds on a variety of levels. For one thing, the reader can see just how hard it was to make a living farming at the time. Her parents, her, and her brothers and sisters all had to help in order to plant, care for, and harvest the crops. They never had a lot of money, but they did have wonderful family life.

Her description of the anit-Japanese prejudice after Pearl Harbor, the way the FBI arrested people without charge, her transportation to Poston and her life, and the life of her family, there, all make for some fascinating reading. Kiyo herself had a very hard life, having to work a variety of jobs, to help out her family and to help her get a college education.

One of the most interesting parts, and a part not covered in very many books, is the numerous problems she and her family had after their release from Poston and their attempts to move back to their former home. There was still a great deal of prejudice against Japanese Americans.

There were also problems with greedy councilmen and even more greedy developers that threatened to destroy their farm, and she had to fight against them. Then there's a section dealing with her mother's cancer and how her mother faced death.

There's also a great deal of anger in the book, anger against FDR and those who treated the Japanese Americans, 2/3rd of whom were actually American citizens, so shabbily, arresting some without any charges or trial or legal representation, taking the homes and property of many, and putting them away in the internment camps, surrounded by barbed wire and guns pointing inward.

This is without doubt one of the best books I have read on the subject.

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