Kiyo's Story: A Japanese-American Family's Quest for the American Dream

“Vividly honest, deeply moving.”—Bill Hosokawa, Out of the Frying Pan: Reflections of a Japanese American

“It is a magnificent memoir, fully worthy of being compared to Farewell to Manzanar. I cannot praise its pointillist realism, its Zen-like austerity, highly enough. Exquisite.”—Kevin Starr, California: A History

“Taken simply as a family chronicle, it is moving and graceful. But it is also a powerful, thought-provoking historical document.”—James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy 

When Kiyo’s father left Japan, his mother told him never to return: there was no future there for him. Shinji Sato arrived in California determined to plant his roots in the land of opportunity even though he could not become a citizen or own land. Education was his watchword.

He and his wife and their nine American-born children labored in the fields together, building a successful farm. Yet at the outbreak of World War II, when Kiyo, the eldest, was eighteen, the Satos were ordered to Poston Internment Camp.

This memoir tells the story of the family’s struggle to endure in these harsh conditions and to rebuild their lives afterward in the face of lingering prejudice. Rejected by several nursing schools due to her ethnicity, Kiyo eventually became a captain in the Army Nursing Corps. The Satos returned home to find their farm in ruins, occupied by another family, but through fortitude and ingenuity, they persevered and ultimately succeeded.