Great memoirs of second-generation daughter of a Japanese family in Calif. during WW II. Camp life, etc. ( )

In 1953, Monica Itoi Sone wrote the consummate book on the "Internment" of Americans of Japanese descent. This book is not political, as most subsequent writing on this subject is. However, many of my friends, including a long-term girlfriend, several bosses, and neighbors, are the direct descendants of the Minidoka (Idaho) Gulag. Therefore, I know many untold truths about this tragic historical event. Here is where the Itoi family and 10,000 other men, women, and children were held as political prisoners by the Roosevelt administration's Executive Order 9066. Most of these folks were from the Greater Seattle and Puget Sound area of western Washington State. Many lost everything and had to start anew after World War II. This act by the government ranks among the Extermination of Native Americans, Latin American Human Trafficking, and African Slavery as the scar tissue of United States history. Regardless of your political beliefs or stance on historical issues, I consider this a TOP 10 MUST READ for any American. ( )

So glad, after meeting 'Kimi' in 'The Plague and I', to discover that she'd written a memoir. I recommend this book to all who are familiar with Seattle. If you want more about the TB sanatorium, you'll be disappointed, as she gave that episode in her life only about 3 pages. That's OK, she couldn't have topped Betty MacDonald's highly amusing account of it. ( )

From the back cover: With charm, humor, and deep understanding, a Japanese-American woman tells how it was to grow up on Seattle's waterfront in the 1930's and to be subjected to "relocation" during WWII. Along with some 120,000 other persons of Japanese ancestry--77,000 of whom were U.S. Citizens--she and her family were uprooted from their home and imprisoned in a camp. In this book, first published in 1952, she provides a unique personal account of these experiences.