Snow on Willow: A Nisei Memoir

This is the story of an American-born daughter of Japanese immigrants who is caught in Japan in the 1940s and returns to America after the war. She spends her early childhood exposed to two cultures in a pre-war Japanese settlement in West Seattle. When U.S. anti-Japanese sentiments escalate, she is called “Jap” and told “Go back home.” Her parents take her to their homeland. Here, she experiences discrimination from the Japanese, who call her “Yankee girl” because she is different and because of anti-U.S. sentiment. During the war, she and her family endure terrifying air raids, severe food shortages and many other hardships. They are only 40 miles from Hiroshima when the Americans drop the atomic bomb and they feel its massive jolt. Two years later she travels alone to Boston and works her way through college. Although this intrepid young woman encounters enormous hurdles on both sides of the Pacific, she refuses to allow anyone or anything to crush her spirit. A great read!