AUTHOR KIYO SATO TO READ, DISCUSS MEMOIR 'KIYO'S STORY' ON JULY 17

Author Kiyo Sato will read from and discuss her award-winning memoir, Kiyo’s Story: A Japanese American Family’s Quest for the American Dream, at a public program set for Saturday, July 17, beginning at 2 p.m. at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.

Like thousands of Japanese Americans, the Sato family was forcibly removed from their home and sent to live in a government-run concentration camp in Poston, Arizona, during World War II. Kiyo, the eldest daughter of immigrant farmers from Japan and one of nine children, was 18 and attending Sacramento Junior College when the war began. At the war’s end, the Sato family left camp and migrated to Colorado to work as laborers until they could return to Sacramento and their farm.

Kiyo then joined the United States Air Force, completing her college education in nursing and achieving the rank of captain. She eventually returned home from the service, married, and started her own family in Sacramento. Her four children grew up frequently visiting and working on their grandparents’ farm, a vital part of every Sato family member’s experience.

Originally published as Dandelion Through the Crack, the memoir won the 2008 William Saroyan Prize for International Writing. In her book, she describes her fear while driving the family car trailed by a police car as she and her family prepare to pack up and leave their farm. :If the FBI thinks a good man like Mr. Saiki is a spy, there is no telling what they will do to me. If I were to be picked up now, what would my family do? Would my parents be notified? I must write down somewhere that my name is Kiyo Sato and that my parents are Shinji and Tomomi Sato at Route 2, Box 2917, in Sacramento, California. What will they do with my Studebaker? Dear God, please, please, not now!"

Besides discussion of her book, Sato will talk about the process of writing her memoir. This program is free to National Museum members or with admission.