Japanese Internment Camp To A Life Of Service Summary

In her detailed and informative work, “Kiyo Sato : From a WWII Japanese Internment Camp to a Life of Service”, Connie Goldsmith accurately describes the events that took place for Japanese families during the Pearl Harbor attacks of 1941 and forward. Goldsmith is a renowned author and historian who was able to bring Soto’s story to life using detailed imagery and unique information. The title of the book gives way to the theme in that it is a perspective from inside the Japanese internment camps, one often untold and unseen. Using first-hand information from Kiyo Soto and her deep knowledge of the event, Goldsmith wrote a gripping narrative of what these Japanese internment camps were like to the thousands who were forced to live in them. The book unveils an often unspoken

However, the atmosphere shifted drastically the day after the Pearl Harbor attacks. Goldsmith conveys this feeling in chapter three, writing, “Kiyo couldn’t understand why most of the students she knew treated her like an unwelcome stranger, as if she’d done something bad and everyone knew about it except her” (Goldsmith 33). After these attacks on Pearl Harbor, Japanese families were discriminated against because the American people saw them as a threat to the country. The following weeks would be troublesome for the Soto family. Government agents would interrogate and search the home of the Soto family before the family was eventually taken to an internment camp. Frantic and confused, the family scrambled to figure out what was going on. Goldsmith tells the reader of the awful circumstances in which the families had to push through. It quickly became obvious to the reader that the prejudice against these Japanese families was unwarranted and the treatment they received was far too