“Maybe one must bend like the bamboo in the wind and
when the storm is over, we will be able to stand upright again.
The bamboo never breaks.”
—Kiyo Sato, about facing adversity
“Our camp, they tell us, is now to be called a ‘relocation
center’ and not a ‘concentration camp.’ We are internees,
not prisoners. Here’s the truth: I am now a non-alien, stripped
of my constitutional rights. I am a prisoner in a concentration
camp in my own country. I sleep on a canvas cot under which
is a suitcase with my life’s belongings: a change of clothes,
underwear, a notebook and pencil. Why?”
—Kiyo Sato, about being interned at Poston
“Like so many Japanese-Americans that were forced to leave
their homes in a time of national panic and bigotry, Kiyo did
not let it stop her from living an exceptionally full life.”
—California assemblyman Ken Cooley, presenting Kiyo Sato
with the California Woman of the Year Award, 2017
An imprint of Lerner Publishing Group
