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Dandelion Through the Crack

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Kiyo Sato's Dandelion Through the crack is, in one sense, "an Internment memoir," one of several published over the years. It is valuable as that. But it is so much more as to stand out from the rest.

Dandelion is, at its heart, the story of a family's quest for the American Dream, as the subtitle suggests. The specific facts pertain to the Sato family--father Shinji and mother Tomomi and their nine children, of whom daughter Kiyo was the first. At another level, Dandelion is the story of all immigrants to America seeking their piece of the American way of life, realized in the form of a home, family, rewarding and productive work, education, and acceptance as a valued part of the American community. And at yet another level, it is the story of all families, struggling with the challenges of life, from managing expenses to coping with the aging and death of parents.

In all of this, Dandelion has a unique and compelling literary voice. Distinctively, it is written in present tense, putting the reader right there in the story. It is further brought to life through the use of Shinji Sato's poetry (mostly haiku) and the stories he told his growing children. The writing is clear and direct, free of self-pity but influenced by an entirely understandable indignation at the way these patriotic citizens were treated by their own government and abandoned by their friends. (Shinji and Tomomi had lived in the U.S. for decades before the outbreak of WW II, and all of their children, born in the U.S., were American citizens. Shinji and Tomomi became naturalized citizens in the 1950s, taking the American names John and Mary, respectively.)

The book opens (after acknowledgments) with a dramatic scene in 1942, as the Internment and its rounding up of Japanese Americans, rapidly approaches. Kiyo, then just 19, is on a mission to find suitcases for "the trip," for the removal to a--let's be blunt--concentration camp. It is an anxious and dismaying time for young Kiyo.

A look back follows to how Shinji Sato came to America as a young teenager, learned English, acquired some useful education (he took classes at the Heald business school), and began to put down roots (literally as well as figuratively, as he became a farmer, starting with strawberries and then adding grapes and walnuts).

Kiyo turns, then, to her own life, starting with her first memories as a very young child. While I suspect that some of the memories are not entirely in chronological order, and tend to be impressionistic, they are nonetheless a remarkable window into the author's early years and into life on a Sacramento-area farm during the Roaring 20s (they did not roar for the Satos) and the Depression (which saw the Sato family, with its farm and its farming-community neighbors, able to manage with frugality and constant work).

Work! The Satos are relentlessly hard working, always in the fields or managing the household. And they are frugal, making every scrap productive or useful. They are a study in the American values (so much neglected these days) of thrift and industry, not to mention of dedication to family and its nurturing.

In all of this, the family is becoming American--especially the children, born in Sacramento, California, educated in public schools, and absorbing lessons of American history, government and patriotism.

And then it falls apart. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and a wide net of fear and suspicion is thrown over people (people of Japanese ancestry, whether American-born citizen or immigrant) who were simply living life as best they could, working, contributing to their communities. Friends turn cold.

We have seen, in loving detail, the growth of the family and of the farm.

And then the family and its Japanese neighbors and Japanese Americans across the West are rounded up and taken away. Their property is often lost or destroyed--or simply stolen--their rights removed with a stroke of President Roosevelt's pen and with the support of Earl Warren, later to become Chief Justice of the United States, but then California Attorney General.

We see how life was in the camps, how ingenuity and effort and devotion to the children helped to make life bearable, to the extent that was possible. Sometimes the results are surprising, as the knowledgeable and industrious internees make the desert bloom with vegetables and flowers--as many had turned undesirable land into thriving farms over preceding decades.

Kiyo is released (still under the government's watchful eye and conditions) to attend college in the East (the Western states were still off limits), and she struggles to earn enough to pay her expenses.

In time (1945) the family returns to what is left of the Sacramento farm. You must read that for yourself, in the context of all that has gone before. Remember: these were Americans, the children citizens born here and the parents residents for decades.

The story is far from over by that point, as the family rebuilds a life--again, a tribute to unceasing work. Challenges abound, including a confrontation with developers whose plans would have ruined what remained of the farm, which has again become a thriving enterprise.

In a touching chapter that has lessons for ALL families, Mama (Mary Tomomi Sato) passes on, surrounded by her family, decades after the trauma of the Internment.

Ultimately, the story reaches its payoff, as the reader realizes that the family has indeed achieved the American Dream. It has done so not through the acquisition of fancy cars and impressive homes, but through the success of children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, productive and educated citizens--through perseverence toward honorable goals.

Incredibly, despite the losses and the trauma that form a backdrop to much of the narrative, at the end, the reader feels good. The outcome, for which the title image of the Dandelion Through the Crack is apt, rewards the reader. A postscript, in the form of a letter to Tochan ("Daddy," Kiyo's father), brings the story up to date with yet more insightful and touching observations on the continuity of life and the outcomes of literal and figurative seeds planted generations earlier.

Dandelion Through the Crack is a jewel. Kiyo Sato has given us all a great gift in this remarkable, beautifully crafted narrative.

Dandelion Through the Crack is a compelling memoir. One of the few memoirs by Japanese Americans who experienced the internment experience during World War II, it is worth reading for that aspect alone. This book is historically significant and skillfully written. Kiyo Sato's story is never preachy or asking for pity. She reports the facts simply and eloquently. As I read about her treatment at college the day after Pearl Harbor, I felt her bewilderment and shock as people in the hallways turned away from her and refused to speak. On the previous Saturday she had been a young American college student with a bright future. By the following Monday she and her family had become The Enemy. Dandelion is touching, poignant, and unforgettable!

I must start by saying that Dandelion Through the Crack is not a book that I would have picked up at a store, even to browse through. However, upon hearing and reading rave reviews of the book, I decided to read it for myself.

Kiyo Sato tells an excellent, bracing story of her life as the daughter of Japanese immigrants, growing up on a farm outside Sacramento. Everything is great for her family until 1942, when the American government posts the dreaded "NOTICE TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY" that require her to report to a camp for the duration of the war. Despite the fact that she is an American citizen and was in no way responsible for the attack, she and her family are rounded up and taken to an internment camp in Arizona.

From there, the story is very fast paced, as she writes about daily life in the camp, her release to attend college, and how she always keeps her family first and foremost despite being separated from them by a thousand miles. She moves from place to place, trying to secure the future for her family. And, her family is trying to do the same for her, despite their hardships.

Dandelion Through the Crack is a wonderful book that anybody interested in reading a well-crafted true adventure should read. There are several bracing conflicts in the books: the family vs. the government, vs. developers, vs. anti-Japanese sentiment, and vs. nature. But, throughout each conflict, the family grows stronger.

In addition to be a good story, the book opened my eyes up about what Japanese internment camps were like during World War II. Highly recommended.

This is one of those books you will never forget reading, and which you will recommend to everyone you know who reads. It is the story of a family, surviving despite insurmountable odds, at a time when the whole country had turned against them. Through hardships which most of us cannot imagine, this family finds ways to perservere. Their courage and work ethic is beyond admirable, and their unity as a family is such a beautiful thing that it moved me to tears. Buy this book. You will be glad you did.

This book is a must read. Dandelion Through the Crack is so beautifully written from the heart of Kiyo Sato.

You will experience every possible emotion from the front cover to the last page. This book is not just about internment, rather a life of love, compassion and determination.

I found myself wanting to jump ahead to read the next haiku written by her father.

I love the title and how it came about. Thank you Kiyo for sharing this part of your life with us.

An incredible and inspiring true story that moves one to reflect on the importance of family and determination of will. At a time when the entire country was in upheaval the Sato's clung to each other in a way that provides a lesson for everyone; fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, siblings, children and communities. Hard to put down as you the reader are taken in to experience an area of this countries history that is seldom talked about.

Readers might expect a book about being banished to an internment camp to be depressing, but Dandelion is not the story you would expect. First and foremost, it's a heartwarming story about an American immigrant family's daily life on the family farm in Sacramento.

Here you have the young man, Shinji Sato, coming to America with nothing, working as a farm laborer to make a living and save for the future. After a few years, he returns home to marry, and realizes America is his new home. Together, he and his new bride, Tomomi, return to California to farm and raise a family. Against great challenges and prejudice, they manage to lease and then buy a farm, build a home, and raise award-winning strawberries and grapes, as well as other crops.

Kiyo is the eldest child of this struggling young family, and her portrait of their family life is intimate and touching. She describes the hard work in the fields, playing on the farm, the family baths in an enormous hot tub, daily meals and holiday dinners prepared together, school days in a one-room schoolhouse, church life and neighbors, and her dad's wonderful stories and haiku poetry which the children could not get enough of.

Into the middle of this sweet, idyllic family life and a now thriving farm, World War II intrudes. The family is forced to give up everything for the duration of the war and live in an arid, dusty concentration camp in Arizona. Yet even in this, these Japanese-Americans survived and transformed the desert into a garden and their prison camp into a town and the semblance of a home.

The return to their homes and farms after the war brought many heartbreaks and struggles as families like Kiyo's had to start over again. Many had lost everything, yet in true American fashion, they were indomitable in spirit and managed to struggle back and rebuild their homes and their places in the community.

Kiyo Sato's book is destined to become a classic. As the cliche goes, I laughed and I cried when I read it because in presenting such an intimate portrait, Kiyo makes the reader feel like a member of the family. Their struggles, their losses, their joys, and their successes seem almost as though they are our own. Their story is unique to their situation, yet it is also the timeless story of a typical American family, the story of modern-day American pioneers.

Don't miss this book. It's a book you will remember for a lifetime.

Ms Sato's life parallels my father's. She is a contemporary of my father, both of whom lived in the Sacramento area early in their lives. My father and his family, like the Sato's were taken away from their homes and sent inland to remote areas of the US.

Having read the first few chapters I see images from my own childhood living on the farm, having a mother who aspired for a better life and father who worked too hard. I can hardly read a chapter without having memories of my early life. I cannot imagine the difficulties that they faced. Their story is one that I rarely heard while growing up other than vague references to that time.

If there is one thing missing from her story, it is in providing more of the details of what happened after their return to their farm and how they prospered as the world around them changed. For me, that is the part of which I have the most vivid memories growing up in the 60s and 70s.

Update - The book has been retitled as Kiyo's Story: A Japanese-American Family's Quest for the American Dream. Same book, same story.

I am a caucasian American of German descent who grew up on the east coast in the 60's. I had heard, vaguely, about the internment of Japanese citizens during WWII, and I was always a bit curious about it, but it's not as if my own history brought me to this book predisposed to hang on its every word. Yet hang on every word I did; I was desperately short of sleep three nights in a row because I read until my eyes closed. I would love to make this required reading for all citizens, especially in our current time of mistrust against Middle Eastern immigrants. Not only did I love the family Ms. Sato described, I loved their farm, their trees, their dogs. I felt very strongly her family's hopes and bewilderment, and I rooted hard for their triumphs. She writes in a very poetic voice, and it creates out of her family's story a sort of literary flower, individual, delicate and beautiful. Don't miss this book.

This is a heartfelt, heartwarming family saga of an immigrant Japanese American family and their struggle to survive despite war, racism, poverty, farming misfortunes, and many obstacles that would have defeated the toughest among us. It is a story of hope, devotion, love, faith, endurance and steadfastness against staggering circumstances that the World War II era had to offer new Japanese immigrants as well as native born Nisei Japanese Americans. While the protagonists are a Japanese family, their story has many commonalities that will resonate with any family that came with little and struggled to achieve the American dream. Everyone alive could only hope to have as remarkable a family as the Sato clan. Congratulations Kiyo on telling your story so well.