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Nisei Daughter Biography

Monica Sone

Monica Sone was born Kazuko Monica Itoi in Seattle in 1919. Like many Nisei, her name was a bridge between her Japanese past and her American future: Kazuko is Japanese for "peace," while Monica is the name of St. Augustine's mother. She spent her childhood helping her parents run the Carrollton Hotel on Seattle's Skid Row. In 1942, she and her entire family were forced into a Japanese internment camp in Puyallup, Washington. The family was eventually relocated, along with hundreds of others, to Camp Minidoka in Idaho, where many Japanese Americans remained until 1946.

Sone was released from internment in 1943 to work in Chicago as a dental assistant. She eventually returned to college (which she had begun before internment) in Indiana, studying clinical psychology. She married another Nisei, Geary Sone, and the two eventually settled in Canton, Ohio. As of 2006, Nisei Daughter remains the only book...
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