The author, Mitzi Asai Loftus describes her family life and the hardship that she and her family were subjected to during the Second World War. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Japan early in the 20th century. So Mitzi is one-hundred percent Japanese but American in terms of nationality because she was born in the United States. Her father worked for many kinds of manual jobs when he was young in order to buy farmland near Hood River, Oregon. He and his wife raised a big family of eight. But during the Second World War, the oldest daughter, Masako died under American bombs in Yokohama; two of the sons, Taro and Half fought in the US Army in the Pacific theater; while the rest of the family spent the war in the Japanese-American internment camp in Tulelake, California and Heart Mountain, Wyoming from 1942 to 1945. After Mitzi received a BA degree from the University of Oregon, she taught at Creswell High School until 1957, and then she went to Japan on a Fulbright teacher