Spring 1942 in Sacramento: Bitter Harvest

"A Country's Only as Good as its Love for its Children."

-Kiyo Sato


Wednesday evening, the talented Kiyo Sato stood before a group of patrons in the Sacramento Room and told tales from a dark time. The scene: 1942 in the current-day Rancho Cordova. Imagine being a nineteen-year-old being followed by the police as you drive home. Imagine being rent from your two dogs as they nervously run in circles, trying to corral you to safety, as you step toward transportation to your relocation center in Sacramento. Next scene: Poston, Arizona. Imagine using the bathroom at an interment camp, one room, twelve holes in the floor, no dividers, and no privacy. Imagine watching friends pass out - some dying - because of temperatures reaching into the 120s and 130s. If that's not sobering enough, imagine returning to your house three years later to see someone else living in it.

This is a sampling of Sato's recollections from her award-winning memoir, Dandelion Through the Crack. She took attendees from her father's strawberry fields in the extinct hamlet of Mills to the barren expanse of Poston, Arizona, where everything was saved, collected as a means to make life better. She even recalled teenage boys being sent into the desert to collect rattlesnakes for the eventual making of belts and other items.

Sato's hour-and-a-half was memorable, and you can watch for her to appear as a participant in the California of the Past Project which is active through June 21.

Dandelion Through the Crack: Kiyo Sato, Heroism, and the Memory of Injustice

Kiyo Sato, a Japanese-American woman born in 1923 in Sacramento, has written the saga of the Sato family’s life in America: Dandelion Through the Crack. It is the compelling story of starting a family in California, coping during the Depression, being swept off to concentration camps, and ultimately surviving and succeeding despite terrible odds and oppressive prejudice.

Dandelion Through the Crack tells of a family formed both by ancestry and by the American way of life. Interwoven throughout are the haikuof the author’s father and his wise fables, drawn from his old and new homelands.

Joins us in the Central Library’s Sacramento Room on June 4 at 6:00 PM as Sato speaks about this important new book. Copies of Dandelion Through the Crack will be on hand for sale and signing.

Registration is encouraged by calling264-2920 or going to http://www.saclibrary.org/.

"Sacramento's War" is Online

Unveiled on Tuesday, the 18th of September, the Sacramento Public Library's Web page, entitled "Sacramento's War," [http://www.saclibrary.org/TheWar/sacramentoswar.htm] provides patrons with a window into the state of California's capitol city during the Second World War. Like the rest the country, the conflict caught Sacramento relatively offguard, but as it had in the past, in the face of fire, disease, and flooding, the city stepped forth and made a marked contribution to the War effort.

The site contains an essay on wartime Sacramento, a number of images from the Sacramento Room Archives and the Central branch's Federal Documents collection, a list of resources available throughout the library system on the Second World War, and a section dedicated to oral history, including the testimonials of five area WWII veterans.

"Sacramento's War" will compliment both the September 23 airing on KVIE of Ken Burns' PBS epic THE WAR and the Central Library's November 14 live interview of Sacramento native and Pearl Harbor survivor Bob Addobati. The interview will be conducted by local Oral Historian Paul Ferrell. To attend the interview, register by calling 264-2920 or go to http://www.saclibrary.org/. Sacramento holds distinction vis-a-vis THE WAR as it is one of four American cities featured in the series, along with Waterbury, Connecticut, Mobile, Alabama and Luverne, Minnesota.