Silver Like Dust: One Family’s Story of America’s Japanese Internment

By Kimi Cunningham Grant

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Through conversations recorded by her granddaughter, a Japanese-American woman recalls her life during World War II. Born into a poor but industrious family in California, she finds her life shattered by the onset of war, and the subsequent forced “evacuation” of her family to a bleak concentration camp in northwest Wyoming. Soon the young woman marries and gives birth to her first child. Enduring the bitter cold winters and equally unpleasant torrid summers, she finds the worst trial is the utter hopelessness of her situation, and the unchanging depression of those around her.

Published in the same year as the opening of the now restored camp, this account stands as a testament to the rampant racism and fear of those years, as well as the qualities of the Japanese culture that allowed them to accept it without complaint. Make no mistake, the actions of those who banished these citizens from their homes were still reprehensible. To drive this point home, the grandmother always refers to herself and her family as “prisoners” which indeed they were.