BEND WITH THE WIND By: Sachi Kaneshiro
 
My niece made me do it. She prodded me into dusting off an old manuscript that had been languishing in my file cabinet off and on for over twenty years. Several attempts to get it published had come to naught.
Karen Kennedy, “mover and shaker” that she is, read the story, relocated a few chapters and made other minor changes; then passed it on to her mom, Mary Karatsu, to type up the revised edition. So I thank them for rescuing the book from certain extinction leaving untold the stories of some remarkable people during a dark period in my life.
My fellow students in a Creative Writing class in 1985 who heard about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II for the first time, felt that mine was a story that needed to be told. However, initially, for whatever reason, I tended to detach myself from the scene. There was a lack of immediacy. A fellow student and friend, Jane Missett, worked tirelessly with me to place myself in the center of the story. I am indebted to her for that.
Each episode is based on real experience; they are the incidents most vivid in my mind. I have used the actual names of my family and close friends. Others are fictitious (except for Isamu Noguchi). I am grateful to those persons both inside and outside of internment camp who helped me “keep the faith” during that period and to those who, in later years, encouraged me to share my story.