er in Seattle's Skid Row, she was the child of two vastly cultures who were destined to go to war with each other. The "Nisei" of the title comes from the fact that Sone was the second generation daughter of Japanese immigrant parents (Issei).
In his introduction Miyamoto points out that the differences in language and culture (not to mention race) between Japanese and Americans are considerably greater than between the often competing European immigrant groups flooding to American shores, further compounding the difficulties for establishing valid and functional bicultural identity. The whole theme of Sone's book is her successful integration of these (literally) warring cultural influences in her life. At the end she writes: "I used to feel like a two-headed monstrosity. Now I feel that two heads are better than one" (236). After the bitterness of being the continual target of white racism, which culminated in several years of internment for the entire Japanese community of Seattle behind barbed wire under the constant surveillance of armed guards, her paeon to the American ideal of freedom and democracy at the end of the book sounds a little unconvincing:
In spite of war and the mental tortures we we
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