The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest

by Satsuki Ina

A compelling and prismatic love story of one family's defiance in the face of injustice—and how their story echoes across generations.

"It is both overwhelming and affirming to imagine, in the midst of their darkest hours, and in the middle of a country and a war that willfully misperceived them as enemy aliens, that the future, for Itaru and Shizuko Ina, was not only possible, but would deliver redemption in the form of the intimate, inexhaustible attention of a daughter." —Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the Wall

In 1942 newlyweds Itaru and Shizuko Ina were settling into married life when the United States government upended their world. They were forcibly removed from their home and incarcerated in wartime American concentration camps solely on account of their Japanese ancestry. When the Inas, under duress, renounced their American citizenship, the War Department branded them enemy aliens and scattered their family across the U.S. interior. Born to Itaru and Shizuko during their imprisonment, psychotherapist and activist Satsuki Ina weaves their story together in this moving mosaic. Through diary entries, photographs, clandestine letters, and heart-wrenching haiku, she reveals how this intrepid young couple navigated life, love, loss, and loyalty tests in the welter of World War II-era hysteria.

The Poet and the Silk Girl illustrates through one family's saga the generational struggle of Japanese Americans who resisted racist oppression, fought for the restoration of their rights, and clung to their full humanity in the face of adversity. With psychological insight, Ina excavates the unmentionable, recovering a chronicle of resilience amidst one of the severest blows to American civil liberties. As she traces the legacies of trauma, she connects her family's ordeal to modern-day mass incarceration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Lyrical and gripping, this cautionary tale implores us to prevent the repetition of atrocity, pairing healing and protest with galvanizing power.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Historical, Asian American, Book Club

382 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 12, 2024

Reviews

[Nanako Water · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I read Satsuki Ina’s memoir The Poet and the Silk Girl, I suddenly saw where the Japanese cultural trait of gaman (to endure) turned inside out to become the American trait of protest. Like me, Ina was raised by her parents to not speak about shameful moments in one’s life. The four-year incarceration of Ina’s parents (both American citizens) by the US government would have remained secret if it were not for Ina’s curiosity about a tattered quilt her mother refused to throw out.

…the unexpected kindness of a stranger that sustained my mother for years after her incarceration. She told me about the “church ladies” from the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) who would come to the fence to toss fresh fruits and vegetables over to prisoners every week. One day, a woman, possibly noticing that my mother was pregnant, called to her to come closer. Then, with enormous strength, the woman heaved a beautiful handmade quilt over the fence. When my mother picked it up, the woman smiled and said, “I hope this helps.”

A lifetime later, when my mother was ill and failing, the familiar quilt, now worn and ratty, lay on her bed. I suggested we replace it with a new blanket, but she refused. I knew the story about how it had come to belong to her, but I was surprised by the intensity of her refusal. When I asked her what the blanket meant to her, she said softly, clutching it in her hand, “This blanket helped me to remember that someone outside cared.” I realized, in that moment the healing power of the compassionate witness, someone whose presence countered the dehumanizing narrative imposed on a victim of trauma. Someone cared.

Ina’s parents were born in America but they both had elementary school educations in Japan, making them Kibei. When times were good, their bilingual, bicultural backgrounds were a great asset. Ina’s mother was selected out of thousands of young women to represent the Japanese silk industry at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition.

But when times were bad, Ina’s parents were cursed. Targets of suspicion from both sides. The Depression had made people desperate and nationalism was rampant. The Japanese considered Ina’s parents Gaijin (outsiders from America) while whites and fellow American-born Japanese (Nisei) thought they were enemy spies. Can you imagine what it felt like to be rejected, not only by one’s country of birth but also by one’s ancestors’ country?

Two months after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 forced the Japanese American community on the West Coast into ten remote concentration camps. People like Ina’s parents were confused when they were taken away. Surely our American citizenship will protect us. But they were wrong. The young couple was caught in the middle of an M. C. Escher lithograph-like world. Inside prison, it no longer mattered which way one ran on stairs that climb up to the bottom or down to the top. There was no longer any citizen or alien, up or down, right or wrong, loyal or disloyal. Just trying to survive in such a convoluted world made the young man and woman delusional and believe they had some say in their lives.

Ina’s incredible memoir uses the letters her parents wrote to each other from separate detention centers to show how two ordinary newlyweds in love ended up labeled as dangerous enemies of the state, condemned to four years of incarceration, separated for months at a time, “voluntarily” stripped of their American citizenship, and almost deported to a war-devastated country with their two toddler children born in prison - Satsuki Ina and her older brother Kiyoshi. Ina’s documentation of files from the FBI, Department of Justice and many government officials support this unbelievable house of cards constructed to justify the imprisonment of this young family. Who needs to read dystopian literature when you can find true stories like this?

Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have learned from past experience. This is a bitter pill we have to swallow. Over the course of human history, there has been and will continue to be scapegoating, injustice and cruelty towards people who look different from the mainstream. Just look around today and you will see government authorities throwing out phrases like “deportation of illegal immigrants”, “removal of American birthright citizenship” and “deterrence of unauthorized immigration by detention” as ICE raids increase in major cities.

ProPublica and the Texas Tribune reported less than half of the approximately 8,200 people arrested (by ICE) from Jan. 20 (2025) through Feb. 2, so far have criminal convictions.

“It was just a regular morning,” said Loreal Duran from Echo Park in Los Angeles, describing her family’s before-school rush to get the kids out the door and loaded into the car.

But on the morning in question, Jan. 23, as her husband fastened their two young children into their seats, an immigration officer walked up, asking Loreal to show identification. “As he got closer to the car, he saw my husband, and basically, he just went around to the other side to grab my husband out of the car and take him away.”

Giovanni Duran, 42, came to California from El Salvador without federal authorization when he was 2 years old, brought by his family. He worked as a busser in a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles, Loreal said. Duran is now being held in the Adelanto detention facility, run by a private company under contract to ICE, awaiting deportation to a country he doesn’t know.

But even if I know such actions are wrong, what can I do? As one person, my opinions have no effect on the current political situation. Complaining only aggravates everyone. Defying the authorities might get me in trouble or worse, lose my job and thrown in jail myself.

When I first heard about Satsuki Ina’s public protests about the treatment of immigrants coming in at the Southern border, I felt uncomfortable. We shouldn’t be protesting against the authorities. It’s not my business to get involved in other people’s problems. But Ina is older than I am, and had learned a valuable lesson I was only beginning to understand.

Ina’s contact with the detained immigrants at the Southern border was in direct correlation with the trauma she and her parents suffered in an American concentration camp. While her parents were helpless in the face of the war hysteria and the mass incarceration because they happened to have faces that looked like those of the enemy, Ina realized that the church lady had given her mother a powerful weapon.

The quilt is not just bedding. It is evidence of the woman’s devotion to community. The interlocking design. The repeating pattern. The bits of fabric from someone’s clothing - all remind us how we are all part of a community. The quilt is an embodiment of the greater Truth. We are all connected to each other and owe each other respect and compassion. A simple quilt couldn’t change the fact of Ina’s family incarceration and the separation of Ina’s parents, but it provided great comfort while they slept.

Satsuki Ina knew her IKIGAI, her purpose in life, was to deal with her parents’ trauma (and that of the Japanese American community). Her fascinating memoir documents her long journey of self-discovery. Once she uncovered the layers of secrets her parents kept, she realized she had to do something with that knowledge.

It wasn’t enough to just uncover her mother and father’s stories. Ina and her supporters went down to the immigrant detention centers, not for political reasons, but to contact the detained immigrants, tie hand-folded senbazuru origami cranes on the fence and show the imprisoned women and children that someone outside cared. Her goal was to be a “compassionate witness” to help heal their wounds of rejection, just as the church lady did for her mother.

In her memoir, Ina recounts her surprise when she met with women and children who had just been released after weeks or months of incarceration. After her eighty-year-old brother Kiyoshi talked about being born in prison and growing up without his father for a significant part of their four-year imprisonment, one of the immigrant mothers, carrying a toddler in her arms, stood up to speak:

Black strands fell from the rubber band holding her hair back; her clothes were rumpled and faded, and tears streamed down her face. As she spoke, the translator struggled to keep her own composure. “I have just spent four months in a terrible place,” she said. “I feared for my children. We were hungry and afraid every day. When I hear that you were in prison for years, my heart aches for you. I cannot imagine your suffering.”

Compassionate witnessing can occur both ways, across time, across generations, across language barriers. Even between those who are imprisoned and those of us who are free. Satsuki Ina described the healing they all felt as they shared their stories.

So too did I realize that I couldn’t just write about my own family history or run away during these difficult times and go live overseas as I’ve been tempted to do. It would be easy for me to escape to Japan, find a nice apartment in Tokyo, enjoy eating wonderful food and just write. But after reading Ina’s memoir, I knew I couldn’t be so selfish.

I have to do my part to improve my society. American society. In this increasingly uncomfortable enclave getting pressed on all sides by frightening forces, I needed to act, not just write. In my own small way, I was going to have to show up and be a compassionate witness for people who happen to be on the wrong side of the fence.

[Kiku]

This is a hard one to review, and impossible to give a star rating. It's deeply personal, and offered great insight into experiences my grandmother and great grandparents must have gone through as San Francisco Nikkei during the war. I also appreciated the deeply layered look at the No-No decision - though I have long since learned more about the nuances of the No Nos, I remember my mom telling me they were troublemakers, at least in her own mom's eyes.

It is important American historykeeping. And yet there was a glaring absence from the story that I couldn't ignore. I think that for Sansei, the big community reckoning that had to happen was the one Dr. Ina helped to bring about - the end of derision and shame about the No No decision. That was important work. For Yonsei like me though, I think our personal reckoning is increasingly with the ways in which our ancestors were complicit in, or criminally ignorant of, the war crimes that the Empire of Japan was committing at the same that that our community was being unjustly incarcerated.

I don't think that has to be a focus in every camp story - certainly most Nisei had no idea of what was happening in Japan nor any stake in it. Even most Issei I think can be excused, as so many were poor and powerless in Japan and escaped the increasing fascism there for a reason. But in this book, Shizuko and Itaru specifically mention the "loss of Manchuria" and the end of their plans to live there. They had a direct relationship to the Japanese colonial project. I think it would have benefited the book to expand on that thorny topic - as Dr. Ina says, healing can only come when the truth is named. I think it is our generation's work to synthesize our own trauma and outrage at the injustices done to our families, and their own relationship to Japanese nationalism, to examine our own inherited biases. This is not to say Shizuko and Itaru are somehow responsible for Japanese war crimes, or that it in any way negates the injustice of what was done to them in the USA. I just think, given their apparent plan to be active colonizers in China, it is important to name the complexities of that plan, the layers of privilege and oppression that exist in every community.

[Barbara Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

A part of our history that needs to be told….I was an adult before I even heard of the 125,000 Japanese living in America who were incarcerated in internment camps in the US during WWII.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last sentences of this exceptional account says it all: “It is my hope that this one story will encourage others to discover and claim their own family stories. In this way, we collectively challenge the distortions and lies that have suppressed the truth and the facts of our traumatic history. Each story will add to a multifaceted accounting of how democracy failed and how some of us, not all of us, managed to survive. “

[AmyNsReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Japanese American, this was such an important read for me that opened my eyes in ways I hadn't thought going into it.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!

I knew it would be a story of a family that was placed into the internment camps during World War II but I was not expecting the heartbreaking ups and downs of trying to navigate citizenship or denouncement of it to try to save themselves/their family. I went through so many emotions of being heartbroken for the families ripped away from everything they knew just for their ancestry despite many being citizens, anger for the way they were treated because of how they looked and the blood that ran threw them, horror at the ways we see the dark side of humanity in times like this both by the government meant to protect its citizens, and the people that were their neighbors.

I was uplifted by people that did the right thing, stood up for the marginalized and oppressed, and inspired by the amazing women that did a lot of the silent heavy lifting. I think of Shizuko's mom in the camp single parenting with two toddlers while suffering her own physical and mental health issues in this traumatic experience while her husband was on his own in a separate camp. Then to think of kids being born and raised in these camps, separated from the family they've known... on top of that, I was so upset that the government turned to draft/enlist the people they imprisoned in these camps. Many may have gone out of loyalty and duty to the country they called home, but to hear how disheartened people were to be treated so unfairly by the country they held citizenship of and felt the need to take matters into their own hands is just awful.

It was a great call to stand up for people that are mistreated unfairly because if people think this doesn't happen or can't happen to them, as people of another color, I'm sorry but you're sorely mistaken. We have seen it time and time again unfortunately. If you see things and don't speak up for the right thing, who will be there to stand up for you when they finally come for you and people that look like you?

[Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was, unfortunately a timely read. Have had it on my to read list for awhile and so was excited to see it was available via Hoopla. This is the story of the author's parents, Itaru and Shizuko Ina, who were forcibly removed from their homes, required to renounce their US citizenship and were held in internment camps. Through memories, historical records, letters, etc. author Ina takes us through the experiences of her parents as well as others during this time period.

If you've read any account of what it was like in the Japanese internment camps then much of this will be familiar. The events leading up to the war, the increased suspicion, the humiliation and dehumanization of these Japanese-Americans, forced to give up everything and be moved into camps. And interwoven is Ita's history of how her parents met and married, how they had a family, etc. And there are parts of some hope as well, such as the small gifts to the internees--it reminded them that someone, on the outside, did care about them.

When they are released there is of course, the readjustment and the shock of the entire experience. It wasn't unusual, for example, for families to return "home" only to find they had no home to return to, with their property and belongings seized by "neighbors" or "friends," or just gone, stolen by thieves. There was also the readjustment of being "American," where it wasn't unusual for children to be given "American" names to blend in. Ita describes the shock of realizing her name wasn't "Sandra" at all, as well as discussing how younger children were given westernized first names with their Japanese name as their middle name.

This experience has echoed down through the years and sadly we are facing a situation not too far from this one. History may not necessarily repeat itself but it can certainly show up again in the ugliest ways. I would very strongly recommend people read this to learn and remember that we really aren't that far removed from this at all, and that these stories and experiences deserve to be read, learned and remembered. Would be a good read for a mature high schooler, and maybe younger, but your mileage may vary.

I wouldn't have minded buying it. Would recommend it as part of reading more on the Japanese internment camps, although there's also the graphic novel 'They Called Us Enemy' that Star Trek actor George Takei collaborated on with a few other people. All the same, I would urge to find a way to learn a little more about the Japanese internment camps and the circumstances that got the United States there.

As mentioned, got this through Hoopla and that was probably best for me.

[Brittany]

Thank you to the publisher and author for an advanced reader copy (arc). I am so grateful to have read this, and that Satsuki Ina shared this with us. I'm writing this review because I want to <3

I hate that we are still seeing parallels to these kinds of stories TODAY (20-Oct-2025 as I write this!!!). People often say, "Why don't you just leave then if you hate America so much?" because I constantly criticize our dehumanizing policy. However, it's honestly the exact opposite of that; I LOVE MY COUNTRY (albeit..... I do live on *stolen* Muwekma Ohlone land, so I recognize the irony in me claiming a country that was stolen).

My point is that you don't just leave when things are not perfect and it's a massively privileged response... Not everyone can just up and move to a different country when they dislike a country's politics. Also, I'd be *shocked* if you found a country that had perfect politics. So, to me, it's worth it to call attention to the pain points of your country, state, country, communities. It's part of believing in community, to work towards a better, more inclusive and peaceful space for all.

ANYWAY, I say all that because it's so disappointing, shameful, and depressing to be a U.S.ian right now, and for the exact reason that Satsuki Ina shares in this reflection, analysis, and dissemination of her family history. She not only goes over the history of the displacement camps of the Japanese during World War 2, but also specifically how this impacts our psyche and overall wellbeing. She shares diary entries, photographs, letters, and haiku that illustrate the struggles her parents endured as Japanese Americans in advocating for their humanity and dignity, all less than 100 years ago. If you want a fictional pairing with this, I'd recommend We Are Not Free by Traci Chee! One of my favorite young adult novels ever.

I appreciated how accessible Ina's writing felt, inviting us to learn, sympathize, and to hopefully speak up if we see this happening today. Advocacy and organizing doesn't have to be the picture you have in your head (i.e. leading a protest), it can start with your own circles of influence, and if we flex our "bravery" muscles a bit more and commit to practicing it more frequently, it will start to feel more natural and comfortable, meaning we will reach for that bravery more!!!! A little discomfort does not always mean "unsafe," and if we have privilege, we have to use it to advocate for those who cannot be as vocal or open with their beliefs. Fuck ICE, fuck racist policy, and fuck borders.

[Michael Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

An emotional journey through the darkest years in American history from the perspective of a family that endured the worst of it. This marvelous work is from the child, born in captivity, to a young family whose only crime was their heritage.
Many of us (baby boomers) were unaware that the prison camps in the US ever existed. None of our history or civics textbooks contained any mention of the mass incarceration of American citizens of Japanese decent. Even growing up to marry a Japanese-American whose parents and grandparents were in the camps, it tool a long time to hear much about the experiences because they just did not want to talk about it.
Satsuki Ina does an incredible job of telling her family's story using research and the remaining written correspondence between her mother and father who were separated into different camps for the last year of their imprisonment. You can feel her mother's anguish and her father's hopefulness. Their fear is real and impacts the reader. The callousness of our own government is appalling.
I wish I could say that we, as a country had learned our lesson. But the last few years has proven otherwise. Prison camps for immigrants, sometimes separating children from their parents for long periods of time. A now thankfully former President who assails and ridicules immigrants, calling them less than human. What have we learned?
For me, the introduction and first chapter were tough to get through, as these sections seemed to drag a bit. But the rest of the book just flew by. It was difficult to put down to continue later as I always wanted to know the content of the next diary entry or letter.
I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone. The lessons for our country are critical. The story is emotional, but rewarding. The clarification of history is illuminating. The view into the Japanese and Japanese-American cultures is eye-opening, even for someone who has lived in their midst for several decades.

イなーさま、どうもありがとうございました！

[Shirley Kamada · Rating 5 out of 5]

In THE POET AND THE SILK GIRL: A MEMOIR OF LOVE, IMPRISONMENT, AND PROTEST, author Satsuki Ina, a psychotherapist specializing in community trauma, wastes no time and pulls no punches in assessing the adverse long-term effects of the WW2 internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans.

Ms. Ina’s writing, crystalline in its clarity, communicates significant truths. She states, "A whole world of understanding opened up for me when I realized that false imprisonment of an entire community could have a profound and intergenerational impact.” The author continues, “Sadly, for people of color today, the threat of being unjustly targeted has far from passed.” And, "In a social system fraught with anxiety about the COVID pandemic and seeking a scapegoat, violent anti-Asian hate crimes have proliferated.”

I am moved to ask, how can this be? We are, none of us, clones. Diversity is inescapable, a given. What have we, what has society, bungled in dealing with this, a major source of our nation’s intellectual and cultural development?

Rooted in extensive research as well as her own experience, Satsuki Ina’s THE POET AND THE SILK GIRL brings light to a darkened room. Highly recommended, five stars—ten if I could do so.

[Marleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satsuki Ina is a licensed psychotherapist who has used her academic training to explore the Japanese American experience through the lens of her family’s traumatic experience of imprisonment, separation and dissidence which affected how they subsequently navigated the world and raised their children. It is a love story between her parents and how government policies shattered their young married lives. It was very poignant to read how her parent’s wish for their chidren’s success in the world was not guided by hope for a better life but by fear that everything could be taken away again. We needed to be such good Americans our loyalty and behavior would never be questioned again. The Japanese Americans have the highest rate of outer marriage than any other Asian American group. People who are oppressed will often identify with the oppressor in order to survive. Ina points out we need to look at our story from those two sides. Even though these events happened during WWIi, we are targeting a new group of people with the same kind of rhetoric and a rise of the voices of white supremacists. We are repeating history.

[Andrea Stoeckel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Through these treasured writings,my mother and father have been speaking to me, leaving some gaps, some mystery, much history, and more than anything,many lessons about how to choose to live my life."

This book is a frightenly marvelous look at a world that the US really wants to forget. However, with our current president incarcerating people much as he did during his first presidency it is a book written by a trauma therapist about her own history of being born in an internment camp simply because her family was Japanese during WW2.

I am a member of the baby boomer generation, a New Englander born and bred. Both my parents served in WW2. But until I heard about George Takei's stories of Manzanar I never knew about this egregious horror the government caused thousands of people. [ Note: it also happened to the only group of Jews allowed into the country and interred in a small camp here in Oswego NY]

This book is an eye opener that almost reads like fiction instead of first person memoir. It's not an easy book by any means but it is a book well worth reading. Highly Recommended 5/5

[Amber]

"The signing of Executive Order 9066, in reality, marked the perpetration of a profoundly damaging psychological trauma, which would go unacknowledged by both victim and perpetrator for decades. To the victims of mass incarceration is, by definition, traumatic. To be deemed guilty by reason of race, over which one has no control, is, by definition, racism. What Japanese Americans suffered was governmental-perpetuated racism trauma. The betrayal by a trusted source—in this case, their own government—complicated the response of the victims. Not unlike a helpless child being abused or abandoned by a parent, the victim often clings to the belief that the perpetrator somehow cares about the victim. In the case of the mass incarceration, the perpetrator is the government, an all-powerful, inaccessible, generalized authority, issuing orders being carried out by faceless military authority and bureaucrats, rather than an identifiable individual at whom the anger and outrage could be directed."

[Joe Davoust · Rating 5 out of 5]

An emotional look at how a family of American citizens were kidnapped from their home by the United States Government, forced to give birth in captivity, then were asked to swear allegiance to those same kidnappers. An impossible situation that while it mirrors the way immigrants are being treated today, is made so much worse in that the family, including the author, were born in the United States. A well written and researched account that was a quick and necessary read.

[Cal Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really important read that shows what happens with civil liberties are stripped away. There are a lot of key lessons for today, especially around in-group fighting, how more extreme views get cultivated, and the sys racism that still exists in US policies today. A deeply personal memoir about the authors' parents, and a really engaging way to share about Japanese American internment.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

astonishing.

This should be required reading in schools. This history was never taught to us but should have been. Now we are living in similar circumstances. What a brave family to have endured this. Shame on the Government that they are doing this again.

[Amal Omer · Rating 4 out of 5]

horribly sad, learned a lot. i loved the mix of personally narrative, poetry, letters… it was easy to keep up with and stay engaged

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, Satsuki, for sharing this glimpse of your parents with us.

[Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will break your heart.

[Dianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unbelievable true life story of a horrible time in our history. We need to learn from our errors!