Opening Line
The author attempts the daring leap of opening her book with a metaphorical image. More than that, she goes way on a limb by offering not a simple image, but a metaphor of significant imagination:
“The first five years of my life, I lived amoebic bliss, not knowing whether I was plant or animal.”
What was Nisei?
Very early in the book, the narrator considers the very concept of being a Nisei: someone born in America of parents from Japan. This was an especially difficult concept to literally live with during the controversial World War II internment camp years, but the metaphor seems to be right on the mark, psychologically speaking:
“I didn’t see how I could be a Yankee and Japanese at the same time. It was like being born with two heads.”
What is Nisei?
The author makes a callback to this earlier metaphorical representation of being Nisei near the end of the book. Her elderly mother expresses a feeling of regret at being a Japanese parent to American children and her daughter—the author—relieves her of that notion:
“I used to feel like a two-headed monstrosity, but now I find that two heads are better than one.”
Youthful Exuberance
Continuing in the tradition of manifesting somewhat offbeat imagery to describe her feelings, the narrator digs deep into the pocket of childhood memories to come up with a truly idiosyncratic simile with which to describe the youthful exuberance of a thrilling adventure:
“To walk up the plank to a boat which had just come from Japan was exciting—like a state fair, an educational tour and a trip to foreign land all rolled into one.”
The Day of Infamy
The author wisely avoids hyperbole and emotional overstatement to describe the single most significant day of the 20th century for Japanese-Americans. The day that changed everything—though they could not have known that at the time they first heard the big news of the day. It is the understatement of the image of first learning about the Pearl Harbor attack which makes it so potent as simile:
“The terrible words hit like a blockbuster, paralyzing us.”
