“Women are weak, but mothers are strong.”

“Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place. That's not him, we said to our mother, That's not him, but our mother no longer seemed to hear us..."Did you..." she said. "Every day," he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms...”

“A Japanese can live on a teaspoonful of rice a day. We were the best breed of worker they had ever hired in their lives.”

“That night our new husbands took us quickly. They took us calmly. They took us gently, but firmly, and without saying a word. They assumed we were the virgins the matchmakers had promised them we were and they took us with exquisite care. Now let me know if it hurts.They took us flat on our backs on the bare floor of the Minute Motel. They took us downtown, in second-rate rooms at the Kumamoto Inn. They took us in the best hotels in San Francisco that a yellow man could set foot in at the time. The Kinokuniya Hotel. The Mikado. The Hotel Ogawa. They took us for granted and assumed we would do for them whatever it was we were told. Please turn toward the wall and drop down on your hands and knees (...)They took us violently, with their fists, whenever we tried to resist. They took us even though we bit them. They took us even though we hit them (...).They took us cautiously, as though they were afraid we might break. You’re so small. They took us coldly but knowledgeably — In 20 seconds you will lose all control —and we knew there had been many others before us. They took us as we stared up blankly at the ceiling and waited for it to be over, not realizing that it would not be over for years.”

“We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting.”

“It's all in the way you breathe.”

“Mostly though, they waited. For the mail. For the news. For the bells. For breakfast and lunch and dinner. For one day to be over and the next day to begin.”