Like many Nisei children, her education included American classes and extra Japanese language and cultural courses, the latter of which were held at Seattle's Nihon Go Gakko;[1] later, she and her family visited relatives in Japan.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing military commanders to designate areas from which "any or all persons may be excluded" and paving the way for the removal of all Japanese Americans from the West Coast.

[2] In 1943, Sone was allowed to leave camp after passing the so-called "loyalty questionnaire" and relocated to the Chicago area, where she worked as a dental assistant and lived with a white Presbyterian minister and his family.

The cover photograph of the original edition shows Sone and her sister Sammy smiling and sitting on the steps of the Carrollton Hotel, their father's establishment, in 1932.

Sone offers a first-hand account of life at the Puyallup Assembly Center and at Minidoka, one of ten public concentration camps where Japanese Americans were detained during the war.

By the time Nisei Daughter was reissued in 1979, Americans were becoming increasingly aware of and sensitive to mistreatment of people of Japanese descent in the United States during World War II.