With the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, all persons of Japanese descent were declared 'enemy aliens.' Their assets were seized and most of the Japanese Canadian population was relocated or sent to internment camps. Stone Voices is a selection of memoirs, diaries, and letters written by four Issei, the first generation of Japanese to settle in Canada. "I devoured these stories in one hungry afternoon of reading...as I read, I ranged through discomfort, old sadness, nostalgia, admiration, tenderness, pride, and anger as I was taken back to look again with the help of these additional perspectives, into the secrets and intimacies of my childhood." - Joy Kogawa