Shizuye "Shichan" Takashima was born on June 12, 1928, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to Senji and Teru Fujiwara Takashima. As a result of her premature birth, Takashima was sickly and walked with a slight limp.

Although she was actually fourteen when the Canadian government uprooted her family during World War II, in A Child in Prison Camp she makes herself two years younger because she "felt younger" and "seemed so helpless" at the time. Her four brothers were separated from the family and sent to another camp, and Joseph, her younger brother, eventually joined the Canadian Army and served in India. Along with her parents and sister, Takashima was sent to a relocation camp near New Denver, seven hundred miles from Vancouver.

At the New Denver internment camp, she attended grade school first under makeshift arrangements and then formally under the nuns of Notre Dame des...