Sono Osato (born August 29, 1919 in Omaha, Nebraska) is an American dancer and actress of Japanese and European descent.
Early life
Her Japanese father, Shoji Osato (1885-1955), and her Irish-French Canadian mother, Frances Fitzpatrick (1897-1954), were the caretakers of the Phoenix Pavilion and its Japanese garden, both of which had been built for World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, from 1935 to 1941. Japanese-Americans were forbidden from traveling east of Chicago during World War II; as a result, her father was interned in Chicago under the United States Government's Japanese American Internment policy.
Sono Osato was the oldest of three siblings; her given name is Japanese for "garden". She had two siblings. Teru, her younger sister, married a U.S. naval officer and started a family in Norfolk, Virginia. Timothy, her younger brother, upon turning eighteen years-old in 1943, joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the United States Army...