Author Barbara Yuen O'Connor's grandfather left the China mainland in 1877 when he was twenty years old. It was the beginning of an amazing journey that took him to San Francisco just a few years before the Chinese Exclusion Act. He ultimately went to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations, and it was there that he and his wife raised twelve children.

The second generation continued the family's tradition of working hard, putting family first, and traveling. Barbara, a member of the third generation, was a schoolgirl when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The...