Grandma was an alien?

We called my maternal grandmother, Nonna (duh, it's the Italian word for grandmother).  Since my mom was the youngest of seven children, having been born when my Nonna was 40, and my mom did not get married until she was almost 30, I remember Nonna only as an old woman.
She was tiny, wiry and carried this black rubber cord called 'licorice'.  Getting licorice was not a good thing.  It meant getting your hands slapped.  She made great homemade pasta and meatballs (they were sooooo tender).  Her English was not great and we mostly communicated with her through my mom and Aunt Mary, who lived with her.
She was pretty stern -- she was not the hugging, laughing, building self-esteem type of grandmother.  I now realize that her life was not easy.  She left her mother in Italy and came to a foreign country.  She took three of her oldest children back to Italy for a visit and her oldest child died there from the flu.  Can you imagine?   I found her passport recently that showed her embarking with three children, with a notation upon her re-entry into the US that one had died.   Her husband died when my mom was a senior in high school, in 1938. 
I also found her alien registration card from 1942.  At that point, it is noted that she had lived in the United States for 35 years and 9 months.   We also found a notarized affidavit from Ann Street Radio in Homestead, attesting to the fact that her Zenith radio had its short wave coils disconnected, making "the radio completely dead and inoperative on all short wave bands." 
My brother remembers my mom telling him this story.  Apparently, my grandmother and her radio constituted a threat to national security.  What an indignity.  The Japanese, many of whom had been on American soil just as long or longer endured much worse. 
What a different life she had.  It would be so good to be able to have just one conversation with her to understand more.  Hoping to fill in some gaps in family history at the upcoming reunion.