Mitsuye Yamada

Mitsuye Yamada (born July 5, 1923) is a Japanese American poet, essayist, and feminist and human rights activist.

She is one of the first and most vocal Asian American women writers to write about the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Mitsuye Yamada was born as Mitsuye Mei Yasutake in Fukuoka, Japan on July 5, 1923.

Her parents were Jack Kaichiro Yasutake and Hide Shiraki Yasutake, both first-generation Japanese Americans (Issei) residing in Seattle, Washington.

Her mother was visiting relatives in Japan when she was born, but had to return to Seattle to care for one of her brothers.

Mitsuye was left in the care of a neighboring family in Fukuoka until she was 3 1/2 years old, when her father's friend brought her back to Seattle.

At age 9, she returned to Japan to live with her paternal grandparents for 18 months.

Upon returning, she spent the remainder of her childhood in Seattle with her parents and three brothers.

Mitsuye's family lived in Beacon Hill, an Asian residential enclave.

She graduated from Cleveland High School, receiving her diploma while incarcerated at the Puyallup Assembly Center.

When World War II broke out, Mitsuye's father Jack Yasutake was branded an enemy alien and arrested on suspicion of espionage.

Like hundreds of other Japanese Americans, he was arrested without proof of wrongdoing, and was later exonerated after the war.

Jack worked as a translator for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and was also the founder of the local Senryū club whose members would read their poems at the family home in Seattle.

In 1942, after Executive Order 9066 was signed, Mitsuye and the rest of her family were incarcerated, first at the Puyallup Assembly Center and then at Minidoka War Relocation Center, Idaho.

Mitsuye was allowed to leave the concentration camp with her brother Mike because they renounced loyalty to the Emperor of Japan.

Both went on to attend the University of Cincinnati.

Although Yamada began her studies at the University of Cincinnati, she left in 1945 to attend New York University, where she received a B.A. in English and Art in 1947.

Mitsuye married Yoshikazu Yamada in 1950, and the couple had four children together.

Mitsuye has seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

She earned an M.A. in English Literature and Research from the University of Chicago in 1953.

Mitsuye became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955.

She considers herself Nisei (second-generation Japanese American).

She began teaching at Cypress College in 1968, and retired in 1989 as a Professor of English.

She wrote her first book, Camp Notes and Other Poems, during and just after her internment during the Second World War, but it remained unpublished until 1976.

In this collection, the "wartime conflicts of Japanese Americans are traced back to the injustice of Executive Order 9066 and to visible and invisible racism against Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry both inside and outside the camp."

Mike was soon expelled because the U.S. Air Force was conducting "sensitive wartime research on campus and requested his removal" but Mitsuye was allowed to continue studying at the University (Yamada, 1981)

During the time of Mitsuye's upbringing, Japanese society did not offer women much freedom; they were unable to obtain higher education or choose a husband on their own accord.

Yamada's personal and familiar ordeals throughout World War II and observations of her mother's way of life bring anti-racist and feminist attitudes to her works.

(Geok-Lin, 1993).

Yamada's first publication was Camp Notes and Other Poems.

The book is a chronological documentary, beginning with "Evacuation" from Seattle, moving in the camp through "Desert Storm," and concluding with poems recounting the move to Cincinnati.

"Cincinnati" illustrates the visible racial violence and "The Question of Loyalty" shows the invisible humiliation of the Japanese during World War II.

She wrote the book to promote public awareness surrounding the discrimination against the Japanese during the war and to prompt deeper discussion of these issues.

With this publication, Yamada challenged Japanese traditions that demand silence from the female.

(Yamamoto, 2000).

Yamada once said, "Asian Pacific women need to affirm our culture while working within to change it."

(Usui, 2002).

Yamada's professed purpose for writing is to encourage Asian American women to speak out and defy the cultural codes that encourage Asian American women to be silent.

(Sheffer, 2003).

Yamada recognizes that Asian American women have not been fully represented as "sites of complex intersections of race, gender, and national identity."