Mitsuye Yamada

Masami Usui (Doshisha University)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège)

Dates

Born 5 Jul 1923
Activity 1976-ongoing

Places

Born in Japan
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

Activities

Primary

Essayist
Poet
Revolutionary, Activist
Story-writer

Resources

Mitsuye Yamada was born in Fukuoka in Kyushu Japan as a Nisei or second-generation Japanese American while her Issei, or first generation Japanese American, mother was visiting Japan. Yamada emigrated to the United States in 1926 and spent her childhood and adolescent days with her family in Seattle. Her father, Jack Kaichiro Yasutake, worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Immigration Service and founded the Senryu Society in Seattle.

At the outbreak of World War II, her father was arrested for espionage by the FBI, and in 1942 Yamada was interned with her family in Camp Minidoka, Idaho. Yamada and her brother, Seiichi Yasutake, were allowed to leave the concentration camp to work and attend college. Yamada first went t…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

763 words

Citation: Usui, Masami. "Mitsuye Yamada". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4825, accessed 21 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here