Hisaye Yamamoto: An American Story

Hisaye was born in 1921 in Redondo Beach, California. Her parents were immigrants from the Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan and farmed strawberries to make a living in the United States.

Since they were not allowed to own agricultural land under the California Alien Land Law of 1913, Hisaye's family moved from place to place while she and her brothers were growing up.

Hisaye's mother (pictured on the left) encouraged her daughter to write when she was young. Many of Hisaye's short stories explore the issues faced between immigrant parents (Issei) and their children born in the United States (Nisei).

From a young age, Hisaye was captivated by literature. She sent her writing to a number of different publications in her early years.

Hisaye and her family members were among more than 112,000 Japanese Americans ejected from their homes on the West Coast and sent to internment camps shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Approximately two-thirds of those interned at Poston, which was called the Colorado River Relocation Center, were citizens of the United States.

Hisaye worked at the camp hospital and as a columnist and editor for the Poston Chronicle, the camp’s newspaper. It was at the newspaper that Yamamoto met many other Japanese Americans that would become invaluable friends and distinguished writers.

She wrote a regularly published column titled “Small Talks,” though it was her serial murder mystery that captured readers’ attention.

Hisaye was 20 years old when her family arrived at Poston in 1942. They were interned there for three years. During her family’s internment, her younger brother, John (pictured earlier with Hisaye as a child holding the flag), was killed in Italy fighting for the United States in the war.

The Poston Chronicle announced that Edith Fukaye would be taking over as editor-in-chief after Hisaye Yamamoto left the internment camp in March of 1945. This marked Hisaye's transition back to California life as a free woman. By November of 1945, the last residents of Poston were relocated.

While she was extremely bitter about the government's treatment of them, Hisaye admitted that she made some important lifelong friends at the camp. Many were fellow writers, and their time together created a strong bond. She was especially close with Wakako Yamauchi, who later went on to write award-winning plays.

Hisaye (far left) is pictured here with some of those friends.

“[W]hile the Japanese were gone, Little Tokyo had become ‘Bronzeville,’ the blacks had moved into that area, and interracial friendship was the aim. They wanted an interracial paper.”

"It was a very educational experience. I learned the extent of racism, besides what happened to us during the war. In those days, there were lynchings going on in the South.”

While working at the paper, she wrote about the animosity O’Day Short and his family faced as Black residents of an all-white neighborhood in Fontana, California.

On December 16, 1945, the Short Family’s home was burned and the family killed. The fire was ruled an accident in the investigation, but many believed it had been arson. This event deeply troubled Hisaye and motivated her to become further involved in the fight for racial equality.

In 1985, Hisaye published an essay on her time at the Tribune... "Given the responsibility by the busy editor, I had written up from my notes a calm, impartial story, using 'alleged' and 'claimed' and other cautious journalese. Anyone noticing the story about the unwanted family in Fontana would have taken it with a grain of salt."

The story of mother and daughter is subtly poignant in its understanding of the differences between generations and also the differences between immigrants and their quickly assimilating children.

The story’s title comes from the definition of haiku, a traditional Japanese form of poetry. Hisaye’s writing style is illustrative of the ability to pack strong emotion and understanding into a limited number of syllables.

Hisaye would find it difficult to write while raising a family with five children. She would write primarily at night. When something hit her emotionally, she would write a story to explore it.

In writing about her career, she said she must "in all honesty list [her] occupation as housewife."

But her work is continually praised for its skill, humor, and deep understanding of community and family.

While highly praised for her short stories—which were published in a host of journals and magazines from the late 1940s through the 1980s—her work was only collected into a book in 1988, taking its title from her most well known story.

The book has been reprinted with new stories added and even a reprint of the serialized "Death Rides the Rails to Poston" being added to the most recent edition.

Hisaye’s writing inspired many Japanese Americans such as Wakako Yamauchi, Cynthia Kadohata, and Chizuko and Emiko Omori to share their own stories.

Her work highlighted key issues faced by Japanese immigrants and the children of those immigrants. It illuminated the struggles of many minorities in the “melting pot” of the United States. Countless ideas expressed in Hisaye’s work continue to ring true, even half a century later.

“She continues to be my ethical and moral guide. What she did with language astounds me daily”
—Kent A. Ono

“Hisaye was like a star in the sky—she made me dream about what was possible”
—Cynthia Kadohata

“Hisaye’s prophetic voice, tempered by a tremendous wit and intelligence, spoke so much of the unspoken in the Japanese American experience”
—Patricia Wakida

Hisaye Yamamoto not only inspired through her words, but also inspired through her actions. In 2018, playwright Tom Jacobson wrote "Mexican Day," which looks at the time in 1948 when Hisaye put her job as a reporter at risk while working to desegregate Bimini Baths.

While fictionalizing some of the history, Jacobson highlights her real work and her real words, taking inspiration from her short stories to help create her voice.

"Hisaye Yamamoto's work (as well as Toshio Mori's and John Okada's) was definitely an influence on mine in terms of my interest in the Japanese American internment experience, the important role of art and beauty during the internment, and the different ways the experience played out in people's families in the years after it happened.”

—Author Misa Sugirua, featured in the My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today exhibit.