All Posts
View Other Categories
The Nisei Women Who Fought—and Won—an Early Redress Battle in Seattle
On February 27, 1942, the Seattle School Board accepted the forced resignations of 27 Nisei women working as clerks for the school district. Four decades later, those women fought for,…
Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi: Creating Community and Building Bridges After WWII Incarceration
Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi was born in Los Angeles on October 17, 1921, the second of four children—and oldest of three sisters—of Hatsu and Tahei Matsunaga. She grew up in a…
Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority and Ahead of Her Time
Patsy Takemoto Mink was born in Pā`ia, Maui, on December 6, 1927, to Nisei parents Suematsu and Mitama Takemoto. Like many Japanese Americans growing up in Hawai`i at that time,…
Surviving Racism, Toxic Masculinity, and Some Gruesome Medical Ordeals
There’s a tendency during women’s history month to focus our celebrations on the women who accomplished great things as activists, artists, and thinkers. And indeed these women should be celebrated!…
Smashing the Patriarchy since 1895: The Anti-Violence Advocacy of Issei Pioneer Yeiko Mizobe So
Yeiko Mizobe So was born in Fukuoka on December 4, 1867 to samurai Nobuhara Mizobe and his wife Ino. She and her three siblings grew up in a fairly privileged…
From Poston to the Prison Industrial Complex: Mia Yamamoto’s Unwavering Fight for Justice
Mia Yamamoto was, in her own words, “born doing time” in Poston in September 1943, and spent the first years of her life confined in an isolated prison camp in…
Wordsmith and Renaissance Woman Guyo Tajiri
In honor of National Women’s History Month we are excited to introduce the Guyo Tajiri Collection, new to the Densho Digital Repository. Guyo Tajiri was a journalist and writer at…
4 Bad Ass Issei Women You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
If you’re into strong women who like to color outside the lines and aren’t afraid to take what’s theirs, then you came to the right place, my friend. Following the…
Visionary Sculptress Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa is best known for her wizardry in weaving copper wire into enchanting, diaphanous forms. Her work, once at the vanguard of modernist sculpture, is still widely celebrated. This month, Asawa’s gossamer creations…
5 Bad Ass Japanese American Women Activists You Probably Didn’t Learn About in History Class
Since history tends to sideline the central role so many women played in the major social movements of the 20th century, here’s a little herstory lesson about five women warriors…
Japanese American Women’s Lives in the Camps and Beyond
Citizen 13660, Farewell to Manzanar, and Nisei Daughter, are perhaps the most widely known accounts of wartime incarceration by women, but there are many less widely known works that also…