Emiko Tsuchida
@emikotsuchidaEmiko Tsuchida is freelance writer and digital marketer living in San Francisco. She has written on the representations of mixed race Asian American women and conducted interviews with some of the top Asian American women chefs. Her work has appeared in the Village Voice, the Center for Asian American Media, and the forthcoming Beiging of America series. She is the creator of Tessaku, a project that collects stories from Japanese Americans who experienced the concentration camps.
Updated December 2016
Stories from This Author
Nancy Yamamoto - Part 2
March 15, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Read Part 1 >> So those were hard times. Once I was home for a girls’ meeting and I was intending to take the train back to San Francisco on Monday morning. They wouldn’t allow me to get on the train, they wouldn’t sell me a ticket. I think I can still picture him. I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘Your country started a war against us.'” And I said that’s not my country. I said I’m an American born, …
Nancy Yamamoto - Part 1
March 14, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Once I was home for a girls’ meeting and I was intending to take the train back to San Francisco on Monday morning. They wouldn’t allow me to get on the train, they wouldn’t sell me a ticket. I think I can still picture him. I said, “Why not?” He said, “Your country started a war against us.” -- Nancy Yamamoto A longtime member of the Oakland Buddhist Church’s Momijikai, a young Nancy Yamamoto had aspirations to become a fashion …
Fusae Yoshida - Part 2
Feb. 28, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Read Part 1 >> [To Fusae] Do you remember a conversation that your parents had with you over moving to the camps? They went with the flow, evidently. They packed up. They closed their laundry business. And we waited for evacuation because we knew it was coming. Did you ever experience anything negative from school? Our school wasn’t that bad, I didn’t feel it. I was in junior high school. In fact, the school gave a special farewell assembly. The …
Fusae Yoshida - Part 1
Feb. 27, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
“When he came back to Tule Lake where we were, he got off the bus, and he was an old man. To this day I cry when I think about it. He had aged so much, it was so noticeable. But I was too young to question him about what happened in those camps.” -- Fusae Yoshida I connected with Fusae Yoshida through the Oakland Buddhist Church’s senior citizen group (Momiji kai). This church holds a lot of history for our …
Digger Sasaki - Part 2
Feb. 2, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Read Part 1 >> [To Digger] I think it’d be interesting to talk about your first impression of Tule Lake and arriving. Digger Sasaki (DS): Being in Pinedale for three months, it gave me a little awareness of barracks and stuff. But Pinedale was so small in comparison. And the reason they sent us to Pinedale is Tule Lake wasn’t finished as far as building all the barracks. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t remember how we got to …
Digger Sasaki - Part 1
Feb. 1, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
“They had soldiers and jeeps with machine guns, you know, patrolling the camps. It was kind of exciting in a way.” -- Digger Sasaki Digger Sasaki has a peculiar moniker, one that has fully replaced his given name and dates back to high school. “In high school, I played football. And you know when you practice, you have to push a sled to strengthen your legs. When people push, everybody says, “dig, dig, dig,” you know. And then one day the coach …
Howard Yamamoto - Part 2
Jan. 27, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Read Part 1 >> Do you remember if there was any convincing that Mr. Wada needed to do with your family? No, that I have no idea. I just imagine what happened was he says, “Take me, too.” To get back to the history, they were allowed to voluntarily leave California. And I think there something like 10,000 permits given out. Out of that 10,000 only few made it. Not many. Some of what I read is that they were …
Howard Yamamoto - Part 1
Jan. 26, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
“It was hard, it was hard on the parents. Was it hard on me? I don’t know, I don’t remember that much, the hardship. But the parents, my god. Could I do it? No. I couldn’t do it. I can’t imagine myself doing it.” —Howard Yamamoto Out of the 110,000 Japanese Americans who were thrown in the internment camps, 130 escaped the stark reality of mess hall food, barbed wire, and guard towers. Four-year-old Howard Yamamoto was one of them. …
Bob Kaneko - Part 2
Jan. 13, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Read Part 1 >> So what happened in the camps? Your family voluntarily went. Bob Kaneko (BK): Well they voluntarily went to Auburn. And they got rounded up. Actually my mother said that the area they were in called Ophir. In fact my sister’s birth certificate says “rural California.” Cathy Kaneko (CK): His mom said the doctor didn’t make the birth so their friend’s wife delivered the baby and the doctor got their shortly afterward. What were your parents doing …
Bob Kaneko - Part 1
Jan. 12, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Sadly, Mr. Kaneko passed away on September 18, 2016. I regret that he wasn’t able to read his interview and hope that this can honor his memory and pay great respect to his accomplished life. You had your sensei at the front of the room and he had different kinds of batons, if you will. You hear about Catholic nuns whacking kids? Well, these guys did the same thing. -- Bob Kaneko When I visited his Berkeley home last …
