Tamiko Nimura
@tnimuraTamiko Nimura is an Asian American writer living in Tacoma, Washington. Her training in literature and American ethnic studies (MA, PhD, University of Washington) prepared her to research, document, and tell the stories of people of color. She has been writing for Discover Nikkei since 2008.
Tamiko just published her first book, Rosa Franklin: A Life in Health Care, Public Service, and Social Justice (Washington State Legislature Oral History Program, 2020). Her second book is a co-written graphic novel, titled We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration (Chin Music Press/Wing Luke Asian Museum). She is working on a memoir called PILGRIMAGE.
Updated November 2020
Stories from This Author
Year-ending
March 18, 2021 • Amy Uyematsu , Tamiko Nimura , traci kato-kiriyama
As we survey the past year of lockdowns and quarantines that started here in the States by mid-March, 2020, we take stock of a wide spectrum of revelations and experiences over the last twelve months. From new personal practices and experiments in the arena of safer-at-home, to illness and loss, further exposure of inequities and suffering, uprising and reckoning, community unlearning and building—we share the works of two artists who give us a glimmer of their lives through poetics about …
Writing We Hereby Refuse: 3 Things I Learned about Resistance
March 2, 2021 • Tamiko Nimura
When I was a little kid in California in the early 1980s, it was cool to be a rebel, or a resister. On the sawdust-covered playground of my elementary school, we played out different scenes from the movie Star Wars. A popular scene reenactment was the trash compactor scene, when we would pretend the wooden play structure was closing in on us and we had to fight our way out. I had to play Princess Leia, the only role that …
Kiku Hughes’ graphic novel Displacement addresses the intergenerational trauma of Japanese American incarceration through a story of time travel
Jan. 18, 2021 • Tamiko Nimura
A time-travel graphic novel about intergenerational Japanese American camp history is a surprise. But even for readers versed in this history, Kiku Hughes’s Displacement is a powerful innovation in camp literature and Japanese American literature overall. Displacement brings together several current conversations in camp history: intergenerational trauma, the relevance of camp history for present-day history, tracing genealogy, the tradition of resistance to incarceration, and Japanese American queer history. As a loosely autobiographical book, the main character “Kiku” is visiting San …
Falling Into Public History: My Writing about Japanese American and African American Community Stories
Dec. 23, 2020 • Tamiko Nimura
The following essay is adapted from a talk that I gave to the City of Tacoma Historic Preservation, Tacoma Historical Society, and Historic Tacoma in November 2020. An edited video version is available here on YouTube. I’ve been asked to talk about my work documenting Tacoma’s Japanese American and African American history. It’s been a great privilege—and a little surprising—for me to be doing this work, which is why I called the talk “Falling Into Public History.” * * * …
Care Is Free: Behind the Scenes with Two Nikkei Sisters and 35 Care Packages
Nov. 6, 2020 • Tamiko Nimura
In October 2020, Tamiko and Teruko Nimura were asked to create a community engagement public art project for Tacoma Arts Month (a month celebrating arts and artists in Tacoma). They drew on their Japanese American heritage and created a batch of care packages which they distributed all over Tacoma, Tamiko’s hometown. Each care package had a letter describing the purpose and the contents of the package. Below is the letter. * * * * * September 25, 2020 Dear neighbor, …
A Conversation With Aya Hashiguchi Clark on the Past, Present, and Future of Japanese American Theater
Oct. 13, 2020 • Tamiko Nimura
Given COVID-19 circumstances, the state of live theater in America is changing radically in 2020–but it is also changing because of the social uprisings and racial reckonings. Veteran Tacoma producer, actress, and writer Aya Hashiguchi Clark has had much to say lately around these changes, and I wanted to find out more about her perspectives. (Side note: During our conversation, we found out that both of us had been in the play Teahouse of the August Moon as children; her …
Behind the Tadaima! Scenes with Kimiko Marr of Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages
July 29, 2020 • Tamiko Nimura
I met Yonsei Kimiko Marr through social media and an online network of Japanese American activists and pilgrimage organizers. The network has become so active that over the last few years, I forget that we’ve never met in person. So perhaps it’s perfect that this virtual connection led me to this conversation with Kimiko over e-mail, as she’s in the middle of a massive online undertaking in Summer 2020: Tadaima! an online series of events (both live and prerecorded) intended …
Keywords For Being Nikkei In A Moment of Racial Reckoning
July 15, 2020 • Tamiko Nimura
“I recognized that the heartbeat, historically, of racism, has been denial.” — Ibram Kendi Brokenness. There are times to write normality and there are times to write brokenness. Feeling the need for something as it was—“normal”— the essay I wanted to write used a straightforward reporting style, journalism, objectivity, neutrality. This style is what we’re accustomed to as “normal.” It’s mid-2020. These times are both normal and broken, and some ways were always broken. This essay objected to the idea …
Persimmon and Frog: Reading a Kibei-Nisei Tacoma Artist's Journey
May 13, 2020 • Tamiko Nimura
In 2014, I had visited Tacoma artist Fumiko Kimura in order to profile her for a retrospective exhibition at Tacoma Community College. Kimura’s story and artistic journey fascinated me. When I met her, she was a Kibei-Nisei artist in her 80s. Last year, she celebrated her 90th birthday. She is a Kibei who did not experience wartime incarceration, who began her professional life as a chemist before transitioning into artmaking, who pursued an artist’s life successfully in addition to marriage …
Learning From the Issei Grandfather I Never Met
April 9, 2020 • Tamiko Nimura
“What you are feeling is grief,” says the article from Harvard Business Review. And yes, living in COVID-19 in Washington State, March 2020 feels like a kind of grief, even though I have grieved before. But the waking up to a profoundly altered reality each day, each wave a fresh infusion of loss, or a looming reminder of losses to come—grief feels like an appropriate description. Honestly, the way that I dealt with grief in the past was to avoid. …
