was an artist, children's book author, and civic activist.

World War II and later years

Mitsu was the daughter of a shipbuilding company executive. She attended

Kobe College Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, which ...

, and later enrolled at Bunka Gakuin in Tokyo. In the 1930s, she joined a Marxist study group, where she met her future husband, artist Taro Yashima. She and her husband painted farmers and laborers, and participated in exhibitions of art that critiqued Japan's military expansion and the government's increasingly heavy handed suppression of dissent. She and her husband were later imprisoned and brutalized by the Tokkō (special higher police) in response to their antiwar, anti-Imperialist, and anti-militarist stance in the 1930s. Their lives from this time period are depicted in her husband's graphic novels, published in English, the ''New Sun'' and ''Horizon is Calling''. Mitsu and Taro's son Makoto Iwamatsu was born in 1933. He would eventually become a renowned actor and voice actor. In 1939 she and Taro went to America so that Taro could avoid conscription into the Japanese Army and to study art. When World War II broke out, Mitsu joined the U.S. war effort, working for the

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...

by sending American propaganda to the Japanese. She adopted the pseudonym ''Mitsu Yashima'' during the war. Following the war in 1948, Mitsu and Taro had a daughter Momo, who also appeared in their children's books. The family moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1954, where she and Taro opened an art institute."Taro Yashima Papers"
de Grummond Children's Literature Collection. University of Southern Mississippi. July 2001. Retrieved 2013-06-27. With biographical sketch. With Taro, she co-wrote the children's books ''Plenty to Watch'' in 1954 and ''Momo's Kitten'' in 1961. Mitsu left Taro in the 1960s and moved to San Francisco, where she devoted herself to art and community work as well as civic activism. In 1976, she appeared in the television movie adaptation of the book Farewell to Manzanar, acting opposite her son and daughter. In declining health, she moved back to Los Angeles in 1983 and lived with her daughter until her death on December 7, 1988.

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Yashima, Mitsu 1908 births 1988 deaths Japanese anti-fascists People from Hiroshima Prefecture Japanese emigrants to the United States American artists of Japanese descent Place of birth missing Place of death missing American women civilians in World War II Japanese-American civil rights activists People of the Office of Strategic Services 20th-century Japanese women artists 20th-century American women artists American children's writers

World War II and later years

See also

References

Further reading

External links