Teiko Tomita (December 1, 1896 March 13, 1990) was a Japanese tanka poet who lived in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

. Her

penname A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

was Yukari.

Early life

Tomita was born Teiko Matsui on December 1, 1896 in

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

, Japan. She was the second of nine children. She began writing tanka when she was in high school. She took on the penname Yukari. After high school, Tomita earned a teaching certificate, and taught in elementary schools until 1920, when she married a farmer named Masakazu Tomita. They had been exchanging letters for two years, but had never met in person. He lived in Wapato, Washington, so Tomita moved to the United States to be with him. They had five children, but one died as a child.

Career

Tomita and her new husband farmed on the Yakima Indian Reservation. However, they lost the lease on the farm soon after Tomita's arrival. Masakazu worked as a foreman at a nursery in Satus. They moved to

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in 1929. In 1939, Tomita joined a tanka club in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

. Some of her poetry was published in Japan. After the

bombing of Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. At the ...

, Tomita burned all of her poetry so that the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

would not assume that she had any loyalty to Japan. Regardless, she and her family were

incarcerated Imprisonment or incarceration is the restraint of a person's liberty for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is considered "false imprisonment". Impris ...

Tule Lake Tule Lake ( ) is an intermittent lake covering an area of , long and across, in northeastern Siskiyou County and northwestern Modoc County in California, along the border with Oregon. Geography Tule Lake is fed by the Lost River. The ele ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

and Heart Mountain in

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

as part of the enforcement of

Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a President of the United States, United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. "This order authorized the fo ...

. After she was released in 1945, Tomita briefly lived in

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

, but returned to Seattle after the war and became a

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. In 1967, Tomita was forced to relocate a second time when it was found that her home was in the buffer zone around the Seattle Tacoma Airport. She moved to Seattle. Despite burning all of her poetry at the beginning of the war, she resumed writing while incarcerated at Tule Lake. She wrote poetry as a way to deal with the situations around her. Some frequent symbols that appeared in her poems include the

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and

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. She wrote poetry for the rest of her life. Tomita died on March 13, 1990.

Selected bibliography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tomita, Teiko 1896 births 1990 deaths Japanese poets Japanese-American internees Japanese people imprisoned in the United States Writers from Osaka Prefecture American poets American poets of Asian descent American women writers of Asian descent American writers of Japanese descent Japanese emigrants to the United States