Shizue Iwatsuki

Shizue Iwatsuki (October 15, 1897 – July 7, 1984) was a Japanese American poet who immigrated to the US with her husband and children. She founded the Japanese Women's Society in Hood River, Oregon, and was the first Issei woman in Hood River to receive a driver's license. After being released from Minidoka War Relocation Center following World War II, she returned to Hood River and organized the Japanese Christian Women's Society in 1948 and also served as the president of the Northwest Women's Society. She was named Hood River County's Woman of the Year in 1974 and the Japanese government honored her with the Sixth Class Order of the Precious Crown for her cultural achievements and community service. One of Iwatsuki's tanka poems was selected by Emperor Hirohito of Japan as one of ten award winners from 32,000 worldwide submissions. She was the only award winner that did not live in Japan. Some of Shizue's poetry is displayed in the Japanese-American Historical Plaza in Portland, Oregon and is a topic at the Hood River History Museum. Her poetry also appears on boulders along the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade. Not unlike most Japanese women of her generation, Shizue rarely complained and showed little emotion. However, her poetry and the memoir she wrote while incarcerated in a concentration camp, shared the emotional pain and disappointment she felt as an immigrant Japanese woman.

After Executive Order 9066, when her family was forced from their home to the Pinedale Assembly Center, Tule Lake, and then Minidoka concentration camps, she volunteered as a nurse and taught needlework. All the poems on display illustrate the struggles these Japanese Americans experienced throughout their lives, as well as important moments in Japanese American History. Shizue Iwatsuki's poems in the plaza discuss the part of her life she spent in concentration camps. Her emotional works are also on display at the Hood River history museum for people to see, as well as information about her life and contribution to the community.