Toyo Suyemoto

Biography Toyo Suyemoto was born January 14, 1916, in Oroville, California. She was the daughter of Japanese immigrants, Tsutomu Howard Suyemoto and Mitsu Hyakusoku Suyemoto. She was raised in the Nihonmachi, or Japantown, of Sacramento, CA. She attended University of California, Berkeley where she majored in English and Latin. She married Iwao Kawakami, a Nisei journalist. The couple moved to Oakland, CA, where their son, Kay, was born in October 1941.

Early and personal life Toyo Suyemoto's early life was influenced by growing up in Berkeley, California. Toyo was the oldest of 10 children in her family. Her appreciation of Japanese poetic forms came from her mother who encouraged Japanese literature and English. Her later work is a reflection of her mother's influence. Her writings reflected the main idea of loss, memory, and hope. The legacy of Suyemoto and other Japanese-American women writers have altered American literary history and continue to inspire prospective writers and activists.

Internment After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Toyo decided to rejoin her family in Berkeley while her husband Iwao moved to San Francisco for a job with a newspaper. The couple separated later that month, and Toyo took her son Kay with her to Berkeley. That spring, as part of the enforcement of Executive Order 9066, she and Kay were incarcerated at Tanforan Assembly Center. She was friends with artist Miné Okubo and she also served on the staff of the camp's literary magazine. Several of her poems were published there.

"Gain" in December 1942 "In Topaz" in February 1943 "Transplanting" in June 1943 "Promise" in June 1943 "Retrospect" in June 1943

Later life and death After the war, she moved with her parents to Cincinnati, Ohio. She worked in the libraries of the University of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Art Museum. In 1958, her son Kay died of a disease contracted in the camp. She attended the University of Michigan to get her Masters of Library Science. In 1964, she began working for the Ohio State University Library. During this time, she spoke frequently to high schooler and university audiences to educate and bring national attention to the long-lasting impacts of incarceration for Japanese-Americans. She retired in 1985. Before her death, she donated over forty boxes of poems and works to OSU, with whom she had a close relationship with due to her long career at the university. Suyemoto remained active in the arts community until her death in December 2003. Although her poetry was not very well known, she published poems in publications including The Yale Review and Commonground. Poet Lawson Fusao Inada referred to her as "our major Camp Poet and Nikkei Poet Laureate". The Rutgers University Press published her memoir posthumously in 2007.