Mitsuye Yamada

In 1982, she received a Vesta Award from the Los Angeles Woman's Building.

She contributed two essays to This Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings from Women of Color. (1981) "Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster" reflects the double invisibility of being both Asian and a woman while "Asian Pacific American Women and Feminism" urges women of color to develop a feminist agenda that addresses their particular concerns. That same year, Yamada joined Nellie Wong in a biographical documentary on public television, "Mitsuye and Nellie: Two Asian-American Woman Poets." The film tells of actual events that happened to the speakers, their parents, grandparents and relatives. It uses poetry to tell Asian American history of biculturalism.

She wrote her first book, Camp Notes and Other Poems, during and just after her internment during the Second World War, but it remained unpublished until 1976. In this collection, the "wartime conflicts of Japanese Americans are traced back to the injustice of Executive Order 9066 and to visible and invisible racism against Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry both inside and outside the camp." (Usui, 2002). Yamada's professed purpose for writing is to encourage Asian American women to speak out and defy the cultural codes that encourage Asian American women to be silent. (Sheffer, 2003). Yamada recognizes that Asian American women have not been fully represented as "sites of complex intersections of race, gender, and national identity." (Yamamoto, 2000). Yamada once said, "Asian Pacific women need to affirm our culture while working within to change it." (Geok-Lin, 1993).

Mitsuye became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. She considers herself Nisei (second-generation Japanese American).

Mitsuye married Yoshikazu in 1950, and the couple had four children together. Mitsuye has seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Although Yamada began her studies at the University of Cincinnati, she left in 1945 to attend New York University, where she received a B.A. in English and Art in 1947. She earned an M.A. in English Literature and Research from the University of Chicago in 1953. She began teaching at Cypress College in 1968, and retired in 1989 as a Professor of English.

Jack Yasutake was the founder and president of the Senryū (A Japanese style of short form poetry similar to a haiku) Society in Seattle and an interpreter for the U.S. Immigration Service during World War II. Yamada spent most of her youth in Seattle, Washington. Mitsuye's father was arrested by the FBI for espionage after the U.S. joined the Second World War. In 1942, after Executive Order 9066 was signed, Mitsuye and her family were interned at Minidoka War Relocation Center, Idaho. She was allowed to leave the camp with her brother because they renounced loyalty to the Emperor of Japan and both attended the University of Cincinnati. Mike was soon expelled because the U.S. Air Force was conducting "sensitive wartime research on campus and requested his removal" but Mitsuye was allowed to continue studying at the University (Yamada, 1981)

Mitsuye Yamada was born as Mitsuye Yasutake in Fukuoka, Japan. Her parents were Jack Kaichiro Yasutake and Hide Shiraki Yasutake, both first-generation Japanese Americans (Issei) who were visiting Japan when she was born. Her older brother, Seiichi Yasutake (known as "Mike") was born in the US. Her family returned to the U.S. in 1926 and settled in Seattle, Washington.

Mitsuye Yamada (born July 5, 1923) is a Japanese American activist, feminist, essayist, poet, story writer, editor, and former professor of English.