Mitsu Yashima
{{Short description|Japanese artist, activist (1908–1988)}}
{{more citations needed|date=January 2014}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Mitsu Yashima
| native_name = 八島 光
| native_name_lang = ja
| image = Mitsu Yashima San Francisco Chronicle File Photo 1975 Photo.jpg
| alt =
| caption = Mitsu Yashima in 1975
| birth_name = Tomoe Sasako
| birth_date = {{birth date|1908|10|11}}{{cite web|last=Wakida |first=Patricia |url=https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Mitsu_Yashima/ |title=Mitsu Yashima |publisher=Densho Encyclopedia |access-date=2018-11-02}}
| birth_place = Innoshima, Hiroshima, Japan
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1988|12|07|1908|10|11}}
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| occupation = Children's book author, artist
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| spouse = Taro Yashima
| children = 2, including Makoto Iwamatsu
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}}
{{Nihongo|Mitsu Yashima|八島 光|Yashima Mitsu|born {{Nihongo|Tomoe Sasako|笹子 智江|Sasako Tomoe}}; October 11, 1908 – December 7, 1988}} was an artist, children's book author, and civic activist.
Life
Mitsu was the daughter of a shipbuilding company executive. She attended Kobe College, 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.{{Cite journal | last = Shibusawa | first = Naoko| author-link=Naoko Shibusawa |date=October 2005 | title ="The Artist Belongs to the People": The Odyssey of Taro Yashima | journal = Journal of Asian American Studies | volume = 8 | issue = 3 | pages = 257–275 | doi = 10.1353/jaas.2005.0053| s2cid = 145164597| url = https://www.academia.edu/347041 | access-date = 27 July 2019}} Their lives from this time are depicted in her husband's picture books, published in English, The New Sun and Horizon is Calling.{{cite news |last=Pulvers |first=Roger |title=Taro Yashima: an unsung beacon for all against 'evil on this Earth' | newspaper=The Japan Times |date=September 11, 2011 |url=http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2011/09/11/commentary/taro-yashima-an-unsung-beacon-for-all-against-evil-on-this-earth#.VGiMTpVxnIU |access-date=2011-09-18}}
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. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mitsu joined the U.S. war effort, working for the Office of Strategic Services 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.
[http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum/public_html/html/research/findaids/yashima.htm "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.{{cite news |last1=Robinson|first1=Greg|last2=Matsumoto|first2= Valerie|title=The Epic Lives of Taro and Mitsu Yashima | newspaper=Discover Nikkei |date=September 11, 2018 |url=http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2018/9/11/taro-and-mitsu-yashima/ |access-date=2019-07-29}} 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.{{cite web|author=Judy Stone |url=http://www.sfgate.com/performance/article/An-unlikely-heroine-of-World-War-II-2569670.php |title=An unlikely heroine of World War II |publisher=SFGate |date=2007-03-18 |access-date=2014-02-04}}
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
Further reading
- {{cite book | title= Momo's Kitten | url= https://archive.org/details/momoskitten00yash | url-access= registration | publisher= Viking| author= Mitsu Yashima, Tarō Yashima | date= Sep 5, 1961}}
External links
- {{cite web|url=http://history.librarypoint.org/taro_yashima |title=Taro Yashima: Artist for Peace | History |publisher=History.librarypoint.org |access-date=2014-02-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303232315/http://history.librarypoint.org/taro_yashima|archive-date=2016-03-03|url-status=dead}}
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Category:Japanese anti-fascists
Category:People from Hiroshima Prefecture
Category:Japanese emigrants to the United States
Category:American artists of Japanese descent
Category:Place of death missing
Category:American women civilians in World War II
Category:American civil rights activists of Japanese descent
Category:People of the Office of Strategic Services
Category:20th-century Japanese women artists