Diane C. Fujino - Nisei Radicals: The Feminist Poetics and Transformative Ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake

NISEI RADICALS

NISEI
RADICALS

THE FEMINIST POETICS AND
TRANSFORMATIVE MINISTRY OF
MITSUYE YAMADA AND MICHAEL YASUTAKE

Diane C. Fujino

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS

Seattle

Copyright 2020 by the University of Washington Press

Design by Katrina Noble

Composed in Iowan Old Style, typeface designed by John Downer

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UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS

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All royalties from this book will go to the Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake Justice Fund in support of the work for justice and liberation struggles broadly represented by the subjects of this book.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Fujino, Diane Carol, author.

Title: Nisei radicals : the feminist poetics and transformative ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake / Diane C. Fujino.

Description: Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020015378 (print) | LCCN 2020015379 (ebook) | ISBN 9780295748252 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780295748269 (paperback) | ISBN 9780295748276 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Yamada, Mitsuye. | Yasutake, Michael, 19202001 | Japanese AmericansBiography. | Asian AmericansCivil rights. | Civil rights movementsUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Social justiceUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Human rights workersUnited StatesBiography. | ClergyIllinoisChicagoBiography. | PoetsCaliforniaIrvineBiography.

Classification: LCC E184.J3 F834 2020 (print) | LCC E184.J3 (ebook) | DDC 973/.04956dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015378

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015379

Lines for a Future Daughter by Brynn Saito. Reproduced with permission.

Copyright by Brynn Saito.

Despite all the years researching, reading, and writing on ones own, the creation of a book is never a solitary act, especially for a project that has taken two decades to birth. These pages reflect years of academic study and years of activist commitments. There are many more people to thank inside and outside of both the academy and the Movement than I can possibly acknowledge. I will attempt a short list.

First and foremost, I wish to thank Mitsuye Yamada and Reverend S. Michael Yasutake for their extraordinary practice and vision, and for their trust. Their families have been important to this process, especially Hedi Yamada Mouchard for her tireless creativity, sharing of stories, and consistent encouragement. Through Reverend Mike and Mitsu, I also came to know a multitude of people, including those formally interviewed for this book and many more who helped to shape my ideas and analysis. My appreciation for the generosity of Sandra Yasutake Conners, Dora Garcia, Nelson Kitsuse, Skip Land, Jose Lpez, Sunny Lpez, Mary Powers, and Steven Whitman for interviews, and to Hedi Yamada Mouchard, Ron Fujiyoshi, Ben Furuta, Richard Conners, and Greg Yasutake for persistence in photo hunting. Many thanks for the marvelous research assistance of Briana Burrows, Jamie Luu, Daniel Magpali, Leigh Saito, Jay Tseng, and Stephanie Yorizane (all from many moons ago) and Justine Trinh (more recently), and especially to Lindsey Quock.

What a joy to work with the amazing team at the University of Washington Press who worked with great professionalism, effectiveness, and compassion, notably Mike Baccam, Hanni Jalil, Margaret Sullivan, and Christopher Pitts. Thank you to Chris Dodge for indexing.

To my Movement community locally and far beyond; to my scholarly community in my department, on my campus, and far beyond, with a special note of thanks to Arlene Phillips on her retirement; to my friends and to the Fujinos, Osugis, Nakamuras, Cisneros, Barkers, Dunbars, Hacketts, Smalleys, and Robinsons: thank you for sustaining me in so many ways, material and immaterial. My greatest gratitude is reserved for Matef, Kano, and Seku, and for the ways we are all interconnected in a web of mutuality.

This is for the Nisei radicals whose stories are waiting to be told. And this is for todays generation of activists, sitting at the crucible of change.

With Lines from Mitsuye Yamadas Desert Run Brynn Saito

We need not repeat our past histories: my daughters and I need not merely survive with strength and determination. We can, through collective struggle, live fuller and richer lives. MITSUYE YAMADA

A certain quiet tonight, a certain sanctuary. I cultivate a nostalgia for the present.

Moonrise over mesquite and me in the outer-dark away from the orbits, dreaming your face.

My desert never ages

If you must fit me to your needs / I will die / and so will you

So I dream of a life beyond mine with dark matter desire. I study the creosotes tears.

There are worlds inside of this world, laboring into birth.

There are garden caves beneath the earths soil where the dead dance, and roots lock arms, drinking water.

Their roots spread / wide on the surface / expecting / drops / of my blood

In New York and young, I worried about sunlight. I stood in the broken theater beside my sisters, stage bashed and bleeding with red signs of hate.

I am back to claim my body.

I was too young to hear silence before.

I worried about sunlight. Now I stroke a small lump in the mysterious slope between thigh and lower belly and terror sings through me like a corrugated flame.

I return to the desert

Everything is done in silence here

In the world I imagine for you, women of the deep rise from the red rocks, hauling from the bogs our pre-history.

The canyon is a place with eyes.

The desert is the lungs of the world

As a ghost I grow stronger and lighter at the same time.

I am transfused / by the creosote / shrubs

I talk stories to your daughters daughters from the desert ruins.

NISEI RADICALS

T HIS IS A story about two remarkable activists, a brother and sister, whose lives trace both the customary aspects of Japanese Americans and the unexpected experiences that challenge commonplace ideas about the Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans). That the older brother was born in the United States and the younger sister born in Japan disrupts ideas about linear movement from homelands to the United States and reflects the migratory circuits and mutual influences of the two countries as rising military and expansionist world powers.

Reverend Seiichi Michael Yasutake (19202001) was an Episcopal minister whose politics changed with the historical contexts and circumstances surrounding his life. During World War II, he rejected pressures to serve in the US military while inside the concentration camp in Minidoka, Idaho; he did so again as a student at the University of Cincinnati, a decision which led to his dismissal. During the 1960s, he traveled throughout the Midwest to offer support and spiritual counsel to draft resisters in military stockades and federal penitentiaries. Then, during the 1980s and 1990s, he became a fierce supporter of political prisoners and anti-imperial movements, inspired by the 1980 arrest of his colleague and fellow activist, Carmen Valentn, who had joined the clandestine Puerto Rican independence struggle.