“A vital ancestral fire tended by brilliant poets.”

— Rita Wong, author of Current, Climate: The Poetry of Rita Wong

The Gate of Memory includes poetry from:

Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi is the author of The Book of Kane and Margaret (FC2 / UAP), inspired by his maternal grandparents. These grandparents met at Tulare Assembly Center, married at Gila River camp, and were together for 70 years. 

Brittany Arita is an art director & lettering artist. Her grandpa was incarcerated at Manzanar & Minidoka. Her grandma was incarcerated at Rohwer. 

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is the author of Common Grace (Beacon Press, 2022) and Ubasute (Slapering Hol Press, 2021). His honors include a MacDowell Fellowship, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, and a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. His father, Tetsumi Joe Kimura, was incarcerated at the Santa Anita Racetrack, Jerome, and Tule Lake.

Brian Komei Dempster is a Sansei whose mother’s family was incarcerated at Topaz concentration camp in Utah and whose grandfather was interned at the Department of Justice camp in Crystal City, Texas. His poetry collections are Topaz (Four Way Books, 2013) and Seize (Four Way Books, 2020).

Miya Folick is a musician and songwriter. Her records include Erotica Veronica (2025), Roach (2023), Premonitions (2018), and Give It To Me (2017), among many other collaborations and songs. She lives in Los Angeles. She had family members incarcerated in Minidoka. 

Sesshu Foster's grandparents, Otokichi Agawa and Umeko Yamane Agawa were farm workers in San Luis Obispo county. Three of their nine children died before 1941, and in 1942, the family was sent to the Tulare detention center, and from there to Gila River. Foster is writing a book about the family. 

Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson is a fourth-generation Japanese American author-illustrator whose grandfather was incarcerated at Sand Island and Honouliuli in Hawai'i. Her children’s books include The Mochi Makers and Shell Song, which was inspired by the shells her grandfather collected at Sand Island. 

Steve Fujimura is a poet and the author of Sad Asian Music. His work engages with memory, history, loss, and family. His parents were born in camp at Poston, AZ. From San José, Steve currently lives in Berkeley, CA.

Laura K. Fukumoto is a poet living on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tseil-Watuth lands. Vancouver was the birthplace of her grandfather, before the family’s permanent displacement to Toronto. Laura's grandparents were incarcerated, and married, in Slocan, British Columbia. Born in 1921, Grandma Kay Fukumoto is celebrating her first published work. 

Cathlin Goulding is an educator and curriculum designer. A former public school teacher, she co-directs YURI Education Project, an education consultancy that helps PK-12 educators teach and tell Asian American histories. Her grandparents and mother were incarcerated at the Jerome and Gila River camps. She lives in Queens, New York. 

Rebecca A. Green is a writer who lives and works in the San Francisco East Bay area.  Her mother Mitsue Matsumune was incarcerated in Poston along with other family members.  The experiences of biraciality and otherness have formed Rebecca's life and work.

Sansei poet and independent filmmaker and producer Richard Hamasaki’s San Francisco born and raised mother, Setsuko Nao [Hamasaki] was incarcerated with parents and siblings in a horse stall at the now defunct Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, CA. They were transported by train to a concentration camp in Topaz, Utah.

Sharon Hashimoto writes poems and short stories. Her mother's family (grandparents, aunts and uncles) was incarcerated at Heart Mountain. Her poetry books are The Crane Wife (Red Hen Press) and More American (Grid Books), winner of the 2022 Washington State Book Award. Stealing Home, a story collection, was published by Grid Books (2025). 

Casey Hidekawa Lane/Levinski (Amache/Topaz descendant) is a Nikkei Jewish poet and ritual artist from Huichin (so-called Piedmont, CA). Their special interests include the past, the future and all that is sacred. Free Ainu Mosir! Free Ryūkyū! Free Palestine!

Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawaiʻi and grew up on Oʻahu and in Los Angeles. Forthcoming from Knopf is Ocean of Clouds: Poems. He is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. When he was young, his grandfather told him stories about being incarcerated in Leupp, Arizona.

Jodi Hottel is sansei, third generation Japanese American. During WWII, her mother’s family was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Her chapbook of poems about the incarceration, Heart Mountain, won the 2012 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize.  Jodi has published four chapbooks and been published in numerous journals and anthologies. 

Kurt Yokoyama Ikeda (he/him) is a park ranger by profession and spoken word poet by passion. As a Shin-Nisei and a descendant of Tuna Canyon, Santa Anita, Poston, Lordsburg, and Crystal City, he preserves the legacy of Minidoka. He lives in Idaho with his beloved wife, April, and baby May (Gosei).  

Kevin Irie is a third generation Japanese-Canadian from Toronto. Both his parents and grandparents were originally from Vancouver. They were sent to the internment camp of Popoff-Slocan, in the British Columbia interior, then relocated east to Toronto following the end of the war.

Michael Ishii is a healer, artist, and community organizer. His mother and her family were incarcerated at Minidoka concentration camp and his upstate NY relatives were massacred during WWII. Much of his life has been devoted to the work of nonviolence and healing multigenerational trauma related to Japanese American WWII incarceration.  

Erica H. Isomura is a writer, poet, and interdisciplinary artist. She was raised by a Cantonese Canadian mother and a sansei Japanese Canadian father on Qayqayt territories/New Westminster, BC. Her grandparents were incarcerated in Tashme and Greenwood, BC. Erica currently lives in Toronto/Tkaronto.

Lauren Emiko Ito is an American Gosei poet, researcher, and organizer whose art explores American concentration camps, ancestral healing, and the genealogy of home. Her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and extended family members were forcibly incarcerated at Sand Island Internment Camp (HI), Minidoka (CA), Angel Island (CA), Ortiz Park in Santa Fe (NM), among others. As a San Francisco Arts Commission Artist Grantee, Lauren's latest project convenes Japanese American poets and visual artists to co-create a “love letter to our ancestors: past, present and future.” 

Susan Kiyo Ito's memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, was published by the Ohio State University Press in 2023. She is the descendant of incarcerees in Amache and currently lives in California.

Miya Iwataki’s mother, Sadae Nomura Iwataki was incarcerated in Manzanaer; her Dad Kuwashi  was S/Sgt in the 100th/442nd. Miya was profoundly impacted by testimonies of Issei and Nisei at the CWRIC Hearings. Today with NP/NCRR, she’s actively supporting Black Reparations.  Her lifelong cultural and political activism are reflected in her poetry, writings and columns.

Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan is a poet. She passed away in 2016. She published three books of poetry: Shadow Mountain 影山 (Four Way Books, 2008), Bears, Diamond and Crane (Four Way Books, 2011), and Vidya’s Tree (Bull City Press, 2019). Her father and his two brothers were incarcerated at Manzanar Internment Camp, California. 

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of This Is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence 2020) and The Dead Wrestler Elegies (New Michigan Press 2023), and co-author of Slash/Slash (Diode 2021) and Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2024). His father and grandparents were incarcerated at Minidoka.

traci kato-kiriyama is a Sansei/Yonsei multidisciplinary artist, author, educator and community organizer based in the South Bay of Los Angeles on unceded Tongva land. Their parents and grandparents were incarcerated at Manzanar and Tule Lake. tkk is the author of Signaling (2010) and Navigating With(out) Instruments (2021).

Amanda Mei Kim is a Yonsei and Korean American writer and founder of KanshaHistory.org. Her Bachan, No-No Boy Jichan, mother, and two uncles were incarcerated at Poston and Tule Lake where their sister was born in 1946. Her writing has appeared in Brick, LitHub, NYTimes, PANK, DiscoverNikkei, Common and Tayo.

Christine Kitano is the author of the poetry collections Birds of Paradise and Sky Country. Her chapbook, Dumb Luck & other poems, won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. She is the daughter of Harry Kitano, who was incarcerated at Topaz. 

Aisuke Kondo, born and raised in Japan and currently based in Berlin, Germany, is an interdisciplinary artist. His work focuses on the history of discrimination against Asians in Western societies and his great-grandfather, who lived in the United States. His great-grandfather was incarcerated at Santa Anita and Topaz.

Garrett Kurai, a Los Angeles native and NYU MFA grad has poems in JANM’s “Nikkei Uncovered,” Lotus Magazine, PennSound, and Skylight Books Podcast. “The Return” was written after a Phil Levine prompt. Garrett’s Aunts Joanne and Alice and his Uncle Thomas were incarcerated at Poston’s Camp. His father Shuichi played taiko at 1975’s Manzanar Pilgrimage.

Keiko Lane is an Okinawan American poet, memoirist, and psychotherapist. Her current projects explore the relationships between stories told and untold, silence, embodiment, and the transmission of memory. Her family was incarcerated at Manzanar, where her mother was born. 

Katherine Terumi Laubscher is a mixed gosei writer and founder of the Japanese American cultural journal Kioku. Her great-aunt Dorothy Nagai was incarcerated at Heart Mountain; Katherine's poetry is dedicated to her memory. 

Alison Lubar is a poet and educator; their grandfather, along with their Auntie and great-grandmother, were incarcerated at Tule Lake. Alison writes about being queer, nonbinary, and mixed-race, with a focus on intergenerational healing. Find out more about their work at alisonlubar.com.

Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Mothersalt (Alice James Books, 2025); the chapbook Notes from the Birth Year; and Isako Isako, winner of the Alice James Award, Nautilus Gold Award, National Indie Excellence Award, and Maine Literary Award. Her grandparents and great-grandparents were incarcerated at Rohwer and Lordsburg.

Angela Marian May is a gosei writer, artist, and PhD Candidate (English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University). Her grandmother was interned in Greenwood, British Columbia. Her grandfather grew up in Vancouver throughout the 1940s, living just outside Powell Street, in the Downtown Eastside—because his mother, Angela's great grandmother, resisted the RCMP.

Ali Meyers-Ohki (she/her) is a writer of fiction, poetry, and screenplays based in Sacramento, California. Her work has been published by Queer Rain Magazine, Voyage YA Magazine, and ANMLY. She is the recipient of a 2022 Hedgebrook residency and a 2023 Walter Dean Meyers grant. Her grandparents met while incarcerated at Amache.

Emily Mitamura is a poet and scholar of race, gender, empire, and film. With commitments to women of color and Third World feminisms, their work takes up archival, relational, and bodily hauntings. Her family was incarcerated at Poston and Heart Mountain.

Hikari Leilani Miya is a poet from the Central Valley of California. Grandparents and relatives were incarcerated at Jerome, Arkansas.

Starr Sumie Miyata is a yonsei (fourth generation) multiracial Japanese American, living, writing and working in Tokyo. She is often in Hiroshima, her great-grandfather Kyoichi's birthplace. Kyoichi, a first generation Japanese settler in Hawai'i, was incarcerated at Sand Island,  Angel Island, Fort Sill, Camp Livingston, Fort Missoula, and Jerome.

James Fujinami Moore is a poet born and raised in Los Angeles. His great-uncles were incarcerated at Jerome prior to serving in the 442nd.

Paulette “Tkl’ Un Yeik” Moreno is a civil rights leader, poet, and speaker. Her grandfather George Kamachi Miyasato Sr and her Uncle George Miyasato Jr were incarcerated during World War II in Lordsburg, NM and Minidoka. Paulette and her mother Harriet Miyasato  Beleal are journeying to share their vision of truth that reflects Worth. 

David Mura is the author of the memoirs Turning Japanese and Where the Body Meets Memory; the poetry collections After We Lost Our Way, The Colors of Desire, Angels for the Burning, and The Last Incantations; the novel Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire; the essay collection, The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself; and the documentary MIS Nisei Armed With Language. His mother was incarcerated in Minidoka and his father was incarcerated in Jerome. 

Yukiko Nagakura (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Berlin. In 2017 and 2019, she visited several of the incarceration camps with her spouse, Aisuke Kondo. This experience sparked her interest in learning about the history of Japanese immigration to the United States with a specific focus on women.

Heather Nagami is a yonsei (fourth generation) Japanese American poet from Southern California. She is the author of Hostile (Chax Press). Her father’s side of the family was incarcerated at Jerome and Rohwer. Her mother’s side, the Togawa family, was incarcerated at Poston.

Noriko Nakada is a multi-racial Asian American who creates fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to capture the hidden stories she has been told not to talk about. Her father was incarcerated during World War II at both Heart Mountain and Gila Rivers. Noriko is represented by Emily Keyes of Keyes Agency. 

Greer Nakadegawa-Lee is an illustrator and poet from Oakland, California. You can find more of her work at greernl.weebly.com. Members of her family were incarcerated in Poston and Manzanar. Her uncle, Art Nomura, wrote the novel Mizuko: True Spirit, detailing his grandmother's time in Manzanar, where he was born.  

Carolyn Nakagawa is a fourth-generation Anglo-Japanese Canadian poet and playwright who makes her home in the territory colonized as Vancouver, British Columbia. Her paternal grandparents were forcibly uprooted from Steveston and lived in Magna Bay and Westbank before returning to Vancouver in 1950.

Ryan Hitoshi Nakano is an Okinawan/Japanese American poet, journalist and aspiring birder currently living in Huchiun (aka Oakland, CA) on the unceded lands of the Lisjan Ohlone  with his wonderful partner and cat. His paternal grandfather was incarcerated at Amache (Granada) and paternal grandmother at Topaz.

Tamiko Nimura is an Asian American (Sansei/Pinay) creative nonfiction writer and public historian, originally from California and now living in Washington State. Her father and eight of her family members were incarcerated at Tule Lake. She is a board member of the Tule Lake Committee. Her forthcoming memoir is titled A Place For What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake.

Mona Oikawa is a faculty member at York University and lives on the territory care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Wendat, and the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the  Credit First Nation. She is the author of Cartographies of Violence: Japanese Canadian Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the Internment. Her mother and maternal grandmother Shizu were incarcerated in the Slocan, BC camp. Her father was incarcerated in the Schreiber, ON Camp and her paternal grandmother was incarcerated in the Tashme, BC camp. 

Troy Osaki, the descendant of Filipino and Japanese immigrants, is a poet, organizer, and attorney. His grandmother was incarcerated at the Puyallup Assembly Center and the Minidoka War Relocation Center. After two years of separation, his grandmother reunited with her father at the Crystal City Alien Enemy Detention Facility. 

Michael Prior is a poet and teacher. His grandparents and their families were incarcerated in Tashme, a camp located on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples. Prior's most recent book of poems, Burning Province, won the 2021 BC & Yukon Book Prize for poetry and the 2020 Canada-Japan Literary Award. 

Brynn Saito’s third collection of poetry, Under a Future Sky (Red Hen Press, 2023), was inspired by her visit with her father to Gila River, the place where her aunt, grandparents, and other family members were incarcerated. Brynn teaches at California State University, Fresno.

Rob Sato is an artist based in Los Angeles. His grandfather was incarcerated in the Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas camps.

Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including The Grave on the Wall and The Afterlife Is Letting Go, both from City Lights. He had family in Heart Mountain, Poston, and Fort Missoula, where his grandfather was incarcerated under suspicion of being a spy for Japan. 

Patrick Shiroishi is a multi-instrumentalist and composer living in Los Angeles. His grandparents, Hidemi Pat & Sayoko Dorothy Shiroishi, were incarcerated at Tule Lake. Their story is special as they met and married each other in the camps. It is a reminder that even in the darkest of moments, light and hope can still shine through. 

Leanne Toshiko Simpson is a mixed-race Yonsei writer and psychiatric survivor. Her maternal grandparents were interned in Slocan Valley. Leanne teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and co-founded Mata Ashita, an intergenerational writing workshop for Japanese Canadians. Her debut novel Never Been Better explores mental health from cross-cultural perspectives.

Dana Swensen is a poet and writer who lives in California. Her great grandfather, an Issei man who chose to leave his family behind in Hawaii, was incarcerated from January of 1942, first on the island Lanai, then a POW camp in Texas, and then the Santa Fe Internment Camp for the duration of the war. 

Kenneth Tanemura teaches writing at the University of Central Florida. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Cincinnati Review, New Ohio Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Kenneth's father is a Sansei Kibei who was interned at Gila River and Tule Lake.  

Micah Tasaka (田坂舞花) is a queer, nonbinary poet, multidisciplinary artist, and reiki master from Colton, California. Their grandmother was incarcerated at Poston, AZ, and their grandfather fought in the 442nd Infantry Regiment in WWII. They are the author of Expansions (Jamii Publishing, 2017). Currently, Micah is earning their MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans and working for the Rainbow Pride Youth Alliance as the Director of the Inland Empire’s first LGBTQ+ Youth Drop in Center. www.micahtasaka.com

George Uba is Professor Emeritus of English, CSU Northridge. Literary & cultural critic, poet, and memoirist. Author of the books Disorient Ballroom and Water Thicker Than Blood, which traced the generational impacts of his parents' wartime incarceration at Heart Mountain. Finalist for the 2024 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Recent poems in New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nimrod, and Atlanta Review. 

Amy Uyematsu was a renowned sansei poet whose family was incarcerated in Manzanar and Gila River. She is the author of 30 Miles From J-Town, Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain, Stone Bow Prayer, The Yellow Door, Basic Vocabulary and That Blue Trickster Time. While at UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center, she co-edited the first widely used Asian American Studies anthology, Roots: An Asian American Reader (1971). Amy penned the widely acclaimed essay, “The Emergence of Yellow Power” (Gidra, 1969), an assertion of Asian American identity. Her poems consider the intersection of politics, mathematics, spirituality and the natural world. Amy died of breast cancer in 2023.

Terry Watada is a well-published writer living in Canada. He has four4 novels, six6 poetry books, and a collection of short stories in print. Hiroshima Bomb Money is his latest novel.  He is honoured that his two poems in this collection were selected for inclusion. In 1942, his father was forced to join a road gang before reuniting with his family in Minto BC, a self-sustaining internment camp.

Anne Yukie Watanabe (she/her) is a queer femme yonsei and shin-nisei nurse, organizer, peer counselor and writer living in Chicago. Her grandparents were incarcerated in Tashme and Lillooet in Canada. She is a founding member of Nikkei Uprising, a Nikkei group that organizes for collective liberation with an abolitionist and anti-imperialist lens.

Syd Westley is a poet and artist in Berkeley, CA. Their grandparents were incarcerated at Minidoka and Tule Lake. 

shō yamagushiku writes against the imperial inheritances that breathe life into the word "Nikkei.” His first poetry collection entitled shima reflects ancestors, violence, and tradition. He is located on the homelands of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples (Victoria, BC).

Doug Yamamoto is a retired union construction worker enjoying the benefits of being a longtime union member of Glaziers Union #718. His mother was imprisoned at Poston, along with her relatives, and his father incarcerated at Amache, along with his parents and siblings.

Traise Yamamoto is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of Masking Selves, Making Subjects: Japanese American Women, Identity, and the Body. Her mother and family were incarcerated at Tule Lake; her grandfather was also separately imprisoned at Santa Fe. Her father and family were incarcerated at Heart Mountain; her uncle was found guilty of draft evasion and imprisoned on McNeil Island. Her father, David Hiroshi Yamamoto, testified during the Redress and Reparations hearings.