Shigeo Kikuchi (died 1985) was a '' bōmori'' (坊守), a Buddhist missionary's wife, in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

in the years surrounding

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Born in Japan at an unknown date, Kikuchi was the wife of the Reverend Chikyoku Kikuchi, who was in charge of the Buddhist temple in Naalehu. She came to Hawaii in 1914, and with her husband served as a

Shin Shin may refer to: Biology * The front part of the human leg below the knee * Shinbone, the tibia, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates Names * Shin (given name) (Katakana: シン, Hiragana: しん), a Japanese ...

missionary; she also taught Japanese classes and served as a prominent member of Naalehu's Japanese-American community while her husband traveled on horseback to serve workers in the cane fields and sugar plantations. Chikyoku Kikuchi was interned in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

during

, and Shigeo took over many of his duties until his return, including organizing departure ceremonies for '' Nisei'' soldiers and distributing ''nenju'' prayer beads. Heavily active in Fujinkai, she also served as an intermediary with military authorities, and tried to protect her neighbors from harassment. Japanese-American internees were not allowed to receive letters in Japanese, and to counter this she learned English so she could write to them in that language. After the war, Chikyoku Kikuchi returned to his priestly duties; he and his wife retired in 1953. Shigeo Kikuchi kept a memoir of her time in Hawaii, covering among other things the war years; this was published by the Buddhist Study Center Press as ''Memoirs of a Buddhist Woman Missionary in Hawaii'' in 1991.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kikuchi, Shigeo Year of birth unknown 1985 deaths Japanese Buddhist missionaries Japanese emigrants to the United States Female missionaries People from Hawaii (island) 20th-century American memoirists American women memoirists 20th-century American women writers Hawaii people of Japanese descent