Tsuyako "Sox" Kitashima (1918 – December 29, 2005) was a
Japanese-American activist noted for her role in seeking reparations for
Japanese American internment
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
by the United States government during World War II,
[ particularly as investigated by the ]Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians
The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) was a group of nine people appointed by the U.S. Congress in 1980 to conduct an official governmental study into the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Pr ...
in the 1980s.[
Kitashima was born Tsuyako May Kataoka in 1918 in ]Hayward, California
Hayward () is a city located in Alameda County, California in the East Bay subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area. With a population of 162,954 as of 2020, Hayward is the sixth largest city in the Bay Area and the third largest in Alameda Coun ...
, to Masajiro Kataoka and Yumi Ishimaru, who had emigrated from Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan and owned a strawberry farm in Eden Township, Alameda County, California.[ She had five siblings. At school, her classmates were unable to pronounce her name, calling her "Socko" instead; this in time was further shortened to "Sox". Kitashima's family moved from Eden to Centerville, Fresno County, California, where she graduated from Washington Union High School in 1936.]Executive Order 9066
Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...
, Kitashima and her family were among those 120,000 Japanese Americans interned into relocation camps.[ They were kept in horse stalls at ]Tanforan
The Shops at Tanforan is a regional shopping mall in San Bruno, California, United States. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco city limits.
The site was originally used as a horse racing track from 1899 until 1 ...
, California, and later moved to a single room at Topaz War Relocation Center
The Topaz War Relocation Center, also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) and briefly as the Abraham Relocation Center, was an American concentration camp which housed Americans of Japanese descent and immigrants who had come t ...
in Utah.[ The Kataokas were also moved to ]Tule Lake
Tule Lake ( ) is an intermittent lake covering an area of , long and across, in northeastern Siskiyou County and northwestern Modoc County in California, along the border with Oregon.
Geography
Tule Lake is fed by the Lost River. The elevat ...
while interned. In August 1945, Tsuyako married Tamotsu Kitashima in Salt Lake City, Utah.[
She later became a spokesperson for the ]National Coalition for Redress and Reparations
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, ce ...
, and fought for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, by which the American government formally apologized and granted reparations to the wartime internees.[ In 1998, The Freedom Forum awarded her a ]Free Spirit Award
Free may refer to:
Concept
* Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything
* Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism
* Emancipate, to procure ...
, which came with US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
10,000.[ She has also been recognized by the National Women's History Project as a ]National Women's History Month
Women's History Month is an annual declared month that highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. It is celebrated during March in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, corresponding with ...
/Week honoree.[
Kitashima died of a heart attack in a care home in San Francisco, California on December 29, 2005, aged 87.][
]
References
External links
Tsuyako Kitashima
at Discover Nikkei
at What if No One's Watching?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kitashima, Tsuyako
1918 births
2005 deaths
Japanese-American internees
People from Hayward, California
Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area
Japanese-American civil rights activists