We are honored to celebrate Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month (APIHM) with the poetry of activist and creative, Leesa Nomura—of Samoan and Japanese descent and an inspiring abolitionist who I had the pleasure of meeting when she performed at the API RISE gala in 2024. This piece allows us to imagine the long journey of generations that brought us to this moment of community, here, now. I invite us all to seek out Leesa and continue to be lifted through her storytelling. In the meantime, enjoy… 

—traci kato-kiriyama 

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Leesa Nomura (she/her) is a formerly incarcerated woman of Samoan and Japanese descent. She serves the California Coalition for Women Prisoners as membership organizer and a volunteer for the AANHPI community as a board member of API Rise. Leesa’s life’s work is encapsulated in the empowerment of the formerly incarcerated and those who still fight for their freedoms behind those walls of oppression. She is a Project Rebound scholar and in 2023 has earned her Bachelor’s degree in Human Services. Leesa is a proud mom of four sons and two daughters whose resilience has inspired her to continue to strive for success and live her best second chance. She is also a blessed “Nana” to her three granddaughters and two grandsons. In her free time, Leesa is a karaoke queen and loves being in nature.

How Did I Get Here?

My people traveled across thousands of nautical miles settling in the cradle of the South Pacific

Some call us
The People of the Sun
Tagata o le La
Or
the Happy People
Tagata o le FiaFia

Until the five deadly whites came and killed my peoples longevity and ability to thrive as our ancestors once did
You know the ones
Rice
Sugar
Flour
Mark Zuckerberg
Ronald McDonald

How did I get here????
Oh right??? I remember!!!

In 1918, 18 yr old Nagasaki born Masao Nomura and two of his best friends of the Shimashaki and Hisataki clans boarded a fishing boat to work to support their families.
Forced in a dingy after a card game gone bad
My sousofu was a gambler, a savvy one at that
He won all the yen that night
A sore loser trying to cut his coin bag off
Chose the right one on the wrong day
At the end of Masao’s knife
The judgement was… an honorable death or jump ship with dishonor off the coast of Samoa

How did I get here???
The answer
Is all but obvious as I live and breathe.
He married a Samoan girl and through them came generations of us.
The Nomura Clan, lost with no way back home.
Fast forward to 1971, 35 yr old Sgt First class Edward Nomura meets a beautiful 18 yr old girl named Hazel

And the rest is a blur today
The harder I try to focus the harder is it to see,
Through lies and betrayal, arbitrary rules set by arbitrary men
I guess how did I get here is not the question
But why did I get here; I'm speaking about the reason for it all
Masao, Edward, Me-crime, punishment, slavery, released, world pandemic?
here
The purpose of ten thousand me right smack dab in the center of the struggle for
gender, equality, liberation, to the tune of a million tears with the millions who cry FREEDOM NOW!
Tirelessly paddling strokes against countless waves of endless struggle
Toward a horizon that keeps getting pulled further and further away

The path to here runs through it you see,
My story etched in it by incessant drops on stone
3,794 drops to be exact, days imprisoned
I tell this tale that began over a century ago.
Great Grandpa we are not so different are we?
So for us I speak to those who can only but try to quench our flame:

From the distant shores of far far away, our journeys began
O’er the sweat of beaten brow of our grand elders
To the early beginnings of our immigrant parents in this foreign land
Be we born or brought, legal or not; we are here and yeah you tried
You tried to erase us
You tried to defame us
You tried to mass incarcerate us
Dammit!
You even tried to blame the fate of the entire world on us
Like a concrete sunflower reaching for the light and yeah you tried
You tried to call us into your tunnel of tracks
Handcuffed, hogtied every asian, brown, and black
You tried to snuff out the spirit of the sun, and got singed to no avail
Be we born or brought, legal or not; we are here and yeah you tried
We are a people of samurais and warriors, navigators of the seas, native from exotic lands
Our unity is rooted in culture and ancestry
Generations upon generations long
Our tattoos have more to say than all your libraries of Congress
Be we born or brought legal or not, and I still see you trying!!!!
We are too strong to be taken, too united to be divided. Fading into the ether we will not!
See us, hear us, but know you will never beat us
Who are we? We are the voice that cannot be silenced
And this is our REVOLUTION. And this is why I’m HERE.

In honor of my otosan, rest in peace: Edward Tsuneo Nomura, Sr.

*This poem is copyrighted by Leesa Nomura (2025)

© 2025 Leesa Nomura