Tamiko Nimura
@tnimuraTamiko Nimura, PhD, is an award-winning Asian American (Sansei/Pinay) creative nonfiction writer, community journalist, and public historian. She writes from an interdisciplinary space at the intersection of her love of literature, grounding in American ethnic studies, inherited wisdom from teachers and community activists, and storytelling through history. Her work has appeared in a variety of outlets and exhibits including San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Magazine, Off Assignment, Narratively, The Rumpus, and Seattle’s International Examiner. She has written regularly for Discover Nikkei since 2016. She is completing a memoir called A Place For What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake.
Updated October 2024
Stories from This Author
We Have Been Here Before: A Speech for Tsuru for Solidarity and La Resistencia at the Northwest Detention Center
March 16, 2025 • Tamiko Nimura
On Sunday, February 23, 2025, close to 300 people stood in the rain in front of the Northwest ICE Processing Center, formerly known as the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington. We were there to support the detainees there who have been subject to terrible living conditions, with no relief in sight—all because of their immigration status. We heard from community organizers, and from Minidoka and Tule Lake survivor Mary Tanaka Abo, and from the prisoners inside the detention …
Documenting the Contributions of Nikkei Farmers: The Kansha History Project
Jan. 28, 2025 • Tamiko Nimura
Before World War II, my grandparents, my father, and his siblings were sharecroppers. I have a few stories of what that was like from my father and his siblings, but there is more I would like to know about what they raised, where and how they lived. And it’s harder to find accounts of rural Nikkei, Nikkei farmers, and their stories in official historic records. The Kansha History Project addresses this type of gap in an exciting community-sourced, community-powered effort. …
A Story of Artful Giving Comes Full Circle: Seattle Samurai and the Goto Family
Nov. 29, 2024 • Tamiko Nimura
In 2017, Kelly Goto found herself sorting through the belongings of a parent that she’d recently lost: her father, Sam. She was back in her childhood house living with her children and her mother. Among other things, her father had left a huge collection of books, a collection of samurai swords, and countless handwritten notes that she still finds in drawers to this day. But she had a few invaluable resources that helped her sort through these belongings, including the …
Healing Ceremony Held after Sadako Sasaki Statue is Stolen from Peace Park in Seattle
Nov. 10, 2024 • Tamiko Nimura
It was a terrible feeling to wake up in mid-July 2024 and read that the statue of Sadako Sasaki in Seattle’s tiny Peace Park had been mutilated. Created by artist Darryl Smith, the Sadako statue was installed in 1990 by Quaker activist Floyd Schmoe, who successfully lobbied the City of Seattle to create a tiny park close to the University of Washington and across the street from the Quaker Friends Meeting House. The statue had been vandalized once before in …
A Seven-Year Dream Realized: The Remembrance Gallery at the Washington State Fairgrounds
Sept. 3, 2024 • Tamiko Nimura
Nestled underneath the grandstands at the Washington State Fairgrounds, across from the regionally famous Fisher Scone stand, there is a new exhibit opening in 2024. Organized by the Puyallup Valley chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, the Remembrance Gallery stands as a powerful testament to the 7,500+ persons of Japanese descent who were incarcerated at the fairgrounds in 1942. Many Japanese Americans in the area avoided going to the Fair for decades, finding the memories too painful. Though a …
Writing In the Shadows of Tule Lake: A Conversation with Akemi Johnson
July 5, 2024 • Tamiko Nimura
Akemi Johnson is a mixed-race Yonsei writer and author of Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa. She’s currently at work on a second book about her family history and Tule Lake concentration camp. I “met” Yonsei writer Akemi Johnson through that social-media-site-which-shall-not-be-named (except with the letter X), and we moved our conversation to e-mail and social media. Generously, Akemi invited me, Diana Emiko Tsuchida, and Kyoko Oda to participate in …
The Tacoma Japantown Project
June 16, 2024 • Tamiko Nimura
This year, 2024, marks 10 years that I have been researching, writing, and marking the story of Tacoma’s historic Japantown. Readers of Discover Nikkei might have read about this work in different formats: encyclopedia article, personal essay, walking tour, smartphone application, day of gathering. I’ve also written essays about Tacoma-related Japanese American people and places. I’ve wanted to compile and share this knowledge with as many people as possible, though, and online seemed to be the easiest place to do …
How Do We Remember Japanese American History? A Descendant's Perspective
April 4, 2024 • Tamiko Nimura
The following is adapted from a talk I gave at Plymouth Church in Seattle in February 2024. Good afternoon. I’m honored to be here with you all. I’m an Asian American writer from Tacoma, half-Filipina American, half-Japanese American. I have so many emotions being with you here today on this day before a national Japanese American Day of Remembrance. This commemoration began in Seattle back on Thanksgiving weekend in 1978, when a group of Asian American activists, many of them …
Naomi Hirahara’s Meticulously-Researched Mystery about Postwar Midcentury Japanese America
March 14, 2024 • Tamiko Nimura
There’s a haunting in Naomi Hirahara’s latest novel, Evergreen—a much-anticipated sequel to her novel, Clark and Division. After wartime incarceration in Manzanar and then resettlement in Chicago, Aki Ito, now Nakasone, and her family have returned to Southern California, and much has changed. The haunting comes in several forms—as the voice of Aki’s deceased older sister Rose, asking not to be forgotten; as the PTSD of Aki’s 442nd veteran husband Art Nakasone; and as the material losses and livelihood of …
Why the Language We Use to Describe JA Incarceration During WWII Matters
Feb. 23, 2024 • Tamiko Nimura
Out the front windows of our bus, we could see acres of sun-dried grasses during a hot and arid Northern California summer. On either side of the road stood barbed-wire fences, like the ones many of our family members spent years behind, surrounded by armed guards and guard towers, living in crowded tar-paper barracks with little to no privacy. “How many of you have been here before or were here during World War II?” our tour guide asked. A few …
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