Susan Yamamura
@susanySusan Yamamura was born in Seattle, WA in 1940. She and her family were sent to Camp Harmony, WA and Camp Minidoka, ID. She graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1962. She first worked as a computer programmer at Space Technology Labs in Redondo Beach, CA and later at the Boeing Co in Seattle. Susan retired from managing a computer and graphics lab in the Chemistry Department at the University of Arizona in 1997.
She had a son with Hank Yamamura; Hank passed away in 2008. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Updated April 2020
Stories from This Author
Gifts from Japan
Sept. 16, 2020 • Susan Yamamura
Jichan and Bachan brought back many beautiful gifts from their trips to Japan. They ordered lovely, hand-dyed silk kimonos for my mother, my sister Louise, and me, each embellished with the Araki family crest. Beautiful belts (obi) were part of each kimono set. One year, they gave me a gorgeous brocade piece fabric which shimmered with silvery threads. Growing up with Jichan and Bachan, I learned a complex and loving pattern of customs around gift giving and receiving, an important …
Mochitsuki
July 13, 2020 • Susan Yamamura
One of my fondest memories is of the annual mochi making party that was held at our house in the week after Christmas and before New Year's Day. My Kurosu second cousins, the grandchildren of Jichan’s elder brother, Shinsaku, would come to our house in South Park to make mochi. The sweet mochi rice would have been pre-washed and steamed over pipes from the steam boiler which heated our greenhouses adjacent to our home. My Kurosu cousins recently told me …
Dolls
June 11, 2020 • Susan Yamamura
The first gift I remember receiving from Jichan and Bachan was a gift of Japanese culture, the celebration of Girls’ Day or Hinamatsuri, a Japanese holiday celebrated every year on March 3rd. I “remember” my first Girls’ Day now because of photographs taken by my uncle, Shosuke Sasaki. Though not a professional, Uncle Shosuke was an expert photographer and he took a picture of me at about nine months of age in front of a Girls’ Day display in March …
The Home That Jichan and Bachan Built
May 7, 2020 • Susan Yamamura
How Jichan Became an Araki Although Jichan was born Nisaku Kaneda, the second of four sons in the Kaneda family of Fukui-ken, when he married, he took the family name of his wife, Masa Araki, acting as a yoshi, so that the Araki family name could be continued. Jichan, around twenty-seven years old, and Bachan, about twenty, were married in Tacoma, WA in December of 1913. Bachan was an only child, and as a female, she could not carry on …
Comfort
April 16, 2020 • Kendall Tani , Susan Yamamura , traci kato-kiriyama
This month, we feature California-based Yonsei writer, Kendall Tani, and Arizona-based Sansei writer, Susan Yamamura. Susan’s is a lighthearted parody poem that heralds where we look for some solace during a time of major strife, while Kendall’s first piece featured here, soft bodies, speaks to a relationship with oneself through an intimate practice of shaping earth (and future) by hand. Both reminded me of the ideas of comfort and doing something good for ourselves...like poetry, a vessel through which we …
Where to Bury Me
March 31, 2020 • Susan Yamamura
I awoke this morning to memories of the cowboy lament, “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.” Perhaps the memories had been triggered when I had confronted my mixed feelings about where to be buried. Last evening, I had decided to request burial for the ashes of my deceased husband, Hank, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known to many as the Punchbowl Cemetery, close to Pearl Harbor. Hank had served as a Captain in the United States …
Jichan in America
June 27, 2017 • Susan Yamamura
The grandfather of my heart will always be my father’s father, Grandfather Araki (born a Kaneda but taking the Araki name as a yoshi), whom I called Jichan. He gave me the precious gift of unconditional love. I thought Jichan was his given name. In reality, it was a child’s version of ojisan, which means “old man” or “grandfather” in Japanese. Jichan’s true given name was Nisaku. Grandfather asked me once why I called him Jichan. I told him all …
Matsutake Sukiyaki
June 1, 2017 • Susan Yamamura
In Seattle, my family’s mushroom hunting season would begin with discussions around the big table in the large, windowed breakfast nook at home, where the family took all everyday meals. Around the dinner table, rumors about friends and acquaintances being recognized at various well-known matsutake sites in the Cascades, the Olympic Peninsula, and Shelton were thoroughly analyzed. One year, matsutake were found under huckleberry bushes, an inconceivable place! Every Japanese family had their own, secret matsutake hunting places, locations which …
Cherry Blossom Petals
April 28, 2017 • Susan Yamamura
An elegant few, pale pink blossoms on the slender limbs of a delicate February Fuji Cherry tree, displayed themselves in the midst of a light winter snow. To Naomi, looking down on the scene from her second floor bedroom window, the blossoms looked magical—large, pink snowflakes amid the falling, smaller, white ones. The tree looked very much like the beautiful, delicate hazel tree in Elenore Abbot’s illustration for “Cinderella” in Grimm’s Fairy Tales. In this version of “Cinderella,” rather than …
Minoru Tamesa: The Quiet Man Who Came to Dinner - Part 3
April 13, 2017 • Susan Yamamura
Read Part 2 >> In writing this remembrance of Minoru Tamesa, one more memory of Min’s father, Uhachi Tamesa, comes to mind. My Jichan (grandfather) Nisaku Araki was a friend of Uhachi’s. On one of Uhachi’s visits to our house, I remember hearing raised voices from the kitchen, almost as if Uhachi and Jichan were having an argument. Such raised voices were unexpected and different from the usual low murmurings of polite conversation, so I peeked into the kitchen alcove, …
