Emiko Tsuchida

emikotsuchida

Emiko Tsuchida is freelance writer and digital marketer living in San Francisco. She has written on the representations of mixed race Asian American women and conducted interviews with some of the top Asian American women chefs. Her work has appeared in the Village Voice, the Center for Asian American Media, and the forthcoming Beiging of America series. She is the creator of Tessaku, a project that collects stories from Japanese Americans who experienced the concentration camps.

Updated December 2016

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Tessaku

Bob Kaneko - Part 2

Por Emiko Tsuchida
13 Jan 2017

Read Part 1 >> So what happened in the camps? Your family voluntarily went. Bob Kaneko (BK): Well they voluntarily went to Auburn. And they got rounded up. Actually my mother said that the area they were in called Ophir. In fact my sister’s birth certificate says “rural California.” Cathy Kaneko (CK): His mom said the doctor didn’t make the birth so their friend’s wife delivered the baby and the doctor got their shortly afterward. What were your parents doing before, when the war broke out? BK: They were working at the North Bay Cleaners on Vine…

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Tessaku

Bob Kaneko - Part 1

Por Emiko Tsuchida
12 Jan 2017

Sadly, Mr. Kaneko passed away on September 18, 2016. I regret that he wasn’t able to read his interview and hope that this can honor his memory and pay great respect to his accomplished life. You had your sensei at the front of the room and he had different kinds of batons, if you will. You hear about Catholic nuns whacking kids? Well, these guys did the same thing. -- Bob Kaneko When I visited his Berkeley home last November, I discovered that Mr. Kaneko’s younger self had recently received some major press. Earlier in the year, a planned auction to sell a pl…

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Tessaku

Sandy Kaya - Part 2

Por Emiko Tsuchida
6 Jan 2017

Read Part 1 >> So you spent two and a half years in Hawaii, then moved back to Berkeley. Why Berkeley? In 1948 we moved to Berkeley because my sister Toshie, the oldest sister, her father-in-law passed away and she was all by herself with her two boys. So my mother decided she didn’t want to stay in Hawaii, let’s go back. So my father did come to Hawaii while we were there and he stayed for two weeks. He kind of grew up with them, grew up with my mother’s parents, because my mother’s parents brought my father’s father and him to Hawaii with them whe…

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Tessaku

Sandy Kaya - Part 1

Por Emiko Tsuchida
5 Jan 2017

“When we got to camp it was really nice because there were all these kids, same age. From what I can remember, it was fun. It was fun.” -- Sandy Kaya Sandy Kaya is one of my father’s oldest friends from elementary school. Soft-spoken, generous, and committed to keeping his Berkeley community of Japanese American friends and classmates in touch, Sandy is the anchor that sustains the relationships of the past. Each year he coordinates a reunion, maintains the master email list and is the group’s news anchor, telling others about the well-being of everyone else…

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Tessaku

Madeleine Sugimoto - Part 2

Por Emiko Tsuchida
20 Dez 2016

Read Part 1 He produced an incredible amount of work in the camps. There were two different paintings that I wanted to ask you about. The first is called Final Decision. It looks like a Japanese American soldier looking at a picture of his parents with an American flag on the wall. Can you describe what that’s about? Well the fact is that during, being in camp, many of the young fellows wanted to join the army which is ironic when you think they’re in the camp. And so I think in that, my father tried to capture the sense of a young man wanting to join the army or hav…