A Japanese Name: an American Story

In 1942, when she was 15 years old and a freshman at Garfield High School, Suma (Kato) Yagi and her family were forced to leave their home in Seattle. Executive Order 9066 authorized the mass removal of Japanese Americans from prescribed military zones, which included the West Coast. Suma and her family were sent to the Puyallup Assembly Center, then to the Minidoka "Relocation Center" in Idaho. Her family returned to Seattle at the end of WWII and Suma completed her senior year of high school. She married Takeo Yagi, whom she met at Minidoka and they raised four children. Although being sent to a concentration camp had a profound impact on her, Suma shared little of her experience with her children until well after she retired. She took an introductory poetry writing course with Professor Nelson Bentley at the University of Washington and that distance learning course, along with subsequent writing courses at UW and at Richard Hugo House, opened up the world of poetry to her and a way to express what had happened to her during the Second World War. Through poetry, Suma found a hidden voice that allowed her to share her previously suppressed emotions about being uprooted from her home and being put behind barbed wire. She was compelled to share her experiences so that what happened to her does not happen again.