Hisaye Yamamoto
| Hisaye Yamamoto | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 23, 1921 Redondo Beach, California |
| Died | January 30, 2011 (aged 89) Los Angeles |
| Nationality | USA |
| Genre | Short story |
| Subject | Japanese-American Culture Stories |
| Notable works | Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories |
| Notable awards | American Book Award, Lifetime Achievement. |
Hisaye Yamamoto (August 23, 1921 – January 30, 2011) was a Japanese American author. She is best known for the short story collection Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, first published in 1988. Her work confronts issues of the Japanese immigrant experience in America, the disconnect between first and second generation immigrants, as well as the difficult role of women in society.
Yamamoto was born to Issei parents in Redondo Beach, California. Her generation, the Nisei, were often in perpetual motion, born into the nomadic existences imposed upon their parents by the California Alien Land Law and the Asian Exclusion Act. As a mainstay, Yamamoto found comfort in reading and writing from a young age, producing almost as much work as she consumed. As a teen, her enthusiasm mounted as Japanese American newspapers began publishing her letters and short stories. Many Issei immigrants were concerned with preserving their native language, while the interests of the Nisei tended more towards expressions of loyalty to the United States, most easily achieved through knowledge and application of the English language. As a result, the communication lines between Japanese parents and their children faced rapid degradation, hampering the preservation of traditional Japanese culture in America. Initially writing solely in English, Yamamoto's recognition of this language barrier and generational gap would soon become one of her primary influences.
On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese navy, an act of war that was both undeclared by the Japanese and unexpected by the United States. Within four months of the bombing, Japanese Americans numbering close to 120,000 were forced into internment, two-thirds of which were born on American soil. Abandoning homes, farms, and businesses, this forceful relocation movement contributed to a certain physical, social, and psychological uprooting that Yamamoto would repeatedly address in her work. Japanese women leading ephemeral lives in the United States often had no female confidants outside of the family. In spite of the perpetual hardships that they faced, literature and poetry continued to flourish in the new land. In a sense, as a response to the various forms of imprisonment and relocation faced by both Issei and Nisei women, be it jail, internment, poverty, gender, or even marriage, art became the only source of freedom in their lives.
Yamamoto was twenty years old when her family was placed in the internment camp in Poston, Arizona. She had two brothers, one of whom was killed in combat fighting for the United States army during her family's internment. In an effort to stay active, Yamamoto began reporting for the Poston Chronicle, the camp newspaper. She started by publishing her first work of fiction, Death Rides the Rails to Poston, a mystery that was later added to Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, followed shortly thereafter by a much shorter piece entitled Surely I Must be Dreaming. She briefly left the camp to work in Springfield, Massachusetts, but returned when her brother died while fighting with the U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy. The three years that Yamamoto spent at Poston profoundly impacted all of her writing that followed.
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