This year we celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month by sharing poetry written by Kane Maida in Tanforan and Topaz.
Kane Maida was born in Wakayama Prefecture in 1898 and, as a teen, accompanied her mother Matsue to Richmond, CA, where her father (Kumakichi) and brother (Eichi) had started a nursery. By 1942, Kane had married and had three daughters; and Maida family members were running three nurseries in the area. After EO 9066 was issued, the family was detained in Tanforan Assembly Center, and then transferred to Topaz, where they remained until the end of the War.
Throughout her incarceration, Kane wrote short poems in Japanese in a form called tanka. Thanks to Kane’s grandson Ken Tokuno, we are able to share some of her poetry with you (translated by Robert Huey PhD, Professor Emeritus, East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Hawai`i at Manoa).
Read “A Message From the Heart: Six Tanforan Poems.”
The Topaz Stories Team
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Media Coverage:
Watch “Utah Historians Run Exhibit on Japanese American Internment,” abc4 News, 2/19/2025).
Read “Utah Once Said ‘Never Again’–Do We Mean It? Deseret News, (2/26/2025).
Read “Topaz Stories Exhibition: A Way to Remember the Past.” SUU News, 2/7/2025.
Read ‘Topaz Stories’ exhibit travels Utah showing human side of WWII internment (KSL.com, May 24, 2024)
Read ‘Topaz Stories’ mines the history of a Japanese American internment camp (ParkRecord, May 18, 2024)
Read Remembering Japanese American Internment–Day of Remembrance (Rosie the Riveter Trust blog, March 24, 2024)
Read Internee’s story told with ‘Topaz Collages’ (Wheel of Dharma, Vol. 5, Issue 3, March 2023).
Watch Topaz survivors tell their stories (abc4 News, 4/22/2022)
Listen to the “In the Hive” podcast with interviews with Ann Dion, Jonathan Hirabayashi, and Topaz survivors Jeanie Kashima and Joseph Nishimura (KCPW, 4/28/2022)
Read How a Utah exhibit about Topaz Camp looks to find empathy in ‘an ugly stain on American history (ksl.com, 4/22/2022)
Read “Topaz Stories rise from the dust,” (Department of Culture & Community Engagement, 4/2022)
Listen to KQED Forum, Day of Remembrance interview with Ruth Sasaki, 2/15/2022
Listen to Max Chang and Ruth Sasaki interviewed (KRCL RadioActive, 2/9/2022
Read On Topaz Stories and ‘Authentic Voice’, the Discover Nikkei interview with Ruth Sasaki (10/14/2022)
Listen to Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration, the Topaz Stories podcast with Ruth Sasaki and Jonathan Hirabayashi (6/2/2021)