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| Wakako Yamauchi |
Wakako Nakamura was born in October 25, 1924 to Yosaku and Hamako Nakamura in Westmorland, California. Her parents were Japanese immigrants from Shizuoka-Ken, Japan. Her father's lettuce crop failed after the 1940 earthquake and the family moved to Oceanside, where they borrowed money to start a boarding house.
On May 15, 1942, when Wakako was 17 years old, she was evacuated with her parents and older siblings, Yukiko and Isamu, from Oceanside, California to the Poston, Arizona internment camp block 12-1-A. While detained at Poston, Wakako was employed as an artist for the Press Bulletin, the camp newspaper. She also was employed as a cartoonist for the Poston Chronicles, where she started her lifelong friendship with the writer, Hisaye Yamamoto, one of the first Nisei writers to earn literary distinction after World War II with highly polished short stories. Wakako's brother, Isamu Sam Nakamura, departed from Poston on October 7, 1943 and transferred to the Tule Lake Segregation Center in California.
On April 11, 1944, Wakako found employment in Chicago, and left Poston. She worked in a candy factory and attended many play performances while in Chicago. Her parents were still at Poston, and her 59 year old father, Yosaku Nakamura, was hospitalized at the Poston General Hospital for 14 days before he died on October 29, 1945. Her mother departed to San Diego on November 12, 1945 and was among the very last internees to leave the closing camp.
Wakako took night school painting classes at the Otis Art Center in Los Angeles and learned to love painting. Wakako married Chester Yamauchi in 1948 and began a family and raised her only child, Joy.
Wakako began writing fiction after raising her daughter, when she was in her thirties. She was given a great opportunity to publish her writing when the Rafu Shimpo asked her to contribute to its annual holiday newspaper issue. Wakako's first play, And the Soul Shall Dance, was adapted from her short story of the same title. The East West Players’ artistic director, Japanese actor, Mako had read her story and encouraged Wakako to adapt it into a play. The play was first performed at the East West Players of Los Angeles and won the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle Award for best new play of 1977. It was produced as a television drama for the PBS station KCET in Los Angeles.
Wakako's short story “And the Soul Shall Dance” was published in the groundbreaking Asian American anthology Aiiieeeee! (1974) and later adapted into an award-winning play, which launched her long career as an acclaimed playwright. Wakako wrote And the Soul Shall Dance, which has been republished numerous times since it first appeared in 1966, and was made into a play in the mid-1970s. Wakako was a winner in the 1975 Amerasia Journal Short Story Contest, and awarded the 1976 Rockefeller Playwright in Residence Grant. She also won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for best new play of 1977.
Wakako's first collection, Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays, and Memoir, was published in 1994. She wrote the stories collected in Rosebud in later years, focusing on the clarity of her language and “telling the story, getting as close to the truth as I can.” In 1994, Wakako Yamauchi received the Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Writers Award,
In 12-1-A, Wakako transfers the World War II Japanese internment camp experience to the stage. The title is a reference to her family's address at the Poston, Arizona internment camp.
In 12-1-A, Wakako transfers the World War II Japanese internment camp experience to the stage. The title is a reference to her family's address at the Poston, Arizona internment camp.
"And the Soul Shall Dance" (1974, story; 1976, play)
"Boatmen on Toneh River" (1983, story)
"Surviving the Wasteland Years" (1988, story)
"Makapoo Bay" (1985, story)
"Maybe" (1990, story)
Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays, and Memoir (1994)
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/yamauchi_wakako.php
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0767422783/student_view0/wakako_yamauchi-999/about_the_author.html
aascpress.metapress.com/index/b38442n132717x62.pdf
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wakako-Yamauchi/108005732561818
http://rafu.com/news/2011/04/author-wakako-yamauchi-to-discuss-new-works-at-janm/
