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A tribute to the 150,000 people incarcerated by the United States and Canada during WWII, this anthology is the first of its kind. The poetry expresses a range of experiences and perspectives from the afterlife of this historical yet enduring injustice. The Gate of Memory explores intergenerational trauma as the contributors, all of whom are descendants of those who were incarcerated, sift through an intimate record of wartime incarceration.

The Gate of Memory is edited by Brandon Shimoda and Brynn Saito, features a foreword by Mitsuye Yamada, and gathers work from sixty-six descendant poets of Japanese American, Japanese Canadian, Okinawan American, Okinawan Canadian, Japanese Hawaiian, Alaska Native, mixed race Nikkei, and Japanese descent.

The Gate of Memory will be released by Haymarket Books on April 1, 2025. Pre-order your copy from the publisher, your favourite independent bookstore, or request it at your local library today!

Laura K. Fukumoto is a poet living on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tseil-Watuth lands. Vancouver was the birthplace of her grandfather, before the family’s permanent displacement to Toronto. Laura's grandparents were incarcerated, and married, in Slocan, British Columbia. Born in 1921, Grandma Kay Fukumoto is celebrating her first published work. 

Erica H. Isomura is a writer, poet, and interdisciplinary artist. She was raised by a Cantonese Canadian mother and a sansei Japanese Canadian father on Qayqayt territories/New Westminster, BC. Her grandparents were incarcerated in Tashme and Greenwood, BC. Erica currently lives in Toronto/Tkaronto.

Carolyn Nakagawa is a fourth-generation Anglo-Japanese Canadian poet and playwright who makes her home in the territory colonized as Vancouver, British Columbia. Her paternal grandparents were forcibly uprooted from Steveston and lived in Magna Bay and Westbank before returning to Vancouver in 1950.

Mona Oikawa is a faculty member at York University and lives on the territory care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Wendat, and the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the  Credit First Nation. She is the author of Cartographies of Violence: Japanese Canadian Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the Internment. Her mother and maternal grandmother Shizu were incarcerated in the Slocan, BC camp. Her father was incarcerated in the Schreiber, ON Camp and her paternal grandmother was incarcerated in the Tashme, BC camp. 

Michael Prior is a poet and teacher. His grandparents and their families were incarcerated in Tashme, a camp located on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples. Prior's most recent book of poems, Burning Province, won the 2021 BC & Yukon Book Prize for poetry and the 2020 Canada-Japan Literary Award. 

Leanne Toshiko Simpson is a mixed-race Yonsei writer and psychiatric survivor. Her maternal grandparents were interned in Slocan Valley. Leanne teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and co-founded Mata Ashita, an intergenerational writing workshop for Japanese Canadians. Her debut novel Never Been Better explores mental health from cross-cultural perspectives.

Anne Yukie Watanabe (she/her) is a queer femme yonsei and shin-nisei nurse, organizer, peer counselor and writer living in Chicago. Her grandparents were incarcerated in Tashme and Lillooet in Canada. She is a founding member of Nikkei Uprising, a Nikkei group that organizes for collective liberation with an abolitionist and anti-imperialist lens.

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We gratefully acknowledge support from the Community Projects stream of the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society Community Fund.