Description: A memoir of a Japanese American girl imprisoned in U.S. camps during WW II and her insights as an adult making sense of this grave injustice.--Mako Nakagawa
Brief description: In February 2018, Mako Nakagawa celebrated her 81st birthday and completed her memoir, Child Prisoner in American Prison Camps, which she had been working on for more than a decade. This book is based on her original manuscript of stories for young readers, Camp Child, self-published in 2007. Her brother-in-law, Mits Katayama, a well-established commercial artist, created original illustrations to accompany Mako's stories. Mako began her formal education at five years old as a child prisoner in American concentration camps built to confine people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast during World War II. In her adult years, Mako became an educator, earning her M.A. in Education from Seattle University. She specialized in multicultural education and was the Program Director for Seattle Public School's Ethnic Cultural Heritage Program (RAINBOW). In 1976, she oversaw development of a RAINBOW curriculum for a national market and received a Washington Education Association Curriculum Award in 1977 for her work on this project. Mako served as principal at two Seattle elementary schools in the 1970s and 1980s. She went on to become Program Administrator for Multicultural Education, Basic Skills and the Curriculum unit of the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). Her growing concern for Japanese American civil rights and redress matched her ongoing concern for multicultural education. In 1991, Mako started her own business, Mako & Associates, providing contract diversity training programs. As an accomplished public speaker and writer, Mako emphasized the "power of words" and the importance of describing the imprisonment of Japanese Americans with accurate terminology - not with euphemisms that mislead and distort the truth. Mako was an active member of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and other groups to create policies and plans to educate the general public about the injustices in recent U.S. history, in particular, the imprisonment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast. Over the years she has made numerous presentations on her experiences as a child prisoner and conducted a series of workshops on the subject for teachers, organizations, and students from elementary through college. Mako has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors for her work as an educator, including from the national Committee on School Desegregation, the Asian Education Advisory Council, and the Japanese American Citizens League. Mako lives in Seattle and has three adult children. She enjoys Seattle sports including the Seahawks, Sounders, and Mariners, and spending time with her family and friends. This is her first published book and if you ask her --her last!
Review Quotes: Child Prisoner in American Concentration Camps is a wonderful read. It chronicles Mako Nakagawa's life story through her eyes as a bewildered five-year-old Japanese American child trapped in three American concentration camps and later, her lifework as an educator concerned and involved with the civil rights of all Americans. For many, she has become a community heroine for her years of work advocating for justice. Mako's childhood remembrances of her concentration camp experiences evoke smiles, sadness, and understanding of her family's four-year travail and the community's healing process that took forty years to materialize. Some of her stories as a child are especially wonderful to read out loud to school-aged children.
Tetsuden Kashima, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
Karen Yoshitomi, Executive Director, Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington Mako Nakagawa has written a poignant book that tells of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II through her eyes as a five-year-old child. Through those eyes--as well as the book's clear, simple language and striking, at times whimsical, illustrations by Mits Katayama--Mako shares with readers not only the uncertainty, fear, and hardship of the incarceration and two-year separation from her father, but also the humor and absurdity in the worst of times that sometimes only children can see. That perspective allows readers to understand this important chapter in our nation's history, but, more importantly, to be aware of the real, human cost of prejudice and the separation and imprisonment of families.
Lorraine Bannai, Director, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, Seattle University School of Law--Mako Nakagawa