Mitsu Yashima

Mitsu Yashima (八島 光, Yashima Mitsu), whose real name was Tomoe Sasako (笹子 智江, Sasako Tomoe), was a Japanese children's book author.

World War II and later years

Mitsu was the daughter of a shipbuilding company executive. Yashima attended college in Japan. In the '30s, she joined a Marxist study group, where she met her future husband, artists Taro Yashima. She and her husband, were both thrown in jail for their protests against the Japanese government. They went to America to study art in 1939, leaving behind their son, Makoto Iwamatsu with relatives. When World War II broke out, Tomoe, along with her husband, joined the U.S war effort. She adopted the pseudonym Mitsu Yashima, and Atsushi the pseudonym Taro Yashima, to protect their son who was still in Japan. Mitsu Yashima made broadcasts to Japanese women in order to damage their wartime morale. She and Taro went on to collaborate on a children's book, Momo's Kitten, but eventually they separated.

She took issue with the film Farewell to Manzanar. Although she was pleased that the film pointed out the discrimination against Japanese Americans, she was quoted in a San Francisco Gate as article saying, "If they knew, then they could compare it with what the Japanese army did to the Chinese people and all the places they conquered. The Japanese Americans don't have so much to complain about. Well, we should complain, I know, but not so much." In that same article, she said, referring to the bombing of Hiroshima, that "After all, who started the war? But the atomic bomb should never be used again. Never!"