Keiho Soga
Yasutaro (Keiho) Soga (相賀安太郎 渓芳, March 18, 1873 Tokyo - March 7, 1957) was a Hawaiian Issei journalist, poet and activist. He was a community leader among Hawaii's Japanese residents, serving as chief editor of the Nippu Jiji, then the largest Japanese-language newspaper in Hawaii and the mainland United States, and organizing efforts to foster positive Japan-U.S. relations and address discriminatory legislation, labor rights and other issues facing Japanese Americans.[1] An accomplished news writer and tanka poet before the war, during his time in camp Soga authored one of the earliest memoirs of the wartime detention of Japanese Americans, Tessaku Seikatsu or Life Behind Barbed Wire.
Life
Born Yasutaro Soga to a relatively wealthy family in
In 1908, Soga, Fred Kinzaburo Makino, Motoyuki Negoro, and Yoichi Tasaka formed the Higher Wage Association (Zokyu Kisei Kai). Together, they protested the low wages that Japanese plantation workers were making relative to other ethnic groups.[3] In 1909, Soga used the Nippu Jiji to champion the cause of Japanese plantation workers then striking for higher wages. He became one of the leaders of the territory-wide strike and was later arrested and convicted of conspiracy with the other founders of the Higher Wage Association. His wife, Kozue Sugino, fell ill while Soga was in prison, and died soon after his release.[1] He married Sei Tanizawa in 1911.[4]
Soga was arrested within hours of the
He continued to write poetry and publish articles for the Hawaii Times in the years after the war. In 1952, after the
Awards
- 1985 American Book Awardfor Poets Behind Barbed Wire
Works
- Keiho Soga; George Hoshida; Jiro Nakano; Kay Nakano (1983). Jiro Nakano; Kay Nakano (eds.). Poets behind barbed wire: Tanka poems. Translated by Jiro Nakano; Kay Nakano. Illustrator George Hoshida. Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 978-0-910043-05-2.
Memoir
- Keiho Soga (2007). Life behind barbed wire: the World War II internment memoirs of a Hawaiʻi Issei. Translator Kihei Hirai. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-2033-6.
Keiho Soga.
Anthologies
- Steven Gould Axelrod; Camille Roman; Thomas J. Travisano, eds. (2005). The new anthology of American poetry. Vol. 1. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-3164-9.
- Juliana Chang, ed. (1996). Quiet fire: a historical anthology of Asian American poetry, 1892-1970. The Asian American Writers' Workshop. ISBN 978-1-889876-02-3.
- Eric Edward Chock; Darrell H. Y. Lum, eds. (1986). The best of Bamboo ridge: the Hawaii writers' quarterly. Bamboo Ridge Press. ISBN 978-0-910043-08-3.
See also
References
- ^ a b c Niiya, Brian. "Yasutaro Soga," Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 31, 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-8248-2033-6.
Keiho Soga.
- ^ "Hawai'i Labor History Biographies". www.hawaii.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-03.
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- ^ "Soga, Yasutaro (Keiho) | Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii". interneedirectory.jcch.com. Retrieved 2019-11-05.