Skip to main contentBiographyTomeo Hanami was born in Rexburg, Idaho, to Japanese immigrant sugr beet farmers. From the ages of nine to eighteen he was sent to live with relatives in Fukushima, Japan. Soon after returning to the U.S. he fell ill, and it was partly to relieve the boredom of hospital life that he began writing for Kamai Senryu, the senryu poetry column in Kashu Mainishi, a Los Angeles Japanese vernacular newspaper. In 1940, he helped found the poetry magazine, Senryu Tsubame Ginsha. For over sixty years, he and his wife Yasuko, also an accomplished poet, self-published this magazine by composing poetry, collecting work by others, and even painstakingly assembling pages. In 2003, a year before his death, Hanami donated a significant collection of his own poetry magazines as well as representative works by other groups to the Japanese American National Museum's permanent collection. This collection demonstrated the significance of the written word in shaping and memorializing the Japanese American experience. (Emily Anderson, 10/6/04)
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for Hanami, Tomeo
Hanami, Tomeo
1912 - 2004
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