Violet Kazue de Cristoforo

Who was Violet Kazue de Cristoforo?

Violet Kazue de Cristoforo was a Japanese American poet and composer of haiku. Her haiku reflected the time that she and her family spent in detention in Japanese internment camps during World War II. She wrote more than a dozen books of poetry during her lifetime. Her best known works were Poetic Reflections of the Tule Lake Internment Camp, 1944, which was written nearly 50 years after her detention. She was the editor of May Sky: There Is Always Tomorrow; An Anthology of Japanese American Concentration Camp Kaiko Haiku.

She was a major advocate for the plight of Japanese Americans who were held in internment camps during the war. The work of Cristoforo and other activists ultimately led the United States government to make reparations and issue an official apology to the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II.