Mary matsuda gruenewald biography

Mary Matsuda Gruenewald (née Matsuda; January 23, 1925 – February 11, 2021) was an American writer.
Born on January 27, 1925, on Vashon Island in Washington, Gruenewald's life unfolded against the backdrop of a tumultuous era in the United States history.
A health care professional, activist, public speaker and author, she was revered by many on Vashon.

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Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, who was 90 years old in 2015 when this interview took place, is a retired Seattle health care professional and author of the memoir Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camps (NewSage Press, 2005).

Mary Matsuda was a 17 year old living on her family's strawberry farm on Vashon Island on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The island's Japanese-American leaders were taken away by the FBI and detained in secret. Her family knew the government would come for them next, so they burned all of their Japanese possessions - family photographs, her father's music, treasured books, even her dolls. They did not want to look even faintly sympathetic to Japan, the country responsible for the Pearl Harbor devastation. Five months after the attack, on May 16, 1942, the Matsuda family and the other Japanese-American families on Vashon Island were forced to evacuate Vashon Is

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Archives West Finding Aid

Mary Matsuda Gruenewald was a Japanese American activist, author, and healthcare professional who wrote several books on her experience of being detained during the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans in World War II. Mary’s father Heisuke Matsuda was born in Japan in 1877 and came to the United States in 1898 as a laborer. He worked in Hawaii, Alaskan Klondike, and Cle Elum. In 1921 he returned to Japan, where he met his wife, Mitsuno Horiye. The two returned to the United States in 1922 where Heisuke worked on a farm in Fife belonging to a fellow Japanese immigrant, Yoshio Yoshioka, before moving to another farm in Seattle. Heisuke and Mitsuno had two American-born children, Yoneichi (b. 1923) and Mary (b. January 23, 1925). In 1927 the family moved to Vashon Island where they leased a ten-acre farm in the Shawnee area and grew vegetables, loganberries, and cherries which they sold in Tacoma. At the beginning of the Great Depression in 1930 Heisuke bought 10 acres of farmland on Vashon Island and buil

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Mary Matsuda Gruenewald

American writer (1925–2021)

Mary Matsuda Gruenewald (née Matsuda; January 23, 1925 – February 11, 2021) was an American writer. She is best known for her autobiographical novelLooking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps, which details her own experiences as a Japanese American in World War IIinternment camps.^[1]

Biography

Early life

Mary Matsuda was born in 1925 in Vashon Island, Washington to Heisuke and Mitsuno (née Horie) Matsuda, Japanese immigrants and farmers.^[2] She and her brother, Yoneichi, grew up in the small community of Vashon Island under idyllic circumstances. Her family owned a strawberry farm and attended a local Methodist congregation.

Internment experience

Upon learning about the Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, her family destroyed their Japanese possessions.^[3] In May 1942, following the signing of Executive Order 9066, she and her family were forced from their home and placed in a series of camps, starting with Pinedal