Description
Incarceration to Inspiration: Ikigai Legacy of an American Jap Girl
In 1925, three-year-old Tome, one of nine children, is abandoned by her birth parents. Raised by a foster family who instill in her the Bushido code of honor and perseverance, she grows up believing she’s an all-American girl-until America brands her a “Jap.”
When Executive Order 9066 uproots her family and confines them behind barbed wire, Tome endures injustice with quiet strength, guided by her purpose: her ikigai. Through war, poverty, and personal tragedy, including a desperate moment of near suicide-halted by her young son Richard’s cry, “No, Mommy, no!”-she transforms pain into determination.
American Jap Girl, told in Tome’s posthumous voice and reconstructed from family journals, reclaims a racial slur as a symbol of resilience and belonging. Spanning from the Great Depression to the rise of postwar California, Tome’s story is a testament to one woman’s defiance against the myth of inferiority and her transformation of suffering into legacy.
Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Richard Y. Okumoto
Published: 05/05/2026
Publisher: Digital Lifestory Press
ISBN: 9781971076010
Pages: 282
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 0.64″ H x 8.50″ L x 5.50″ W
About the Author
Okumoto, Richard Y.: – Dr. Richard Y. Okumoto is a Sansei author and PhD qualitative researcher who reconstructed his mother’s voice from journals and memory to write her posthumous memoir. A whistleblower, black-belt martial artist, and former Silicon Valley C-suite executive, he writes with Bushido discipline about resilience, truth, and cultural identity. American Jap Girl is his first book.
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