She and her husband painted farmers and laborers, and participated in exhibitions of art that critiqued Japan's military expansion and the government's increasingly heavy handed suppression of dissent.

[2] She and her husband were later imprisoned and brutalized by the Tokkō (special higher police) in response to their antiwar, anti-Imperialist, and anti-militarist stance in the 1930s.

[3] After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mitsu joined the U.S. war effort, working for the Office of Strategic Services by sending American propaganda to the Japanese.

[1] Mitsu left Taro in the 1960s and moved to San Francisco, where she devoted herself to art and community work as well as civic activism.

[2] In 1976, she appeared in the television movie adaptation of the book Farewell to Manzanar, acting opposite her son and daughter.