Teiko Tomita (December 1, 1896 – March 13, 1990) was a Japanese tanka poet who lived in the Pacific Northwest.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tomita burned all of her poetry so that the FBI would not assume that she had any loyalty to Japan.
Regardless, she and her family were incarcerated at Tule Lake in California and Heart Mountain in Wyoming as part of the enforcement of Executive Order 9066.
[2] In 1967, Tomita was forced to relocate a second time when it was found that her home was in the buffer zone around the Seattle Tacoma Airport.
[4] Despite burning all of her poetry at the beginning of the war, she resumed writing while incarcerated at Tule Lake.