Tsuyako "Sox" Kitashima (1918 – December 29, 2005) was a Japanese-American activist noted for her role in seeking reparations for Japanese American internment by the United States government during World War II,[1] particularly as investigated by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in the 1980s.
[2] Kitashima was born Tsuyako May Kataoka in 1918 in Hayward, California, to Masajiro Kataoka and Yumi Ishimaru, who had emigrated from Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan and owned a strawberry farm in Eden Township, Alameda County, California.
Kitashima's family moved from Eden to Centerville, Fresno County, California, where she graduated from Washington Union High School in 1936.
[2] They were kept in horse stalls at Tanforan, California, and later moved to a single room at Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah.
[4] Kitashima died of a heart attack in a care home in San Francisco, California on December 29, 2005, aged 87.