November 4, 1904 [Japan] – December 19, 1981 [Los Angeles, California]
[Originally born in Japan in 1904, Kagawaimmigrated to the United States in 1918 and livedwith his father in Los Altos, California. He studiedat nearby Stanford University, where he met poetand literary scholar Yvor Winters. Winters took theyoung Kagawa under his wing and jump startedhis career by co-authoring with Kagawa the poetryvolume Hidden Flame in 1930. Soon after, Kagawabegan sending his verses to various publications,and his poems appeared in the pages of PoetryMagazine and Stanford’s Carillon Magazine.Kagawa’s fame spread within the JapaneseAmerican community; he helped form a poetry circle among Japanese Americansin northern California, and several community newspapers such as the RafuShimpo and Kashu Mainichi published his poems. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, Kagawa joined several other writers and artists,including Isamu Noguchi and Ayako Ishigaki, to form an anti-fascist circle tosupport the American war effort. Soon after Executive Order 9066, Kagawa wasincarcerated at Tule Lake concentration camp. Following the segregation programin 1943, Kagawa and several Kibei writers—Masao Yamashiro, Jyozi Nozawa,and Kazuo Kawai —began a literary magazine in camp. Titled Tessaku, or “irongate,” the magazine incorporated a variety of poems, short stories, and essays.While Kagawa could not serve as an editor because he was an Issei, hiscontributions to Tessaku reflected his influence on the publication.]
