Moé Yonamine

Moé Yonamine was born in Okinawa and moved with her family to the United States when she was seven years old. She teaches in Portland, Oregon and is a Rethinking Schools editorial associate. Yonamine is part of the network of Zinn Education Project teachers developing original curriculum to reflect the diversity of today’s U.S. students and to address gaps in the official curriculum. She wrote “But You Guys Wanted Us Here,” a film review and teaching ideas about the U.S. occupation of Japan.

All Content By This Author

Because Our Islands Are Our Life

Resource Types: Articles
Article. By Moé Yonamine. Rethinking Schools, Summer, 2019.
A high school ethnic studies teacher describes how students in the Pacific Island Club used poetry to refocus the narrative surrounding climate justice onto frontline communities.

Fighting for Okinawa — My Home, Not a Military Base

Resource Types: Articles
By Moé Yonamine
My family moved to the United States from Okinawa when I was 7. But Okinawa is still home — and I’m hurt and angered at how the United States and Japan continue to treat Okinawa as little more than a colonial outpost. As a teacher, I’m even more dismayed at how the conventional school curriculum keeps young people in this country ignorant about the abuse, but also about the resistance, in my home islands.

Teaching Untold Stories During Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Resource Types: Articles
By Moé Yonamine
“They’re Latinos . . . I think they’re some kind of farm workers.”

“No, they’re Asians with name tags.”

And then a student in a quiet voice walked by me slowly and muttered, “I think something really bad is happening to them.”

My students at Roosevelt High School in Portland, Oregon — one of the state’s most racially diverse schools — studied each black and white photo posted around the room, inspecting the background and the facial expressions; confused, anxious, frustrated. They began a journey to uncover the hidden story of the Japanese Latin American removal, internment, and deportation during World War II.

Film Tackles the U.S. Occupation of Japan: ‘ANPO: Art X War’

Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 11
Teaching Activity. By Moé Yonamine. Rethinking Schools. 11 pages.
Lesson based on ANPO: Art X War, a documentary about visual resistance to U.S. military bases in Japan by Japan’s foremost contemporary artists.