I have been writing for Discover Nikkei since 2012—almost as long as I have been working on my forthcoming memoir, A Place For What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake. It seemed fitting to publish a “cover reveal” here, one of my publishing homes.
After I sent a few photos and ideas about cover design, the University of Washington Press offered two options for the cover, both of which I loved. The first cover was a combination of graphics and images that are significant in the book, and I was touched by the thoughtfulness and engagement with the content of the book. (And I loved the font choice for that one; it was close to calligraphy.) I came to think of that option as representing the “mind” of the book.
But this option with its tight focus on my dad and me, and the space between us—this option is the “heart” of the book. It uses one of my favorite photos of us with a slightly radiant, almost rainbow filter. I was a little worried about using an image that is my face; I am still an introverted writer. But partly because this book is a memoir, I decided to make the more vulnerable choice, inviting readers into this personal space.
My dear friend and artist Anida Yoeu Ali pointed out that the photo says “memoir” immediately to potential readers. She added that the photo repositions the image of the Asian (and Asian American) male. And I knew what she meant: Rarely, if ever, do we see an Asian American (or Nisei man) in full color, represented with this much paternal tenderness.
I was gratified to read these remarks from Katrina Noble, my cover designer at the Press: “I don’t often have time to read an entire manuscript before designing a cover, but in this case, I couldn’t stop reading. I wanted to capture the complex warmth and contemplation of loss in the cover design. The slightly counter-directional typographic treatment hopefully signals that this memoir is more than a straightforward remembrance of familial love.”
Building on Katrina’s insights, this book is a “camp” book, a book that involves the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans and its aftermath, but it is also much more than that. It is the story of a father and daughter relationship and our love of words across history, space, and time. And so the choice not to use sepia images of barbed wire, guard towers, or tar paper barracks is also deliberate. It says: This is a different kind of camp book. It is the intimate and emotional memoir of a descendant.
In this sense the book is coming “home” to Discover Nikkei and its readers again, and I am grateful for the support and community that I have gained over the years of writing here.
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Book Description:
A Place For What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake
By Tamiko Nimura
University of Washington Press, April 28, 2026
In a moving conversation with the past, Tamiko Nimura explores her late father’s life and her family’s wartime history at Tule Lake. The typewritten pages of her father’s unpublished memoir—written decades earlier about his childhood behind barbed wire—spark a reckoning with the long shadow of parental loss and the unresolved legacy of incarceration.
Following an innovative structure, Nimura interlaces her father’s vivid recollections with her own: scenes of camp life, family separation, and resistance alongside her present-day journey as a mother, writer, and descendant. Joining a community pilgrimage to Tule Lake transforms inherited pain into collective remembrance.
With honesty and lyrical precision, Nimura shows how intergenerational trauma and silence are transmitted, and how confronting them can foster healing. Part memoir, part dialogue with the past, A Place for What We Lose illuminates the enduring costs of incarceration while honoring the persistence of family, memory, and story. It is a profoundly moving exploration of grief, history, and the fragile but necessary work of resilience.
Several pieces of the memoir appeared first on Discover Nikkei, and will appear in different versions in the book:
- “Notes on Hoarding”
- “Barbed Wire, Guard Tower, Tar Paper Barracks, Roll Call”
- “Love and Reckoning”
- “Reframing Japanese American Bitterness”
A Place For What We Lose will be published by the University of Washington Press on April 28, 2026. Preorders are available now from your favorite independent bookstore and wherever books are sold. Author-signed copies will be available from King’s Books and Grit City Books in Tacoma, Washington.
© 2025 Tamiko Nimura
