Mary Tsuruko Dakusaku Tsukamoto (1915–1998) was a Japanese American educator, cultural historian, and civil rights activist. She had taught in the Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento, California, for 26 years, and was described as having a passion to teach children how to learn from experience. The daughter of Japanese parents, she was relocated to an internment camp at Jerome, Arkansas, after the United States entered World War II. She developed a program about the internment period that is part of the California state curriculum for fifth grade history and a California Museum of History tour exhibit. She worked for Japanese American civil liberties, and played a pivotal role in the grassroots effort that led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. She also worked with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, where she developed an exhibit on internment for the Constitution's bicentennial. In March 2006, she was posthumously recognized as a National Women's History Month honoree. Early life Tsukamoto was born on January 17, 1915, in San Francisco, California. Her parents were from Okinawa, Japan, and she was the second of five children (four girls, one boy). At ten years old, she and her family moved to Florin, California, where they worked on a farm that grew strawberries and grapes, although her parents were not allowed to own land because they were Japanese-born. She attended Florin Grammar School, which was segregated at the time. When she was disqualified from participating in a high school oratorical contest because she was a child of an immigrant, her teacher, Mable Barron, coached her for outside contests, and later helped her gain admission and a scholarship to the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California Life in Japanese internment camps In May 1942, as part of the enforcement of Executive Order 9066, Tsukamoto, her husband Al, and daughter Marielle, were sent to the Fresno Assembly Center. She taught the children there at a makeshift summer school, and also taught basic English and public speaking to the adults. In October, they were relocated to an internment camp at Jerome, Arkansas. She said that she was shocked that human beings were fenced in like animals, and that they were no longer free. The National Women's History Project wrote, "the hardship and humiliation of the internment experience fueled much of Mary’s passion for justice as a teacher, community leader, and civil rights activist." The Tsukamoto