Last month, as a way to honor Women’s History Month and beyond, we launched our New Mexico Sheroes campaign to celebrate self-identified women who have made herstory in our state.
Ruth Hashimoto, born in Seattle Washington in 1913, was forced into a Wyoming internment camp with her husband and children in 1942. While there, she helped to organize a school, canteen and recreational activities, and in 1943 was released to join the Navy Intelligence Language School as an instructor. After reuniting with her husband after World War II, Ruth and her family moved to Albuquerque in 1951. Here in NM, she founded the Albuquerque-Sasebo Sister City Committee, the New Mexico Chapter of the United Nations Association, and served as Director for the Japanese American Citizen League, among other leadership roles.
Ruth educated the community on the racism experienced by Japanese Americans who were forced to fight for the U.S. abroad in World War II, while being interned and denied equal rights as citizens at home. She also tutored hundreds of Japanese immigrants in English, taught citizenship courses, and operated “as an interpreter between school officials and immigrant families.” Ruth’s story also reminds us of New Mexico’s own history of internment camps beginning during colonization and as recently as the Japanese internment camps during World War II.
Ruth Hashimoto was honored as a New Mexico Treasure in 1996, acknowledged in the New Mexico Women’s Hall of Fame in 1989, and earned the New Mexico Distinguished Public Servant Award in 1971. She earned many other awards, prior to passing at age 96.