Violet de Cristoforo | Internment-camp poet

Violet Kazue de Cristoforo, 90, who received national honors for haikus reflecting the desolation of Japanese-American internment camps during World War II, died Wednesday.

Ms. De Cristoforo died at her home in Salinas, her daughter Kimi de Cristoforo said.

For more than 50 years, Ms. de Cristoforo wrote, compiled and translated haikus created in the detention camps. She was also a staunch advocate in the campaign that led to reparations and an apology from the U.S. government to the 120,000 Japanese-Americans interned in the 1940s.

Her best-known works include Poetic Reflections of the Tule Lake Internment Camp, 1944, published nearly 50 years after its writing, and May Sky: There Is Always Tomorrow; An Anthology of Japanese American Concentration Camp Kaiko Haiku, which she edited.

Ms. De Cristoforo was recognized in September by the National Endowment for the Arts and received a National Heritage Fellowship Award for cultural achievement.