Reiko Matsumoto, a Japanese American who was interned as an enemy alien during World War II and later was a Fairfax County School teacher and author of children’s books, died March 12 at a hospital in Arlington, Virginia. She was 86.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said a son, Cal Matsumoto.
Between 1977 and 1994, Matsumoto taught at Graham Road, Annandale Terrace and Fox Mill elementary schools. She also was inaugural director of a Japanese immersion program at Fox Mill.
Reiko Odate was born March 25, 1929, in Kauai, Hawaii, where her father was a Buddhist priest who had emigrated from Japan in 1928.
Her father was arrested on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. The family was later interned at camps in Arkansas and Northern California until the war ended in 1945.
Matsumoto graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1950, then taught school in Hawaii and California before earning a master’s degree in education at San Francisco State University in 1957.
She later taught school in Japan and settled in the Washington area in 1977. The Ashburn, Virginia, resident wrote six children’s books, including a fictional memoir of a Japanese childhood in a wartime internment camp, and descriptive memories of an adolescent survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Survivors include her husband of 57 years, Hisao Matsumoto of Ashburn; three children, Kent Matsumoto of Parkton, Maryland, Cal Matsumoto of Washington and Mimi Backhausen of Ashburn; and three grandchildren.
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