Longtime teacher and administrator Marielle Tsukamoto from Elk Grove, California, was five years old in 1942 when her family was removed from their California farm and sent to a World War II Japanese internment camp in Jerome, Arkansas. But she remembers the experience quite clearly. It was partly because of this experience that sparked an enduring passion for justice that set the Chalkboard Champion on her path as an educator, community leader, and civil rights activist.  

Once the war was over, her mother, Mary Tsukamoto, finally got to fulfill her long-time dream of becoming a teacher, a dream she had all but given up.” She had a way of looking at each child, reaching them and telling them, you know, you are important. And you are worthy, and I believe in you,” recalls Marielle. “That’s where I learned that I wanted to be a teacher.”

And that’s how Marielle came to follow in the professional footsteps of her mother. She attended Sacramento State in 1956 before graduating from University of the Pacific. She served first as a teacher, then as a vice principal and principal of C.W. Dillard Elementary in Elk Grove Unified School District. And before she retired, Marielle also served as the Principal of the Elk Grove elementary school named in honor of her mother.

In addition, Marielle has volunteered for the Elk Grove Regional Scholarship Foundation, the Elk Grove Multicultural Festival, and the Time of Remembrance Educational Program, an annual event that originated in Elk Grove and is now held at the California Museum in Sacramento.  

Now 86 years old, Marielle enjoys traveling in retirement and volunteers at the California Museum. There, Uprooted: An American Story, shares the experiences of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans. “All of us that are now volunteering at the museum, we do it because have an obligation to the next generation, because of what the last generation did for us,” asserts Marielle.