Gil Asakawa
@gilasakawaGil Asakawa is a journalist, editor, author, and blogger who covers Japan, Japanese American and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) culture and social justice issues in blogs, articles, and social media. He is a nationally-known speaker, panelist, and expert on Japanese American and Asian American history and identity. He’s the author of Being Japanese American (Stone Bridge Press) and his next book, Tabemasho! Let’s Eat! (Stone Bridge Press), a history of Japanese food in America which will be published in 2022. His blog: nikkeiview.com.
Updated January 2022
Stories from This Author
Five Years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami
April 5, 2016 • Gil Asakawa
I can still remember March 11, 2011, the night of the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which devastated a huge swath of northeast Japan, as if it were last week. It was just before midnight in Denver when I got an alert on my phone. An earthquake had been reported off the eastern coast of Japan. I turned on CNN and watched in horror for the next couple of hours as the footage came in. I saw the …
Building bridges with the Muslim community
Feb. 17, 2016 • Gil Asakawa
Late last year, Erin and I were lucky enough to travel to New York City to see the Broadway musical Allegiance starring George Takei. It’s a story about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and it vividly and powerfully brings to life the emotional toll of the experience on JAs for generations since then. I wrote about the play and interviewed Takei and others for AARP’s AAPI Community. Two nights after attending the show and while we …
George Takei’s Allegiance Is A Timely Historical Musical For Today - Part 2
Dec. 24, 2015 • Gil Asakawa
Read Part 1 >> After interviewing Takei and thoroughly researching the WWII incarceration, Kuo, Thione, and Marc Acito wrote the book and Kuo composed the music and wrote the lyrics for Allegiance, which debuted in San Diego in 2012. The current Broadway version has evolved since then, with fewer principal roles, different songs, and changes in the script. “We had to tell the story of not just one camp, but of 10 camps,” said Jay Kuo in an interview. “Not …
George Takei’s Allegiance Is a Timely Historical Musical For Today - Part 1
Dec. 23, 2015 • Gil Asakawa
After a November performance at the Longacre Theatre in New York’s fabled Broadway district, AARP members were invited for a “talkback” with George Takei and other cast members answering questions about their powerful musical, Allegiance. (NOTE: This post was originally uploaded to the AARP AAPI Community Facebook page.) “I remember we started the school day, each day, with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. I could see the barbed wire fence and the sentry tower right outside my school …
RIP George “Joe” Sakato
Dec. 15, 2015 • Gil Asakawa
I was saddened to hear of the passing of George “Joe” Sakato, a Denver resident who was a World War II hero, a veteran of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team/100th Battalion that fought in Europe during World War II. He was 94 years old. Adele Arakawa of 9News broadcast a moving tribute to Joe that’s worth viewing. “We were fighting prejudice in the States…and fighting the Germans in Europe,” he told Arakawa in 2013. The last time I saw …
Immigration, Refugees, and the Gift of Citizenship
Nov. 26, 2015 • Gil Asakawa
I was born in Japan, but because my father was born in Hawaii when it was a U.S. territory, I am an American citizen. I didn’t have to take a test, and recite an oath of allegiance. After my family moved to the States in 1966, I remember helping my mother, who’s from a small town in northern Japan, study for her citizenship test. I was eight years old. I don’t remember the ceremony when she repeated the oath and …
Real Ramen Is Finally Coming to Denver, and It’s About Time
Nov. 18, 2015 • Gil Asakawa
I grew up in Japan when I was a kid, and have vivid memories of bowls of ramen and soba noodles stacked high in bowls or boxes, being delivered by crazy men riding bicycles through crazy Tokyo traffic like the photo on the right. Ramen had been around since the late 1800s in Japan, but it was during the post-WWII years, and particularly in the 1960s, when ramen became the ubiquitous Japanese comfort food it is today. I loved ramen …
Being JA v2.0 Is Here, And I’m So Glad To Be JA!
Oct. 14, 2015 • Gil Asakawa
During a recent trip to San Francisco to attend the annual conference of the Asian American Journalists Association, I squeezed in two readings from the new revised edition of my book, Being Japanese American. The two events reminded me why I wrote the book in the first place and why I love speaking to JA audiences. I love being JA! The first edition was published in 2004, but a lot has happened since then: Japanese culture is even more popular …
What are words worth: Hapa, Hafu, or Mixed-Race?
March 9, 2015 • Gil Asakawa
I’ve recently finished writing revisions for a new edition of my book, Being Japanese American: A JA Sourcebook for Nikkei, Hapa…& Their Friends, which will be published this June by Stone Bridge Press. I mention this not just to pimp the book to you all (speaking of which, you can pre-order the book now), but because I wrote in the new foreword how I have decided not to use the word “hapa,” at least for now. Instead, I wrote that …
“Fresh Off the Boat” could be the tipping point on TV for Asian Americans
Jan. 27, 2015 • Gil Asakawa
There’s a new ABC sitcom being aired starting in February that I can hardly wait to see. I’m hoping Fresh Off the Boat will finally be a show where I can see people like me acting the way my family acts, with funny American situations but filtered through an Asian cultural perspective. I expect it’ll be a moment of critical mass for Asians on the U.S. pop consciousness. It’s about time. As a baby boomer, I grew up with very …
