Carol Cheh
@carolchehCarol Cheh is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She is the founder of Another Righteous Transfer!, a blog that explores LA’s performance art scene, and Word is a Virus, an Art21 column exploring the intersection between the visual and literary arts. Her writing has appeared in LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, ArtInfo, Art Ltd, Artillery, and East of Borneo, among other outlets. (Photo courtesy of Allison Stewart.)
Updated March 2018
Stories from This Author
A Visit to Otomisan, the Last Japanese Restaurant in Boyle Heights
March 28, 2018 • Carol Cheh
The history of Otomisan Restaurant in Los Angeles’s Boyle Heights neighborhood is well documented in the press. It was first opened in 1956 as Otomi Café, by a couple who are remembered today only as Mr. and Mrs. Seto. At that time, Boyle Heights was a melting pot of diverse, working-class immigrant groups that included Jews, Russians, Armenians, Japanese, and Mexicans. The Japanese had begun spilling over from nearby Little Tokyo in the 1920s, at the same time that a …
An Interview with Filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña
March 6, 2018 • Carol Cheh
Renee Tajima-Peña is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and professor of Asian American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. Her documentary projects focus on immigrant communities, race, gender, and social justice, and have included Calavera Highway Skate Manzanar, Labor Women, My America…or Honk if You Love Buddha, and the highly influential Who Killed Vincent Chin? Tajima-Peña has been deeply involved in the Asian American independent film community as an activist, writer, and filmmaker. She was the director at Asian Cine-Vision in …
An Interview with Holly Yasui
Aug. 25, 2017 • Carol Cheh
Holly Yasui is the youngest daughter of Minoru Yasui, the legendary Japanese American lawyer and civil rights activist. She is currently at work on a documentary film about the life of her father, titled Never Give Up! Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice. On behalf of the Japanese American National Museum, I conducted an interview with Holly Yasui on the occasion of the Los Angeles premiere of Part One of her documentary, held at the museum on July 29, …
A Young JANM Volunteer Shares Her Impressions of the 2017 Pilgrimage to Manzanar
July 6, 2017 • Carol Cheh
The Japanese American National Museum recently welcomed Joy Teruko Ormseth to its volunteer ranks. Born in 2000 in Los Angeles and currently a student at Arcadia High School, Joy is, at 16 years old, one of our youngest volunteers. This past April, museum volunteers and staff organized a bus tour to join the annual pilgrimage to the site of the American concentration camp at Manzanar, where thousands of people of Japanese ancestry were confined during World War II. Joy, who had only …
Whodunit? Naomi Hirahara Draws Readers Into Japanese American History and Culture
May 13, 2016 • Carol Cheh
Born and raised in Pasadena, California, Naomi Hirahara is a writer with a love of Japanese American history. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford University, Hirahara worked for many years as a writer and then the editor of The Rafu Shimpo. Among her many achievements as editor was the publication of a highly acclaimed series on inter-ethnic relations following the Rodney King riots. In 1996, Hirahara left the newspaper to become a Milton Center Fellow in …
Distinguished Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement and Public Service: George Takei
May 15, 2015 • Carol Cheh
George Hosato Takei was born in Los Angeles in 1937 to an Issei father, Takekuma Norman Takei, and Nisei mother, Fumiko Emily Nakamura. He was only five years old when his family was rounded up along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans and sent to concentration camps by the U.S. government following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Much of Takei’s childhood was spent at the camps in Rohwer, Arkansas, and Tule Lake, California. After resettling with his family in Los …
