Karleen C. Chinen
In April 2020, Karleen Chinen retired as the Editor of The Hawaii Herald after 16 years of leading the semimonthly publication that covers Hawaii’s Japanese American community. She is currently writing a book chronicling Hawaii’s Okinawan community from 1980 to 2000 titled, Born Again Uchinanchu: Hawai‘i’s Chibariyo! Okinawan Community. Chinen previously served as a consultant to the Japanese American National Museum and was part of the Museum team that took its traveling exhibition, From Bento to Mixed Plate: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Multicultural Hawaii, throughout the neighbor islands of Hawaii and to Okinawa for its international debut in November 2000.
Updated January 2023
Stories from This Author
Aloha 'Oe, Dr. Franklin Odo: Remembering a Brilliant Scholar and a Special Mentor and Friend - Part 2
Jan. 26, 2023 • Karleen C. Chinen
Read Part 1 >> At the time of his passing, Franklin was working with Honolulu attorney William “Bill” Kaneko, his former Ethnic Studies student, and journalist Sara Lin on a book about the Hawai‘i AJAs who, although not incarcerated, were forcibly displaced from their homes. Kaneko had asked Franklin to serve as the book’s editor. Aside from his parents, “Franklin had the greatest impact on my personal and professional career,” Kaneko said. “He was my teacher, mentor, advisor and friend.” …
Aloha 'Oe, Dr. Franklin Odo: Remembering a Brilliant Scholar and a Special Mentor and Friend - Part 1
Jan. 25, 2023 • Karleen C. Chinen
“If you don’t control your own culture and your own vision of life, and your own participation in life, then you don’t control anything. And that’s what we’re about. The true spirit of any kind of democracy is to have people be autonomous at the same time that they know that they’re dependent on the community around them.” —Dr. Franklin Odo on empowering people and communities from a 1990 oral history interview with the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Center …
Remembrance - Remembering Akira Otani
Jan. 14, 2022 • Karleen C. Chinen
In those sweet pre-pandemic days that we can barely remember now, one of my favorite stops every so often was the United Fishing Agency office, located a few yards from the ocean’s edge at Pier 38, to meet with the company’s chairman, Akira Otani. Even in his late 90s, he was still going in to his office for a few hours a day. When he stopped driving, his daughter would pick him up at his home every morning, drive him …
Three Books, One Message
May 16, 2021 • Karleen C. Chinen
Never Too Young to Learn Why We Should Always Strive for Peace Last year, International Peace Day (Sept. 21) was observed just a few weeks after the 75th anniversary commemoration of the end of World War II. That milestone in history is one that we adults need to share with children. But, how can parents or teachers tell their school-age youngsters this important period in history without boring them with facts and figures and faded photographs? How can we help …
Hawaii’s AJAs Play Ball - Part 2
March 3, 2016 • Karleen C. Chinen
Read Part 1 >> Bang for the Buck AJA baseball also enjoyed the support of the business community, which willingly donated trophies and prizes to the winning teams. In the 1936 O‘ahu championship game, Seikosha Watch Store owner Genbei Watanabe donated a huge silver trophy to the victor, Wahiawa, which had defeated its town rival, Pālama. Other businesses supported AJA baseball as well: Standard Oil Company, where Asahi player Tsuru Mamiya worked, sponsored the Japanese-language broadcast of the game on …
Hawaii’s AJAs Play Ball - Part 1
March 2, 2016 • Karleen C. Chinen
If the Reverend Takie Okumura viewed the game of baseball as a vehicle for “Americanizing” Hawaii’s Japanese community, the founder of the Makiki Christian Church underestimated the pure, unadulterated draw of the game. The recorded history of Japanese American involvement in baseball in Hawaii dates back to 1899, the year Okumura formed a team made up primarily of boys who boarded at his Okumura Home. He named the team Excelsior, and they captured the youth league championship in 1905. The …
“Under The Blood Red Sun”: The Hawai‘i-made World War II Film is a Valuable Story for All Ages
April 13, 2015 • Karleen C. Chinen
How do we keep Hawai‘i’s World War II story alive so that its lessons continue to resonate for generations to come? It’s a tough question that anyone involved in passing on history likely struggles with, be they educators, museum directors, war veterans and their descendants, or parents. One of the most hopeful efforts is the newly released film, Under the Blood Red Sun, which is based on the novel of the same name by children’s book author Graham “Sandy” Salisbury. …
Honouliuli Designated A National Historic Monument
March 30, 2015 • Karleen C. Chinen
Seventeen years ago, a phone call from a Honolulu television reporter was routed to Jane Kurahara, a retired librarian who was volunteering in the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i’s Resource Center. “Where is Honouliuli?” asked the reporter. Despite her best efforts, Kurahara could not find any information on the location of the World War II internment camp. Honouliuli had opened in March 1943 and held about 320 Japanese American internees, along with German Americans, European immigrants, and some 4,000 prisoners …
“Puka Puka Parade” – Voice of the 100th Infantry Battalion
May 29, 2013 • Karleen C. Chinen
In 2012, the Hawaii Hochi marks 100 years since Kinzaburo Makino began publishing the Japanese-language newspaper in December of 1912. Not too far behind the Hochi in publication years is the 100th Infantry Battalion’s monthly newsletter, creatively named the Puka Puka Parade. Since April 1, 1946, the veterans club has kept its members and their extended ‘ohana informed through the PPP. “We have quite a large team (that works) largely behind the scenes,” said president Pauline Sato, who serves as …
DIALOGUE: Remembering Senator Inouye and Senator Akaka
May 20, 2013 • Karleen C. Chinen
This Dialogue was supposed to have been a tribute to Hawai‘i’s retiring U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka. Never could I have imagined that with heavy hearts we would be saying “Aloha ’oe…until we meet again…” to both of our United States senators at the same time—Sen. Akaka by virtue of his retirement from the U.S. Senate on Jan. 2, 2013, after nearly four decades in Congress, and to Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, who succumbed to complications from a respiratory ailment …
