Takako Day

Takako Day, originally from Kobe, Japan, is an award-winning freelance writer and independent researcher who has published seven books and hundreds of articles in the Japanese and English languages. Her latest book, SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME: The Moral Dilemma of Kibei No No Boys in World War Two Incarceration Camps is her first book in English. 

Relocating from Japan to Berkeley in 1986 and working as a reporter at the Nichibei Times in San Francisco first opened Day’s eyes to social and cultural issues in multicultural America. Since then, she has written from the perspective of a cultural minority for more than 30 years on such subjects as Japanese and Asian American issues in San Francisco, Native American issues in South Dakota (where she lived for seven years) and most recently (since 1999), the history of little known Japanese Americans in pre-war Chicago. Her piece on Michitaro Ongawa is born of her love of Chicago.

Updated December 2016

education en

Japanese Christians in Chicago

Katsuji Kato: from Spiritual Savior to Medical Professional - Part 4

  • By Takako Day
  • 13 Mar 2022
Read Part 3 >> We already know that on his trip to Japan in 1917, Kato met with Vice Minister of Education Tadokoro, who told Kato that he hoped the Japanese language was being taught to the Nisei (American-born, second generation Japanese) by their immigrant parents and felt that Japanese language education should be controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.1 Did Kato actually make contact with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was he asked to publish a new magazine with international relations between the countries as its message? Or did his personal experiences alone ma…

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education en

Japanese Christians in Chicago

Katsuji Kato: from Spiritual Savior to Medical Professional - Part 3

  • By Takako Day
  • 6 Mar 2022
Read Part 2 >> Katsuji Kato as publisher of The Japanese Student and The Japan Review Kato wrote about the history of early Japanese students in the U.S. in the 1860s1 and a bibliography on American-Japanese relations2 because he thought that “therecord of the past must be preserved, by disseminating accurate information concerning the intellectual relations of the United States and Japan, and contribute to the solution of the so-called Japanese problem in America, the creation of the spiritual and idealistic attitude in the life-philosophy of Japanese students.”3&nbs…

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education en

Japanese Christians in Chicago

Katsuji Kato: from Spiritual Savior to Medical Professional - Part 2

  • By Takako Day
  • 27 Feb 2022
Read Part 1 >> Katsuji Kato as a missionary for Japanese students The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions originated in New York in 1886, and the Student Volunteer Band for Foreign Missions on campus of University of Chicago “was composed of members of the International Student Volunteer Movement, organized in 1888.”1 In 1895, the Chicago branch of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions was housed within the Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions of the Chicago Evangelization Society (which later become Moody Bible Institute), located a…

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education en

Japanese Christians in Chicago

Katsuji Kato: from Spiritual Savior to Medical Professional - Part 1

  • By Takako Day
  • 20 Feb 2022
Introduction: Kafu Nagai in Kalamazoo, Michigan Kafu Nagai was the pen name of Sokichi Nagai, the author of Amerika Monogatari, a collection of short stories published in Japan in 1908, that was based on his experiences living in the U.S. for four years. In the book, Kafu wrote that while small groups of elite, educated Japanese with significant financial advantages had come to the U.S. and settled on the East Coast, the majority of the poor Japanese laborers and students who immigrated to the States ended up on the West Coast.1 Furthermore, he called the suffering West Coast Japanese an &ld…

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community en

Suspicious Points of Contact in Pre-War Chicago

Japanese Affinity with African American Communities - Part 5

  • By Takako Day
  • 9 Jan 2022
Read Part 4 >> Frank Masuto Kono  When he heard about the Pearl Harbor attack, Frank Kono (the Issei who served as the secretary-treasurer of the Japanese Mutual Aid Society in Chicago and was arrested in 1943 with three other Japanese) was working at his restaurant, the Indiana Restaurant, at 4248 South Indiana Avenue in Chicago.1 Soon thereafter, the FBI came and searched Kono’s house not once but twice, and he was called in by the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service a total of seven times. But they never found anything suspicious, and things ap…

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