Chris Komai

When I attended college at UC Riverside closing in on five decades ago, I took a sociology class on Japanese Americans and World War II. Like many Sansei, I knew very little about my family’s experiences during the war, but I was stunned at the enormity of the events that swept up our Japanese American community. After being rebuffed by my mother to share her memories of camp, I went to the college library and was dismayed to find how little scholarship existed on the forced removal and mass incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry almost 30 ...

Keston Hiura has made a habit of breaking barriers and smashing stereotypes on his way to major league success.

Most sports fans understand that the challenges for any young man or woman to achieve a career in professional sports are numerous and often unforgiving. But some of the toughest hurdles are the perceptions or misperceptions that certain scouts may hold involving a prospect’s size, character, background or even ethnicity.

Keston Hiura heard that he had a perceived weakness that had nothing to do with his baseball abilities, but instead focused on his overall priorities: the fact that he intended ...

In seeking to preserve and share the Japanese American experience, the Japanese American National Museum maintains the largest collection of its kind in the world. While clearly a serious and scholarly endeavor, the collection also contains items that touch on popular culture and (dare we say) are fun.

The holiday card created by Howard Kakudo while at the World War II Poston concentration camp in Arizona, is such an item. Kakudo worked in animation for Walt Disney Productions before the war on such iconic projects as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Pinocchio (1940). His camp drawing depicting ...

Read Part 1 >>

The establishment in 1947 of a Southern California NAU to oversee a basketball league was a very humble beginning. There were just two divisions: AA and A. Gymnasiums were difficult to obtain. Referees were just as scarce. Often, players from other teams in the league were recruited to officiate. Because job opportunities were so limited, money was in short supply. Honda recalled that most players and teams paid their league fees on a “pay as you go” system at a dollar a week. Team entry fees were $15, and the NAU membership was $1 per player. The ...

When I was five years old, our family lived in Los Angeles on 12th Avenue, near what was known as the Seinan district. Construction of the Santa Monica Freeway was being planned, and its path went right through our home. Because of this our house was condemned, and our family moved to an unincorporated area of the San Gabriel Valley which became Temple City. At that time there were a lot of dairies and chicken farms there, but few sidewalks. And almost no other Japanese Americans. When my oldest brother graduated from Temple City High School, he was the first ...