Tamiko Nimura

I’ve been thinking about what we save. 

I’ve been looking through one of my oldest auntie’s scrapbooks. Because I know that it will also fall apart eventually, I asked Densho to digitize what would be useful for others historically, so you too can see some of the scrapbook pages here. Like many Nisei women, she kept a scrapbook of mementoes of her life. Not scrapbooks so much as we know them now, with a million accessories and special papers and glue. But a humble scrapbook with black paper photo corners: with photos of herself, letters, mementoes.

The ...

Like many Sansei, I have agricultural roots. My father’s family worked as sharecroppers during the Depression. My aunties have told stories of harvest time, of the youngest auntie running away to read a book in the orchards. As for me, I grew up in California’s Central Valley and have been spoiled by an abundance of fresh produce for most of my life. Boxes of Satsuma mandarins each November. Flats of yellow and white peaches, baskets of strawberries just minutes from our house, where we visited our farmer’s market each week.

I recently had a chance to revisit ...

In the Pacific Northwest, there are a couple of famous sites related to Japanese American history, such as Seattle’s Panama Hotel (made famous by Jamie Ford’s novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet), where Japanese Americans stored their belongings during their mass incarceration. Locals from Seattle may know about the Aki Sogabe murals in Pike Place Market, a tribute to the Japanese American farmers of the state. And then there is Bainbridge Island’s beautiful National Parks monument, Nidoto Nai Yoni, which I described in 2014 for Discover Nikkei.

However, given my adopted state’s multifaceted ...

The Fife History Museum is a converted midcentury home, awaiting its next stage of storytelling—but it’s a place filled with objects waiting to speak.

“I had no idea just how big the Japanese community of Fife-Auburn-Kent was until I began working for the historical society,” says Julie Watts, the museum’s director. “I look at our Japanese artifacts and files and think, ‘I have got to figure out how to transform what we have into compelling, emotional stories that will enlighten the minds of our citizens and visitors.’”

Fife is a small town in Washington State—with a ...

In these difficult political times, resistance appears every day—from marches to political organizing to Star Wars movies to hashtags. But for many within the Japanese American community, resistance remains a difficult and painful topic. Yonsei Konrad Aderer’s latest documentary, Resistance at Tule Lake, seeks to address that topic, focusing on the most controversial of the ten long-term concentration camps by the War Relocation Authority.

Back in 2015 (and 2013), Aderer spoke with Discover Nikkei writer Norm Ibuki about the film and its making. Since then the issue of mass incarceration has reopened “seemingly out of the blue, [taken ...