Bruce Rutledge
Bruce Rutledge worked as a journalist in Japan for 15 years before moving to Seattle to found Chin Music Press, an independent book publisher located in Seattle's historic Pike Place Market. He is a regular contributor to The North American Post.
Updated March 2018
Stories from This Author
A Compelling Voice & Thoughtful Storyteller Actor & Filmmaker, Lane Nishikawa
April 1, 2020 • Bruce Rutledge
Lane Nishikawa has used film, stage, and written word at various stages of his career to probe what it means to be Asian American and Japanese American. Oscar-winning film director Steve Okazaki called him “one of Asian America’s most compelling voices.” Our Lost Years revisits the forced removal and mass incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. Nishikawa traveled to seven cities to interview internees, their children, and grandchildren about the collective trauma of that dark period …
Fluent in Jazz—DJ Yuki Maguire celebrates music that crosses borders
Nov. 5, 2019 • Bruce Rutledge
“Hello. Konnichiwa. Bon Jour. Ni Hao. Gutentag. Buenas Dias. Welcome to Yuki Maguire’s International Jazz Hour.” Thus begins Yuki Maguire’s jazz radio show on WUMR from the University of Memphis. Maguire, an expat originally from Akita Prefecture, has settled in this famously musical city because of her husband’s job with Federal Express, which is headquartered there. Her twin sons studied jazz at the renowned Stax Music Academy and released an album as The Maguire Twins last year. The album, Seeking …
Mike & Tsuchino Forrester - Remembering the early days of an international marriage
May 13, 2019 • Bruce Rutledge
What was it like for an Irish Catholic American man and a Japanese woman to get married during the Occupation? Mike and Tsuchino Forrester’s story about getting married in the 1950s in Japan and moving to the US in 1960 reminds us of how far we’ve come when it comes to accepting international marriages. Mike wrote a book called Tsuchino: My Japanese War Bride to record what the couple went through. In it, he tells the story of their love …
Patti Hirahara - One woman's mission to preserve the memory of Yakima Japanese pioneers
April 29, 2019 • Bruce Rutledge
More than one thousand people of Japanese descent were shipped to incarceration camps from the Yakima area in 1942. The central Washington community, which supported Japantowns in Wapato and Yakima, was not supposed to be evacuated because they were far enough inland. But once some local farmers realized they could wipe out their competition by stoking racist fervor and insisting the local JAs also be incarcerated, the gig was up for Yakima’s Japanese-American communities. After the war, only 10 percent …
Harold Taniguchi, King Co. Director Faces a New Chapter After Retirement
April 10, 2019 • Bruce Rutledge
“Jazzed about the Future” Harold Taniguchi said goodbye to a 35-year career in public service at the end of 2018. The longtime Director of Transportation at King County is now looking at unlearning old habits and finding a new path that may or may not include voice acting, life coaching, and who knows what else? The only sure thing about his retirement, Taniguchi says, is that he will be able to spend more time with his 94-year-old mother. Taniguchi is …
Marie Rose Wong, Community Chronicler Turns Her Eye to Prewar Nikkei Baseball
March 22, 2019 • Bruce Rutledge
Dr. Marie Rose Wong of Seattle University is one of our foremost chroniclers of life in the International District. Wong published last year a groundbreaking and exhaustive history of Seattle’s residential hotels (Building Tradition) and is working on an equally extensive work on prewar Japanese American baseball leagues that she hopes to finish by the end of the year. Doc Wong, as her friends call her, has served on and advised many nonprofit boards in the ID and elsewhere. With …
Immersed in Japan at John Stanford
March 8, 2019 • Bruce Rutledge
Former Seattle Superintendent of Schools John Stanford was a visionary who saw diversity as a strength, not an obstacle to be overcome. His legacy lives on at John Stanford International Elementary School in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, where 468 students are enrolled in the Spanish and Japanese immersion programs. Since the language immersion programs started in 2000, Seattle Public Schools have educated hundreds of students in the Japanese Dual Language Immersion program. Students spend half the day with an English-speaking teacher …
Maneki Bartender Fu-chan Has Seen it All
Feb. 19, 2019 • Bruce Rutledge
Maneki celebrating its 115th anniversary in 2019 Fusae Yokoyama, a bartender and hostess at Maneki Restaurant for the last 56 years, still serves drinks at the front bar on Sundays and Tuesdays. She’s an 88-year-old ikijibiki, or “living dictionary,” of International District history, having grown up in the Togo Hotel (now a parking lot next to the Panama Hotel), which used to stand just a couple of blocks from the prewar Maneki. “The restaurant was a huge, beautiful castle back …
From Hiroshima to Hope looks for new leadership
Aug. 22, 2018 • Bruce Rutledge
Since 1984, a group of concerned citizens, peace activists, and members of the Japanese American community have gathered together on August 6 to mark the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II and to make connections with other groups looking to spread peace and community. Over the years, the event has grown and evolved, with a massive lantern-floating ceremony on Green Lake as the visual centerpiece of what is typically a moving and invigorating …
Seattle Bon Odori —Seattle Betsuin has deep local roots—
July 21, 2018 • Bruce Rutledge
As we rehearse our Bon Odori dance moves and get ready to be part of the festival this July 21, let’s take a moment to honor those who put this Seattle tradition in motion. This will be our 86th Bon Odori as far as the records go, and it will be hosted by Seattle Betsuin, which was founded in 1901. Those are some deep Seattle roots. According to the book Mukashi Mukashi by Ronald E. Magden, the first Seattle Bon …
