Sergio Hernández Galindo

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 didn't just spark a war between the United States and Japan. Beginning on that day, communities of Japanese immigrants who had settled in several countries in America also became part of the conflict and hostilities.

Several governments in America considered Japanese immigrants to be an invading army of the Japanese empire, and as a result they were forcibly relocated and persecuted despite having settled in those countries decades before. The children of Japanese immigrants, although they were not citizens of Japan, were labeled “foreign enemies” in the countries where they ...

One of the most popular snacks in Mexico is “Japanese peanuts”. This product--which consists of peanuts with a coating made of toasted wheat flour and soy sauce--isn’t originally from Japan. It was actually invented by Yoshigei Nakatani, a Japanese immigrant who arrived in Mexico in 1932.

After coming to Mexico, Nakatani was looking for work and a way to prosper, just like the hundreds of thousands of other immigrants from that country who crossed the Pacific. When he left Japan, he had told his mother: “My goal is to triumph and come back, otherwise I could never return.” At ...

The former Temixco Hacienda is home to one of Mexico’s best-known and popular water parks. The vestiges of the hacienda that still remain—including the parish church and extensive gardens—lend a particular beauty to the place. Temixco (a Náhuatl word that roughly translates to “where the rock of feline is”) is near the city of Cuernavaca and has an average temperature of 20º C (68º F).

But hidden deep in this heavenly place where the flowers always bloom is a little-known story of great importance to the history of Mexico and Japanese immigrants.

When war broke out ...

The series of anti-immigration measures being instituted by President Donald Trump, including the proposed elimination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, is a stark reminder of how Japanese-Americans were persecuted after the Pacific War broke out in December 1941.

Enacted by President Obama in June 2012, DACA has enabled 800,000 young people to study and work in the United States without the threat of deportation. These same young people were brought to the United States as children, without immigration documents, by parents who sought jobs and a better future. These immigrants, mostly from Mexico, have worked ...

In October 2017, leading Mexican businessman Carlos Kasuga Osaka celebrated his 80^th birthday. Carlos is known to many as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Yakult, a Japanese company. He has also become very famous as a public speaker, with thousands of followers on social media.

Behind the success of Carlos Kasuga is a story of hard work and dedication, both personal and by the Japanese community. However, this story is not so well known. The son of Japanese immigrants from Nagano Prefecture, Carlos Tsuyoshi (剛), as his parents named him, was born in a small town in ...