Bill Watanabe

Bill Watanabe is the founding Executive Director of the Little Tokyo Service Center. Since 1980 he has guided its growth, in conjunction with the Board of Directors, from a one-person staff to a multi-faceted social services and community development program with 150 paid staff, many of whom are bilingual in any of eight Asian Pacific languages and Spanish.

Bill received his Masters in Social Welfare from UCLA in 1972. He has been married for 36 years, and has one daughter, and lives near downtown Los Angeles, only a short drive to his ethnic neighborhood of Little Tokyo.

Updated Janurary 2015

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Old Men Will Dream Dreams

By Bill Watanabe
6 Apr 2022

The Terasaki Budokan had its grand opening celebration on March 19, 2022, which was attended by a couple of thousand happy folks and it was a grand time! I hope you don’t mind if I beat my chest a little bit longer about this momentous event and ruminate about the significance of this accomplishment. The Bible has a passage that says “your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams.” When I was a relatively young man back in 1994 and on the staff of the Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), we caught the vision that we needed to build a gymnasium to…

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The Young Doctor

By Bill Watanabe
14 May 2021

Young Dr. Kitano was feeling very happy. He had recently graduated from medical school - and his new patient Masako was the young daughter of a prominent family in the village and considered by everyone as the most beautiful young maiden in the entire region of northern Japan. She quickly got well, and they fell in love. Because she was still young, he agreed to wait for 4 years until she became of age for marriage. They were married in the most joyous wedding ceremony the village had ever seen – everyone talked about this event – the handsome young doctor marrying such a beaut…

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Little Tokyo Clayworks

By Jessica Man, Bill Watanabe, Gary Okura
23 Mar 2018

“Fire” “Earth” “Spirit” ... basic elements of ceramics. Simple strong strokes combine fire and clay to create a spirit in art. This spirit has led to the formation of the California Japanese Ceramics Arts Guild and Little Tokyo Clayworks. Introduction The creative efforts of the Japanese American Ceramics Guild, the Little Tokyo Clayworks, along with the many contributing ceramic artists including Joanne and Yukio Onaga has been published so anyone interested in Little Tokyo and it’s cultural impact can see and appreciate the artistry and contribut…

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Japanese Hospital: Keeping the Community Healthy

By Michael Okamura, Bill Watanabe, Kristen Hayashi
7 Apr 2017

Beginning in the late 19th century, boosters of Los Angeles touted the region’s sunshine and mild climate as a place for health-seekers. Yet residents of ethnic enclaves in Los Angeles were often denied access to health care at mainstream hospitals. Japanese and other recent immigrant groups depended on itinerant midwives for assistance with childbirth and traveling physicians to make house calls to treat serious illnesses. By the 1910s, the increase in birth rate that resulted from the arrival of scores of picture brides from Japan, along with the detrimental effects of the 1918 influ…

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Nanka Nikkei Voices

Melodee, Malcolm, and Me

By Bill Watanabe
31 Mar 2015

I spent my childhood years during the 1950s in the San Fernando Valley. My parents, like a number of other Nikkei families, were flower growers and we had a farm on which we grew carnations, chrysanthemums, anemones, asters, and other flowers. During the summers, I spent many hours working under the hot Valley sun, and I always became dark and tanned, just like my parents, my brothers, and all the hired help we had on the farm. The elementary schools I attended were a mixture of predominantly white kids with a strong Hispanic representation. In 1955, I started attending Northridge Junior Hig…

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Bill Watanabe

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