Erik Matsunaga

In 1935, the Japanese Mutual Aid Society of Chicago began purchasing burial plots at Montrose Cemetery on the city’s North Side. Due to discrimination of the day, Montrose was one of few cemeteries in the area that would inter the remains of deceased persons of Japanese ancestry. In 1937 the Mutual Aid Society erected a Japanese Mausoleum and in 1938 began hosting an annual Memorial Day commemoration.

The majority of Japanese Americans in the Chicago area today are descendants of late 19th and early 20th century immigrants who, along with their American-born children, fell victim to President Franklin D ...

“I don’t make it through this side of town too often, these days.” 

“When’s the last time you were down here?” I asked. 

“Man, it’s been years. I know Tak been tellin’ ya how we went to elementary school together down there at Maryknoll, but we was both from the Westside, and I still live out that way. It’s a straight hike to come down to Li’l Tokyo! Man, it’s kind of a ghost town compared to how I remember it.”

Dean Hirashita bit into his BLT, dipped a french fry in ketchup, and ...

Dr. Joe Takehara, D.D.S., a second generation Japanese American, has trained with the legends of aikido during his fifty-three years of studying the Japanese martial art. Meanwhile, he was a married father of three and built a successful dental practice from which he retired at the age of eighty. Despite being the most senior aikido practitioner in the Midwestern United States, his fifty-three year journey has gone relatively unrecorded.

Aikido, a modern Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969) in the early twentieth century, boasts over a million practitioners worldwide. At eighty-three years of age and having ...

Art Ishii began his judo training in 1954 at Hollywood Judo Dojo in Los Angeles, CA, under the direction of senseis Takashi Kikuchi, Frank Emi, Art Emi, Frank Watanuki, and Gene LeBell. Upon his induction into the Air Force in 1962, he was sent to Sheppard AFB in Texas.

“As an anonymous brown belt out of Hollywood Dojo,” he explains, “I was beating sandans (3rd degree black belts) in Air Force tournaments. I couldn’t believe it. It was a testament to the quality of training I’d taken for granted.”

He continued to train at Hollywood Dojo whenever back ...

Afterward, I thought I’d tour the city. San Francisco is easily the most beautiful city in the United States, if not the world. I had a few hours to kill before heading toward the airport, and had made a short list of things I wanted to see. At this early hour, about half past five in the morning, I would have the run of the streets and boulevards, warm with sunrise, empty but not lonesome.

I first cut down Great Highway to Lincoln, and zigzagged up and down among the row houses of the Sunset District. I’d admired ...