Tamiko Nimura

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 ...

“I live on the edge of Tacoma’s historic Nihonmachi and as I crossed it on my way to downtown, I often wondered what stories lay dormant in the vacant, grassy lots. Today, between the empty slope and the massive convention center, who could know there was once a thriving Japan Town there?” 

—Tony Gomez, Education Director, Broadway Center of Tacoma

How can you show people entire neighborhoods that have vanished? In our smartphone day and age, as they say, there’s an app for that.  

In February 2017, to help commemorate the 75^th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 ...

The women were standing just about eye level with me, their faces sketched on the wall by Issei artist Takuichi Fujii. They were standing in front of barracks at Minidoka, but in the picture they seemed—and felt— at an arm’s length away. One woman had her hand up to her face, as if wiping away tears. The other woman had her hand covering her mouth, the kind of involuntary gesture you make when your breath is taken away, when you want to stop yourself from crying.

These are the women I was facing as I walked into the ...