Kizuna 2020: Nikkei Kindness and Solidarity During the COVID-19 Pandemic

If there’s anything that COVID-19 revealed, it is that xenophobia never went away; it was just hidden. With the rise of COVID-19 cases, hate crimes targeting Asians have increased after having decreased in the 21st century.

Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures or strangers.¹ It is the dislike or fear of the customs of people culturally different from oneself. It’s important to note that xenophobia is very similar to racism. However, it differs from racism because racism is rooted in the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits ...

As I celebrated my 72^nd birthday on January 1, 2020 with my family, we greeted each other with Shinnen Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu (Happy New Year) and toasted with sparkling apple cider. My family started the day with ozoni (soup with rice cake). Our dining table was full of osechi ryori (Japanese New Year’s Day food) inside two-tier lacquer boxes called jubako. All day long we ate our favorite Japanese foods. My husband would eat his inari sushi, futomaki sushi with renkon (lotus root), gobo (burdock root), and salmon. My oldest son loved sashimi with hot rice and satoimo ...

40 staff and 200 volunteers are the human resource numbers for the Japanese American National Museum. With volunteers outnumbering staff 5:1, the hallways and the Takei Volunteer Center became much quieter places in early March when, for health safety reasons, we had to ask they no longer come into the Museum until further notice.

With half of our volunteers having been part of the JANM forces for 10 or more years, there are definite bonds that have formed between staff and volunteers. Daily questions were: Is everybody okay? Is everyone safe?

Volunteers consistently voiced concerns about staff and asked ...

In the section under COVID-19 safety precautions, the Department of Homeland Security letter addressed to me mandated facemasks and banned guests for my newly re-scheduled naturalization ceremony. Given fears that the virus might serve as a pretext for a complete shutdown of immigration and naturalization, it was a huge relief to find out that the ceremony would take place at all. The original date for the ceremony had been scheduled for March 19, the very day that California governor Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order.

I had always imagined this conclusion of a long path towards citizenship would take place ...

When Greg Masuda and his wife Erin opened Courtenay’s first ramen shop in the fall of 2016, it was welcomed with open arms by the residents of this small British Columbia town nestled in the heart of the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island.

Nikkei Ramen-ya, located in a former jewelry shop, serves their own handmade noodles, made daily. Frequent experimentation, and specials like ebi ramen, made with wild sidestripe shrimp and local pea shoots, have ensured that the menu stays varied, and made the shop a hit with customers. A visit to their online ordering page reveals ten kinds ...