Nanka Nikkei Voices
Nanka Nikkei Voices (NNV) is a publication of the Japanese American Historical Society of Southern California. Nanka means “Southern California.” Nikkei means Japanese American(s).” The focus of NNV is to record the stories of the Japanese American Community in Southern California through the “voices” of average Japanese Americans and others who have a strong connection to our history and cultural heritage.
This series introduce various stories from the past 4 issues of Nanka Nikkei Voices.
Stories from this series
Haru Hashimoto: Matriarch of Mikawaya
Feb. 2, 2015 • Iku Kiriyama
Haru Hashimoto was born on July 10, 1903, in Japan, Aichi-ken, Nakashima-gun, Heiwa-mura, to Manjiro and Masa Kataoka. She was the second of six children. She came to San Francisco via Hawaii by ship on January 10, 1923, as a young 19-year-old bride of Koroku Hashimoto (born Meiji-33, June 22), whose marriage on December 9, 1922 was arranged in the traditional omiai by a baishakunin (go-between, also called nakodo). Koroku had returned to Japan when rumors of the 1924 Exclusion …
The Screen Door
Jan. 23, 2015 • Bill Watanabe
Summers in the San Fernando Valley can be stifling hot, and during the 1950s when I was growing up, a screen door was a nice thing to have. There were no such things as air conditioners (at least, not in my neighborhood), and we didn’t even have a water air cooler to help cool the summer temperatures. A screen door allowed the occasional breeze to enter the house but would keep out the irritating flies and other insects that would …
“RING, RING”
Jan. 14, 2015 • Iku Kiriyama
A phone call redirected my career and changed my life forever. Dr. Theodore Chen, chair of the East Asian Studies Department, was on the other end of the line that day in the spring of 1963. He told me the University of Southern California (USC) had received a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to pilot a Japanese language program for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He knew me from my college days at USC where I was active in …
“NAPOLEON SEZ”
Jan. 9, 2015 • Wakako Yamauchi
When I search my past for the defining moment that turned my life around, I find it hard to pinpoint. Maybe there were many, some too subtle or mundane to recognize. I’m inclined to think each of us—starting from early childhood—moves in a certain arc and something, or a series of things, happen that push us rapidly and without resistance, along the curve. It may be an event as simple as missing a bus or an impulsive change of plans. …
Outside
Dec. 16, 2014 • Wakako Yamauchi
We had been in Camp I of Poston, Arizona, for about five months when the Administration began recruiting labor for farms and canneries in permitted areas. I, like everyone else in camp, felt caged, so imprisoned, I jumped at every opportunity to get out. I applied for work leave. All those phrases: “group leave,” “short term leave,” “clearance,” “indefinite leave,” were a familiar part of camp life over half a century ago. Today, however, those desperate angry years seem like …
VC – A Quarter Century in Little Tokyo
May 8, 2014 • John Esaki , Amy E. Kato
Twenty-five years have passed in what seems only a few moments: the Little Tokyo years of VC. Its founders pragmatically called it Visual Communications, Southern California Asian American Studies Central, Inc. in 1971 after a humble birth in the living room of photographer Bob Nakamura, where the first project emerged as an ingenious modular exhibition of the camps for the JACL “Visual Communications” committee. A cadre of dedicated media workers grew through a succession of offices from the Seinan district …