Nikkei Heritage
This series republishes selected articles from Nikkei Heritage, the quarterly journal of the National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco, CA. The issues provide timely analysis and insight into the many facets of the Japanese American experience. NJAHS has been a Discover Nikkei Participating Organization since December 2004.
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Stories from this series
Exploring the History of Richmond’s Flower Nurseries
Aug. 7, 2009 • Donna Graves
In 2002, I had the good fortune to interview Tom Oishi, a Nisei flower-grower from Richmond, California, for an oral history project. Tom’s rascally sense of humor and flashbulb memory made our conversations about his hometown, the nursery business, his family and their lives within the Japanese American community extremely rich and great fun. He vividly recounted the day he left work as a welder at the Kaiser Shipyards and was taken, along with the rest of Richmond’s Japanese American …
Nisei cartoonist Jack Matsuoka
Nov. 17, 2007 • Ken Kaji
Most Nisei will remember Jack Matsuoka’s drawings from the seventies published in Hokubei Mainichi, along with his series, Sensei, and his book about relocation camp life entitled Camp II, Block 211 (Japan Publications, Inc., 1974). Matsuoka was born in Watsonville in 1925 and later attended a single semester at Cleveland School of Fine Arts in Ohio before being drafted into the army. He was just a teen when he drew the cartoons of Camp II, Block 211, a humorous and …
Aren't you Sonny?
Aug. 31, 2007 • Mas Yamasaki
As a Nisei, I am frequently mistaken for Chinese, Korean, Filipino or, sometimes East Indian. When they discover that I am of Japanese ancestry, they think of me as a Japanese national rather than an American. This is one incident that happened to me as a soldier in the U.S. Army stationed in Korea. During the Korean conflict, I was assigned as a clerk to the Surgeon’s Office, X Corps Headquarters, near Inge. Although my assigned duties were that of …
Sacramento – The Early Years
Aug. 3, 2007 • Wayne Maeda
Prior to 1868, the Japanese people were forbidden to go abroad and foreigners were not allowed to enter Japan. In 1868 the change in the ruling party from the Tokugawa Shogunate to Emperor Meiji in the Restoration in 1868, changed the emphasis from isolationism to a broader view to enrich the nation. Earlier, there had been isolated contacts between the Japanese and the Western World. In 1610, a group of Japanese reached the current location of Acapulco, Mexico. In 1613, …
A Spiritual Evolution
July 12, 2007 • John Oda
There is a spiritual hunger among many Japanese Americans today who, like myself, dropped religious observances when they were in high school or college but now admit they long for spiritual nourishment of some sort. Although Japanese American spirituality is not a novel topic, the interest in spirituality within today’s diverse Japanese American community is new. In the past, one’s spirituality was defined by one’s association with a certain religion or denomination. Today, Japanese American spirituality is not necessarily based …
An "Enemy Alien's" Mysterious Fate
June 28, 2007 • Kenji Murase
Much has been written about the experiences of the 120,000 Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Much less is known about the 5,000 Japanese “enemy aliens” who were taken into custody by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). As early as 1939, the Justice Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Army’s Military Intelligence Division compiled lists of persons considered to be potentially “dangerous” enemy aliens who could commit acts of subversion. By the evening of December 7, …