Born in Tokyo on Jan. 5, 1924, Akio Konoshima arrived in the United States on June 23 of that year, about a week before the effective date of the Oriental Exclusion Act. He grew up on raspberry and truck garden farms outside of what is now the heart of “Silicon Valley.” During WWII, he was at Santa Anita and then Heart Mountain, rejected by the Army because, as an Issei, he remained classified as an “enemy alien.” Since the end of the war, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin, studied Japanese at the Army Language School, served in Japan and Korea, then attended graduate school to study Japan and the Far East at Columbia University.

Konoshima retired in 1995 after having worked, among other positions, as a press secretary for the late Senator Hiram Fong and an information specialist at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He has three grown children and four grandchildren. Now he resides with his wife, a Shanghai-born Chinese American. He is comfortably retired, being babied and scolded while living, reading the newspapers and wondering where America and the rest of the world are going now.

Updated October 2010