ベン・アリカワは北カリフォルニアの三世です。父方の祖父母が約100年前に果樹園で働くために定住した場所からそう遠くないところに住んでいます。ベンは最近、トゥーリー湖巡礼に参加し、そこでブラッドとジョージ・タケイに出会いました。晩年、物語を語る必要性に気づき、文学的な面を探求してきました。ベンは、JACLの受賞歴のある新聞であるパシフィック・シチズンに記事を寄稿し、ディスカバー・ニッケイにもいくつかの記事を寄稿しています。彼の物語は、日系アメリカ人、息子、夫、そして父親としての彼の経験を反映しています。また、イケイビ・フィルムズのウェブシリーズ「ゴールド・マウンテン」（2016年）の撮影監督として、また「インフィニティ」や「チャーシューラーメン」 （2013年）で俳優として、芸術的な面も探求しています。
2016年8月更新
この執筆者によるストーリー
ジェロームへの旅
2016年8月24日 • ベン・アリカワ
おとうさん、おばさん、おじさん、電車の旅はどうでしたか？ 私の父、叔母、叔父、そしてその家族は、最初に収容されたカリフォルニア州フレズノ集合センターから、1942年から1944年まで開設されていたジェローム戦争移住キャンプまで、約2,000マイルを列車で旅しました。それから70年以上経ち、妻と私は北カリフォルニアの自宅からアーカンソー州リトルロックまで、ほぼ同じ距離を旅しました。クリントン大統領図書館でのイベントに招待されたのです。飛行機とレンタカーを使った私たちの旅は、間…
All My Friends, They Went to Tule
2013年2月19日 • ベン・アリカワ
There are many untold and, possibly, forgotten stories in one’s family history. In an earlier article in the 2011 Holiday Issue of Pacific Citizen, the official newspaper of the Japanese American Citizens League, I wrote about what little I knew and what I didn’t know about my father’s incarceration in Jerome during World War II. Even before that article was published, I began to research the files of persons incarcerated in War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps that were available through …
Homemade Miso Soup
2012年10月23日 • ベン・アリカワ
If you have been to a Japanese restaurant in the United States, you probably have been served a warm, salty, light brown miso soup. Sometimes it will have thinly sliced scallions floating in the broth. Sometimes there will be miniature cubes of tofu hidden in the depths below the particles of miso suspended in the broth. It is offered more as an afterthought, usually before a meal of overly large portions of protein or sushi. My daughter, Elizabeth, came back …
Mochi and Me
2012年9月4日 • ベン・アリカワ
Mochi is a quintessential Nikkei food. Mochi is a symbol of our ties to our ancestral homeland, the land of small, terraced rice fields tended by family farmers. Mochi is made from rice. Not the typical rice you cook at home, but a glutinous rice that is very sticky when cooked. In the traditional method, the rice is steamed, ground and pounded by people wielding wooden mallets into a sticky dough. I have a very vague memory of my extended …
Two Weddings and a Funeral
2012年6月4日 • ベン・アリカワ
I’m not yet at the age where I scan the obituaries for people I knew, like I remember my father doing. In his later years, he would open the paper to the obituaries most days, looking for the names of acquaintances. I remember my father saying: “I was talking to Don the other day. Frank is gone. Don and I are the only ones left from camp now.” (Don and my father were roommates for a time in the Jerome …
Cooking Traditions with Mom
2012年5月21日 • ベン・アリカワ
I have been told by various people that I am a “good” cook. I’m usually able to put together dishes without recipes from whatever is in the refrigerator or to come up with menu ideas just walking down store aisles. Breakdown a chicken? Just give me the sharp cleaver. Need a grilled 20 pound Thanksgiving turkey instead of an oven roasted one? No problem. Need an easy appetizer for 20? Caramelized onion/pancetta quesadillas with guacamole. Sushi for six? Just let …
Will We Feel the Ghost of the Past at Jerome?
2012年1月23日 • ベン・アリカワ
14-8-C…A few years ago, this series of numbers and a letter were meaningless to me. Then I happened to find my father’s photo album that contain scenes stretching from his childhood in Japan to camp in Arkansas and Arizona and back to Japan where he married my mother in the 1950s. I don’t think that my brothers, sister, or I had seen any of these pictures and my father rarely spoke of his life before kids except for a typical …
The Accidental Actor: On Location with the Cast and Crew of Infinity and Chashu Ramen
2011年12月6日 • ベン・アリカワ
I have spent a great deal of my life trying not to be conspicuous. Maybe it’s the result of my painful lack of social skills when I was younger, my innate shyness in front of people, or maybe it was my mother’s entreaties not to stand out. Though born in Los Angeles, she lived in Japan during World War II. My mother was painfully aware of the incarceration of Japanese Americans, including my father, grandfathers, aunt, uncle, and cousins. She …
Reflections on a Road Well Traveled
2011年8月31日 • ベン・アリカワ
My daughter and I recently took the 180 mile trip from Placer County, California to my hometown, Fresno. Most of the trip is made on Highway 99, which runs down the middle of the Central Valley. This is a drive that I know very well. During an eleven year span from 1988-1998, I made the trip once a month to check up on my mother. I separately visited my father since my parents had divorced in the mid-1980s. Since my …
