“I am not a museum type of person,” says Bob Uragami. He had his first encounter with the Japanese American National Museum in 1991 when it was looking for artifacts for its first exhibition, Issei Pioneers: Hawaii and the Mainland, 1885–1924.
Kimio Tajima was an American-born Nisei, but he died a Japanese soldier, while at war in New Guinea. He was 28 years old. His son, Kihachiro, was only ten months old when Kimio was drafted. Kihachiro grew up being called a war orphan, not remembering his father’s face.
When Tokyo native Nao Magami was a student at California State University in the 1970s, he wondered why his Japanese American friends only spoke English, unlike the Chinese and Korean American students, many of whom spoke their parents’ languages. One day in an Asian American studies class, he watched a …
Fred Yaichio Hoshiyama, a hero and a legend to both the YMCA and the Japanese American community, passed away on November 30, 2015 in Los Angeles, just one week shy of his 101st birthday.
Hitoshi Sameshima was born in Pasadena in 1921 to parents from Kagoshima, Japan. He was a junior at the University of Southern California when the war broke out in 1941. During WWII, his bilingual skills forced him into an uncomfortable position between Japan and the U.S.
Masako Iwawaki Murakami’s parents seldom talked about the years the family spent in an American concentration camp during WWII. Masako was 8 years old at the time and remembers how earnestly her mother and father tried to maintain a sense of normalcy for their children in spite of the extraordinary …
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