Kate Iio

Desde quando eu tinha seis anos de idade, minha mãe e meu pai sempre levavam minha irmã mais velha e eu para o festival Nisei Week em Little Tokyo, no centro de Los Angeles. Lembro-me de meus pais comprando pela primeira vez dango e korokke frescos para mim e minha irmã, de um dos muitos vendedores alinhados ao longo da vila. O molho doce do dango seguido pelo saboroso molho tonkatsu do korokke combinavam tão perfeitamente juntos que se tornaram a tradição anual de lanche da minha família na Nisei Week.

Enquanto minha família e ...

I joined a swim team in Southern California when I was 8 years old and before I knew it, swimming became the biggest part of my identity. If I wasn’t at school, I was in the pool. My weekends were reserved for swim meets from the early mornings to evenings. My conversations were always swimming-related because my friends were mainly swimmers. I gained nicknames from my teammates, and even schoolmates, such as “the Olympic swimmer” and “Kato” (I am actually called Kato more often than my real name). While I excelled in both school and swimming, I always favored ...

“50 Objects/50 Stories of the American Japanese Incarceration” is a project made up of 50 objects that each give a raw, true narrative of the exclusion and confinement of 120,000 American Japanese during World War II. Objects owned by families, museums, and educational institutions have been researched, reviewed, and compiled to create a well-rounded representation of individual experiences in the internment camps. Stories that have gone untold for years are now presented in various forms of media such as articles, videos, and audios.

I interviewed Nancy Ukai, the Lead Project Director, to learn about her creation and overall ...

Trevor Allred is a founding part of Heritage Future, a nonprofit organization dedicated to storytelling as a tool for community betterment, and a moderator on the Creative + Cultural podcast. In “Chapters,” a five-part podcast series dedicated to stories surrounding the exclusion, forced removal, and incarceration of Japanese Americans with a paralleled narrative thread through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), he interviewed the following historical and active figures in the community offering multiple backgrounds and perspectives to the issue.

• Mary Adams Urashima provides an environmental justice background through her preservation efforts to save the Furuta Goldfish Farm and Wintersburg Japanese ...

Currently featured at the Japanese American National Museum is Mark Nagata’s Kaiju vs Heroes exhibition. Mark Nagata is a third-generation, Japanese American artist who was inspired by the Japanese kaiju toys from his childhood to pursue a career in freelance illustration and eventually start his first toy company called Max Toy Company. His work has left a lasting imprint on the Japanese community, but also his own identity.

As a Sansei, Mark’s upbringing deviated from traditional Japanese culture so he never really considered himself as Japanese. Growing up in the 1970s with his two older sisters, Mark remembers ...