Mikiko Amagai
@mamagaiiMikiko Amagai was Managing Editor of The North American Post, the Seattle Japanese-community newspaper, from 2001 to 2005. Of her tenure, Mikiko feels that the most memorable articles she wrote were her interviews of the Seattle Nisei veterans—all but one now deceased. She obtained their stories by “just letting them talk.” She published the accounts in both English and Japanese. On November 1, 2020, Mikiko returned to Tokyo after 44 years in Seattle.
Updated January 2021
Stories from This Author
George (Ganjiro) Morihiro
March 10, 2021 • Mikiko Amagai
“It was exciting.” George Morihiro is talking about his experience in the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II. “But don’t get me wrong. I was 17. The German soldiers were laid dead or wounded around us, but still, I never thought we would die. I was excited to serve for the country.” He talks with a smile in his eyes. George was born in Fife, Washington. His nickname, Ganjiro, came from his father, who came to the …
Edie Horikawa
Feb. 24, 2021 • Mikiko Amagai
“At the field camp (in Europe), kids came to us begging for food, with pans in their hands. Hakujin soldiers kicked them or dumped their leftovers in the garbage in front of them, but us Nisei soldiers, we put our leftovers in each of their pans, thinking that they were like our (Nikkei) kids at home (in the camps) in America…,” Edie Horikawa recalls. He witnessed how war affects children more. Edie had taught art classes to about 200 children …
Bob Sato
Feb. 10, 2021 • Mikiko Amagai
“When my kids ask me what I was doing during the war, I can only say that I was a soldier,” said Robert (Bob) Sato. He was a sergeant in the famed 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated Japanese-American army unit that served with pride and distinction during the Second World War. Like many other Nisei, he has a lot to say about what happened, but is more reticent when it comes to talking about his own feelings during those …
Richard Naito
Jan. 26, 2021 • Mikiko Amagai
On February 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. Almost 8,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in the Seattle area were sent to internment camps. Among them, two thirds were American-born Nisei. Many of the young men were in two groups: “No-No Boys” and volunteers for the U.S. Army. Now that they are aging, the quiet Nisei ex-soldiers are willing to tell their unspoken stories. Having lived through the war themselves, …
