Chris Komai
@ckomaiChris Komai is a freelance writer, who has been involved in Little Tokyo for more than four decades. He was the Public Information Officer of the Japanese American National Museum for over 21 years, where he handled public relations for the organization’s special events, exhibitions and public programs. Prior to that, Komai worked for the Japanese-English newspaper, The Rafu Shimpo, for 18 years as a sports writer, sports editor, and English editor. He still contributes articles to the newspaper and writes for Discover Nikkei on a variety of topics.
Komai was Past Board Chair for the Little Tokyo Community Council and is currently First Vice Chair. He also serves on the Little Tokyo Public Safety Association board. He has been a member of the Southern California Nisei Athletic Union Board of Directors for basketball and baseball for almost 40 years and sits on the Board of the Nikkei Basketball Heritage Association. Komai earned a B.A. degree in English from the University of California at Riverside.
Updated December 2019
Stories from This Author
Will Ireton Uses Analytics, Trackman to Help Dodger Players Improve Their Performances
Oct. 18, 2023 • Chris Komai
What becomes clear after meeting Will Ireton is that there is more to him than meets the eye. Much more. In his eighth year as part of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and in his second as the Performance Operations Manager, Will’s career path included playing minor league baseball for the Texas Rangers, helping to organize the Philippines’ national team for the World Baseball Classic (WBC) in 2015 and acting as the translator for one-time Dodger starting pitcher Kenta Maeda …
Stephen Nelson Makes History as New Dodgers Announcer
Sept. 20, 2023 • Chris Komai
Stephen Nelson has always had a strong interest in history, but because of his new position as a broadcaster for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he is making history this year. Nelson, whose mother is Japanese American, is the first Asian American to work as a play-by-play announcer for a Major League Baseball team. He was hired by SportNet LA earlier this year to broadcast over 50 home and road games when the Dodgers’ primary announcer Joe Davis is unavailable. Stephen, …
Pacific Bridges' Innovative Approach to Financial Services
March 14, 2023 • Chris Komai
As a Japanese American Sansei who has trudged through every practical definition of senior citizenship, I am gratified to have been able to witness the greater acceptance of things unique to our community. While the first step in fighting institutional discrimination has been legislative and judicial, the next phase to overcome is the societal bias against our cultural traditions. As with many Sansei, I felt some embarrassment as a kid when my hakujin friends found out my family ate raw …
JANM Sashimi Potluck Lunches: Extended A Pre-WWII Tradition
Oct. 4, 2022 • Chris Komai
Most people appreciate that anyone who works for a reputable nonprofit organization is unlikely to get rich. But the intangible rewards for those who feel the satisfaction of helping to fulfill a worthwhile mission often surpass the limited monetary compensation. And if you’re lucky, you might gain access to tangible benefits unique to the Japanese American nonprofit community. As someone who worked for the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) for over 20 years, I witnessed a series of remarkable summer …
Appreciating Wat Misaka
Feb. 7, 2022 • Chris Komai
Appropriately, as the National Basketball Association (NBA) celebrates its 75th anniversary, it included Wat Misaka as an important figure in its history. This might seem remarkable since Wataru “Wat” Misaka’s playing career consisted of only three games with the New York Knickerbockers. But Misaka’s mere presence on a roster in 1947 made him the first person of color to play in the Basketball Association of America (BAA), the predecessor to NBA, in the same calendar year that Jackie Robinson integrated …
Kikan: The Homecoming: Film Spotlights the Emotional Turmoil Japanese American Families Suffered Through During World War II
Sept. 24, 2021 • Chris Komai
In Kerwin Berk’s short film, Kikan: The Homecoming the most dramatic moments occur around a dining room table when no one is speaking. The Ito family, trying to absorb the loss of their only son Ken (Ken Takeda) at the end of the war in Europe, is confronted with the reality of his death when a fellow 442nd Regimental Combat Team veteran Jimmy Ibata (Ryan Takemiya) unexpectedly shows up at their home in San Francisco. As the film depicts, Ken’s dying wish …
Assembling My Grandfather’s Story, Piece by Piece
July 21, 2021 • Chris Komai
All of my grandparents passed away before I was born. My mother Kay lost her parents to tuberculosis just as World War II began and my father Khan’s mother died in the 1930s. His father Toyosaku Komai is the only one to live into the post-war era and he died in 1950. Because of that, I never had a sense of who my grandparents were when I was growing up. However, through connections of the family business and other circumstances, …
Matsuyama Wins Major Gold Tournament, But Collin Morikawa Beat Him To It When He Won PGA Tournament in 2020
May 13, 2021 • Chris Komai
Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama’s recent capturing of the Master’s Golf Championship at the venerable Augusta Country Club in Georgia is one of the greatest individual achievements for an athlete from Japan. What’s interesting for me is that while I was happy for Matsuyama, his victory was not as impactful as previous Japanese sports achievements once were to me. The reason in this case is Collin Morikawa and a new generation of Japanese American athletes. First, Morikawa is a young professional golfer …
Coming Home to Heart Mountain: A Sansei Daughter Uncovers Her Family History to Fulfill Her Mother's Hidden Dream
Dec. 11, 2020 • Chris Komai
When I attended college at UC Riverside closing in on five decades ago, I took a sociology class on Japanese Americans and World War II. Like many Sansei, I knew very little about my family’s experiences during the war, but I was stunned at the enormity of the events that swept up our Japanese American community. After being rebuffed by my mother to share her memories of camp, I went to the college library and was dismayed to find how …
Exceeding All Expectations
Aug. 28, 2020 • Chris Komai
Keston Hiura has made a habit of breaking barriers and smashing stereotypes on his way to major league success. Most sports fans understand that the challenges for any young man or woman to achieve a career in professional sports are numerous and often unforgiving. But some of the toughest hurdles are the perceptions or misperceptions that certain scouts may hold involving a prospect’s size, character, background or even ethnicity. Keston Hiura heard that he had a perceived weakness that had …
