Masaru Edmund Nakawatase
Masaru Edmund Nakawatasee was born in Poston, Arizona, and raised along with other Nikkei in Seabrook, New Jersey. He went to Rutgers, but dropped out in 1963 and went to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). After that seminal experience, most of his work life was with the American Friends Service Committee, initially as a community organizer in South Jersey; later as national staff for the Third World Coalition (TWC), a caucus of AFSC staff and committee members of color; and from 1974 until he retired in 2005, he was the organization's National Representative for Native American Affairs. He currently serves on the boards of Asian Americans United (AAU) and the Folk Arts - Cultural Treasures (FACTS) Charter School. He presided over the two boards until last year. (Photo by Lloyd Wolf)
Updated September 2018
Stories from This Author
Tamio Wakayama: A Remembrance
Sept. 7, 2018 • Masaru Edmund Nakawatase
I first met Tamio Wakayama in the winter of 1964 in Atlanta, Georgia. We were both very recent volunteers for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which was regarded accurately as the youngest and most militant of the civil rights organizations. We had come separately to the South a few months earlier inspired by the clarion call of the civil rights movement. Coverage of the movement was incessant and it seemed omnipresent in the popular media. Events of the struggle …
