The Japanese American National Museum, in collaboration with the USC Hapa Japan Database Project, presents the exhibition Visible & Invisible: A Hapa Japanese American History from April 7 – August 25, 2013. Through photos, historical artifacts, multimedia images, and interactive components, the exhibition explores the diverse and complex history of the mixed-roots and mixed-race Japanese American experience.

Here, we introduce a selection of the HAPA related resources available on Discover Nikkei.

~~~VIDEO INTERVIEWS~~~

• Kip Fulbeck [EN, JA, ES, PT]
  Filmmaker and artist. Born in California to a Chinese mother and English/Irish father. His Hapa Project explores hapa identity and was published in a book and an exhibition at JANM that has traveled to 5 additional sites to date.

• Terry Janzen [EN]
  Born in Tokyo in 1930 to a Japanese mother and Caucasian father. She grew up in both Japan and the United States, and was incarcerated at Poston for 6 months during World War II

• Jero [EN, JA, ES, PT]
  Enka singer in Japan. Born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, his interest in Japanese culture and enka music comes from his Japanese grandmother. In 2008, his debut album won the Best New Artist Award at the Japan Record Awards and he performed on the Kohaku Utagassen New Year’s Eve music show, fulfilling a promise he had made to his grandmother.

• Johnnie Morton [EN, JA, ES, PT]
  Former professional football player. Born in Inglewood, CA, the son of an African American father and Japanese American mother.

• Mike Shinoda [EN, JA, ES, PT]
  Musician and artist. A member of Linkin Park, he was born and raised in Agoura Hills, a suburb north of Los Angeles, to a Japanese American father and Caucasian mother.

• Virgil Westdale [EN]
  Hapa pilot and veteran of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 522nd Field Artillery Battalion. Born in Indiana in 1918 to a Japanese father and an English/German mother.

(*The original interview clips were posted in the Interviews section using Flash-based video. To make the interviews more accessible, we have also made them available through the Nikkei Album.)

~~~JOURNAL ARTICLES~~~

• Japanese-Jew Doesn’t “Oy Veh” So Much Since Obama
  By Francesca Yukari Biller

• Half vs. Double: Hybrid Mathematics
  By Simone Momoye Fujita

• My Experience with Heritage Language Loss in America
  By Yurimi Grigsby

• Fred Kinzaburo Makino: A Biography—His Contributions to Society through the Hawaii Hochi (English / Japanese)
  By Hawaii Hochi

• Da Kine Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel
  By Jayne Hirata

• How Marrow Unites a Community: Chris Ishida’s Search & Discovery 
  By Chris Ishida 

• Betwixt and Between: Embracing the Borderlands of My Mixed Heritage (English, 日本語, Español, Português)
  By Mari L’Esperance

• Part Asian, Not Hapa (English, 日本語, Español, Português)
  By Mia Nakaji Monnier

• Hapa-ly Ever After: An Interview with Jeff Chiba Stearns
  By Mia Nakaji Monnier

• My Transnational, Hapa Identity in Question
  By Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu

• Analyze My Face: Hapas, exoticism and the entertainment industry
  By Leah Nanako Winkler

• On Being Japanese American
  By Curtiss Takada Rooks

• My Parents—An Introduction
  By Paul Yamada

• When There Was No “Hapa”
  By Paul Yamada

• Multicultural Heritage
  By Kacie Yoshida

~~~NIKKEI ALBUM~~~

• The Hapa Collection

WHAT ARE YOU? That was the question posed to visitors to the kip fulbeck: part asian / 100% hapa exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum (June 8 – October 29, 2006). A selection from the overwhelming response in Los Angeles to this activity is included here.