Category Archives: history

It’s an honor to meet artist Jimmy Mirikitani & filmmaker Linda Hattendorf

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jimmy mirikitani-linda hattendorf cats of mirikitani

IN 2001, New York filmmaker Linda Hattendorf began documenting the life of a homeless artist whose work caught her attention. The elderly man, who set up his “shop” outside a corner grocery in SoHo, not far from the Wall Street district, wouldn’t take money from passersby, unless it was in payment for one of his drawings or paintings, many of cats and tigers. Hattendorf shot closeups of the arist working with dirt-covered hands on his often playful images. For months, Hattendorf walked by the old man’s spot — she lived nearby — and engaged the artist.

She found if she had her camera, he would open up and tell stories.

Then 9/11 happened.

Amidst the suddenly gray, ashen desolation of lower Manhattan, Hattendorf found the old man in his usual spot, and made a decision that would change both their lives. She decided to give him shelter, and took him home to live in her cramped apartment. Over the months when she helped him reconnect with society, she discovered the old man’s incredible story.

The documentary she produced, “The Cats of Miriktani,” is an amazing chronicle of a life journey for both Tsutomu “Jimmy” Mirikitani and Hattendorf.
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A national town hall to mark the 30th anniversary of Vincent Chin’s death

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"Vincent Who" is a documentary about the death of Vincent Chin

Vincent Chin was beaten with a baseball bat 30 years ago on June 19 in a Detroit suburb, and died four days later.

At the time, I was three years out of art school, managing a paint store, and was a budding young rock critic writing for a Denver newspaper. I didn’t follow any news coverage about the attack on Vincent Chin, and I was clueless about the importance of his tragic death. I was still a “banana” — yellow on the outside, but white on the inside. Like the name of the 2009 documentary film about the impact of Chin’s murder on the Asian American community, if you had asked me then about him, I would have said, “Vincent who?”

Today, Vincent Chin is very much on my mind.

In the decades since his death, I’ve become aware and much more appreciative of my ethnic roots, culture and history as a Japanese American, which I used to take for granted. I’ve also become much more aware of my place in the much larger Asian American community.

Chin’s death still resonates three decades later, like the murder of Emmett Till resonates within the African American community as one of the driving forces of the civil rights movement. The 14-year-old Till was murdered in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman.
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President Barack Obama’s speech to 18th Annual Gala of the APAICS

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President Obama never fails to inspire with his speeches, and for me, especially his speeches in support of the Asian American community. The video above is from his speech in Washington DC on May 18 at the 18th Annual Gala of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies.

And while I’m at it, I’m embedding Obama’s historic interview yesterday with Robin Roberts of ABC’s “Good Morning America” yesterday, during which he states that he now fully supports gay marriage. Here’s the entire segment and a transcript.

Although I’m sure he and his staff weighed the political pros and cons of making such a statement and decided the cons may not significantly affect his re-election campaign (it may help it, particularly with independent swing voters), I think it took some guts to say it. And for GLBT people everywhere, I can’t imagine the power such a statement of support from the President of the United States must convey.

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Denver marks the 100th anniversary of cherry trees from Japan to US by planting 50 trees

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Chidorigafuchi Sakura Tokyo

Cherry blossoms at the Japanese Imperial Palace moat in Tokyo (photo Public Domain from Wikimedia Commons)

When I was a kid in Japan, my family would make the requisite trek out every spring to see the cherry trees, or sakura, blooming at places like the Imperial Palace (above) or Ueno Park, which is better known the rest of the year for a bustling train station and crowded market with smelly fish vendors. Sakura-viewing is such a historically significant cultural event in Japan that it has its own name: Hanami, or “flower-viewing.”

People — individuals, couples in love, entire families — stroll parks and avenues for Hanami and marvel at the fleeting beauty of the cherry blossoms, which bloom and then fall too soon as everyone picnics beneath the lovely pink cascade.

From the woodblock master Hiroshige's series, "36 Views of Mount Fuji" (Public domain)

The country feels so strongly about its precious sakura, that in 1912 Japan made a gift of friendship of 3,000 cherry trees to the United States. They were planted in Washington D.C., around the Tidal Basin (near the Jefferson Memorial), East Potomac Park and around the Washington Monument.

Those trees have become a springtime ritual for Americans as well, a popular seasonal tourist attraction. There’s a National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington that runs from March 20-April 27 this year, with events throughout the month, as well as lots of “hanami,” except we call it “bloom watching.”

When my family moved Stateside in the 1960s and lived in northern Virginia, we would visit D.C. every spring to enjoy the sakura there.
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We need this documentary about Corky Lee, the photographer who’s kept his lens on Asian America

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Corky Lee is the undisputed master photographer of Asian America. The New York-based journalist has criss-crossed the country for decades and manages to be where the action is, whether it’s a protest over racism or an Asian cultural celebration.

I’ve gotten to know Corky Lee over the last decade because of the Asian American Journalists Association. I know when I attend an AAJA convention or the larger Unity convention that includes AAJA every four years, that he’ll be there, networking and meeting and greeting — he knows everyone. He’s a photographer but he’s not there to chronicle the conventions. He’s there for the fundraising silent auction, where he helps out with the sale of photographs by member journalists, including his own work.

Erin and I have purchased several of his photographs at these auctions, because they’re terrific photojournalism, and because every cent goes toward AAJA. Corky donates his time and his images.

Erin and I also ran into Corky when he visited Denver for an OCA/JACL banquet where we served as emcees. Corky was there to unveil his now-famous photo of Chinese Americans posed at the facing locomotives at Promontory Point, Utah, where the transcontinental railroad met. That’s where Corky first used the term “photographic justice,” because he assembled the crowd and shot the photo as a response to the 1869 photo at the same spot, where a famous photo showed all Caucasians … and none of the thousands of Chinese laborers who helped lay the tracks were in the shot, because they were ordered to stay miles away from the celebration.

When I worked briefly in New Jersey, I next ran into Corky at an Asian festival in Manhattan. He was carrying his equipment, on the prowl for cool images, and we competed for the best shots of singer-songwriter Cynthia Lin. It was the first time I’d heard her, but Corky was familiar with her, of course.

We respect Corky’s work so much that we interviewed him on our visualizAsian.com show, and asked him to talk about some of his photos — as selected by fans, who voted for their favorites from this slideshow:
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