Tag Archives: japanese american

Sites like I Am Korean American & Discover Nikkei collect stories about identity for our communities

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http://discovernikkei.org

http://iamkoreanamerican.com/

Every once in a while, people ask me about the name of my blog, because they only hear the word “Nikkei” when it’s used for the Japanese stock exchange. “Nikkei” is also so the word used to describe people of Japanese ancestry outside of Japan. I’m a Nikkei-jin, or Nikkei person. When my blog first started out in the 1990s as a column in Denver’s weekly Japanese community newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Jiho, its publishers, Eiichi and Yoriko Imada, suggested I call the column “Nikkei View” since it reflected my perspective on pop culture and politics.

The name stuck. In the years since, I’ve come across “Nikkei” a few times as a term for who I am — mostly on research projects such as the International Nikkei Research Project, a three-year collaborative project involving more than 100 scholars from 10 countries and 14 participating institutions including the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in LA. There are organizations that use the term, such as the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, and the blog “Nikkei Ancestry.”

Now there’s another “Nikkei” site, which is republishing some of my babbling from this blog. In 2005, JANM launched Discover Nikkei, which is a gathering place for stories about Nikkei-jin from all over the globe, not just Japanese Americans but also Japanese Peruvians and Japanese Brazilians (two countries that have very large Nikkei populations), and every other country, as well as mixed-race people of Japanese ancestry. Continue reading →

Next up on visualizAsian.com: Tamlyn Tomita, leading lady of AAPIs in Hollywood

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Tamlyn TomitaErin and I are taking September off from doing interviews for visualizAsian.com, our series of live conversations with leading Asian American Pacific Islanders. But we’re kicking off October with a star: Tamlyn Tomita, whose inspirational career as an actor spans movies, television and the stage, and whose leadership and activism spans the Japanese American and Asian American Pacific Islander communities.

Our conversation with Tamlyn Tomita will be on Tuesday, October 6 at 6 pm Pacific Time (7 pm MT, 8 pm CT and 9 pm ET) is archived as an MP3 and is available for download for a limited time.

When we thought of starting visualizAsian.com, Tamlyn was the first person we thought of to interview, because of her prominence and passion, and because we’d met her on the set of “Only the Brave,” Lane Nishikawa’s powerful movie about the Japanese American soldiers of the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team.

She was funny, approachable, salty and very real. I have a very vivid memory of her during the filming, taking a break between scenes by sitting in her pickup truck (this was a low-budget production — no trailers for the stars). She was yelling and screaming and so animated we thought something was wrong. It turned out she’s a huge LA Lakers fan, and was listening to the playoff game in progress.

Last year, we saw her again at the Democratic National Convention, when I was one of the emcees at an APIA Vote Gala along with Tomita and Joie Chen, formerly of CNN. She’s a passionate, exciting and entertaining public speaker, and I’ve since seen her on video (just search YouTube) giving lots of speeches and serving as an emcee on many Japanese American and Asian American community events. Continue reading →

Next on visualizAsian.com: Dale Minami, rock star of AAPI attorneys who took on Supreme Court… and won

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Attorney Dale MinamiThe next interview scheduled for Erin and my visualizAsian.com project is one close to our hearts. The free, live interview on Tuesday, August 25 at 6 PM PT (9 PM ET) will be with with Japanese American attorney Dale Minami.

Dale is a rock star within the AAPI community — in fact, the entire U.S. legal community — as the lead attorney in Korematsu v United States, the landmark case that cleared the name of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American who resisted being sent to internment camps during WWII and was sent to prison. A 1944 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision established the constitutionality of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. But Dale and a team of young pro-bono lawyers took on the case and in 1983, got Korematsu’s conviction overturned.

He’s most famous for the Korematsu case, which he won on a writ of coram nobis, a legal tactic that forced the court to admit that an error of “fundamental character” had been made in Korematsu’s conviction.

Here’s a must-see video about Dale made for an award ceremony when he received the UC-Berkeley law school’s highest honor:

But Dale has been fighting for the AAPI community all his career.

He filed the first class-action lawsuit over employment by AAPIs on behalf of AAPIs with United Pilipinos for Affirmative Action v. California Blue Shield, and he helped the Spokane chapter of the JACL take on Washington State University with a class action suit to establish an Asian American Studies program. He also led a fight against UCLA over tenure that was denied an Asian American professor that revealed the layers of discrimination in the academic community. Continue reading →

A Japanese American Judge for Denver: Mayor Hickenlooper and Kerry Hada’s swearing-in

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Japanese Consul General Kazuaki Kubo, Denver District Court Judge Kerry Hada and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Consul General of Japan in Colorado, Kazuaki Kubo, left, and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, right, congratulate Judge Kerry Hada on his appointment at a ceremony on Dec. 3.

When Denver County Court Judge Melvin Okamoto announced earlier this year that he was retiring after two decades on the bench, the legal community offered up a handful of qualified candidates to take Okamoto’s place. Of those, three top candidates were interviewed by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, and Colorado native Kerry Hada, an attorney who went to Wheat Ridge High School, served as an Army Ranger in the last years of the Vietnam War, ranked nationally as a skier while attending CU, and got his law degree from DU, was chosen for the position.

Hada deserves the honor, because he’s a mainstay of the legal community and the Asian American Pacific Islander community. That community support was obvious last night.

As Hickenlooper looked out over the hundreds of people gathered in the lobby of the city’s Wellington Webb building last night, he remarked that he’d never seen such a huge crowd for the swearing-in of any official appointment since he became mayor. He joked that everyone in the room probably sent at least two letters to his office recommending Hada; Kerry himself noted that he would not have received the nod this time (he’s tried for a couple of judgeships before, including one a couple of years ago with Hickenlooper) without the support from the community.

People from every segment of Kerry’s life and work, including friends, family, military friends, folks from the local legal community and many representatives of the local Japanese American and Asian American communities were there to congratulate him. The Consul General of Japan, Kazuaki Kubo, and his wife also both attended.

Hizzoner and Kerry both gave props to Okamoto, himself a damned nice guy, who waved happily from the side of the room. It’s purely coincidental that the Mayor chose a JA to replace another JA, but I’m glad — and proud — that he did.

Modern Indian dance with Japanese taiko’s driving rhythms

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Erin and I have great respect for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders’ need to preserve our traditional heritages — they enrich our lives and help give us our sense of identity with the countries of our ancestors. I think too few young Asian Americans hold on to their ethnic heritage.

At the same time, we’re not just about kimonos and martial arts and traditional music and dances, and don’t appreciate that outsiders (white people, mostly) view us through the exoticized filter of our cultural and social traditions. That’s why, during her tenure as editor-in-chief of Asian Avenure magazine, Erin sought to paint Denver’s AAPI communities with a broader palette. Major stories were about AAPIs in politics, the popularity of Anime with non-Asians, Asian Americans in the U.S. military, multi-racial Asian Americans and even how Asian Americans are excelling in hip-hop dance.

Erin also wrote this month about Namita Khanna Nariani, the founder of Mudra Dance Studio, who’s a terrific example of how AAPIs can synthesize their respect for traditional culture with the modern energy and pan-cultural richness of being Asian in America.
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