A great American photographer died on January 27 at a hospital in Queens, New York, his hometown. But you may not recognize his name: Corky Lee. Like the subject of his half-century career, Asians in America, who have historically been invisible to mainstream Americans, Corky was invisible – he didn’t seek the spotlight, he just wanted to record the community around...
The world, and all our lives, have changed in a very short time. When I wrote about the emerging coronavirus in February, it had just been officially named COVID-19 and it was still mostly concentrated in one province in China. At the time, there had been 42,000 infected with over 1,000 deaths in China and 400 sick and only one...
I was driving on the highway one night some years back between Denver and Boulder, when I got harassed by a couple of young white guys who were tailgating me, probably in their teens or early 20s at the most. When I pulled off at an exit they followed me so I pulled into a parking lot and got out of my car. They...
The skeletal dome that marks ground zero for the atomic bomb that deciated Hiroshima is now part of the city's Peace Memorial Park.
We live in tumultuous – and possibly perilous – times. Our government and society at large is more divided than I can remember, even during my childhood in the 1960s. Race and gender issues fill the headlines every day, and that’s just looking at domestic headlines. It’s not “fake news” to say that our country is struggling today, on a variety of levels on a variety of topics.
One of the great benefits of today’s social media – and why I urge everyone, young and old, to at least be on Facebook – is that it can connect you to people you know, people you don’t know, and maybe most surprisingly, to people you used to know. When baby boomers starting logging into Facebook about a decade ago, I...
Many Japanese Americans I know don’t pay much attention to Japan, which I think is a pity. I believe JAs should keep up with news from Japan, and travel to Japan. A lot. However, most JAs I know closely follow the news of Donald Trump’s presidency, and what he’s doing in the US. A standing-room-only crowd attended this year's Japanese American Day...
Late last year, Erin and I were lucky enough to travel to New York City to see the Broadway musical “Allegiance” starring George Takei. It’s a story about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and it vividly and powerfully brings to life the emotional toll of the experience on JAs for generations since then. I wrote about...
Denver's Mayor Michael B. Hancock welcomes the 100 applicants and their family members to the citizenship ceremony. I was born in Japan, but because my father was born in Hawaii when it was a U.S. territory, I am an American citizen. I didn't have to take a test, and recite an oath of allegiance. After my family moved to the...