Two Ways of Looking at The Terror: Infamy’s Finale
AMC’s series about the Japanese American internment ends with a message about the importance of remembering the past. But it forgets the historical horror at the heart of the show.
Art and the Creation of a Resilient Japanese American Spirit
During the World War II incarceration of west coast Japanese Americans, countless artists found their lives shattered, shunted behind barbed wire. Some of them went on to achieve fame. As a group, they exerted an outsized influence on American art and design, yet rarely spoke of their incarceration experience.
Revisiting Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray: An interview with Robert Nakamura and Karen Ishizuka
Revisiting the work of modernist photographer-turned prison camp inmate and documentarian Toyo Miyatake.
JANM Photo Exhibit: Two Views: Photographs by Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank
Comparing the U.S. and Canadian WWII government prison camp experiences through the work of two photographers.
Dance School Works to Get Back on its Feet
A spunky dance school in South Brooklyn fights to survive after Hurricane Sandy.
Roger Shimomura, Artist, Collector
The Sansei artist opens a show in New York.
Tradition: Osechi
My exploration of the Japanese New Year's foods known as osechi, and where to find them in New York.
Reaching out to relatives and friends after the Great Tohoku Earthquake
My contribution to DN's collection of stories about the devastating 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami
Planning for New and More Diverse Systems of Care Part IV: Seattles Nikkei Concerns
The final installment of my multi-part examination on West Coast Japanese eldercare
West Coast Nikkei Eldercare: Planning for New and More Diverse Systems of Care - Part III-1
Another installment in my series on Japanese-American eldercare, this time an examination of an innovative center in Sacramento
Friends With Differences: Lange and Adams at the Oakland Museum of California
This is a short post that grew out of my research into documentary photographs taken of the California prison camp Manzanar, where people of Japanese descent were placed during World War II.
West Coast Nikkei Eldercare: Planning for New and More Diverse Systems of Care -- Part II-2
This is the second half of part two of my extremely long article on Nikkei eldercare on the West Coast.
West Coast Nikkei Eldercare: Planning for New and More Diverse Systems of Care -- Part II-1
This series became so long that Part II had to be subdivided, hence the strange headline.
James Mitsumori: One of Keiro Senior Healthcare's Founding Fathers
Profile of Nissei James Mitsumori's role in launching Los Angeles' first Nikkei eldercare facility, and a glimpse into the fascinating story of the first Japanese Hospital in L.A.
West Coast Nikkei Eldercare: Planning for New and More Diverse Systems of Care -- Part I
What I planned as one article on Keiro Senior Healthcare in Los Angeles turned into a multi-part series covering Nikkei eldercare all along the West Coast. This article was reposted on the sites New America Media and Redwood Age
Historian Linda Gordon's new Dorothea Lange bio
My account of a New York Public Library Q&A with NYU history professor Linda Gordon, including her views on the prickly relationship between Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams
Reclaiming Photographs of the WWII Japanese American Resettlement
My review of Lane Hirabayashi's book, "Japanese American Resettlement Through the Lens," about Hikaru Carl Iwasaki's WRA photographs
Manzanar Pilgrims Shine Light on Past, Current Injustices, Honor Forebears
I join the 40th annual Manzanar pilgrimage and visit the site of the World War II internment camp that once housed my father and his family.
Fund Offers a Chance to Pay Wartime Debt of Gratitude
Second-generation Japanese Americans set up a scholarship fund in honor of the generosity shown to them by the Quakers during the time of their World War II incarceration in American internment camps.
Pages of Recession
An anchor of the Little Tokyo community, Amerasia Bookstore closes after 21 years in business.