NIKKEI VIEW: The Asian American Blog

Big news for Asian Americans (and for the South Asian community): Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the affable and seemingly tireless chief medical correspondent for CNN (and a practicing neurosurgeon), is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to serve as Surgeon General of the United States.
According to the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz:
Gupta has told administration officials that he [...]

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A New York Times profile of Don Wakamatsu (thanks to reader Juan Lozano for pointing it out), the Japanese American named by the Seattle Mariners to manage the struggling team, reminded me that I’d been meaning to write about him since Wakamatsu’s hiring was announced in November.
It’s an historic signing because for the hype that [...]

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The national organization APIA Vote made it abundantly clear during both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention, where they did a lot of recruiting and convened caucuses: Asian American Pacific Islanders are not involved enough in politics.
We’re not great at getting the vote out, we don’t participate as much as we [...]

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Back on Veterans Day I posted an article about how Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been heroes for generations in the U.S. military, and ended the article with a note about retired Four-Star Gen. Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff and the highest-ranked AAPI in the military.
Today, NBC released an excerpt of [...]

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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 [...]

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Meiko, a one-quarter Japanese American, or “quapa,” from Georgia by way of Los Angeles, is at the vanguard of the new folk music. At least, that’s the category where you’ll find her on iTunes. She strums and picks an acoustic guitar, so she fits the folksinger/troubadour image.
But her music isn’t based on the traditional [...]

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Asian Americans are finally showing up in American pop culture at large, but Asian American fine artists are still mostly invisible. Only a few have had notable — or rather, noted — careers in the art world.
When I was an art student, I didn’t think much of my heritage. You might say it was [...]

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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 [...]

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For Veteran’s Day, 2008: Hoang Nguyen, 37, knew as a kid that he would join the U.S. military. “I wanted to repay back the United States for helping my family after the fall of Saigon,” he says.
He remembers the chaos of the end of the Vietnam war in the late ‘70s. “We took a boat [...]

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Update Nov 3: The Boulder Police Department now says there was apparently no knife involved in the assault against the Asian American as described below, but the victim was threatened with being “cut.” The police are also investigation another assult made the same night, Oct. 30: a gang rape of a woman by four men. [...]

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I wrote an article for Asian Avenue magazine, about mixed-race Asian American Pacific Islanders. The print edition, which is available at 500 locations around Denver, has lots of photos with it.
The article highlights some of the issues facing people of multiple racial heritage in general: the lack of acceptance by either side of [...]

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You read it correctly: MTV is looking for a host for a new Japanese Game Show to be produced here in the U.S. They’re casting around for a hip young Asian American dude. here are the details, copied from an email I was sent by an MTV casting producer for series development:
“MTV is searching for [...]

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Erin and I got to see a really interesting traditional Korean dance and music performance last week.
Think about it — you’ve seen taditional Japanese dancig in kimonos, and heard lots of traditional Japanese music, with the wood flute, koto and taiko drums. You’ve seen Chinese dance and heard Chinese music. And at events such as [...]

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Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders definitely seem more engaged with the political process these days. Maybe it’s the DNC being in Denver that’s made me sensitive to everything that’s going on. Maybe it’s Obama’s Hawai’i connections. Or maybe AAPIs are finally coming out of the shadows and fighting to have our voices heard, and not [...]

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Sept. 24 update: Good news — CBS appears to have pulled all of the Farnfucious clips off their YouTube channel.
It’s hard to believe that a major U.S. broadcast network can get away with it, but there it is on YouTube: “Farnfucious Say,” a regular (apparently) skit on the “Farnsworth & the Fox” show produced by [...]

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Asian American ad man and marketing guru Bill Imada comments on Ad Age’s lively “Big Tent” blog (he’s one of a group of contributors) about how the LPGA is requiring English language proficiency for foreign golfers on the LPGA tour.
For those of you who do not follow golf nor sporting news, LPGA leaders recently [...]

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Actress Tamlyn Tomita speaks bout her support for APIAVote, a non-profit organization that promotes Asian Americans’ involvement in politics, especially getting AAPIs to vote.
Erin and I have been busy all week, running around to various Asian American Pacific Islander events during the Democratic National Convention. Denver’s all dolled up and feeling like a real [...]

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Asian American voters were treated this morning by a surprise visit by Barack Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, during the Asian American Pacific Islander caucus at the Democratic National Convention. She gave a rousing speech that fired up the people in the room.

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Erin Yoshimura took these videos at an AAPI Caucus meeting during the Democratic National Convention. They include Tammy Duckworth, “Survivor” winner Yul Kwon and a young Obama volunteer, Brandon Simomura.
Tammy Duckworth:

Yul Kwon:

Brandon Shimomura:

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Here are DNC-related “tweets” from my Twitter feed, which shows up in my Facebook updates and also in a widget on my blog pages. Some videos, too: Above, emcee Tamlyn Tomita (”Joy Luck Club,” “Come See the Paradise,” “Picture Bride,” Karate Kid II”) introduces Mee Moua, the historic first-ever Hmong American lawmaker, a state [...]

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