NIKKEI VIEW: The Asian American Blog

The JANM conference that starts today in Denver has a whole bunch of interesting and important panels, workshops and discussions. I’m moderating one on Saturday, about Hapas — mixed-race Asian Americans. But some of the most powerful parts of the conference will be the ones that bring people together with their past.
Today and Sunday, caravans [...]

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The Japanese American National Museum is sponsoring a conference in Denver over the Fourth of July weekend, called “Whose America? Who’s American? Diversity, Civil Liberties, and Social Justice.”
Erin and I are helping out the conference, and one of Erin’s main projects has been contacting and inviting Colorado Japanese American veterans to the conference’s Welcome [...]

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Erin and I attended a talk and book signing with 9News Political reporter Adam Schrager last night, and introduced him to her folks. It was the second time we’ve seen Adam speak since the publication of “The Principled Politician.” This talk was held at Simpson United Methodist Church, which serves the Japanese American community, and [...]

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Members of the Grateful Crane Ensemble’s “Moonlight Serenaders” in “The Camp Dance: The Music & The Memories,” include (front row) Keiko Kawashima and Jason Fong; (back row) Kurt Kuniyoshi, Darrell Kunitomi and Haruye Ioka. (Photo by Phil Nee)

You wouldn’t think that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II would make for great [...]

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Bill Hosokawa in 2005, sitting next to a caricature at the Denver Press Club

Bill Hosokawa died of natural causes at age 92 in Sequim, Washington, where he lived with his daughter. He was a pioneering Japanese American journalist, author and diplomat who lived in Denver for 60 years.
Those are the facts of Bill’s life and [...]

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I grew up being apprehensive every December 7. I’m Japanese American, and was born long after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, but for a long time I felt an inescapable sense of responsibility for the attack.
My early years were spent in a military environment — my dad was in the U.S. Army. [...]

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11:00 a.m.
Here I sit in my rental car, mere yards from the water. I’m waiting for the Bainbridge Island Ferry in Seattle — I missed the last one by just seconds and the next one leaves in an hour.
Bainbridge Island is the place captured poetically in the book and movie, “Snow Falling on Cedars” (which [...]

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Thank you very much, Michelle Malkin.
Thanks a bunch for writing your book, “In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror.” Thanks for trying to prove that not only was putting Japanese Americans into U.S. concentration camps during World War II the right thing to do, [...]

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