a mixed plate of Japanese American news and culture
“Aoki,” the new documentary by Ben Wang and Mike Cheng, tells the little known story of Black Panther Party Field Marshal Richard Aoki. Filmed during the last five years of Aoki’s life, the filmmakers weave archival footage with interviews of key players including — Bobby Seale, Kathleen Neal Cleaver and Aoki himself — to create [...]
When Dean Maeda was sworn in as Palo Alto, Calif.’s postmaster in early January, he was carrying on a family tradition begun by his father, who retired from the United States Postal Service about 20 years ago. “It was always a goal of mine to be a postmaster. And working at the same one that [...]
LOS ANGELES — The 2010 Los Angeles Day of Remembrance, held Feb. 20 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, featured San Francisco civil rights attorney Dale Minami as the keynote speaker. Minami spoke on Korematsu v. United States and its relevance to current civil liberties issues and the government’s use [...]
President Obama on Feb. 24 nominated University of California at Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to serve on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Liu, 39, teaches constitutional law and education policy and is associate dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he would [...]
SACRAMENTO — The Florin chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), one of the most prolific of the national organization’s 110-plus chapters, recently celebrated its 75th anniversary. And although the small farming town of Florin no longer exists — having been swallowed up by the larger Sacramento metropolis — its namesake chapter continues to [...]
ROHNERT PARK, Calif. — Police on Feb. 15 arrested a suspect in the killing of well-known guitar maker Taku Sakashta outside his Rohnert Park workshop. Sakashta had been stabbed multiple times in his head, neck, chest and hand, the Sonoma County coroner’s office said Feb. 16. Joshua Rhea Begley, 28, was taken into custody shortly [...]
Las Vegas believes in the expression “imitation is the greatest form of flattery,” with all the tribute acts copying the originals and all the casinos themed after other famous locales. Well, the same mentality must exist in Texas. Did you know that there is a miniature replica of the Beijing Forbidden City in the Texas [...]
YAMASAKI, GEORGE MUNEICHI, 105, passed away peacefully at home in Auburn, Calif., on Saturday, February 13, 2010, He was born in Osaka, Japan, July 13, 1904, to Zenkichi and Kikuyo Yamasaki, and came to the United States at the age of 13 to join his father in Auburn, Calif. He married Shigeyo Fujitani in 1926, [...]
Post by Whitney Wilcox on February 10th at 12:58pm on rjcmedia.org, the Web site of the Renaissance Journalism Center “The Renaissance Journalism Center has awarded $20,000 grants to three Bay Area projects to test innovative models for gathering and distributing community news. The grants represent the first awards under the Center’s Media Greenhouse, which are [...]
SAN JOSE — Susan Shinagawa was just 34 years old when she received the devastating news after battling to convince her doctor to give her a biopsy — that she had breast cancer. “The doctor said I was too young and that Asian American women don’t get breast cancer,” said Shinagawa, who spoke as part [...]
Connect & Share