OAKLAND, Calif. — On Jan. 14, Jordan Clarkson led the Los Angeles Lakers on their final visit to the Bay Area this season as they took on the defending NBA champions, the Golden State Warriors. Despite leading the Lakers with 22 points, the Lakers fell to the Warriors 116-98 at Oracle Arena. Clarkson, a 6-foot-5 […]
Archives for 2016
Man convicted of misdemeanor vandalism, hate crime charges for anti-Chinese graffiti
January 21, 2016 by Leave a Comment
A man arrested in connection with anti-Chinese graffiti in the Portola and Bayview neighborhoods of San Francisco was found guilty Jan. 7 of misdemeanor vandalism and hate crime charges. John Schenone, 62, of San Francisco, was found guilty of 13 misdemeanors including seven counts of vandalism and six counts of a hate crime by way […]
Bay Area JA group condemns anti-Muslim, Arab and refugee rhetoric
January 7, 2016 by Leave a Comment
As anti-Muslim and anti-refugee rhetoric reaches unprecedented levels, the Bay Area Day of Remembrance Consortium held a press conference and candlelight vigil Dec. 22 with leaders of the Muslim community in San Francisco’s Japantown to condemn the statements made by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and others in the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris […]
Japan, S. Korea strike landmark deal on ‘comfort women’
January 7, 2016 by Leave a Comment
SEOUL — Japan and South Korea on Dec. 28 struck a landmark deal to “finally and irreversibly” resolve the protracted dispute over Korean women who were procured for Japan’s wartime military brothels. As part of the deal, Japan will contribute 1 billion yen ($8.4 million) from its state budget in a foundation South Korea will […]
Boxer introduces bill designating Tule Lake camp as National Historic Site
January 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) on Dec. 17 introduced legislation to establish the former Tule Lake concentration camp as a National Historic Site managed by the National Park Service, a statement from Boxer’s office said. Tule Lake was the largest “War Relocation Authority” camp during World War II, incarcerating nearly 19,000 persons of […]
A time to take a stand
January 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Between calls for banning Muslims from entering the United States to references to the mass incarceration of some 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry in American concentration camps, politicians in recent weeks have evoked a sense of hysteria and fear-mongering that many have likened to that of the World War II-era. Japanese Americans, who are all […]
FANTASTIC VOYAGE: The process of becoming a better minister
January 1, 2016 by 5 Comments
Happy New Year! It has been two years since I last wrote, and in that time I finished my Buddhist training and have become an assistant minister in my village. It’s pretty difficult because as I was told: Being a minister is not a job, it’s a lifestyle; there’s no clocking out. But it is […]
Book tackles all-things JA
January 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment
BEING JAPANESE AMERICAN, A JA SOURCEBOOK FOR NIKKEI, HAPA … & THEIR FRIENDS By Gil Asakawa (Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, second edition, 2015, 192 pages, $18.95, paperback) This is a great sourcebook for all things Japanese American. In addition to being a good reference, it likely will make the reader think about what being […]
By George…
January 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment
As Chizu Omori notes in her column (on page 9), the Japanese American wartime concentration camp experience has in fact been in the mainstream news for much of the year, most notably through the Nov. 8 Broadway debut of actor and activist George Takei’s “Allegiance.” The musical presents a fictionalized account of Takei’s family incarceration […]
When it comes to hatred and prejudice, it’s time to See Something Say Something
We live in anxious times. We probably always will. And I don’t say this lightly. I’ll never shake the memories of the times I sprinted out of my office in the Senate or rushed down the steps of the Capitol in panicked evacuation because planes had come too close and were possible terrorist attacks. Sometimes […]