The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) has planned a community celebration on Angel Island on Saturday, July 31. Entitled “Reflections/Renewal: A Tribute to Angel Island Immigrants,†the program will take place from 11 a.m. to noon and focus on the experiences of diverse immigrants who came through the Immigration Station. AIISF also will use […]
History
Angel Island to commemorate 100th anniversary of Immigration Station
July 29, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Untold stories of Tule Lake Segregation Center unveiled at pilgrimage
July 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment
The 2010 Tule Lake Pilgrimage had the apt theme of “Sharing the Untold Stories of Tule Lake,†as more former Tuleans participated in the four-day pilgrimage, many for the first time. Close to 330 people participated in this year’s pilgrimage on the Fourth of July weekend, with more than 60 of them over the age […]
PARTING SHOTS: Ranko Yamada, Catalyst of the Free Chol Soo Lee Movement
January 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment
CATALYST OF A MOVEMENT — (Left to right): Ranko Yamada, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi and journalist K.W. Lee at a 2002 reunion. photo courtesy of K.W. Lee It doesn’t take a village or a celebrity to launch a movement. It takes only a person. In the 1950s, it took a humble, tired […]
PRESERVING OUR JAPANTOWNS: History Forgotten, Isleton’s Japantown
January 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment
ISLETON, Calif. — Unfamiliar with the Sacramento Delta region but lured by Japantown lore and a faint recollection of actor-comedian Pat Morita claiming his roots in Isleton, my family and I visited the riverfront town. Driving the two blocks of Main Street, we easily found Chinatown with its distinctive architecture and remnants of Chinese characters […]
An Unharmonious History Revisited
January 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment
CAMP HARMONY: SEATTLE’S JAPANESE AMERICANS AND THE PUYALLUP ASSEMBLY CENTER By Louis Fiset (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009, 232 pp., $25, paperback) Many readers are probably familiar with Louis Fiset’s previous works, especially “Imprisoned Apart.†He has produced another important work on a subject long ignored perhaps because of the temporary nature of the […]
Documented: From Exile to Release from Concentration Camps
January 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment
MOVING IMAGES: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration By Jasmine Alinder (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009, 232 pp., $40.00, paperback) With the advent of digital, cell, and even laptop cameras, we snap endless images knowing that we can just transport them to a worldwide audience or merely delete them into cyberspace without a second […]
UC Berkeley’s Honorary Degree Ceremony a Time to Reflect
December 17, 2009 by Leave a Comment
For most of the approximately 400 students who participated in the University of California Berkeley’s Dec. 13 winter graduation ceremony, the day represented the beginning of an exciting future as college grads. However, for a select group, the day marked a bittersweet end to a painful chapter in their past. Forty-two of the approximately 500 […]
Forum Examines Death and Rebirth of JA Press
December 10, 2009 by Leave a Comment
A few dozen community members gathered at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC) in San Francisco’s Japantown on Dec. 6 to discuss the state of the community’s Japanese American newspapers. The forum — co-sponsored by the Nichi Bei Foundation, the Japanese American National Library, the National Japanese American Historical Society and […]
Honored: 67 Years Late, UCSF Awards Nikkei with Diplomas
December 10, 2009 by Leave a Comment
On Dec. 4, Edith Oto received a degree from the School of Nursing at the University of California San Francisco. She also turned 90. The Napa native was one of the 68 former UCSF students who was granted an honorary degree almost 68 years after Executive Order 9066 derailed her education. Diplomas were handed out […]
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My Life as a Crusader
I am Ruth Shigeko Ishizaki (formerly Hirose) and I was born and raised on our family’s 80 acres of orange groves in Richgrove, California in the southern San Joaquin Valley, northeast of Delano, at the base of the Sierra Mountains. Since our orange grove was east of the California Highway 99 dividing line, called the […]