Sept. 7, 2021 Dear Topaz Museum Board President Jane Beckwith and Board Members Lance Atkinson, Scott Bassett, Lorelei Draper, Rick Okabe, Hisashi Bill Sugaya, and Teresa Thompson: The U.S. Department of the Interior has designated the Topaz Relocation Center (“Topazâ€) as a National Historic Landmark (NHL), the nation’s highest and most coveted historic status. Topaz […]
Wakasa Memorial Committee ‘stunned’ by Topaz Museum Board’s ‘crude and unprofessional’ unearthing of monument
September 16, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Tribute to Jan Mirikitani
September 2, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Jan died on my birthday. She called me while I was still in the hospital. “How ya doing?†I poured my heart out. (I’d been there nearly a month!) For over an hour she listened, comforted. You know how she is. Then she said, “Bren, I have some bad news … I know how much […]
A declaration for peace
August 19, 2021 by Leave a Comment
The atomic bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, were small and rudimentary nuclear weapons, only 10 and 12 kilotons respectively. Yet they reduced these once beautiful cities to complete ashes and caused unspeakable human suffering, killing nearly a quarter of a million people instantly and leaving those who survived […]
Why Tule Lake matters
July 8, 2021 by Leave a Comment
In this post-Trump, post-Stephen Miller era where social media has brought to the fore the systemic racism that permeates U.S. society, it is time to see Tule Lake for what it was. Tule Lake had nothing to do with loyalty or disloyalty. That’s just government propaganda, perpetuated by the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). What […]
Folding the origami crane
May 13, 2021 by Leave a Comment
It is belie(ved) that if you fold 1,000 origami cranes one’s wish will come true. It takes hours to fold that many and string them on a streamer. The crane is also considered to live 1,000 years. It symbolizes good fortune, longevity and peace, and represents hope and healing … during such challenges, especially the […]
Tips for navigating Japanese learning online
April 15, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Learning Japanese is hard. Unlike English there are multiple alphabets plus character sets. Online learning can make what would normally be challenging seem overwhelming. Don’t despair, a few tips gleaned from experience can reduce the stress of learning Japanese. The default technology, Zoom, is far from a friction free learning environment. Let’s start by taking […]
My tsuru
January 21, 2021 by Leave a Comment
I am a member of Tsuru for Solidarity. I am not an activist, nor am I a trained artist, but I have painted 12 large tsuru (paper cranes) of various sizes. I paint because it gives me pleasure and a way to express myself. Last year, like many Japanese Americans, I began by folding hundreds […]
The virtual Nikkei
January 1, 2021 by Leave a Comment
To call this past year “unprecedented†is the understatement of all understatements. But as we noted in the commentary at the onset of the pandemic — “Navigating the new normal†(March 26, 2020) — “we are a resilient community, which fought racist immigration laws, endured our wartime incarceration and rebuilt our lives from scratch after […]
A life lesson from John Lennon, in Japantown
December 17, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Sadness and sorrow. Dec. 8 was the 40th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. Here’s my story on meeting him: I was a young teen in the summer of 1973, hanging out at Paper Tree, when in walks John and Yoko. They smiled at my folks as they wandered through the store, bought some postcards, then […]
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Wakasa monument unearthing a ‘slap in the face’
To All Concerned, Despite the personal request of a decades long financial supporter of the Topaz Museum to fund a ceremonious, archivally professional excavation of the long buried stone monument, Jane Beckwith (Museum Director), the very next business day, hired her trash haulers to dig up and move it to her private museum. That personal request […]