On the first track of Nobuko Miyamoto’s brand new double album, “120,000 Stories,” the long-time musician and community activist sings these words from her Asian American Movement song, “We are the Children”: “Sing a song for ourselves. What have we got to lose?” After 50 years of using the arts to create social change and […]
Q-and-A with longtime activist and mentor Alan Nishio
May 7, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Editor’s Note: This Q-and-A-format interview was originally posted on the Manzanar Committee’s blog prior to the 2020 virtual Manzanar Pilgrimage. https://manzanarcommittee.org/2020/04/25/nishio-q Alan Nishio, who is the keynote speaker for our 2020 Virtual Manzanar Pilgrimage, was awarded the Manzanar Committee’s 2017 Sue Kunitomi Embrey Award for his leadership during the Redress Movement in the 1980s, along […]
American activist seriously injured in shooting in the Philippines airlifted back to SF
November 7, 2019 by Leave a Comment
A San Francisco man seriously injured in a shooting in the Philippines back in August is back home with his family after he was able to flee the country with the help of the U.S. embassy. San Francisco native and environmental activist Brandon Lee arrived at San Francisco International Airport on Oct. 25 after he […]
San Francisco poet and activist dies
June 7, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Peter Kenichi Yamamoto — a poet, community activist, volunteer and one of the last surviving tenants of the famed I-Hotel — passed away in San Francisco during the early hours of May 27, 2018. Yamamoto, who had just posted his final Facebook post beaming about having just met activist Angela Davis — a longtime hero […]
Longtime Chinatown community leader, activist dies at age of 68
September 29, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Longtime San Francisco Chinatown activist Rose Pak died Sept. 18 at the age of 68, according to city officials. Mayor Ed Lee said in a statement, “This is a great loss to the city as a whole, and the Chinese community in particular — a community that Rose served, supported and fought for, often fiercely, […]
Jerry Enomoto, first APA U.S. marshal, dies
January 21, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Jerry Enomoto, the first Asian American to head the California Department of Corrections and to be appointed as a U.S. marshal, passed away Jan. 17, 2016. He was 89. A lifelong civil rights advocate based in Sacramento, Calif., Enomoto and his wife Dorothy helped to organize local Martin Luther King, Jr. Day events. He served […]
Henry Miyatake: Seattle redress visionary
December 18, 2014 by 1 Comment
Within JACL circles, its Seattle chapter has always been known, with either admiration or disdain, as “the maverick chapter.” For that, they can thank Henry Miyatake. Henry was the troublemaker Japanese America needed. Without his persistent vision of petitioning for redress of grievances, the government would never have rescinded Executive Order 9066 in 1976, Seattle […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: A MAN OF PRINCIPLE: Robert Chino, civil rights activist, draft resister and veteran
January 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The New Year’s season is a special time for wrap-ups and updates. One interesting, if slightly frustrating, part of doing my Nichi Bei column is that my research does not stop with publication of a given essay. Instead, I continue to discover more information about the people I write about even after the pieces have […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Multiracial pacifist and activist, Yone Stafford
June 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
One of the more pleasant aspects of doing “The Great Unknown” is the responses that I get to my columns from readers, including friends and family members of the people whom I write about. They not only offer praise but provide additional information and inspire further work. Not long ago I did a column about […]
Aoki, the Activist and Intellectual
February 25, 2010 by Leave a Comment
“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 […]
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