Asian Americans call for multiracial solidarity at first-ever unity march

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Approximately 15,000 people gathered June 25 at the National Mall here for the first-ever Unity March, organized to draw attention to the dramatic spike in hate crimes against the Asian American Pacific Islander Community. The enthusiastic young crowds gathered against the backdrop of the Capitol Building in the sweltering humidity of a […]

Bio of Issei journo shines

A REBEL’S OUTCRY: BIOGRAPHY OF ISSEI CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER SEI FUJII (1882-1954) By Kenichi Sato (Los Angeles: Little Tokyo Historical Society, 2021, 231 pp., $60, hard cover) Prior to reading this book, my knowledge about prominent Issei lawyer/journalist Sei Fujii derived from two starkly contrasting experiences. The first of these was co-authoring with Ronald Larson […]

A “consequential” collection of JA history

THE UNSUNG GREAT: STORIES OF EXTRAORDINARY JAPANESE AMERICANS By Greg Robinson (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020, 294 pp., $29.95, paperback) This is the second of two outstanding books by eminent historian and journalist Greg Robinson consisting primarily of his “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great” columns in the San Francisco-based Nichi Bei Weekly. […]

DISSENT: Stephen Miller’s white supremacy should alarm JAs

New ColumnPart of a host of new editorial features funded by a grant from The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, the Nichi Bei Weekly is proud to announce the launch of a new civil rights-oriented column, “Dissent,” written by New York-based ACLU attorney Carl Takei, a native of Sacramento, Calif. The Washington Post recently […]

Layoffs by community legal center spark controversy

LOS ANGELES — The sudden decision by one of the nation’s leading Asian American civil rights and legal services organizations to lay off 19 of its employees on Oct. 7, because of what it stated was a financial crisis, has led to protests by the staff and former employees amid accusations that the organization had […]

TULE LAKE ICON PASSES: Hiroshi Kashiwagi was a noted poet, playwright, author, actor and symbol of wartime resistance

When Hiroshi Kashiwagi was born in a boarding house in Sacramento, Calif. on Nov. 8, 1922, no one imagined that he would become a successful activist, writer, playwright, actor, and a poet of such regard that he would be known as the “Poet Laureate of Tule Lake.” Although his first book, “Swimming in the American: […]

Hugh Macbeth Jr., advocate of Japanese Americans, dies at 100

Hugh Macbeth Jr, who died Sept. 14, 2019 at the age of 100, was an extraordinary figure, both in who he was and in what he represented. On a personal level, he was a distinguished lawyer and judge — a prime member of a generation of African Americans who achieved mainstream success, despite the formidable […]

Text ‘enrichens’ knowledge of Asian Americans in the South

A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South By Stephanie Hinnershitz (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2017, 296 pp., $39.95, hardcover) In “A Different Shade of Justice,” Stephanie Hinnershitz details the struggles for equality by ethnic Asians in the American South. For more than a century, Asian laborers […]

Japanese Americans say ‘never again’ to plan to detain migrant children

LOS ANGELES — Japanese Americans who claim the Trump administration is repeating the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, will on June 22 protest the detention of young migrants who were taken into U.S. custody after crossing the border from Mexico with no legal status. The Fort Sill army base in Lawton, […]

Symposium examines wartime scars

More than three quarters of a century since the forced removal and incarceration of some 120,000 people of Japanese descent in American concentration camps, the Japanese American community still has not fully recovered from the trauma. The day-long event entitled “A Community Fractured: Compliance & Resistance” explored the rifts within the Japanese American community that […]