Tim Asamen is the coordinator of the Japanese American Gallery, a permanent exhibit in the Imperial Valley Pioneers Museum. His grandparents, Zentaro and Eda Asamen, emigrated from Kami Ijuin-mura, Kagoshima Prefecture, in 1919 and settled in Westmorland, California, where Tim resides. He joined the Kagoshima Heritage Club in 1994, serving as president (1999-2002) and as the club's newsletter editor (2001-2011).

Updated August 2013

Ken House, a Senior Archivist with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at Seattle, grew up on Whidbey Island, Washington. He attended Western Washington University in Bellingham and holds a M.A. degree in Archival Studies and History. He is passionate about locating and making available archival records documenting the struggles of people in challenging circumstances. While an archivist at Weyerhaeuser Company, he researched and made presentations about the history of the Company’s Japanese American workforce. He lives in Tacoma and serves as the chair of the City Landmarks Preservation Commission.  

(Updated June 2013)

Satoru Ichikawa was born in November 1929 to a Buddhist minister and his wife in Fresno, California, the eldest of seven children. His family moved to Seattle in 1936 where he earned a BA in Commercial Art from the University of Washington. During World War II he faced imprisonment at the Minidoka WRA camp. Separated from his father for two years, Ichikawa finally rejoined him at Crystal City, Texas. Married with two children and two grandchildren, he has spoken to many schools about the camp experience. In his free time Mr. Ichikawa enjoys playing pickle ball and strumming in the Ukulele Band of Senior Retirees.

Updated October 2013 

Former President of Tsuda University. Former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Tsuda University. Formerly served as Professor at Tsuda University, Visiting Assistant Professor at McGill University, Visiting Professor at Acadia University, and Visiting Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2001, he received the Canadian Governor General's Award for International Canadian Studies from the International Council for Canadian Studies. In the spring semester of 2013, he was Visiting Professor at Bryn Mawr College.

His major edited works include Ethnic America: Searching for Coexistence in a Multicultural Society (3rd edition) (co-authored, Yuhikaku, 2011), Traveling Canada (co-edited and authored, Akashi Shoten, 2012), 57 Chapters to Understand Modern Canada (co-edited and authored, Akashi Shoten, 2010), The History of Japanese Canadians (University of Tokyo Press, 1997, winner of the Canadian Prime Minister's Publishing Award), Another History of Japan-U.S. Relations: Japanese Americans in Conflict and Cooperation (Yuhikaku, 2000), The People Who Supported Tsuda Umeko (co-edited and authored, Yuhikaku, 2000), and Trends and Bibliography of Immigration Research in Japan (I and II) (co-edited and authored, Akashi Shoten, 2007).

(Updated August 2013)

Tom Ikeda is Founding Executive Director of Densho and has conducted more than 200 video-recorded oral history interviews with Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. He also created classroom curriculum from these materials and helped design Densho’s award-winning website. Before founding Densho, Mr. Ikeda was a General Manager at Microsoft in the Multimedia Publishing Group. He has received numerous awards for his contributions in the humanities, education, and nonprofit sectors, including the Humanities Washington Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Public Humanities, the National JACL Japanese American of the Biennium Award for Education, and the Microsoft Alumni Foundation Integral Fellows Award.

Updated November 2013 

Born in Sacramento in 1922, writer and actor Hiroshi Kashiwagi spent his early years in Loomis, California. He was incarcerated at Tule Lake Segregation Center during World War II where he was defined as a “disloyal” for refusing to answer the loyalty questions. He renounced his U.S. citizenship and later worked with the Tule Lake Defense Committee and Wayne M. Collins to restore his citizenship. Since 1975 he has been speaking publicly of his incarceration experience. His poem “A Meeting at Tule Lake,” written while on a pilgrimage in April 1975, established him as a seminal voice among Nikkei concentration camp survivors.

He earned his BA in Oriental Languages from UCLA in 1952, followed by an MLS from UC Berkeley in 1966. Kashiwagi has worked as editor, translator, interpreter, and English language secretary at Buddhist Churches of America Headquarters; he has also served as reference librarian at San Francisco Public Library with a specialty in literature and languages. His publications include Swimming in the American: A Memoir and Selected Writings, winner of American Book Award, 2005; Shoe Box Plays; Ocean Beach: Poems; and Starting from Loomis and Other Stories. Notable acting credits include the play The Wash, produced at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco, and the films Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980, dir. Robert Nakamura), Black Rain (1989, dir. Ridley Scott), Rabbit in the Moon (1999, dir. Emiko Omori), and Infinity and Chashu Ramen (2013, dir. Kerwin Berk).

He passed away in October 2019 at age 96.

Updated December 2019.

(Author photo by Ben Arikawa)

Joy Kogawa was born in Vancouver in 1935 to Japanese-Canadian parents. During World War II, Joy and her family were forced to move to Slocan, British Columbia, an injustice Ms. Kogawa addresses in her 1981 novel Obasan. She has worked to educate Canadians about the history of Japanese Canadians and was active in the fight for official governmental redress. Ms. Kogawa studied at the University of Alberta and the University of Saskatchewan. Her most recent poetic publication is A Garden of Anchors. The long poem A Song of Lilith, published in 2000 with art by Lilian Broca, retells the story of Lilith, the mythical first partner to Adam. In 1986 Ms. Kogawa was made a Member of the Order of Canada, and in 2006 she was made a Member of the Order of British Columbia. In 2010 the Japanese government honored Ms. Kogawa with the Order of the Rising Sun "for her contribution to the understanding and preservation of Japanese Canadian history.” Ms. Kogawa currently lives in Toronto.

Updated July 2013

Juliet S. Kono has written two books of poetry, a short story collection, and several children’s books. She has been widely anthologized, most recently in Imagine What It’s Like, which combines literature and medicine. Her most recent book is Anshū, a historical novel about World War II, published in 2010. Ms. Kono has won several awards, most notably the American Japanese National Literary Award and U.S./Japan Friendship Commission Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship in 1999. In 2006 she won the Hawai’i Award for Literature. Born and raised in Hilo, Hawai’i, she now lives in Honolulu with her husband and teaches writing as an associate professor at Leeward Community College.

Updated September 2013 

Professor of English Language and Literature, Shirayuri Women's College. America is a "nation of immigrants" created by people from various countries who came to the country in search of a new frontier. He studies American culture from the perspective of "Japanese immigrants." He completed his master's degree in American History at the Maxwell Graduate School of History, Syracuse University. He specializes in American history and American studies, particularly Japanese American history, and has recently been excavating, preserving, and analyzing Japanese-language literature. He received the Shimizu Hiroshi Award from the American Studies Association for his book "Social History Surrounding Foreigners: Modern America and Japanese Immigrants." He has co-authored and edited books including "What is the United States of America: History and Present," "Reading America Through the Ages," and "An Invitation to American Culture: Learning about the Diverse America Through Themes and Materials."

(Updated August 2013)

The Honorable Norman Y. Mineta has had a career in public service that has been both distinguished and unique. For almost thirty years Secretary Mineta represented San Jose, California, first on the City Council, then as Mayor, and finally as a member of Congress. In 2000 he was appointed by President Bill Clinton as United States Secretary of Commerce, becoming known for his work on technology issues, for achieving international cooperation and intergovernmental coordination on complex fisheries issues, and streamlining the patent and trademark process. He was appointed Secretary of Transportation by President George W. Bush, a position in which he served until 2006. Following the horrific terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, Secretary Mineta guided the creation of the Transportation Security Administration—an agency with more than 65,000 employees—the largest mobilization of a new federal agency since World War II. He was also a vice president of Lockheed Martin, where he oversaw the first successful implementation of the EZ-Pass system in New York State. Currently, Secretary Mineta provides counsel and strategic advice to Hill+Knowlton Strategies’ clients on a wide range of business and political issues.

Updated October 2013 

Wayne Nakata was born and raised on Bainbridge Island.  He worked in his family's Town and Country store until 1981, when he left to pursue other interests, including being the family's historian.  He has revisited Manzanar numerous times on trips to California.

Update July 2013

Tamiko Nimura, PhD, is an award-winning Asian American (Sansei/Pinay) creative nonfiction writer, community journalist, and public historian. She writes from an interdisciplinary space at the intersection of her love of literature, grounding in American ethnic studies, inherited wisdom from teachers and community activists, and storytelling through history. Her work has appeared in a variety of outlets and exhibits including San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Magazine, Off Assignment, Narratively, The Rumpus, and Seattle’s International Examiner. She has written regularly for Discover Nikkei since 2016. She is completing a memoir called A Place For What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake.

Updated October 2024

Alan Nishio retired from CSU Long Beach after a career teaching in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and serving as Associate Vice President of Student Services. Within the community, Mr. Nishio was a founder and co-chair of the National Coalition of Redress/Reparations, an organization that played a significant role in the redress campaign for Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. He is also past President of the California Conference for Equality and Justice, a leading human relations organization in the state. Mr. Nishio’s current community involvement includes serving as President of the Board of the Little Tokyo Service Center, the leading Asian Pacific American community development corporation in the region. He is also a member of the Board of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and is active with the U.S.–Japan Council in their work with non-profit organizations in Japan.

Updated October 2013 

In 1993, Judge Omatsu was the first woman of East Asian descent to be appointed a judge in Canada. In the 1970s she began a law career centered around human & environmental rights. Her award-winning book, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience, narrates her personal journey as an active member of the redress movement. She has taught & lectured in Canada & abroad, worked for all levels of government, chaired the Ontario Human Rights Appeals' Tribunal, & was appointed to the Ontario Court of Justice in 1993.  In 2018, Judge Omatsu made the video, Swimming Upstream, that was awarded the MADA (Making a Difference Award) at the Toronto Community Film Festival in 2019. 

She is co–founder of the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers & was the first Canadian to receive the American National Asian Pacific Bar Association's Trailblazer Award (2013). Judge Omatsu was appointed to the Order of Ontario (2015). She has been named to the: Canadian Race Relations Foundation: Special Advisory Council (2018); the NAJC’s Steering Committee for B.C. Redress as co-chair (2018) & recipient of Ryerson University Honorary Doctorate of Laws (2019).

Updated February 2020

Greg Robinson, a native New Yorker, is Professor of History at l'Université du Québec À Montréal, a French-language institution in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of the books By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Harvard University Press, 2001), A Tragedy of Democracy; Japanese Confinement in North America (Columbia University Press, 2009), After Camp: Portraits in Postwar Japanese Life and Politics (University of California Press, 2012), Pacific Citizens: Larry and Guyo Tajiri and Japanese American Journalism in the World War II Era (University of Illinois Press, 2012), and The Great Unknown: Japanese American Sketches (University Press of Colorado, 2016), as well as coeditor of the anthology Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road (University of Washington Press, 2008). Robinson is also coeditor of the volume John Okada - The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press, 2018).

His historical column “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great,” is a well-known feature of the Nichi Bei Weekly newspaper. Robinson’s latest book is an anthology of his Nichi Bei columns and stories published on Discover Nikkei, The Unsung Great: Portraits of Extraordinary Japanese Americans (University of Washington Press, 2020). It was recognized with an Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in History Honorable Mention in 2022. He can be reached at robinson.greg@uqam.ca.

Updated March 2022

The Honorable Mary M. Schroeder served as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from December 2000 through November 2007, and she has been on that court since 1979. Judge Schroeder previously served on the Arizona Court of Appeals and practiced law in Phoenix. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Chicago Law School, and she worked as a trial lawyer in the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice. She is a recipient of the Arizona State Bar Association’s James A. Walsh Outstanding Jurist Award and the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award. Judge Schroeder regards the case of Hirabayashi v. United States as “the case of a lifetime,” which allowed the courts to help rectify one of our nation’s great wrongs.

Updated October 2013

Stanley N Shikuma is a writer, taiko (Japanese drum) artist, and community activist. He performs with Seattle Kokon Taiko and directs Kaze Daiko (a taiko youth group), and has also been a performer, composer, and percussionist on new opera, silent film scores, Butoh dance, and puppet theatre. As a social activist, Stan writes and lectures on Civil Rights, Japanese American history, and Taiko. Affiliations include work with the Tule Lake Pilgrimage, Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), Seattle Nisei Veterans Committee & NVC Foundation, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), Regional Taiko Groups-Seattle, and Taiko Community Alliance.

Updated June 2019

Professor Emeritus at Japan Women's University. Her field of research is Japanese American history. Her research topics include the Pacific War experiences of Japanese Americans on the West Coast, the Pacific War experiences of Japanese Americans in Hawaii, changes in Japanese society as seen in short poems by Japanese Americans in Hawaii, changes in the identity of Okinawan society in Hawaii, war brides and picture brides, etc. She has written many books and research papers. Her main books include Japanese Americans in the Pacific War (1995, Liber Publishing), A Social History of War and Immigration: Japanese Americans in Hawaii at War (2004, Gendai Shiryo Publishing), and edited The Path of Picture Brides and War Brides: Excavating the History of Female Immigrants (2009, Akashi Shoten).

(Updated August 2013)

Professor at the Faculty of Literature, Aichi Gakuin University. Specializes in American studies, particularly Asian American history and society. Graduated from Waseda University's Faculty of Literature, Arts and Sciences I, majoring in Western History. Received an MA in International Studies from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Graduate School. Received an MA in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Hawaii Graduate School. Major papers include "Japanese immigrants as seen through haiku and tanka (1930-1960)—Focusing on Hawaii Island" (2007), "The feelings of Issei women as seen through haiku, tanka, and senryu—A page in Hawaiian social history" (2008), and "Fuyokai: A Japanese American women's student association at the University of Washington and the US-Japan War" (2013).

(Updated September 2013)

Barbara Takei is a Detroit-born Sansei whose introduction to the Asian American movement in the late 60s was Grace Lee Boggs and the Detroit Asian Political Alliance. She puzzled over the missing stories of Japanese American dissent against the unjust incarceration for decades, but it wasn’t until her first Tule Lake pilgrimage in 2000 that she realized peaceful protest during WWII was erased by demonizing it as “pro-Japan disloyalty.” For the past two decades, she has served as an officer on the non-profit Tule Lake Committee and devoted herself to preserving Tule Lake as the site of Japanese American civil rights resistance.

Updated January 2023

Marla Williams is a documentary filmmaker and journalist; she directed, wrote and produced the public television documentary Aleut Story. She spent five years researching and filming Aleut Story. Marla lives in Seattle with her husband, Andy Ryan, and their dog, Gus.

Updated June 2013 

Eric K. Yamamoto is an award-winning, internationally recognized Professor of law at William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai`i. He is known for his legal work and scholarship on social justice, with an emphasis on redress for historic injustice; Professor Yamamoto also specializes in civil procedure and complex litigation. In 1984 he served as coram nobis Co-counsel to Fred Korematsu in the successful reopening of the infamous World War II Japanese American internment case. In April 2012 Yamamoto was appointed to a prestigious new professorship, The Fred T. Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice, in recognition of his teaching, mentoring, scholarship, and justice work.

Updated October 2013 

Holly Yasui is a freelance writer, editor, and translator (Spanish to English—tried to study Japanese at the university but couldn’t get the hang of it!) living in Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico. She was born in Denver, Colorado, received a bachelors degree in fine arts from the University of Colorado and a masters degree in communication arts  from the University of Wisconsin; and lived and worked in Seattle, Washington, before moving to Mexico. She is currently working on a tribute to Min Yasui to take place in 2016, the centennial of her father’s birth. She would greatly appreciate help from any readers who have materials, especially recordings (audio or film/video) of Minoru Yasui that they might be willing to loan for this project. Please contact her through Discover Nikkei at Editor@DiscoverNikkei.org.

Updated January 2014