Congratulations to Judge Bruce Iwasaki who was appointed to a judgeship in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Governor Jerry Brown on May 18. He is a former board member of the Japanese American Bar Association.
The photo below is from The Rafu Shimpo, taken by Mario Reyes. The very proud-looking woman to the right of Judge Iwasaki is his mother Sumi, who happens to be a long-time volunteer at JANM! To his left is his wife, Evelyn Yoshimura, a long-time staff member at the Little Tokyo Service Center. Both Bruce and Evelyn were part of the collective that produced Gidra magazine which was featured in our Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design & Activisim in Post-War Los Angeleslast year.
Also in the picture are his daughter Naomi and son-in-law Casey Eiseman.
The Japanese American National Museum will be closed on Tuesday, July 31, 2012 from 11AM to 2PM for a Staff Retreat. We will be open to the public from 2PM to 5PM with last admission at 4:30PM.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
For many Nikkei around the world, food is often the strongest and most lasting connection they have with their culture. Across generations, language and traditions are often lost, but their connections to food remain.
The Museum’s Discover Nikkei website has launched a project to collect and share stories about Nikkei food culture and its impact on identity and communities. We want to collect together as many diverse stories from around the world as we can, so we invite you to submit personal stories and essays, memoirs, academic papers, book reviews, and other prose genre.
All stories submitted for our Itadakimasu! that meet the guidelines will be published on Discover Nikkei as part of this series. In addition, our Editorial Committee will select their favorite articles per language to be featured and translated into our site languages! Some of the submitted stories will be selected to be published in various Nikkei newspapers and partnering organization newsletters around the world (including The Rafu Shimpo in Los Angeles, Peru Shimpo in Lima, and Nikkeiy Shimbun in São Paulo, Brazil) after the conclusion of the project.
We’ve already published 6 Itadakimasu stories online, and have received several more that we’ll be posting soon. They range from holiday food traditions to sushi therapy. The most recent story features 100th/442nd veterans, Jake Shimabukuro, and of course, food!
The deadline to submit stories to be included in Itadakimasu! is September 30, 2012 at 6pm (PST). That’s just 3 months away from today!
Please join us and share your favorite food stories on Discover Nikkei!
Jake Shimabukuro with 100th & 442nd veterans from Jayne Hirata's story, "Health, Happiness, and Bear Hanakuso with the Wine Gang"
Giant tempura from Silvia Lumy Akioka's story, "My gastronomic habits in Brazil" (Portuguese & English)From Jean Oda Moy's story, "Sushi Therapy" -- a touching story about the power of food memoryBen Arikawa's mother on their Fresno family farm. From his story, "Cooking Traditions with Mom"From Keiko Fukuda's story, 我が家の定番、県民食の鶏料理 (Japanese only)Plastic kagami mochi and sparklers from Laurie Iwami's "Soba, Firecrackers and Home"
We have so many dedicated & wonderful volunteers, without who we would not be able to do all that we do here at JANM. Every year, we honor our volunteers at our annual Volunteer Recognition Awards.
Mary Karasawa receives the Program Award from G.W. Kimura, JANM President/CEO. Mary was unable to attend the Volunteer Recognition event, so staff surprised her the following week.
On May 19, 2012, we honored our outstanding volunteers for 2011. All together, Museum Volunteers contributed a total of 33,800 volunteer hours from January through December 2011. Eight individuals even volunteered over 500 hours each!
During the awards program, Volunteer Service Year Pins were awarded. One Year pins went to: George Gonzalez, Sergio Holguin, Kyle Ishii, Nao Magami, MariAnne Nguyen, Pearl Punperk, Kihachiro Tajima, and Joy Takeuchi. Five Year pins went to Wayne Iwahashi, Terri Kishimoto, Carol Miyahira, and Mas Yamashita. Ten Year pins were awarded to Eiko Masuyama, Fred Murakami, Julia Murakami, Larry Oshima, Chieko Sakuno, Carol Takafuji, and Mitsuyo Tanaka. Fifteen Year pins went to Nancee & Roy Iketani, and Marge Wada. Twenty Year pins were presented to Kimiko Oriba, Bill Shishima, and Helen Yasuda.
Carol Miyahara received the 2011 Administration Award
After the service pins were presented, next came the presentation of the various outstanding award winners:
Administration Award: Carol Miyahira
Carol is an active member of the Organizational Support Committee and the Volunteer Leadership Council. She also assists with origami for school tours and with various volunteer activities.
Community Award: Glenn Oshima
Glenn helps out in the Hirasaki National Resource Center assisting visitors with access to the databases and other resources. He is also co-editor of Volunteerly Speaking, the volunteer newsletter, and helps out with the membership table at various events.
Sergio Holguin received the Lois & Elman Padilla Student Award
Program Award: Mary Karasawa
Mary is a long-time volunteer docent who leads tours of our Common Groundexhibition for school groups and other visitors.
Padilla Student Award: Sergio Holguin
Sergio began as a docent while still in high school. He continues to volunteer on weekends now that he’s in college. [Read his article on Discover Nikkei: Nisei? Sansei? No, I’m just a Gakusei]
Museum Family Spirit Award: Roy & Eileen Sakamoto
Roy & Eileen Sakamoto both contribute to the Museum in their own ways. Roy is a docent and a former chair of the Volunteer Leadership Council. He also coaches new docent trainees, and helps out wherever he can. Eileen volunteers in both Visitor Services welcoming guests to the Museum, and also in the Museum Store. [Check out their 30-second volunteer videos on YouTube: Roy Sakamoto – Citizenship Papers; Eileen Sakamoto – Baseball Team Photo]
Eileen & Roy Sakamoto received the Family Spirit Award
Miki Tanimura Award: Julia Murakami
The Miki Tanimura Award honors outstanding volunteers who have made exceptional contributions to the Museum. It’s always amazing to me that every year we honor someone totally deserving, and yet they are always completely taken by surprise. The twenty volunteers who make up this exclusive club are an incredible group of “all-stars” that have helped the Museum in enumerable ways with such dedication and modesty.
Julia Murakami is a worthy addition to this group. Although she works full-time, she helps out in so many different ways around the Museum. A former member of the Volunteer Leadership Council, she has taken charge of recruiting and mentoring many younger volunteers, especially on the weekends. She helped coordinate the Community Marketplace at the Museum’s 2008 National Conference in Denver; helped to develop guidelines for recruiting off-site volunteers to help with Discover Nikkei; is a regular volunteer in the Hirasaki National Resource Center; assists with entering in data for the Museum’s annual Gala Dinner; helps with administrative tasks for the Volunteer office; is currently assisting with Xploration Lab visitor surveys; and so much more.
Congratulations to all of the winners!…and thanks so much to all of our volunteers!
2011 Miki Tanimura Outstanding Volunteer Award Winner, Julia Murakami with past Tanimura award recipients, Kirby and Terri Tanimura, and G.W. Kimura
Photos by Russell Kitagawa, Richard Murakami, and Vicky Murakami-Tsuda.
Hello! I just finished reading through all of the previous interns’ entries, and it seems like fun. I guess I’ll try to revive the intern section of the JANM blog!
My name is Lawrence, and I’m transferring to Cal State University, Northridge, in the fall as an Asian American studies major. This summer, I’m one of eighteen interns who have been placed at a variety of different community-based organizations throughout California’s Japantowns (in Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Francisco) through the eight-week-long Nikkei Community Internship program. This summer, the program has placed me with both JANM and the Japanese American Bar Association (JABA), so while I’ll be contributing to the Discover Nikkei website in my capacity as the Discover Nikkei intern at JANM, but I’m also going to be researching and helping to preserve the legacy of pioneering Nikkei jurists in the local Los Angeles community for JABA!
The first two days of last week was the opening retreat for the Nikkei Community Internship (NCI), and even in those first two days, I got a chance to see how close-knit and interconnected the Japanese American community in Little Tokyo — and even the larger JA community beyond it — is. It’s so amazing and refreshing to see so many people working for their community in very real ways. I’m sure that, as the summer proceeds, I’ll continue to be impressed at the family-ness of the community here. I’m just glad to be a part of it this summer.
It’s only a week into my internship at JANM/JABA, and I’m really excited for the next seven weeks!
Went to the Dwell Expo at the LA Convention Center today. They used to have a Japanese section with intresting designers from Japan, so I never know what I might find. Unfortunately they did not have that international section this year, but I still made some relevant connections for the Museum Store, so it was worth the price of admission (which admittedly for me, at least, was free–non-trade folks have to pay admission.)
One of the people I met was the editor of an online craft and design magazine called Handful of Salt (handfulofsalt.com) Tomorrow they are sponsoring A JA artist who does very cool packaging. She will be incorporating tanabata wishes into hand-crafted bows for packaging tomorrow. Unfortunately I didn’t get the time (I think around 1 PM), but go to booth 1709 and they’ll know.
We published a wonderful series of five articles by Dean Ryuta Adachi on our DiscoverNikkei.org site about various artifacts from JANM’s permanent collection. Dean is a PhD candidate in American History at Claremont Graduate University and is an active volunteer at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose. I “met” him through the Discover Nikkei Twitter account several years ago and have kept in touch. When he found out that he would be down in Los Angeles last fall to be a lecturer of Asian American Studies at Harvey Mudd College, he offered to come in as a volunteer during his spare time.
Gift of Indiana Bessho (92.81.2)
Dean worked with Programs, Discover Nikkei, and Collections staff to go through some of the little-known collections in our archives, and then share about them through Discover Nikkei. Here are links to the five articles in the “Producing Japanese American History: An exploration through the JANM archives” series. They include images of various artifacts from the collections.
Part 1 – History is Made: Namyo Bessho
Did you know that there was an Issei in the US Navy during the Spanish-American War?
John Nitta played a significant role in the establishment of the chick sexing industry in the United States, but as Dean looked past the many awards in his collection, he found “plenty of unrelated hidden gems.”
Part 3 – History is Ignored: Estelle Ishigo
Estelle Ishigo was a Caucasian artist who went with her Nisei husband to Heart Mountain in Wyoming during World War II. She authored the book Lone Heart Mountain which included the drawings she did while in camp. She was the subject of Steven Okazaki’s Academy Award winning film Days of Waiting (1990). Yet, most of what we know is about her art. Dean’s exploration of JANM’s collection revealed artifacts that shared aspects about her personal life, and especially her deep love for her husband Arthur.
You may recognize the radio in part 4 from the American Tapestry exhibition. It is a beautiful shortwave radio, with a mysterious past that will most likely never be known. Left with Ramon “Mac” MacWilliamson by a Japanese American friend during World War II, he and his daughter always hoped to be able to return it the original owners after the war. After the story was posted on Discover Nikkei, Joyce MacWilliamson, the person who donated the radio to the museum, posted a comment, “Thank you for keeping hope alive that the rightful owner or his family will be found.”
Part 5 – History is Found: Sumi and Masao Shigezane
The final part of the series ended with a surprising connection to a UCLA student’s project on Discover Nikkei. His search through JANM’s archives started with James G. Lindley, project director of the Amache camp during WWII, and led to the Shigezane family.
I’d like to thank Dean for his work on unearthing and sharing these amazing stories. Many thanks also to Patricia Wakida who initiated this project, Yoko Nishimura for working so hard to get the stories online, and to JANM’s collections staff (Nikki Chang, Tomi Yoshikawa, Jane Nakasako, and Yoko Shimojo) for all their help in providing access and working with Dean during his time at JANM. Our CMA staff are the unsung heroes that work really hard behind-the-scenes at JANM!
I am deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of my dear friend—educator and activist Jim Hirabayashi on May 23, 2012. Jim will always hold a special place in the history and memories of Museum staff, volunteers, and leadership. As our dynamic and visionary Founding Scholar and Curator Emeritus, he established the philosophical foundation of the Museum that continues to guide our work today.
During the opening of the Museum’s landmark exhibition, America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience in 1994, controversy arose over the Museum’s use of the term “concentration camp.” As a Harvard-trained anthropologist, Jim was adamant that U.S. history be examined accurately without euphemisms, and argued that the term “relocation center” was actually a euphemism used by governmental officials to strip Japanese Americans of their basic constitutional rights (see Hirabayashi’s essay, “Concentration Camp” or “Relocation Center —What’s in a Name?).
In more recent years, Jim served as the Chief Project Advisor for the Museum’s International Nikkei Research Project, and was Co-Editor for one of the project’s resulting publications, New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan. At our 2008 National Conference in Denver, CO, Jim presented a dramatic reading on the complex choices faced by Nisei families during WWII from his piece, Four Hirabayashi Cousins: A Question of Identity.
The Museum and our community owe a great deal to Jim, who along with his late brother, Gordon, and now his son Lane, have devoted their lives to educating others by taking a stand for their principles with integrity and unwavering commitment.
Jim will be deeply missed for his remarkable wit, intellectual insight, charismatic spirit, and humble character. On behalf of the Museum family, I send our heartfelt condolences to the Hirabayashi family during this difficult time.
For more about Jim Hirabayashi, view clips filmed for Jim’s recognition at the Museum’s 2004 Annual Gala Dinner on our Discover Nikkei site.
—Nancy Araki
[Posted on behalf of Nancy Araki, JANM Director of Community Affairs and long-time personal friend of Jim Hirabayashi]
The Japanese American National Museum has once again been nominated in Downtown News‘ 2012 Best of Downtown Contest!
We’ve been nominated in 2 categories: Best Museum and Best Family Attraction for our Target Free Family Saturdays!
Help us win by going to votebestof.com and follow the instructions to vote.
Plus, if you vote for at least 30 categories (out of the 120 total), you automatically get entered to win prizes (grand prize: 2-night stay at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel that includes dinner for two at Sai Sai, $200 spending cash, dinner for two at Morton’s The Steakhouse, a $150 Ticketmaster gift card, and a Los Angeles Conservancy walking tour. Additional prizes: iPod Touch, cash prizes, gift certificates and more!).
You’ll need to log in to vote. If you have voted in previous years, you can use the same account.
