Japanese American Community Research Articles

The New Nikkei: Transpacific Shin Issei and Shifting Borders of Community in Southern California

Increasing immigration from Asian countries to the United States post-1965 and subsequent global transformations in local urban communities is well researched and documented. Less visible as a point of investigation are the parameters of contemporary Japanese immigration to the U.S. in the last 25 years and its effects on existing Japan America. This brief paper is a preliminary attempt to rectify the relative dearth of scholarly research on new Japanese arrivals and introduce several theoretical questions that can lead to further discussion. Who are shin Issei and what their motivations for leaving Japan? What are the outlines of their transmigrant lives in Los Angeles? Finally, what are the social tensions that arise with their presence in already established Japanese American communities in Southern California? It is argued that discussion on these issues can promote a framework for future research on the renegotiation and transformation of a shared Japanese American identity.

Liquid Walls: The Digital Art of Tamiko Thiel

You find yourself in a room, with rice-paper walls and bamboo mats, a Japanese house standing on stilts in middle of the sea. Wooden stairs lead down to the surface of the water, and on the water floats a boat. You descend the staircase and you are in the boat and you sail into the sea in this boat drawn by seahorses, as golden icons float upwards overhead like self-similar fractals, products of some iterated function system, or air bubbles from some invisible leviathan. You are Mariko Horo, Mariko the Wanderer, or you are seeing the world through her eyes, and the time is some point, or many points, between the twelfth and twentysecond centuries. You sail westward to a land that alternately appears as Paradise, Purgatory, Limbo, and Inferno; you reverse Marco Polo’s travels, discovering and dreaming Venice as an exotic Occident. Ghosts of Palladio and Dante haunt these islands, as do darker specters of a more recent past, of Vietnam and Abu Ghraib, of the Virgin Mary as Guan Yin, of Byzantine frescos and Tibetan tankas swirling in a fiery Court of Final Judgment. 1 Like her creation Mariko Horo, the digital artist Tamiko Thiel is a border-crosser and an explorer of virtual space. She recalls: growing up mixed race in the U.S.A. at a time when the media did not admit of non-white Americans. Although born in the U.S., my first memories are from Japan (where I lived from ages two–five . . .), and my first impressions of the U.S. were of a strange, empty land filled with tall, pale people. As a child, growing up outside the Japanese American community in a white, working-class neighborhood in Seattle, since I could not “see” myself in the images of America, I maintained that I was Japanese—until I turned fourteen, that Age of Enlightenment, and realized that I was not socially Japanese, would not fit into Japanese society and would not want to do so. 2

Imagining Community: Language and Literacy in Hisaye Yamamoto's "Seventeen Syllables"

The significance of language and literacy in "Seventeen Syllables" as a means of disrupting and transforming modes of apprehension has not been fully examined. Yamamoto's emphasis on crossgenerational language and cultural acquisition in the Japanese American community lends itself especially well to an analysis that incorporates Mary Louise Pratt's ideas about language as "a device, precisely, for imagining community." Pratt's ideas help to illuminate the situation that occurs at the end of "Seventeen Syllables" when Tome Hayashi forges community with her daughter Rosie through the story of her illicit past and the violence, heartbreak, and constriction of her present.

Effective Colorectal Cancer Education for Asian Americans: A Michigan Program

Asian Americans are among the fastest growing population groups in the USA. Despite the fact that colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common cancer for this group, Asian Americans have low CRC screening rates. An established health promotion program, Healthy Asian Americans Project (HAAP), expanded to include community-based CRC education during 2005-2006. Using Asian-language media, HAAP promoted awareness throughout local Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese American communities and recruited men and women over 50 years to attend health fairs at local community/cultural centers. Evaluation data from 304 participants in an evidence-based educational intervention showed significantly increased knowledge and attitudes about the importance of screening. Follow-up conducted between 6 and 12 months showed that 78% of those receiving the educational intervention had been screened in the last 12 months, compared with the 37% who had ever been screened with any of the tests prior to the study. This community-based health promotion program reached underserved populations and the educational intervention improved CRC screening rates. This and similar programs may help lower CRC mortality among Asian Americans.

Interning America’s Colonial History: The Anthologies and Poetry of Lawson Fusao Inada

Within the field of Asian American literary studies there are few artists and public intellectuals as influential yet understudied as the Japanese American poet Lawson Fusao Inada. He coedited with Jeffery Paul Chan, Frank Chin, and Shawn Hsu Wong the seminal Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974) and has published several books of remarkable poetry, including Before the War (1971), Legends from Camp (1993), and Drawing the Line (1997). In the specific study of Japanese American culture, his influence is even more pronounced. While impacting the shape of Japanese American literary studies via his work as an editor and anthologist for Aiiieeeee! and the subsequent collection The Big Aiiieeeee! (1991), Inada has also taken a prominent role in a number of different projects, from documentaries public memorials, addressing the history of internment and relocation during World War II. Such productions include work as narrator in the documentaries Conscience and Constitution (2000) and From a Silk Cocoon (2005), as a primary consultant for the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Portland, Oregon, and as editor for the anthology Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience (2000). Particularly compelling about this body of work is the way many of Inada's projects gravitate around not just the internment, but the specific resistance of Japanese American boys during the war: those men incarcerated, mostly at the Tule Lake Camp, for their responses the infamous Loyalty Questionnaire distributed in the camps. Specifically, the term no-no marks the refusal respond affirmatively the questionnaire's twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth questions regarding a willingness to serve in the armed forces of the United and swear unqualified allegiance the United States of America (Only 315). (1) Such an answer branded people as 'disloyal' in the eyes both of the US government and many in the Japanese American community (324). Inada's cultural production is indeed characterized by an effort write relocation, a phrase Gayle K. Soto uses describe his work as it attempt[s] reveal, critique, or subvert the racist ideology and devastating consequences of the wartime removal of Japanese Americans 'relocation centers' (139). Yet I would complement this characterization with the addendum that Inada is primarily concerned with writing, or anthologizing, no-no resistance: the stories of the men and their families, incarcerated for responses the Loyalty Questionnaire. (2) Inada's effort foreground this resistance is remarkable because it counters the dominant model through which the internment has been absorbed into national memory. As historian Tak Fujitani notes, since World War II, and increasingly with the emergence of the Japanese American redress movement in the 1980s, internment history has been closely aligned with the martial exploits of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a group of Nisei soldiers highly decorated for their wartime valor. By the 1990s, mainstream narratives of the war, whether voiced by leaders in government or carded in the popular media [from Life magazine CBS], fairly routinely at least mention Japanese American internment and military service. The problem with such official and pervasive memorials, Fujitani argues, is that they occlude enduring, yet also changing structures of racism in the postwar years (240). It is against this historical obfuscation and its attendant praise for the 442nd that I position Inada's work. In sharp contrast the celebratory, teleological narrative that registers the internment, as Fujitani points out, as a minor aberration on the path the promised land (245), much of Inada's work focuses on the shadowed historical figures such as the boys and their families. These internees, noted for their ethical stand against the violation of their civil liberties, and hence for their struggle against the federal government rather than for it (as in the case of the 442nd), have been overlooked, overwritten, and ostracized by dominant representations of the camps and, importantly, even by the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). …

Seeking the Truth, Spiritual and Political: Japanese American Community Building through Engaged Ethnic Buddhism

This essay documents the history of the Senshin Buddhist Temple in South Central Los Angeles, a Japanese American temple belonging to the Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) School. In the United States, ethnic Buddhists are generally perceived as socially conservative and politically passive, while convert Buddhists are known to be active in peace movements and social activism. The essay analyzes the reforms Senshin members introduced to the temple’s religious rituals and elucidates the development of new cultural activities and art forms, which not only contributed to the emergence of vernacular ethnic art and music, but also to the construction of a community of socially engaged Japanese American Buddhists. By opening their temple to members of local minority communities, Senshin Buddhists formed artistic and political coalitions with other peoples of color, harboring subaltern cultural activism, which transgressed national, racial, and religious borders, and defied hegemonic racial, gender, and class hierarchies.

“A Terribly Incomplete Thing”: <i>No-No Boy</i> and the Ugly Feelings of Noir

In its January 1956 issue, Reader's Digest published an article by Albert Q. Maisel titled Japanese Among Us, which offered an assessment of status of Japanese Americans in postwar years. The piece contended that while Japanese Americans had been subject to decades of discrimination that culminated in their wartime internment in West Coast detention camps, sacrifices, composure, and success of Japanese American soldiers, students, and entrepreneurs in 1940s and 1950s led to an amazing turnabout in their fortunes. Maisel argued that mid-1950s Japanese Americans were enjoying a prestige, a prosperity and a freedom from prejudice that even most sanguine of had never hoped to attain within their own lifetime (182). The improved status of Japanese Americans, article contends, can be traced to performance of Nisei soldiers in highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which had been assembled interned young men were asked to serve in military forces of same country that had incarcerated and their families. By middle of 1944, Maisel states, the conduct of evacuated Japanese and, above all, superb military record of Nisei had brought about a reversal in feelings of most other Americans toward them (192). The patriotic valor and dedication displayed by Nisei soldiers had galvanized public opinion, Maisel claims, and ensuing years saw gradual erosion of prejudice, as Japanese Americans returned to life outside camps and achieved remarkable economic and cultural success. As evidence of such success, Maisel points to achievements of a long list of individual Japanese Americans in agriculture, law, education, and business. Like many other articles about Japanese Americans in mass-market publications during postwar years, Maisel's essay claimed that anti-Asian prejudice was largely confined to past and that through their industry, patience, and patriotic commitment, Japanese Americans were rapidly entering American mainstream. (1) In painting such a picture, essay foreshadows model minority discourse that would come to shape public image of Japanese Americans in 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. (2) Given his aim of demonstrating both wartime loyalty of Japanese Americans and ultimately all-embracing and tolerant nature of American democracy (even as article's title enforces a divide between Japanese Americans and us), Maisel neglects to mention history of those interned Nisei who refused to serve in army, earning moniker because they responded negatively to two key questions on a government questionnaire administered to Japanese American men in camps. The postwar predicament of such no-no boys serves as focal point of John Okada's novel No-No Boy, published a year after Japanese Among Us appeared. The novel, which has become a canonical work of Asian American literature, complicates relentlessly upbeat thrust of Maisel's account by foregrounding emotional anguish of a no-no boy who returns from prison to find Japanese American community deeply fractured along lines of generation and military participation. However, extent to which No-No Boy challenges liberal, assimilationist ideology at heart of an essay such as Japanese Among Us has been vigorously debated. Critics such as Jinqi Ling have sought to discern novel's response to narrowly-conceived politics of national identity that dominated postwar years, when Cold War ideological drives toward U.S. nationalism and legitimation of material abundance promoted tendencies to embrace a common national character and a 'seamless' American culture (360). While Ling argues that novel rejects both wholesale assimilation and a diametrically opposed Japanese nationalism (374), Suzanne Arakawa more recently contends that Okada's text ultimately demonstrates virtual impossibility of resisting grand narrative of assimilation (191). …

The Pedagogical Process of a Japanese-American Shamisen Teacher

Abstract Using a participant-observer design, the researcher initiated a research project that sought to learn the pedagogical process in which a Japanese art music tradition of the shamisen continues to be transmitted through the Japanese-American community. Over a period of one year, the researcher collected data by participating in lessons himself, observing the lessons of other students, and conducting interviews with the teacher. The data was analyzed using ethnographic techniques, and focused on four themes, namely (a) the pedagogy surrounding the strum/pluck patterns of the instrument; (b) the transmission of language, rituals and culture surrounding the instrumental tradition; (c) analysis of the pedagogical techniques as per Schipper’s (1996) continua of holistic verses analytical, and orality verses notation; and (d) how the teacher have bridged the East-West cultural gap.

Performance Review Essay: Japanese Theatre in Los Angeles

Performance Review Essay: Japanese Theatre in Los Angeles Kevin Wetmore Jr. Shochiku Grand Kabuki—Chikamatsu-za. By Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Directed by Nakamura Ganjiro III. Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles. 22June 2005. Blood! Love! Madness!By Nakamura Kichizo, Kikuchi Kan, and Shimizu Kunio. Directed by Brent Hinkley. Ivy Substation, The Actors’ Gang, Los Angeles. 14October 2005. Hiroshima Maiden. Created by Dan Hurlin. REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre), Los Angeles. 5November 2005. In Mark Jacobson’s 1991 novel Gojiro,the eponymous lizard, clearly based on Tōhō’s Gojira(Godzilla), decides to attack and destroy Los Angeles, only to be defeated by the scope of the city: “It was the sprawl that did it, that L.A. whizzing by: the overwhelming sameness, the diffuse repetition. It dulled all passion, doused every fire. Ever spreading, the city was an amorphous sweep without a vital organ or center at which a determined Destroyer could aim . . . [I]n what amounted to a perfect defense against exactly the attack the monster envisioned, the town had no cherished emblem of itself beyond its very vagueness” (Jacobson 1991: 172). Unable to do to Los Angeles what it has done to Tokyo countless times, the monster instead capitulates to the seductions of the city and becomes a movie star. This scenario is a telling metaphor for many things Japanese that enter the City of Angels: unable to remain as they are and change the city, they change themselves and become part of the culture already present, an [End Page 159]assessment that holds true to varying degrees of three Japanese or Japanese-inspired productions in Los Angeles: one kabukifrom Japan, one an American production of three shingekiclassics, and an American fusion production utilizing bunraku-style manipulation and other forms of puppetry to tell the story of one of the Hiroshima Maidens. As with Gojiro,the American location in general, and the Southern California location in particular, transform the performance experience, sometimes to the benefit of performance and audience experience and sometimes to the detriment of both. (Interestingly, when Hollywood had the opportunity to remake the Godzilla story in its own image in 1996, it was to New York to which the giant radioactive lizard went, regardless that the West Coast was much closer to Godzilla’s Pacific origins. It was apparently much easier to attack Manhattan, filled with recognizable symbols, than Los Angeles, even in an American film). These productions are also unique in that they form a continuum of connection between East and West that require us to reevaluate what is meant by “Asian theatre” in general and “Japanese theatre” in particular, especially when performed outside the culture that produced them. What is it that makes a particular theatre Asian? The ethnicity of the performers? The culture of origin? The subject matter? The claims of the producers? If an American company performs a play set in Japan, about Japan, written by a Japanese playwright, with a multiethnic company for a multiethnic audience, is it solely an American play, or is the production inherently multicultural? The globalization of culture allows for American theatre artists to seize upon elements of both traditional and modern Japanese theatre and present them in new American contexts while making claims of authentic Japaneseness. For the purposes of this review, I am interested in how this “Japaneseness” is made manifest within productions, how it is marketed to American (specifically Southern Californian) audiences, and how, if at all, the stated authenticity is accurate. As part of their 2005 tour of the United States and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, the Shichiku Grand Kabuki performed in Los Angeles at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. Living National Treasure Nakamura Ganjirō III’s Chikamatsu-za presented Boshibari(Tied to a Pole) and Sonezaki Shinjō(Love Suicide at Sonezaki), the former being a dance play based on the kyōgenoriginal, adapted for kabukiin 1916 and the latter being one of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s (“Japan’s Greatest Playwright,” proclaims the program) best-known plays. Nakamura played the geisha heroine Ohatsu, a role he used to play opposite his father Nakamura...

The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII by Ellen Eisenberg

today's classes on the West. But that isaminor quibble. Who can saywhat Pomeroy might have included had he started this project at least tenyears earlier? Itmight be added thatPomeroy's chapter notes alone comprise a total of nearly 120 pages and are themselvesfilledwith additional comments and information. The book also includes an up-to-date supplemental bibliog raphyprepared by historian David M. Wrobel. An excellent index concludes thevolume and adds to itsenduring usefulness as an important reference tool. Though The American FarWest in the20th Century is an advanced and no-nonsense approach to thehistory of the region, itcould be read profitablyby anyone seeking in-depth knowledge of themodern West. The book belongs on the scholar's bookshelf along with theother landmarkpublications thathave done somuch to spur and advance thinking about the West. We are indebted toPomeroy, Etulain, Wrobel, Howard Lamar, who wrote the fore word, and Yale University Press forcollectively creating a highlyuseful and attractiveaddition to the Western history library. Carlos A. Schwantes University of Missouri-St. Louis THE FIRST TO CRYDOWN INJUSTICE? WESTERN JEWS AND JAPANESE REMOVAL DURING WWII byEllenEisenberg Lexington Books, Lantham, Md. 2008, Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 204 pages. $24.95 paper. Eisenberg's book recounts a story littleknown in standard works on Japanese American internment, namely the role of the Western Jewish community. Her thesis is simple: one would suppose that Jews,themselves thevic timsof discrimination, would have sidedwith the JapaneseAmerican community as itfaced discrimination and eventual internmentduring World War II. This was not the case, however, and herwork laysout the reasonswhy. Briefly,this work describes the Jewishcom munities in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The communities had worked hard to constitute themselves and had strong ties to one another, focused around the syna gogues and businesses. The passage of the Alien Land Laws and the National Origins Act of 1924, ending immigrationofAsians to America, were early signs of discrimination against Japanese Americans. Facing discrimination itself,the Jewishcommunity remained silentbefore these discriminatorymeasures. In thedays following PearlHarbor, the leading rabbi inSeattle urged his congregation to remain calm and be assured thattheUnited Stateswould ultimatelyprevail. JapaneseAmericans were more fearful. While only the Issei feared overt discrimination, the Nisei were cautiously optimistic. The Nikkei, relativelycalm, trusted their long tradition of loyaltyto the United Stateswould protect them. Some organizations, such as the American Civil LibertiesUnion, offered tentativesupport,but only a few came to theirdefense once Execu tiveOrder 9066 was announced and plans for removalwere publicized. The Jewishcommu nities, it should be noted, put great emphasis on their "whiteness," and this caused them to feel their "differentness" from the Japanese Americans. The Jewish community, being solidly behind thewar effortand supporting PresidentRoosevelt inallhiswartime measures to defeatNazi Germany, became overwhelm inglyanti-Japanese. There was some tendency to differentiatebetween the Japan-born Issei and the citizenNisei, butmost concluded the Japanese communitywould sticktogetherand sidewith Japan. Although the prewar years were crucial in the formation of ethnic communities, the year 1942was most significant in the shaping of attitudes between the two groups about internment.The attitude of the Jewishpress 472 OHQ vol. 107, no. 3 was critical. Instead of sidingwith theoutsid ers, the press chose to remain silent, not from ignorance but ratherfromdiscomfortwith the concept ofmass internment. Support for the war remained the primary sentiment. Exceptional individuals, however, do stand out for theiropposition to internment.They spoke forthemselves and not foranyorganiza tion.The makeup of the individual communi ties played a role.Where the Jewishand the Japanese American communities were physi cally close and people knew each other, there tended to be feelings of support for citizen Nisei. Personal ties and religious connections also helped forman opposition to internment. The Bay Area Fair Play Committee voiced strongopposition to internment; its member ship included college faculty and students as well as religious leaders.The ACLU did not for mally oppose internment,although a number of its members did. The Nikkei community in theBay Area was close to its white and Jewish neighbors,many ofwhom opposed internment and helped theirneighbors. Seattle had a large Nikkei population, and itsJewishcommunity members were individually sympathetic. Still, therewas no organized opposition to intern ment, although Christian groups such as the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) helped departing and returningNikkei. The...

“This Place Makes me Proud to be a Woman”: Theoretical explanations for success in entrepreneurship education for low-income women

Despite serving women who are socially and economically disadvantaged, and despite being chronically under-funded and short-staffed, Women’s Business Centers (WBCs) in the United States have been extraordinarily successful in helping women start businesses [Langowitz, N., Sharpe, N., & Godwyn, M. (2006). Women’s Business Centers in the United States: Effective entrepreneurship training and policy implementation. Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, 19(2)]. The purpose of this research is to determine the social mechanisms that explain the success of WBCs. Two theories are applied: the macro-theory of middleman minorities [Bonacich, E. (1980). The Economic basis of ethnic solidarity: Small businesses in the Japanese American community. Berkeley: University of California Press; Butler, J. S. (2005a). Entrepreneurship and self-help among Black Americans: A reconsideration of race and economics. NY: State University of New York Press; Butler, J. S. (2005b). Regional wealth creation and the 21st century: Women and “Minorities” in the tradition of economic strangers. Unpublished manuscript. IC@ Institute/Herb Kelleher Center. The University of Texas at Austin], and the microconcept of stereotype threat [Steele, C. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape the intellectual identities and performance of women and African-Americans. American Psychologist, 52, 613–629]. Through survey, focus group and interview data analysis, this study extends the application of middleman minority theory to capture gender solidarity and demonstrates the conceptual applicability of stereotype threat to professional identity. Techniques used by WBCs to engender intra-group solidarity and neutralize the stereotype threat experienced by many female entrepreneurs may be applied to a variety of educational and workplace environments to create “identity safety” for groups whose performance is at risk. Additionally, the methodology used here provides both qualitative and quantitative measurements that are readily transferable to other settings.

Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles by Laura Pulido. Race, Radical Activism, and the Third World Left

Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles by Laura Pulido. Race, Radical Activism, and the Third World Left

The battle for Los Angeles: racial ideology and World War II

World War 2 prompted many Americans to join an ongoing debate about the meaning of 'race'. Some argued that the United States was fighting against Hitler's racial ideology. Others insisted that a 'white' America was fighting a 'grasping, cruel and insanely ambitious race', as the 'Los Angeles Examiner' referred to the Japanese. This debate was especially notable in Los Angeles, home to the nation's largest Japanese American and Mexican American communities and to a large and growing African American population. Kevin Leonard follows this verbal 'battle for Los Angeles' immediately before, during, and after the war. Until late 1942, few people challenged the idea that 'race' determined how a person thought and behaved. After Pearl Harbour many of the city's leaders argued that all people of Japanese ancestry were racially Japanese and therefore loyal to Japan. This traditional racial ideology influenced the incarceration and removal of Japanese Americans from coastal areas. The 'Zoot-Suit Riots' of June 1943 forced many Los Angeles residents to question their beliefs about 'race'. Some community leaders argued that the belief that 'race' made some people prone to criminal behaviour had led to the rioting, in which 'white' sailors, soldiers, and civilians attacked young Mexican American and African American men. Elected officials agreed that traditional racial ideology had hindered the US war effort, and explicit statements of these beliefs about 'race' virtually disappeared from Los Angeles newspapers. The disappearance of such statements, however, did not lead to the end of racial discrimination. As the war ended defenders of discrimination frequently claimed that their opponents were Communists.

Pure beauty: judging race in Japanese American beauty pageants

With a low rate of immigration and a high rate of interracial marriage, Japanese Americans today compose the Asian ethnic group with the largest proportion of mixed-race members. Within Japanese American communities, increased participation by mixed-race members, along with concerns about overassimilation, has led to a search for cultural authenticity, giving new answers to the question, Who is Japanese American? In Pure Beauty, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O'Riain tackles this question by studying a cultural institution: Japanese American community beauty pageants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Honolulu. King-O'Riain employs rich ethnographic fieldwork to discover how these pageants seek to maintain racial and ethnic purity amid shifting notions of cultural identity. She uses revealing in-depth interviews with candidates, queens, and community members, her experiences as a pageant committee member, and archival research-including Japanese and English newspapers, museum collections, private photo albums, and mementos-to establish both the importance and impossibility of racial purity. King-O'Riain examines racial eligibility rules and tests, which encompass not only ancestry but also residency, community service, and culture, and traces the history of pageants throughout the United States. Pure Beauty shows how racial and gendered meanings are enacted through the pageants, and reveals their impact on Japanese American men, women, and children. King-O'Riain concludes that the mixed-race challenge to racial understandings of Japanese Americanness does not necessarily mean an end to race as we know it and asserts that race is work-created and re-created in a social context. Ultimately, she determines that the concept of race, fragile though it may be, is still one of the categories by which Japanese Americans are judged.Rebecca Chiyoko King-O'Riain is lecturer in sociology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Big Drum: Taiko in the United States

“Big Drum: Taiko in the United States.” Japanese American National Museum, 369 E. First St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Temporary exhibition, July 14, 2005–Jan. 8, 2006. 3,000 sq. ft. Sojin Kim, curator; Ronald Stroud, exhibition designer; Akira Boch, Masaki Miyagawa, and Ann Kaneko, director/videographer/editor of media arts pieces; John Esaki, producer/editor/video grapher of media arts pieces; Art Hansen, senior historian/oral history interviewer; Lisa Sasaki, education; Sabrina Motley, director of public programs; Vicky Murakami-Tsuda, Web editor. Internet: description of exhibition, history of taiko in North America, video clips, interviews, photo gallery, and related links <http://www.janm.org/exhibits/bigdrum> (March 6, 2006). Three and a half decades after the first Japanese drumming groups formed in the United States, the significance of taiko (Japanese drumming; or big drum) in Japanese American history has received public recognition from the Japanese American community. Over 800 people crowded into the Japanese American National Museum (janm) on the evening of July 13, 2005, to celebrate the opening of the exhibition “Big Drum: Taiko in the United States.” On that same day, the 2005 North American Taiko Conference opened at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (jaccc), attracting over 600 drummers from the United States, Canada, Britain, and Japan. Both the janm and jaccc are located in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo district.

Effects of Exercise and Nutrition on Memory in Japanese Americans With Impaired Glucose Tolerance

Type 2 diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), and associated hyperinsulinemia increase the risk for impaired verbal memory (1–3). In rodents, insulin resistance adversely affects brain structures that support memory (4). In humans, pharmacologic management of diabetes improves cognitive functioning (5,6). Weight loss and exercise decrease the incidence of diabetes (7,8). This study examined whether endurance exercise and dietary fat restriction would improve cognition in Japanese American adults who have a high risk for IGT and type 2 diabetes (9). Adults with IGT were recruited from the Japanese American Community Diabetes Study. Screening and diagnostic procedures have been described previously (10). Participants (15 active and 13 control) completed cognitive testing at baseline and at 6 and 12 months. Treatment was randomly assigned, and groups were equivalent with respect to baseline age ([mean ± SD] active 58.0 ± 9.7 and control 60.6 ± 9.0 years), BMI (active 24.7 ± 3.2 and control 26.7 ± 4.3 kg/m2), V o2max (active 29.5 ± 7.1 and control 27.4 ± 5.6 ml · kg−1 · min−1), and 2-h oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) glucose levels (active 9.4 ± 1.1 and control 9.4 ± 0.9 mmol/l). Active participants followed an American Heart Association step 2 eucaloric diet (total calories <30% fat, <7% saturated fat, 55% carbohydrate, and 15% protein). An exercise physiologist supervised walking or jogging on a treadmill three times weekly for 1 h. …

The National Park Service: Groveling Sycophant or Social Conscience: Telling the Story of Mountains, Valley, and Barbed Wire at Manzanar National Historic Site

Manzanar National Historic Site was established to protect and interpret the resources associated with the internment of Japanese Americans at one often War Relocation Centers during World War II. One of the many challenges facing the National Park Service (NPS) at Manzanar is determining how to tell the story of the internment. Opinions about the role of the NPS in managing and interpreting the site range from suggestions that the NPS needs to serve as the social conscience of the nation to cautions that the NPS not become a “groveling sycophant” to the Japanese American community. To address this issue, the park sought diverse forums to engage the public in the management of the site. This paper details how public engagement has affected a number of management decisions.

The National Park Service: Groveling Sycophant or Social Conscience: Telling the Story of Mountains, Valley, and Barbed Wire at Manzanar National Historic Site

Manzanar National Historic Site was established to protect and interpret the resources associated with the internment of Japanese Americans at one often War Relocation Centers during World War II. One of the many challenges facing the National Park Service (NPS) at Manzanar is determining how to tell the story of the internment. Opinions about the role of the NPS in managing and interpreting the site range from suggestions that the NPS needs to serve as the social conscience of the nation to cautions that the NPS not become a “groveling sycophant” to the Japanese American community. To address this issue, the park sought diverse forums to engage the public in the management of the site. This paper details how public engagement has affected a number of management decisions.

The Rainbow Model of American Ethnic Groups

The study represents an attempt to develop a theory of Japanese Americans in comparative perspective in relation to Americans at large and Japanese. I propose that Japanese Americans are the way they are because of their endogenous and exogenous factors: 1) ethno-religious heritage and 2) ethnic composition and social structure in the community. They are basically Americans, language-wise and as far as identity and loyalty are concerned. However, they maintain certain physical as well as ethnic heritages derived from their ancestral traditions. These include such institutions as religion, martial arts, food and a variety of hobbies to fine arts. This is carried on through organizational efforts of the Japanese American community in Hawaii. They constitute a color or two in the rainbow of colors represented in Hawaii. Hence, we propose the rainbow model of Japanese Americans in Hawaii.

Shirakawa: Stories from a Pacific Northwest Japanese American Community by Stan Flewelling

Shirakawa: Stories from a Pacific Northwest Japanese American Community by Stan Flewelling