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: Japanese-American
In 1905, Cycling Brought Riverside Together but a Backlash Quickly Followed
by Genevieve Carpio
August 26, 2019
In 1905, cyclists gathered in Riverside, California, for an inaugural meet on a new racing track. About 60 miles inland from Los Angeles, Riverside was a heralded cycling center, home to one of the largest leagues of bicyclists in the state and to frequent regional cycling competitions, but this race looked unlike any other previously promoted in the region because the new track had been funded by the Riverside Japanese Association.
The association’s brand-new Adam’s Track was supposed to promote commerce …
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Born in Seattle in 1920, Harry Fukuhara Was Fully Bicultural, Bilingual, and Binational
By Pamela Rotner Sakamoto
January 28, 2016
When I first met Harry Fukuhara, in 1994, he was orchestrating a Tokyo press conference for Japanese Foreign Ministry officials, former Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, and veterans of the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The groups were there to commemorate the separate threads connecting them to the Holocaust. The Foreign Ministry officials were belatedly acknowledging a renegade consul, Chiune Sugihara, who had issued approximately two thousand transit visas to desperate Jewish refugees in Kaunas, Lithuania, when he was stationed …
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Post-WWII Gardens Like My Family’s Found Beauty in Stony Ground
By Kathy Nakagawa
January 14, 2016
When my high school orchestra teacher found out my family owned a Japanese flower garden in Phoenix, Arizona, he made a confession: He had once snuck into those fields. He stole flowers to propose to his wife. To this day, I meet other people who share with me equally vivid memories of the farms. One friend told me: “I would drive my mom there every weekend!” Although all of the flower fields are gone now, they’re still an important part …
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As a Top Japanese Gymnast, My Dad’s Future Was Laid Out for Him. He Opted for Adventure in the U.S. Instead.
By Erika Hayasaki
January 2, 2015
The letter that would change my father’s life—and eventually lead to his recent induction into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame—arrived in 1964, at his high school in Nara, Japan. Addressed to Yoshi Hayasaki, it was from an American.
My father, 17 at the time, could not make out a single sentence typed by Eric Hughes, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He asked a campus English teacher to translate. “It sounds like he is trying to invite …
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Facing Exclusion and Internment in the World War II Era, Boys and Girls From Seattle to San Diego Created Social Clubs Where They Could Dance, Play, and Belong
By Valerie J. Matsumoto
November 18, 2014
Fumiko Fukuyama Ide always loved to dance. Being a member of the Tartanettes, a club for Nisei (U.S.-born children of Japanese immigrants) girls in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, kept her dance card full in the 1930s. Ide grew up during the Great Depression, sewing her own clothes, darning her socks to make them last longer, and helping out in her father’s Little Tokyo hardware store. She was active in school clubs and edited the Belmont High School newspaper, but much …
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