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https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/1267/

A Pleasant Past

I’m very happy to have been part of the beginning of VC, Visual Communications, the fact that it’s still around; has gone through many changes, but basically I think it’s fulfilled a basic need within the Asian American community, so I have to say, that’s one of the things that I’m very proud of, happy with.

So I guess advice to myself was, we should have even pushed further in the directions we wanted to go. We took little detours from the path of our goals, so I think the advice to myself and advice to other people is to just do it.


Asian American movement communities Visual Communications (organization)

Date: Aug 16, 2011

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Alexa Kim

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Born on July 5, 1936, in Venice, California, to an Issei father and Nisei mother, Robert Akira Nakamura left a successful career in photojournalism and advertising photography to become one of the first to explore, interpret and present the experiences of Japanese Americans in film. His ground-breaking personal documentary, Manzanar (1972), has been selected for major retrospectives on the documentary form at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Film Forum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

A graduate of Art Center College of Design (BFA, 1966) and the UCLA Department of Motion Picture & Television Production (MFA, 1975), where he recently retired as a Professor, Nakamura has garnered over 25 national awards for his innovative and evocative films, including Wataridori: Birds of Passage (1975); Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980), Moving Memories (1992), Something Strong Within (1994), and Looking Like the Enemy (1995).

In 1970, Nakamura founded Visual Communications where he continues to serve as a member of the Board of Directors. He also founded the UCLA Center for Ethnocommunications in 1996, and the Media Arts Center of the Japanese American National Museum in 1997.

Nakamura was the first recipient of the annual Steve Tatsukawa Memorial Award in 1985 for outstanding achievement and leadership in Asian American media, and, in 1994, the Asian Pacific American Coalition in Cinema, Theatre & Television of UCLA, instituted the “Robert A. Nakamura Award” in his honor to recognize outstanding contributions of other Asian Pacific American visual artists. In 1997, the Smithsonian Institute presented a retrospective of his work and in 1999 he was named to the Endowed Chair in Japanese American Studies at UCLA. (August 2012)

Kristi Yamaguchi
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Kristi Yamaguchi

Support from the Japanese American community

(b.1971) Professional figure skater and Olympic gold medalist.

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Lorraine Bannai
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Lorraine Bannai

Heightened awareness of identity as a Japanese American

(b. 1955) Lawyer

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Kathryn Doi Todd
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Kathryn Doi Todd

Opening Up Shop in Little Tokyo

(b. 1942) The first Asian American woman judge

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