Edna Horiuchi
@ednaihEdna Horiuchi is a retired Los Angeles teacher. She volunteers at Florence Nishida’s teaching garden in South LA and is active at Senshin Buddhist Temple. She enjoys reading, tai chi, and going to opera.
Updated June 2023
Stories from This Author
Celebrating June Kuramoto, Koto Virtuoso
Oct. 10, 2024 • Edna Horiuchi
On Saturday, October 19, the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) will hold an Arigato Event to honor June Kuramoto, koto artist and 2024 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellow. Kuramoto and fellowship recipients were recently honored at events at the White House, Library of Congress, and Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Since 1982, the NEA fellowship is the nation’s highest honor in folk and traditional arts and includes a $25,000 award. Fellowship recipients are nominated by the …
BTSD Holds Services for Imperial Valley Ancestors: A Longstanding Memorial Day Weekend Tradition
Sept. 10, 2024 • Edna Horiuchi
Editor’s note: Edna Horiuchi, a Sangha member of Senshin Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles, grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She moved with her parents to the Imperial Valley in high school and attended Central Union High School in El Centro and graduated from Calipatria High School in Calipatria. She also attended Imperial Valley Community College. Horiuchi shared the following reflections on the BTSD visit to the Imperial Valley on May 25. Light rain fell on Saturday morning, May 25, …
Meet Kenyon Mayeda: Bringing a Multigenerational, Multicultural Legacy to JANM
July 2, 2024 • Edna Horiuchi
Kenyon Mayeda is the new Chief Impact Officer for the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), a position which among other things, involves the daily running of the museum. He remembers early trips to the Manzanar concentration camp with his father, Mark Mayeda. It was before there was a museum, with some areas covered with broken dishes and trash. While returning to Manzanar as a child, Kenyon’s father would find empty shotgun shells and ammunition cases leftover from target practice. Although …
An Albuquerque Childhood
Nov. 3, 2023 • Edna Horiuchi
I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico during the 1960’s. My parents had grown up in Hawaii, confident in their Japanese American heritage. There was never any doubt in my mind that I was Japanese American, but I rarely saw people outside of my family who looked like me. During my early childhood, my Nikkei community consisted of my parents, younger brother, and a few others. We were the only Asian family in our neighborhood of tract homes, surrounded by …
In Their Own Voices: Understanding Heart Mountain through Oral Histories
Sept. 18, 2023 • Edna Horiuchi
The book Unforgotten Voices from Heart Mountain by Joanne Oppenheim and Nancy Matsumoto captures the emotions and everyday life during World War II at the Wyoming concentration camp. Presented in a reader’s theater format, the book uses primary-source materials from both inside and outside the camp to illuminate the lived experiences at Heart Mountain. Voices features first-person oral histories from both imprisoned Japanese Americans and the nearby townspeople. The book also includes official documents and letters from camp administrators and …
Eugenia “Jeanie” Kashima, First Topaz Baby
June 6, 2023 • Edna Horiuchi
She was the first baby born at the Topaz Concentration Camp in central Utah. The hospital was not completed yet, so her mother gave birth on a laundry room floor less than two weeks after their arrival in September 1942. A wooden food crate improvised for a crib. Her father was so grateful to the Nikkei doctor, Dr. Eugenia Fujita, that they named the baby after her. Eugenia “Jeanie” Kashima began a series of Topaz collages during COVID isolation. Her …
Navigating With(out) Instruments: traci kato-kiriyama’s art for love, hope, and healing
April 10, 2023 • Edna Horiuchi
It was only a year ago that artist traci kato-kiriyama (they + she) launched their second book, Navigating With(out) Instruments at a party in Little Tokyo on April 10, 2022. Navigating was named in Ms Magazine’s 2022 Poetry Roundup and in the 2021 L.A. Taco Book Guide, which recommends LA-centered books. traci is a queer, third/fourth generation Nikkei writer and performer. She said, “One of the questions I asked myself was what kind of conversations do I want to have …
Redress: A film about the Office of Redress Administration
Feb. 15, 2023 • Edna Horiuchi
For Emi Kuboyama there was “one story that has been haunting me in a way for decades.” Now that story has finally been told in the film Redress which was co-created by Kuboyama, a former ORA lawyer, and Todd Holmes, a UC Berkeley historian, in collaboration with filmmaker Jon Ayon. Redress is an educational short film about the Office of Redress Administration (ORA) and its relationship with the Japanese American community after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of …
Coronado Japanese community, a Tea Garden, and a Movie Star
Aug. 3, 2022 • Edna Horiuchi
Before World War II, there were sixteen Japanese families (including children, about 100 individuals) living in the resort town of Coronado on a peninsula in San Diego Bay, California. These were Issei who were mostly from Kagoshima, Japan and their Nisei children. Many of the Issei worked at the luxurious Hotel Del Coronado as gardeners, maids, or cooks, or at the nearby North Island naval base as cleaners or doing laundry. Shizue Koba was the only Coronado Issei woman who …
Nobuko Miyamoto: Giving Voice to Asian American Stories - Part 2
Feb. 9, 2022 • Edna Horiuchi
Read Part 1 >> On the influence of Reverend Mas Kodani of Senshin Buddhist Temple (in Los Angeles, CA): I believe one of the most influential people in my art making, actually. But when I came back here to be able to be at Senshin, Rev. Mas just openly gave me the key to the social hall without really knowing me that well. And trusted me. He said, "You could teach dance, you know. You could rehearse here." And that …
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