Oliver Wang
@OliverWangOliver Wang is a professor of sociology at CSU-Long Beach and both the project curator of the 2025 JANM exhibition, Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community and author of Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles (Angel City Press). He is also the author of Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews of the San Francisco Bay Area (Duke Univ. Press, 2015), and since 1994, he has written regularly on music, food, and other pop culture for outlets including NPR’s All Things Considered, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and KCET’s Artbound. (Illustration by Ella Mizota-Wang)
Updated July 2025
Stories from This Author
Quarter-Mile Memories: Dane Matsubara On His Family’s Drag Racing Legacy
Oct. 7, 2025 • Oliver Wang
Dane Matsubara is the grandson of the late West Los Angeles drag racer, Sush Matsubara. Sush grew up in the Sawtelle neighborhood, working at local gas stations, before joining the wave of drag racing fanatics. In the mid/late 1960s, Sush was part of the (Joe) Mondello-Matsubara team that raced altered Fiat Topolinos. In the early/mid 1970s, he switched to racing funny cars with Joe Pisano, most famously in a yellow and red-flame 1974 Chevy Vega sponsored by the model toy …
The Miata Papa: Remembering Auto Designer Tom Matano
Sept. 30, 2025 • Oliver Wang
Tsutomu “Tom” Matano first arrived in Los Angeles from Tokyo in 1971 as a 22-year-old, initially interested in studying language as a practical fallback plan. As he explained to me in 2024, his thought process was, “if I go overseas, pick up a language, I could live as an interpreter or translator or tour guide or something. At least I gained another skill.” However, while taking his language classes, he met fellow students connected to the ArtCenter College of Design, …
Yoshio Shimazu: The Hot Rod Gardener of West L.A.
Sept. 23, 2025 • Oliver Wang
Yoshio Shimazu’s parents first came to West Los Angeles in the early 1900s, settling into a house one block east of Sawtelle Blvd., on Beloit Ave., in the era before half of the block was destroyed to build the 405 freeway. Yoshio grew up in the area, attending University High School, and was set to enroll at Trade Tech College just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor upturned the lives of his entire community. The Shimazus were first sent to …
The Speed Specialist: Nobu Oshiro
Aug. 26, 2025 • Oliver Wang
Born in Okinawa in 1937 and raised on Oahu, Nobu Oshiro spent his teen years in the mid-1950s working at Honolulu gas stations, pulling a graveyard shift for the Dole Pineapple company, and with whatever time he had left, taking his souped-up 1941 Chevy to race through plantation fields. “We used to go racing west of Honolulu in a pineapple or sugarcane field…I did a lot of racing. That’s all I cared about,” said Oshiro, who still carries traces of …
A Car Deferred: George Nakamura and The Meteor
Aug. 19, 2025 • Oliver Wang
One day in 1940, an 18-year-old George Nakamura—part of a Culver City truck-farming family—stumbled across a unique car for sale. Even amongst other innovative hot rod designs, this roadster stood out: long, tubular, and clad in hand-riveted aluminum panels, it resembled the fuselage of an airplane or, as photographer David Fetherston put it “a Jules Verne submarine.” The car even had a futuristic name: The Meteor. The hot rod was built in 1939 by Alfred Churchill, a West L.A. truck …
The World’s First Japanese Auto Race…in Los Angeles
Aug. 12, 2025 • Oliver Wang
When I describe Cruising J-Town to people, I usually mention that the project draws from “110-plus years of Japanese American car culture” and the reason for emphasizing 110 years (versus a more general “century-plus”) has to do with the oldest story we tell in both the exhibition and book: the August 8, 1915 “first Japanese auto race” held at Ascot Park, then in South Central Los Angeles. It’s serendipitous that Cruising J-Town's opening happened almost exactly 110 years after this …
“100,000 serviceable tires”: The Fresno Tire Fabrication of 1943
Aug. 5, 2025 • Oliver Wang
Author’s Note: This article was originally part of the WWII chapter of the Cruising J-Town book but was cut for length. However, it was a unique story about the role of cars during the WWII incarceration experience that hasn’t drawn much attention before. I wanted to keep it as a sidebar article via Discover Nikkei instead. There are many other stories that also highlight how, even behind barbed wire, cars/trucks were part of the Nikkei experience. —Oliver Wang * * …
Letter From the Curator of Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community
July 16, 2025 • Oliver Wang
“Where are our stories and histories about Asian Americans and cars?” For me, this question planted the seeds for the Cruising J-Town exhibition and book, decades ago. Back in the early 1990s, I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, taking Asian American Studies classes for the first time. I was excited to learn about our community histories as well as Asian American novels and movies I had never known about before. But when it came to the culture being lived …
Hikotaro Yamada—The Mystery Veteran Rediscovered
Aug. 1, 2024 • Oliver Wang
While working on the forthcoming Cruising J-Town exhibition, I came upon the photo of a WWI veteran in his naval uniform, arriving at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in April 1942. It’s a profound, powerful image; an American veteran being incarcerated by his government for no other reason than being of Japanese descent. The photo has been republished numerous times, including in JANM’s permanent display, Common Ground. However, for all its uses, I noticed the veteran was never identified by …
On the Road with the Atomettes
Nov. 6, 2023 • Oliver Wang
One summer in the early 1950s, a small group of young Nikkei women from the Sawtelle neighborhood of West Los Angeles squeezed into a Chevy Bel Air driven by Susan Uemura (née Hashizume). They were bound for Northern California and as part of their planning, the group picked one route in particular. “When we studied the map, we said ‘oh gee, there’s a road that goes right along the coast, that would be great,’” recalls Sadie Hifumi (née Inatomi). That …
Discover Nikkei Updates
Tuesday, December 9
Hosted by traci kato-kiriyama
Featuring Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, Erica Isomura, and Syd Westley
