Fábio Akamine is a graphic designer living in São Paulo. He is the author of the book "Agijabiyo!" , in which he recounts his experiences searching for his roots. In his spare time, he dedicates himself to organizing his family's collection of photos and documents, as well as researching and recording related stories. In 2024, in partnership with the Okinawa Prefectural Library, he held the exhibition "Uyafaafuji nu Michi" ("The Path of the Ancestors"), presented in Okinawa and Brazil.

Updated October 2025

Tatiana Aoki is a Brazilian journalist and a Sansei (third-generation Japanese). She lived in Japan in 2008, working in social media. She currently works in marketing for Japanese companies and institutions. She enjoys blogging in Portuguese and sometimes in English. A former Gaimusho Kenshusei and JICA scholarship holder, she believes in the diverse possibilities for exchange between Brazil and Japan and among Nikkei communities around the world.

Updated September 2025

Andrew Aoyama is the son of Sansei parents, the grandson of Nisei grandparents, and the great-grandson of Issei immigrants who came to the United States more than a century ago. He holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies with a minor in Japanese. His passions include learning foreign languages and photography, and he is currently studying his third language.

Updated October 2025

Sandra Mikesell Buscher is a lifelong writer who taught a class called “Capture the Moment in Words” in Bethel, Connecticut, for almost 30 years. Her class was designed to help others write their own stories. When students say, “No one in my family is interested in my stories,” she replies, “The person who will want to read your story may not be born yet.” That is the beauty of writing a story down—we can share it with future generations.

A hapa sansei (mixed-race third-generation Japanese American), Sandra is now working to preserve “Helper” stories with OurDebtofGratitude.org.

Sara is a Sansei, or third-generation immigrant. She grew up enjoying delightful snippets of conversation in English with her mother; in French with her father; and more recently in Japanese and Italian with her son. She works as an English teacher at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In her spare time, she learns Japanese language, literature, cuisine, culture and researches on immigration to gain a better understanding of her great-grandfather's history and background. These activities keep her connected with her beloved grandfather Oscar and her Nikkei identity.

Updated August 2025

Vivian Kay Clausing, a hapa Yonsei, grew up in Camarillo, California. She and her brother often traveled to Hilo, Hawaii to visit their Grandma Kay and aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived in Honolulu and Lihue, Kauai. She worked as a lawyer, educator, and director of a program for formerly incarcerated women. Now retired, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is seeking representation for HAWAII KINTSUGI a novel set in Honolulu during WWII and inspired by family history.

Updated September 2025

Sarah Moroi Damon is a student journalist and a second-generation Japanese American. Her mother immigrated from Tokyo in 2003. She has a deep love for history, philosophy, and classical music, drawing inspiration from both the past and the arts. Her gray cat, Balto, is always by her side, no matter what she writes. If she could, she would love to share a cup of coffee with Tchaikovsky, John Stuart Mill, Plato, and Natsume Sōseki.

Updated October 2025

Lucas Hatagima is a third-generation Nikkei (Sansei) living in Rio de Janeiro. He earned a degree in Business Administration from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a postgraduate degree in Marketing from ESPM, a private school specializing in advertising and marketing. He works as an analyst for a multinational company and is passionate about video games and the history of Japanese companies in the industry.

Updated October 2025

Alden M. Hayashi is a Sansei who was born and raised in Honolulu but now lives in Boston. After writing about science, technology, and business for more than thirty years, he has begun writing fiction and essays to preserve stories of the Nikkei experience. His first novel, Two Nails, One Love, was published by Black Rose Writing in 2021. His website: www.aldenmhayashi.com.

Updated September 2025

Amy “Emiko” Hever currently serves as the Executive Director of the MLB Players Trust, the charitable arm of the MLBPA where she works with and on behalf of the Major and Minor League Players to help amplify the impact they have for the causes and communities they care about.

A Hapa originally from New Jersey, she identifies as a Sansei on her grandfather’s side, and a Yonsei on her grandmother’s. A proud Tokyo International School of the Sacred Heart alum (ISSH), Amy has stayed connected to her Japanese roots and Japanese American heritage having previously served the Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and currently as an Advisory Committee member for the National Veterans Network (which serves to educate current and future generations about the extraordinary legacy of American WWII soldiers of Japanese ancestry), and a member of the US–Japan Council.

Updated September 2025

A Nisei native of Tupã, São Paulo State, he holds a Law degree, specializing in Labor Relations. Over the course of 50 years, he worked as an executive and entrepreneur​​ in the Human Resources field. A Business Consultant, he’s also a columnist for the newspaper Nippo Brasil.

Updated June 2017

Born in Hokkaido, Japan, Kiyomi Hiraoka now lives in Northern California with her husband, two teenage sons, and a dog. She works as an industry analyst for an IT research firm and also volunteers as the organizer of a Japanese working mothers group in the Bay Area.

Updated July 2025

Haylee Holiday is a student, advocate, speaker, and founder of Nori Co, a platform dedicated to wellness, healing, and empowerment through storytelling and education. As a Nikkei, she draws inspiration from her family’s history, including her grandmother’s resilience as a Nagasaki survivor. Her work explores identity, heritage, and the intersection of culture and chronic illness.

Updated August 2025

Born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1947. Worked in the field of education until 2009. Since then, she has dedicated herself exclusively to literature, writing essays, short stories and novels, all from a Nikkei point of view.

She grew up listening to Japanese children's stories told by her mother. As a teenager, she read the monthly issue of Shojo Kurabu, a youth magazine for girls imported from Japan. She watched almost all of Ozu's films, developing a great admiration for Japanese culture all her life.

Updated May 2023

Emi Kurogi Imasato is the daughter of Japanese Nisei immigrants and is 61 years old. She is married to Edson Kei Imasato and is the mother of Carine Naomi, Laís Hitomi, and Amílcar Shogo. For 30 years, Emi and her husband ran the home automation company Imagic Multimídia. After the pandemic, they moved to the countryside and are currently building tiny houses (mini chalets) and opening them to guests through the Airbnb platform. She loves studying philosophy, writing, listening to music, traveling, and raising her family.

Updated August 2025

Deborah Ishii is a retired teacher from Mississauga, Ontario. She grew up in Montreal, where she met and married her Japanese Canadian husband, Mark. For more than 50 years, she has been listening to, researching, and writing stories about the Japanese Canadian experience. Debbie and Mark live in Mississauga, where they raised their three children.

Updated October 2025

Since 1992, and after attending the 50th Commemoration of the incarceration of over 18,000 Japanese Americans in Poston, Arizona with her Nisei parents, aunts and uncles, Catherine Jo Ishino has been researching, writing, lecturing, and creating video oral histories and installations about their experiences during World War Two. Ishino also taught design for 25 years at York University and the University of Minnesota with her research focus on the Western stereotyping of East Asian design. Before her academic career, she worked in the TV news industry for 14 years, serving as the Art Director of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour at PBS, Creative Director and Consultant for independent video productions, and Lead Artist at CNN. 

For more information, please visit: her website, portfolio, vimeo.

Updated September 2023

Ellyn J. Iwaoka is a Sansei living in Chicago, Ill. She was the exception to her family who excelled in math and science. She was the creative maverick who worked in communications in the nonprofit sector. She is interested in storytelling and used her experience to honor her family’s legacy in their obituaries.

Updated October 2025

Dr. Robert S. Iwaoka was born and raised in Chicago, Ill. He practiced cardiology for thirty-seven years in Charlotte, N.C., where he and his wife, Elizabeth, raised three sons. They are both retired and spend much of their time participating in outdoor sports in the North Carolina mountains.

Updated November 2025

Roy Kakuda was born in Orange, CA and at age 2 was sent to the WWII Colorado River Relocation Center in Poston, AZ. Roy went to Hover Elementary School as part of the American Mexican integration program, a precursor to the black integration program. At Garden Grove High School, Roy witnessed the attempted integration of black student into that school. He has a BS in electronics from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Roy took over his father’s truck farm when his father came down with TB. Part of the farm land was leased from a settler who arrived by wagon train and was a charter member of the John Burch Society.

He is married. He retired from the Jet Propulsion Lab where he worked on the design of missions into space. After retirement Roy was a docent at Japanese American National Museum. He is an avid bicyclist.

Emi Kasamatsu is a Paraguayan Nisei, a researcher on Japanese immigration and gender, a graduate of the Bachelor of Arts and a Master's in Gender and Development from the National University of Asunción. Abroad, she took courses in Applied Anthropology; Research Methodology; Governance and Leadership; Social Feminist Economy; Ethics, Social Capital and Development; and Care Economy. She belonged to INRP (International Nikkei Research project). She gave numerous lectures on these topics.

Publications: Japanese Presence in Paraguay ; History of the Pan-American Nikkei Association ; Life Path in Bushido ; Evocations . In group: Encyclopedia of Japanese descent in America; New worlds, New lives; “When the East arrived in the Americas”; “Bicentennial of the independence of Paraguay (1811-2021)” and has appeared in numerous anthologies.

Distinctions: Decoration of the Rising Sun with Gold and Silver Rays, Red Cross of Japan, Academic of the Paraguayan Academy of History, Honorary President of the PEN Paraguay Center. Ambassador of Kagawa.

Last updated November 2024

Lynda Takagi Kovach is a yonsei writerand mom to two adult children – Katelyn and Jack. She actively volunteers with the Kansha History Project to support efforts to preserve Nikkei farming records. She resides in Virginia with her husband, two dogs, and two cats.

Susie Ling was born in Taiwan, raised in the Philippines, and has been teaching Asian American studies at Pasadena City College. She is collecting oral histories for the Pasadena Sansei Project along with Kansha Pasadena and the Pasadena Museum of History.

Updated September 2025

Jorge Malpartida Tabuchi was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1990. He is a journalist and writer, as well as a professor of creative writing and journalism courses at universities. Creator of the literature podcast Lector Beta , he is the author of Contra toda autoridad, menos... (Aletheya, 2024), a collection of short stories about punks, otakus, and UFO hunters. He also contributed to the Latin American science fiction anthology Otras formas de ser humano , published in Argentina by Compañía Naviera Ilimitada. He has published stories in the magazines El gran cuaderno (Argentina) and Espinela (Peru). (Profile image: Julio Angulo)

Last updated in October 2025

Ian Martyn is a Yonsei descendant of the Rohwer Incarceration Camp in Arkansas, where his mother was born. His great-grandparents emigrated from Ishikawa and Hiroshima prefectures. He earned a B.A. in Linguistics and Anthropology from UCLA in 2008 and an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from UC Davis in 2013. Ian spends most of his time composing, arranging, and recording music as a singer and multi-instrumentalist. His music has been featured in several video games and films, and his playing has appeared on recordings across several genres on streaming services. Outside of music, he enjoys learning languages, computer programming, nature, and genealogical research.

Updated October 2025

Shigeki Matsumura was born in Makurazaki, Kagoshima Prefecture, in 1942. He grew up in various parts of Kagoshima Prefecture due to his father's job transfers. After graduating from the Kagoshima University Faculty of Agriculture, he emigrated to Brazil in 1966, overcoming the objections of his parents and siblings. He worked in the states of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, and participated in the activities of the Kagoshima Prefectural Association and the local cultural association. He obtained Brazilian citizenship and is currently living on a pension in Diadema, a city neighboring São Paulo, where he enjoys writing as a hobby.

His family includes his wife, Elena Mitsue, his eldest son, Marco Shinobu, his eldest daughter, Andreia Maki, his third son, Rodrigo Makoto, and his second daughter, Mariana Aya. His second son, Andre Joe, died prematurely. 2026 will mark the 60th anniversary of his immigration to Brazil.

(Updated October 2025)

Hillary Moses Mohaupt (Macalester College ’08) earned a master’s degree in public history and is a freelance writer in the greater Philadelphia area.

Updtaed September 2025

James K. Mori resides on the property that was once his family’s farm. A widower, he enjoys spending time with his two adult children, Elena and Tony, two grandchildren, and great grandchild. He is also an avid history enthusiast.

Updated September 2025

Megan Mori is the daughter of Takashi Mori and the niece of James Mori. She grew up surrounded by the warmth of family and the beauty of her grandparents’ chrysanthemum farm, where she has fond memories of running between the flower rows. Today, she resides in California, where she remains close to her extended Mori family.

Updated September 2025

Graciela Nakachi Morimoto was born in Huancayo, Peru. At the age of four, her parents decided to live in Lima. She studied at the Jishuryo Japanese Primary School and at the “María Alvarado” secondary school. With a scholarship from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Virginia (USA), she obtained a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree with a major in Biology. She studied Human Medicine and Pediatrics at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) and completed a Master's degree at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Fellow in Pediatrics at the University of Kobe, Japan, she worked as a pediatrician at the Policlinico and the Centenario Peruano Japonesa Clinic. She was an intensivist pediatrician in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and head of the Emergency and Critical Areas Department at the National Institute of Children's Health (INSN) in Lima. She is a Senior Professor at the UNMSM Faculty of Medicine. Fond of reading, music and painting.

Last updated December 2023

Tania Neira Uejo was born in Lima in 1978. She is a Sansei editor. She holds a bachelor's degree in Peruvian and Latin American Literature from the National University of San Marcos, with master's degrees in Children's and Young Adult Literature and Reading Promotion. She has edited books on Peruvian intangible cultural heritage, the Nikkei community, and children's literature.

Last updated in September 2025

Growing up in the South Bay as the daughter to Shin-Issei and Nisei parents, Kaori Nemoto became intimately familiar with Nikkei grocery stores, outings to Little Tokyo, and the rhythm of the Japanese American community. She hopes to build on her understanding of Japanese American history through the 2025 Nikkei Community Internship program facilitating her joint internship with the Japanese American National Museum and the Japanese American Bar Association. Kaori graduated with a B.A. from Soka University of America this year, and she will be pursuing her J.D. at Georgetown Law School in the fall.

Updated June 2025

Nicolas Nishiyama Kitsutani holds a degree in Political Science from Ritsumeikan University (Japan). His academic background focuses on policy analysis, data analysis, and international relations. He has worked as a research assistant on projects related to politics, culture, and international relations in Japan, Indonesia, and Peru.

Last updated in October 2025

Yumiko Noriyuki is a hapa and indigenous queer artist out of Eugene, Oregon. Writing and film photography are two of their inherited passions from their parents. Yumiko hopes to continue writing and shooting to keep their family legacy alive. Yumiko has two amazing partners, three cats and a step dog.

Updated September 2025

Lorene Oikawa serves as Past President for the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) and Chair of the NAJC Heritage Committee. She is currently working on legacy projects to honour Japanese Canadians, evolving from her work on BC Redress as NAJC President. She is Vice President of the Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Interpretive Centre Society and is currently working on the memorial. She is a fourth generation Japanese Canadian and a descendant of survivors who first came from Japan in the 1800s and 1906 and endured the forced uprooting, dispossession, incarceration, and exile from 1942 to 1949.

Updated October 2025

Sachiko Okuda is a Japanese Canadian Sansei who was born in Verdun, Québec, but now lives in Ottawa, Ontario. Her parents, Hiroshi (Rosie) Okuda and Shima Umemoto, were interned in Tashme and Bayfarm, respectively. Sachiko is grateful to the Mata Ashita, intergenerational online writing circle for encouraging her to write down her family stories.

Updated October 2025

Born in 1955 in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. After completing the doctoral program at Waseda University Graduate School, he served as Professor in the Faculty of Global and Inter-cultural Studies at Ferris University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. His major publications include Studies in the Political History of Yokohama: Political Parties and Bureaucracy in a Modern City (2004), Seven Stories about Yokohama: History and the World as Seen from Our Region (2007), and A Study of Ōe Taku: A Life Dedicated to the Margins and the Grassroots (2023). He also co-authored Yokohama and the Foreign Communities: Lives in the Turbulent Twentieth Century (2015). In addition, he has contributed to municipal histories of Yokohama, Yokosuka, and other cities in Kanagawa Prefecture, and wrote a serialized newspaper column on the history of international exchange titled “The World within Yokohama: Contemporary History of Cosmopolitans” (Mainichi Shimbun, Kanagawa edition, May 4, 2018–July 12, 2019).

Updated October 2025

Meiry Mayumi Onohara received a degree in Letters and Accounting from the Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil, and she is currently a Master’s student in Accounting at the same university. She is a Nisei on her father’s side and a Sansei on her mother’s side. Her father is from Saga-ken and her mother’s family came from Kobe. She used to be a Portuguese language teacher, but today she manages the family business.



Updated May 2022

Karen Oshiro was born and raised in Hawaii Kai (formerly Koko Head), where she grew up under the care of her parents, who were dedicated farmers. She is a retired instructor from the Kapiʻolani Community College Occupational Therapy Assistant Program and now serves as a consultant specializing in ergonomics, home modification, and assistive technology.

Karen is passionate about oral history and genealogy. She is an active member of the OGSH Genealogy Club and the HUOA Yomitan Club, and enjoys gardening and sewing in her free time. She has presented on Okinawan women's oral histories at UH West Oʻahu and the HUOA Senior Fair. In 2023, she collaborated with Micah Mizukami of UH Oral History–Ethnic Studies on a Service Learning project and participated in a Brown Bags presentation focusing on the stories of Okinawan Issei, Nisei, and Kibei women.

Updated August 2025

J. Lisa Oyama enjoys gardening, ikebana, volunteering with various API organizations, and dancing when nobody is watching. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and dog, but will always be a Gardena girl at heart.

Updated October 2025

David Perley, a Yonsei, is a dentist practicing in Long Beach, CA. He has been involved in the Vashon Japanese Presence Project since 2015, which examines the history of the Japanese population on Vashon, WA, including their arrival, community integration, exile, and incarceration during World War II, and subsequent return to Vashon and other locations. He takes pleasure in researching family history, gardening, traveling, and watching the Dodgers.

Updated May 2025

Ava Sakura is a Gosei living in the Greater Toronto Area, where she’s finishing an undergraduate degree in writing. A deep dive into her family’s genealogy led her down a rabbit hole about Japanese Canadian history and public education in Ontario. She is committed to making underrepresented histories accessible and interesting, and her work on analyzing Japanese Canadian heritage won an Excellence in Storytelling award in April of 2025.

Updated May 2025

Shizue Seigel is a Japanese American Sansei born just after her family’s release from World War II incarceration. Her poetry, prose and visual art draw from lived experience in segregated Baltimore, post-Occupation Japan, California farm labor camps, skid rows and mental institutions, and Indian ashrams. As founder/director of Write Now! SF Bay, she supports writing and art by people of color through free workshops, events, exhibits, and publications supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council and others. Her nine books include the 2024 poetry collection Courting A Man Who Doesn’t Talk, In Good Conscience: Supporting Japanese Americans during the Internment (2006) and five anthologies of writers and artists of color. She has been published most recently in Panorama Journal, Journal X, and Porter Gulch Review.

Updated September 2025

John has been married to Mary Sunada for 40 years and he is a retired marine/fishery biologist for the State of California Department of Fish and Game. They have two sons, James and David. John has published a number of scientific papers relating to his research studies with the Department. He has been involved with volunteer work with the Cerritos Senior Center and the Nikkei Social Club. He is also a member of the Long Beach Coin Club. He along with his wife Mary enjoy fishing with their sons in the high Sierras.

Updated September 2020

Mary has been married to John Sunada for 44 years. They have two sons, James and David. Mary retired from the Los Angeles United School District after 36 years of teaching. She is a member of the Orange County Buddhist Church, Japanese American National Museum and the “Go for Broke” National Education Cent1er. Her interests are getting together with family and friends to fish, to dance, to travel and to dine. She has written many stories at DiscoverNikkei.org

Updated October 2024

Vânia Susaki is a third-generation nikkei, a sansei. She lives in São Paulo (SP) and lives in the same house her nikkei grandparents built before she even existed.

With a degree in Literature from USP and a postgraduate degree in Marketing and Social Media from FMU, she speaks four languages (Portuguese, English, Spanish, and Japanese), works as a Content Coordinator, and loves creating content, especially related to nikkei culture.

Chuck Tasaka was born in Midway, B.C., but he spent most of his life growing up in Greenwood, B.C., the first Japanese Canadian Internment site. Grandfather Isaburo lived in Sashima, Ehime-ken, immigrated to Portland, Oregon in 1893, then to Steveston and came with his wife Yorie to settle on Salt Spring Island in 1905.  They decided to return to Sashima permanently in 1935. Chuck’s father Arizo was born on Salt Spring Island but lived in Sashima during his youth. His mother was born in Nanaimo, B.C., but was raised in Mio-mura, Wakayama-ken. Chuck attended University of B.C. and became an elementary teacher on Vancouver Island. After retiring in 2002, Chuck has spent most of his time researching Japanese Canadian history and he is presently working on the Nikkei Legacy Park project in Greenwood.

Updated September 2024

1923年3月21日奈良県の生まれ、1932年家族と共にブラジルへ移住。農業に従事、のちサンパウロ市に移る。文芸に趣味を持ち、「コロニア文学」の創刊に参加、著書十数冊、幾つかに文芸賞を戴く、現在は隠居、102歳。

Elaine Werner has studied Japanese dance from age seven to the present. She graduated from Northwestern University in 1971 and moved to Oregon that same year. In the 1980s, she chaired the American Friends Service Committee’s Affirmative Action Committee for the Pacific Northwest as well as ODOT’s Minority Employee Forum.

Her theatre career includes local Portland productions in which she played roles such as a Latina cleaning woman, an Irish mother, a Taíno mother, a Chinese flower seller, a bird, a dog, and a chorus member and dancer in Pacific Overtures. She also worked as a stage manager and ran tech. She toured schools in two productions—one as a dog, and another as Sadako Sasaki’s mother in 1,000 Cranes.

Updated October 2025

Susan Yamamura was born in Seattle, WA in May of 1940. She and her family were sent to Camp Harmony, WA, and Camp Minidoka, ID in 1942. She graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1962. She first worked as a computer programmer at Space Technology Labs in Redondo Beach, CA and later at the Boeing Co in Seattle. Susan retired from managing a computer and graphics lab in the Chemistry Department at the University of Arizona in 1997.

She had a son with Hank Yamamura; Hank passed away in 2008. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.



Updated September 2025

Yuriko Rosa Lucero Yampufé Yabe is a yonsei, a descendant of Yoshi Yabe, originally from Fukushima Prefecture, from where she departed aboard the Anyo Maru, bound for the Tumán ranch in Lambayeque, Peru. From a young age, she showed a deep interest in her cultural heritage, reading, and writing, a bond she cultivated with her grandfather, Eduardo Yabe. She holds a degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management and a Master's degree in Foreign Language Teaching. She currently works as an English teacher and has contributed as an author to the collective book Nikkeidad: lo que converge en mí.

Last updated in October 2025

Pam Momoko Yan is a third-generation Japanese American and a fourth-generation native Angeleno. She can often be found in her garden or working hard to please her demanding cats. For the past few years, Pam has been on a deep-dive into her ancestry. Each time she goes online for clues, reaches out to living relatives, or inspects her family tree, she learns something new—her family tree continually growing with each discovery. She suspects these discoveries will continue throughout her lifetime.

Updated September 2025

Lillie Reiko Yano, daughter of Nitaro Hamaguchi and Maki Teramoto, was born on May 26, 1923, in Ruskin, British Columbia. She had an elder sister, Eunice Kinuye, and a younger sister, Rosie Akiye. Her childhood in the Fraser Valley was filled with happy memories and a strong sense of community. At age ten, she was elected Maid of Honour for Queen Victoria’s birthday celebration in Haney, becoming the only Japanese Canadian girl selected for the role.

During World War II, Lillie and her family were forcibly relocated to work in Alberta’s sugar beet fields. She married Roy Yano and had two daughters. After the family’s deportation to Japan in 1946, they remained in Alberta until relocating to Toronto in 1952. Roy passed away on December 8, 1980. Lillie lived with her daughter Lillian until her death on December 26, 2008.

Updated October 2025