Marco Carrasco Villanueva is a Peruvian economist specialized in Asia-Pacific Economies (China and Japan) and Behavioral Economics. Economist graduated from the University of San Marcos (Peru), Master of Research in Economics and Psychology from the University of Paris 1 - Sorbonne (France), Young Sinologist from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (China). Disciple of Professor Carlos Aquino, and one of the founding members of the ASIA Group. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, pursuing postgraduate studies in International Development at Harvard University (United States).

Last updated September 2019

Linda Cooper is a communications consultant and freelance writer with more than 30 years of experience as a public relations practitioner, U.S. Senate press aide and journalist. She holds a BA in journalism and political science from Mississippi University for Women. Cooper resides in Tennessee with her husband. Her best friend Brenda is a retired registered nurse and lives nearby with her family.

Updated October 2024

Born in Toronto, Dr. Jonathan Eto is a Sansei Japanese Canadian that works professionally as a chiropractor in Mississauga, Canada. He volunteers his time by actively taking photos and writing articles for the Nikkei Voice and as the team chiropractor for the OHL Mississauga Steelheads.

Updated June 2019

Ryan Ford is a third generation Japanese American and a graduate of CSU of Sacramento with a BA in Psychology. He is a resident of El Dorado County, CA for 48 years and an independent researcher/historian of the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony as well as Japanese history in El Dorado County.

Updated September 2019

Javier García Wong-Kit is a journalist, professor, and director of Otros Tiempos magazine. Author of Tentaciones narrativas (Redactum, 2014) and De mis cuarenta (ebook, 2021), he writes for Kaikan, the magazine of the Japanese Peruvian Association.

Updated April 2022

Dwight Gates is a retired U.S. Army Officer and Japanese American Veteran’s Association member. His wife Cathy is the granddaughter of B.G. Kendall Jordan Fielder. The couple live in Maryland.

Updated July 2019

Margaret Edith Chiseko Ginoza is a mixed-race descendent of Okinawan immigrants. Raised in Southern California, she is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY and current MD/MPH candidate at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida. Her interests include circus arts, mixed-race identity, baking, scientific ethics, and spending too much time on the internet.

Updated June 2019

Otis Wright Ginoza is a third generation Okinawan-American. A graduate of University of California, Santa Cruz and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he made his career in urban planning and city management before retiring to focus on ceramic pottery, California native plants, traveling, and spending time with his wife and daughters.

Updated June 2019

Andrew Hasegawa is a fourth generation Japanese Australian. His great grandfather Setsutaro Hasegawa (長谷川 節太郎) immigrated to Australia in 1897. In everyday life Andrew is an Australian but on the other hand he is a proud Nikkei Australian. From a young age he has had a keen interest in his heritage that at the age of twenty took him to Japan. The quest to know who he was and why his great grandfather came to Australia had become a driving force in his life.

Having lived many years in Japan these days he devotes himself to researching the stories of other Japanese who immigrated to Australia. The Canadian project “Past Wrongs Future Choices” has provided Andrew with an opportunity to share his knowledge as a scholar in residence writing a paper about a Nikkei Australian who used a writ of habeas corpus to remain in Australia and avoid being deported. For Andrew research isn’t work rather a voyage of discovery and opportunity to share knowledge.

Updated October 2024

Sergio Hernández Galindo is a graduate of Colegio de México, where he majored in Japanese studies. He has published numerous articles and books about Japanese emigration to Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

His most recent book, Los que vinieron de Nagano. Una migración japonesa a México (Those who came from Nagano: A Japanese migration to Mexico, 2015) tells the stories of emigrants from that prefecture before and after the war. In his well-known book, La guerra contra los japoneses en México. Kiso Tsuru y Masao Imuro, migrantes vigilados (The war against Japanese people in Mexico: Kiso Tsuro and Masao Imuro, migrants under surveillance), he explained the consequences of conflict between the United States and Japan for the Japanese community decades before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

He has taught classes and led conferences on this topic at universities in Italy, Chile, Peru, and Argentina as well as Japan, where he was part of the group of foreign specialists in the Kanagawa Prefecture and a fellow of the Japan Foundation, affiliated with Yokohama National University. He is currently a professor and researcher with the Historical Studies Unit of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Updated April 2016

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

Edna 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

Michael Hosokawa was born in Portland, Oregon in 1940. Currently he is Senior Associate Dean at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. His daughter Ashlyn lives in Grand Rapids, MI and son, Michael, lives in Houston, TX. Grandchildren Emily and Sean are both students at Texas A&M.

Updated June 2019

Fuyiko is the granddaughter of Kiyoshi Kuwahara, who immigrated to South America in the early 20th century. Fuyiko was born in Iquique, Chile, and for the past 32 years she has been living in Canada. Her university studies in Chile led her to become a midwife and she was an active leader of the Society of Midwives of Iquique. After immigrating to Canada, she began a new career in the visual arts, choosing painting as her second profession. Lately, and to her surprise, she has discovered that she also loves to write and hopes to continue writing more about her Japanese roots.

Updaded September 2019

Born in Cunha, SP, 55 years old (06/14/1964), he is a History teacher and photojournalist since 1989.

Updated September 2019

Marta Marenco was born the youngest of eight children in 1945 to Tatsuzo and Esther Tomihisa. Her father died when she was about to turn nine years old. Her mother was a descendant of the Genoese. They lived in northern Argentina, eventually emigrating to Buenos Aires with her brothers and sisters to find jobs and raise families. Her husband is Argentine, a veterinarian. They have two children living in Mexico and are now enjoying retirement.

Updated September 2015

Keiko Moriyama is a Sansei born and raised in Los Angeles. She recently retired from a career in technology marketing and plunged into the world of travel writing. She was the Discover Nikkei 2019 Nima-kai Favorite with her essay, My Father Was a Tule Lake Resister. Her essay on Morocco was published in an anthology, Deep Travels: Souvenirs from the Inner Journey. As an avid traveler, she enjoys blogging about her adventures and is currently obsessed with exploring Tokyo neighborhoods. She currently resides in Las Vegas with her husband and orange tabby. 

Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Updated April 2020

Iraci Megumi Nagoshi was born in São Paulo in 1952. She is the youngest daughter of Masaru and Miyoko Fujisaka. Although her father died while she was still a baby—1 year and 8 months old—she had a very happy childhood and adolescence. In addition to her brother Luiz, she has two sisters, Amália and Noemia, and many Oni-chans and One-chans—i.e., Dona Miyoko’s boarders.

Updated September 2017

Roberto Oshiro Teruya is a 53-year-old Peruvian of the third generation (Sansei); his parents, Seijo Oshiro and Shizue Teruya, both came from Okinawa (Tomigusuku and Yonabaru, respectively). He lives in Lima, the capital of Peru, where he works in the retail clothing business in the city's downtown. He is married to Jenny Nakasone and they have two children Mayumi (23) and Akio (14). He has a deep interest in continuing to preserve the customs inculcated by his grandparents, including cuisine and the butsudan, and hopes his children will do the same.

Updated June 2017

Naori Shiraishi was born in 1999 in Tokyo. During her second year at Tokyo Gakugei University Senior High School, she studied abroad at the Atlantic College in England as a United World College student and graduated from there. Currently, she is a first year at Kyoto University Law School.

Updated October 2019

Sumōru Maunten (pen name) is a Yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese American). He graduated from law school in May 2019 and has successfully passed the Oregon State Bar Exam. He current works as a lawyer for the Oregon government. His hobbies include haiku and studying Japanese.

Updated September 2019

Beverly Sugimoto attended Pacific High School in San Leandro and went on to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley in English. She taught high school English at Kern Valley High School from 1975-76. After marrying Stan Sugimoto in 1976, they both graduated from business school at UCLA, after which Beverly worked in sales for IBM as a Marketing Representative from 1980 to 1988, when she retired to raise their two sons.

Updated September 2019

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

Kayla Tanaka is the 2019 Nikkei Community Internship intern at the Japanese American Bar Association (JABA) and the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). Over the summer she has primarily been interviewing and researching people who have made impacts in the Japanese American community. She is currently attending the University of California, Riverside and is going into her fourth and final year.

Growing up in Torrance, CA always gave her a place to blend with the JA community, but it was not until this internship opportunity that she got a chance to dive deeper into her family and cultural background. She has a sincere appreciation for the opportunities and knowledge that LA’s JA community (and leaders) have provided for her. In the future, Kayla hopes to pursue a career in law where she hopes to have a positive impact on different minority communities.

 Updated July 2019

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

Sansei whose paternal and maternal grandparents were from the town of Yonabaru, Okinawa. She now works as a freelance translator (English/Spanish) and blogger at Jiritsu, where she shares personal stories and research on Japanese immigration to Peru and related topics.

Updated December 2017

Kyomi Vargas Hoshi was born in Lima in 1996. She is a cat lover, linguist, singer, and fourth-generation Nikkei. She studies linguistics at the Catholic University of Peru. She serves as the spokesperson of the Youth Department of the Japanese Peruvian Association and Perú Niigata Kenjinkai. She also loves to sing and often performs at Nikkei community events with the Kumamoto Karaoke Club, or with her band, Bentobox.

Updated September 2019