Gil Asakawa is a journalist, editor, author, and blogger who covers Japan, Japanese American and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) culture and social justice issues in blogs, articles, and social media. He is a nationally-known speaker, panelist, and expert on Japanese American and Asian American history and identity. He’s the author of Being Japanese American (Stone Bridge Press) and his next book, Tabemasho! Let’s Eat! (Stone Bridge Press), a history of Japanese food in America which will be published in 2022. His blog: nikkeiview.com. 

Updated January 2022

Mieko Beyer currently resides in Los Angeles, California. She writes for Rafu Shimpo’s “Nikkei Entrepreneur Spotlight” a new bi-monthly feature series launched in 2018.

Updated October 2018

Merton Chinen retired from the State of Hawai‘i in 2020. He believes in family and is grateful for opportunities to support and learn about cultivating relationships, healing and peace. He is involved with the Prevent Suicide Hawaii Task Force, Hawai‘i Center for Attitudinal Healing, Community of Christ Church-Kalihi Congregation, and the Hawaii Forgiveness Project.

Updated May 2021

Kelly Fleck is the editor of the Nikkei Voice, a Japanese-Canadian national newspaper. A recent graduate of Carleton University's journalism and communication program, she volunteered with the paper for years before taking on the job. Working at Nikkei Voice, Fleck has her finger on the pulse of Japanese Canadian culture and community.

Updated July 2018

After graduating from International Christian University, Keiko Fukuda worked at a publishing company for an information magazine in Tokyo and moved to the U.S. in 1992. She served as Editor-in-Chief of a Japanese information magazine in Los Angeles until 2003 and transitioned to freelance work that same year. She conducted interviews with various people and reported on topics such as education in the U.S. and Japanese food culture. In 2024, she relocated her base to her hometown of Oita and has continued her reporting and writing online. Website: https://angeleno.net　

Updated October 2024

Warren T. Furutani has been a community activist for 50 years. In the late 60’s he worked in the APIA community and other communities of color around a multitude of civil rights and social justice issues. He is the co-founder of the Manzanar Pilgrimage and Committee.

He is also the first APIA elected to the Los Angeles Unified School District board of education(two terms, eight years), he was then elected to the LA Community College District Board of Trustees (three terms, ten years), and served in the State Assembly (three terms), where he chaired the APIA Legislative Caucus for three years.

On the school board he organized the first high school diploma ceremony for Japanese Americans incarcerated in camp during WWII. In the State Assembly he passed AB 37 that conferred honorary college degrees onto those whose educations were cut short because of camp and established Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution (AB 1775) for the State of California.

Updated May 2020

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

John Endo Greenaway is a graphic designer based out of Port Moody, British Columbia. He is also the editor of The Bulletin: a journal of Japanese Canadian community, history + culture.　 

Updated August 2014

Allison Haramoto is executive editor of the Pacific Citizen, the national newspaper of the Japanese American Citizens League. She can be reached at pc@pacificcitizen.org.

Updated August 2019

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

Enrique Higa is a Peruvian Sansei (third generation, or grandchild of Japanese immigrants), journalist and Lima-based correspondent for the International Press, a Spanish-language weekly published in Japan. He is the coeditor of the Japanese Peruvian Association (APJ) magazine, Kaikan.

Updated July 2024

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

Ricardo G. Hokama is a Nikkei born in Buenos Aires in 1968. He majored in journalism at the Argentine Catholic University, specializing in Radio and Television Production. Since his youth he has participated in leadership positions within the Japanese community in Argentina. Today, he is vice president of the Argentine Nikkei Center and the Argentine Center of Former Fellows of Japan.  He also is director of the press at the Argentine Nikkei Center and editor of Argentine Nikkei. Hokama produces and directs the radio program "Japan Today" on Palermo Radio of Buenos Aires.

Updated February 2023

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

Writer Norm Masaji Ibuki lives in Oakville, Ontario. He has written extensively about the Canadian Nikkei community since the early 1990s. He wrote a monthly series of articles (1995-2004) for the Nikkei Voice newspaper (Toronto) which chronicled his experiences while in Sendai, Japan. Norm now teaches elementary school and continues to write for various publications. 

Updated August 2014

The Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington (JCCCW) was founded in 2008 as a place to gather, preserve, and promote Japanese and Japanese American culture and History. Located in the historic Seattle Japanese Language School buildings (constructed between 1913 and 1920) the JCCCW preserves that legacy through many programs, activities, and public events.

Updated December 2020

Kenji C. Liu (劉謙司) is author of Map of an Onion, national winner of the 2015 Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize. His poetry is in American Poetry Review, Action Yes!, Split This Rock’s poem of the week series, several anthologies, and two chapbooks, You Left Without Your Shoes (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and Craters: A Field Guide (Goodmorning Menagerie, 2017). A Kundiman fellow and an alumnus of VONA/Voices, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, and the Community of Writers, he lives and eats east of LA.

Updated March 2017

Born in São Paulo, Tatiana Maebuchi is a third generation Japanese Brazilian on her mother’s side, and fourth generation on her father’s side. She is a journalist with a degree from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica in São Paulo, and has written for magazines, websites, and media marketing. She is also a travel blogger. As a member of the communications team of the Brazilian Society of Japanese Culture and Social Welfare (Bunkyo), Maebuchi helped contribute to the dissemination of Japanese culture.

Updated July 2015

Nisei Japanese-Argentine. In 1990, he came to Japan as a government-financed international student. He received a Master’s degree in Law from the Yokohama National University. In 1997, he established a translation company specialized in public relations and legal work. He was a court interpreter in district courts and family courts in Yokohama and Tokyo. He also works as a broadcast interpreter at NHK. He teaches the history of Japanese immigrants and the educational system in Japan to Nikkei trainees at JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency). He also teaches Spanish at the University of Shizuoka and social economics and laws in Latin America at the Department of law at Dokkyo University. He gives lectures on multi-culturalism for foreign advisors. He has published books in Spanish on the themes of income tax and resident status. In Japanese, he has published “54 Chapters to Learn About Argentine” (Akashi Shoten), “Learn How to Speak Spanish in 30 Days” (Natsumesha) and others. http://www.ideamatsu.com

Updated June 2013

Jane Shohara Matsumoto is currently the Culinary Cultural Arts Program Curator at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC). She has worked in the public sector for 25 years, primarily in public transporation implementing the TAP smart card, but her passion is in food—its history, science, and the preparation of many different types of cuisnes, especially Japanese foods. When she is not working, she is buried in food blogs, cookbooks, or simply cooking in her kitchen. She is an avid traveler and also loves to hike.

Updated January 2021

Tuney-Tosheia P. McDaniels is studying the effects of precipitation through the lens of Jungian Psychology. Precipitation can impact psychological well-being throughout the world, which is also often depicted in animation.

Updated October 2024

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

Julia Murakami is a Yonsei native Angeleno, the daughter of a Kibei Sansei Hibakusha father and a Shin-Issei mother. She's the Volunteer Program Manager and a Project Manager at JANM. Her most recent project is the exhibition Transcendients: Heroes at Borders. Prior to joining the Museum staff, Julia volunteered at JANM for 17 years in a variety of capacities.

Updated July 2020

Gwen Muranaka, Senior Editor, has been with The Rafu Shimpo since 2001. Prior to that, she worked in Tokyo at the Japan Times where she still contributes the weekly cartoon “Noodles.” She attended UCLA where she received a BA in English literature and also studied one year at Waseda University. Muranaka started in community newspapers as assistant editor at the Pacific Citizen.

Updated March 2021

Tamiko Nimura, PhD, is an award-winning Asian American (Sansei/Pinay) creative nonfiction writer, community journalist, and public historian. She writes from an interdisciplinary space at the intersection of her love of literature, grounding in American ethnic studies, inherited wisdom from teachers and community activists, and storytelling through history. Her work has appeared in a variety of outlets and exhibits including San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Magazine, Off Assignment, Narratively, The Rumpus, and Seattle’s International Examiner. She has written regularly for Discover Nikkei since 2016. She is completing a memoir called A Place For What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake.

Updated October 2024

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

Matthew Saito is currently a third year student at Loyola Marymount University, majoring in Finance and minoring in Philosophy, with an emphasis in Business Law. He plans to go to law school to work in either the civil rights or business law field. Currently, he's the Nikkei Community Internship (NCI) intern for the Japanese American Bar Association and the Japanese American National Museum. NCI is an internship program designed to allow interns to make their mark in the Japanese American community through their work in impactful projects, meeting of community leaders, and sharpening of professional skills. As an intern, he hopes to help the Japanese American community and gain the skills to make positive change within it in his future career.

Updated July 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

Immigrated to Canada in 1986. BA in Sociology from Waseda University. A freelance writer for the Japanese media; a regular columnist for Vancouver-based JCCA Bulletin and Fraser Journal since 2012. Former Japanese editor of the Nikkei Voice (1989-2012). Co-founder of the Katari Japanese Storytellers since 1994. Lecturer on the Nikkei history at various universities in Japan. His translation Horonigai Shori, the Japanese edition of Bittersweet Passage by Maryka Omatsu was awarded The 4th Canadian Prime Minister Award for Publishing in 1993.

Updated March 2020

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

Mary Adams Urashima is an author, government affairs consultant and freelance writer living in Huntington Beach. She created HistoricWintersburg.blogspot.com to generate more awareness about the history of the Japanese in Orange County, including stories of an area in north Huntington Beach once known as the Wintersburg Village. Urashima is chairing a community effort to preserve the century-old Furuta farm and Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission complex, named to the “America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places” list in 2014 and designated a “National Treasure” in 2015 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Her book, Historic Wintersburg in Huntington Beach, was released by History Press in March 2014.

Updated April 2016

Terry Watada is a Toronto writer with many publications to his credit including two novels, The Three Pleasures (Anvil Press, Vancouver, 2017) and Kuroshio: the Blood of Foxes (Arsenal Press, Vancouver, 2007), four poetry collections, two manga, two histories about the Japanese Canadian Buddhist church, and two children’s biographies. He looks forward to seeing his third novel, The Mysterious Dreams of the Dead (Anvil Press), and fifth poetry collection, The Four Sufferings (Mawenzi House Publishers, Toronto), released in 2020. He also maintains a monthly column in the Vancouver Bulletin Magazine.

Updated May 2019

Duncan Ryūken Williams was born in Tokyo, Japan to a Japanese mother and British father. After growing up in Japan and England until age 17, he moved to the U.S. to attend college (Reed College) and graduate school (Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in Religion). Williams is currently Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages & Cultures and the Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture and former Chair of USC’s School of Religion. Previously, he held the Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair of Japanese Buddhism at UC Berkeley and served as the Director of Berkeley’s Center for Japanese Studies for four years. He has also been ordained since 1993 as a Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition and served as the Buddhist chaplain at Harvard University from 1994-96. His latest book is American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019).

Updated July 2020

Sharon Yamato is a writer and filmmaker in Los Angeles who has produced and directed several films on the Japanese American incarceration, including Out of Infamy, A Flicker in Eternity, and Moving Walls, for which she wrote a book by the same title. She served as creative consultant on A Life in Pieces, an award-winning virtual reality project, and is currently working on a documentary on attorney and civil rights leader Wayne M. Collins. As a writer, she co-wrote Jive Bomber: A Sentimental Journey, a memoir of Japanese American National Museum founder Bruce T. Kaji, has written articles for the Los Angeles Times, and is currently a columnist for The Rafu Shimpo. She has served as a consultant for the Japanese American National Museum, Go For Broke National Education Center, and has conducted oral history interviews for Densho in Seattle. She graduated from UCLA with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English.

Updated March 2023

Jonathan van Harmelen is a historian of Japanese Americans. He received his PhD in history at University of California, Santa Cruz in 2024, and has been a writer for Discover Nikkei since 2019. He can be reached at jvanharm@ucsc.edu.

Updated August 2024