Karleen C. Chinen

In April 2020, Karleen Chinen retired as the Editor of The Hawaii Herald after 16 years of leading the semimonthly publication that covers Hawaii’s Japanese American community. She is currently writing a book chronicling Hawaii’s Okinawan community from 1980 to 2000 titled, Born Again Uchinanchu: Hawai‘i’s Chibariyo! Okinawan Community. Chinen previously served as a consultant to the Japanese American National Museum and was part of the Museum team that took its traveling exhibition, From Bento to Mixed Plate: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Multicultural Hawaii, throughout the neighbor islands of Hawaii and to Okinawa for its international debut in November 2000.

Updated January 2023

education en

Aloha 'Oe, Dr. Franklin Odo: Remembering a Brilliant Scholar and a Special Mentor and Friend - Part 2

Por Karleen C. Chinen
26 Jan 2023

Read Part 1 >> At the time of his passing, Franklin was working with Honolulu attorney William “Bill” Kaneko, his former Ethnic Studies student, and journalist Sara Lin on a book about the Hawai‘i AJAs who, although not incarcerated, were forcibly displaced from their homes. Kaneko had asked Franklin to serve as the book’s editor. Aside from his parents, “Franklin had the greatest impact on my personal and professional career,” Kaneko said. “He was my teacher, mentor, advisor and friend.” In Franklin’s Japanese in Hawai‘i c…

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education en

Aloha 'Oe, Dr. Franklin Odo: Remembering a Brilliant Scholar and a Special Mentor and Friend - Part 1

Por Karleen C. Chinen
25 Jan 2023

“If you don’t control your own culture and your own vision of life, and your own participation in life, then you don’t control anything. And that’s what we’re about. The true spirit of any kind of democracy is to have people be autonomous at the same time that they know that they’re dependent on the community around them.” —Dr. Franklin Odo on empowering people and communities from a 1990 oral history interview with the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Center for Oral History Franklin Odo was never my professor at the University of H…

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war en

Remembrance - Remembering Akira Otani

Por Karleen C. Chinen
14 Jan 2022

In those sweet pre-pandemic days that we can barely remember now, one of my favorite stops every so often was the United Fishing Agency office, located a few yards from the ocean’s edge at Pier 38, to meet with the company’s chairman, Akira Otani. Even in his late 90s, he was still going in to his office for a few hours a day. When he stopped driving, his daughter would pick him up at his home every morning, drive him to the office and then come back a few hours later to take him home. The outbreak of COVID-19 put an end to that. For the health and safety of their elderly parents…

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culture en

Three Books, One Message

Por Karleen C. Chinen
16 Mai 2021

Never Too Young to Learn Why We Should Always Strive for Peace Last year, International Peace Day (Sept. 21) was observed just a few weeks after the 75th anniversary commemoration of the end of World War II. That milestone in history is one that we adults need to share with children. But, how can parents or teachers tell their school-age youngsters this important period in history without boring them with facts and figures and faded photographs? How can we help them understand why we should always choose peace over war and how, even in our own lives, we each can make a difference by trying t…

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sports en

Hawaii’s AJAs Play Ball - Part 2

Por Karleen C. Chinen
3 Mar 2016

Read Part 1 >> Bang for the Buck AJA baseball also enjoyed the support of the business community, which willingly donated trophies and prizes to the winning teams. In the 1936 O‘ahu championship game, Seikosha Watch Store owner Genbei Watanabe donated a huge silver trophy to the victor, Wahiawa, which had defeated its town rival, Pālama. Other businesses supported AJA baseball as well: Standard Oil Company, where Asahi player Tsuru Mamiya worked, sponsored the Japanese-language broadcast of the game on KGU radio. Some companies and individuals donated game or tournament trophie…