Material contribuído por Ben_Ari

All My Friends, They Went to Tule
Ben Arikawa
There are many untold and, possibly, forgotten stories in one’s family history. In an earlier article in the 2011 Holiday Issue of Pacific Citizen, the official newspaper of the Japanese American Citizens League, I wrote about what little I knew and what I didn’t know about my father’s incarceration in …

Nikkei Chronicles #1—ITADAKIMASU! A Taste of Nikkei Culture
Homemade Miso Soup
Ben Arikawa
If you have been to a Japanese restaurant in the United States, you probably have been served a warm, salty, light brown miso soup. Sometimes it will have thinly sliced scallions floating in the broth. Sometimes there will be miniature cubes of tofu hidden in the depths below the particles …

Nikkei Chronicles #1—ITADAKIMASU! A Taste of Nikkei Culture
Mochi and Me
Ben Arikawa
Mochi is a quintessential Nikkei food. Mochi is a symbol of our ties to our ancestral homeland, the land of small, terraced rice fields tended by family farmers.

Two Weddings and a Funeral
Ben Arikawa
I’m not yet at the age where I scan the obituaries for people I knew, like I remember my father doing. In his later years, he would open the paper to the obituaries most days, looking for the names of acquaintances. I remember my father saying: “I was talking to …

Nikkei Chronicles #1—ITADAKIMASU! A Taste of Nikkei Culture
Cooking Traditions with Mom
Ben Arikawa
I have been told by various people that I am a “good” cook. I’m usually able to put together dishes without recipes from whatever is in the refrigerator or to come up with menu ideas just walking down store aisles. Breakdown a chicken? Just give me the sharp cleaver. Need …

Will We Feel the Ghost of the Past at Jerome?
Ben Arikawa
14-8-C…A few years ago, this series of numbers and a letter were meaningless to me. Then I happened to find my father’s photo album that contain scenes stretching from his childhood in Japan to camp in Arkansas and Arizona and back to Japan where he married my mother in the …