West Coast Nikkei Eldercare: Planning for New and More Diverse Systems of Care

Part I - Nikkei Eldercare in Los Angeles

Nancy Matsumoto

My mother is in some ways a typical Southern California Nisei. She has participated in organized Nikkei ballroom dance, camera club, and widow’s groups. She plays marathon card games regularly with a group of Nisei friends, and travels the world on organized Japanese-American tours. A lot of her time also …

Historian Linda Gordon’s new Dorothea Lange bio

Nancy Matsumoto

I attended a fascinating discussion recently at the New York Public Library, featuring NYU history professor Linda Gordon in conversation with New Yorker writer Ian Frazier. The topic of discussion was Gordon’s extensively researched and beautifully written new biography, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (W.W. Norton & Co.).

Reclaiming Photographs of the WWII Japanese-American Resettlement

Nancy Matsumoto

I recently picked up a fascinating book, Lane Ryo Hirabayashi’s, Japanese American Resettlement Through the Lens: Hikaru Carl Iwasaki and the WRA’s Photographic Section, 1943-1945. Hirabayashi teaches in the Asian American Studies Department at UCLA, where he holds an endowed chair dedicated to research on and teaching about the Japanese …

Manzanar Pilgrims Shine Light on Past, Current Injustices, Honor Forebears

Nancy Matsumoto

On a sunny cold day in April, I boarded a bus in Little Tokyo, one of more than 1,500 people to make the 40th annual Manzanar pilgrimage.  Our destination was the remote Owens Valley World War II prison camp where my father and his family were placed behind barbed wire …