Nikkei Chronicles #8—Nikkei Heroes: Trailblazers, Role Models, and Inspirations
The word “hero” can mean different things to different people. For this series, we have explored the idea of a Nikkei hero and what it means to a variety of people. Who is your hero? What is their story? How have they influenced your Nikkei identity or your connection to your Nikkei heritage?
We solicited stories from May to September of 2019, and voting closed on November 15, 2019. We received 32 stories (16 English; 2 Japanese; 11 Spanish; and 3 Portuguese) from individuals in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Peru, and the United States.
Here are the selected favorite stories by our Editorial Committee and the Nima-kai.
Editorial Committee’s Favorites
- ENGLISH:
Mine Okubo
By Edna Horiuchi - JAPANESE:
My Roots—The Legacy of Matsugoro Ohto
By Naori Shiraishi - SPANISH:
My Hero: Kiyoshi Kuwahara
By Fuyiko Kuwahara - PORTUGUESE:
Miyoko Fujisaka, 95 years old – Our Heroine
By Iraci Megumi Nagoshi
Nima-kai selection:
- 48 stars:
My Father Was A Tule Lake Resister
By Keiko Moriyama
Stories from this series
Mine Okubo
Oct. 3, 2019 • Edna Horiuchi
The artist Mine Okubo is most famous for her book, Citizen 13660, a graphic memoir of the Japanese American concentration camps. She became my hero while I was a student at University of California (UC), Riverside in 1979. As a young woman in my twenties, I felt inspired by Mine’s accomplishments as part of the “greatest generation” that survived World War II. She did it on her own terms and without apology. She persevered as a female artist and in …
2 Presidents, 2 Senators, 2 Moms…and 2 Dads, too
Oct. 1, 2019 • Linda Cooper
My best friend Brenda and I have often talked about how much change and history our parents witnessed over the course of their lifetimes. We are the only-children, daughters of U.S. military fathers who were born and raised in the American South and Japanese mothers. Our parents lived through much of the history of the 20th century, and we too, as their daughters also are living witnesses to that history. Beginning in 1985, I had the great privilege of serving …
My Father Was A Tule Lake Resister
Sept. 27, 2019 • Keiko Moriyama
I will forever admire my father’s strength and bravery. Despite the incredible challenges he endured during World War II as a young internee in America’s incarceration camps, he lived his life with passion and perseverance. My father was born in Santa Ana, California on June 6, 1921, to immigrant parents who operated a successful celery farm. When he was five-years-old, he and his parents moved back to Japan to care for his ill grandfather, where he spent the rest of …
My Hero: Kiyoshi Kuwahara
Sept. 26, 2019 • Fuyiko Kuwahara
Over time, my concept of who is a hero has changed substantially, and the people I admired for their accomplishments and virtues when I was a girl are not the same people I admire today. Thanks to Pioneros (Pioneers), a database of Japanese immigrants in Peru (1899-1941), for the first time I was able to obtain information about my grandfather, Kiyoshi. This eventually led me to obtain my grandfather’s Koseki (Japanese family record), and as a result I developed a …
Masao Iimuro: Strength and example of a community that overcame injustice and persecution
Sept. 20, 2019 • Sergio Hernández Galindo
When I met Masao Iimuro personally, in 2007, I was already aware of many details of his life. He knew that he embarked for Mexico at the end of 1940, from the city of Nagoya, where he had been born 19 years before. He had precise details of his arrest in the month of May 1942 and his subsequent imprisonment in the Islas Marías prison, in Lecumberri and in the Perote fortress, in Veracruz. Without any trial or precise accusation …
Miyoko Fujisaka, 95 years old—Our Heroine
Sept. 16, 2019 • Iraci Megumi Nagoshi
Miyoko Fujisaka was born in Osaka on September 24, 1924. The third daughter of Sadakichi and Kuri Kawauchi, she came with her family to Brazil, aboard the ship La Plata Maru, arriving at the port of Santos on January 9, 1933. The family was then sent to work on a farm in the northwestern region of the state of São Paulo, where they planted and harvested coffee and cotton. While her parents and two brothers worked in the fields, the …