Japanese Americans

They are complete strangers, born of different cultures nearly eight decades apart. But a twist of historic fate has bound Fred Hoshiyama, a 94-year-old Japanese American, and Chimchanbo Uk, an 18-year-old Cambodian native: The families of both have experienced displacement amid political turmoil. Hoshiyama was forcibly removed from his Northern California home and sent to a bleak internment camp in Utah after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Grace Obata Amemiya was a pre-nursing student at UC Berkeley in 1942 when she, her family and 120,000 other Japanese Americans were forced from their schools and homes and sent to federal internment camps. The wartime relocations destroyed her childhood dream of a University of California diploma. Amemiya, now 88, joyfully returned to UC on Thursday and was named a graduate six decades late.

Alice Uchi slowly pushed a near-empty shopping cart down the near-empty aisles flanked by near-empty shelves in what had been the first and largest modern Japanese supermarket in Little Tokyo. "I feel lost. Sad," the retired Los Angeles registered nurse said glumly. Uchi was catching the tail end of Mitsuwa Marketplace's 50% fire sale before it prepares Sunday to shut its doors, marking an emotional transition for many in Little Tokyo.

Documentary filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura first heard about Chris Iijima while listening to his parents talk about "the movement." That movement was something that had happened eons ago, in the 1970s, a time when young Asian Americans were uncovering hidden histories, creating their own art and music and theater, and forming groups with names like the Yellow Brotherhood and Asian Americans for Action. Iijima had been a part of all of that.

The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, struggling with the challenges of an aging donor base and fundraising difficulties, will focus on regaining financial health as it ushers in a major leadership change, a spokesman said this week. Irene Y. Hirano will step down as chief executive of the Little Tokyo museum but remain as president and launch a major fundraising campaign. Hirano, who will conclude her tenure in 2009 after 21 years of service, has announced she will marry Sen.

On an uninviting swatch of arid desert, marked by sagebrush and mesquite trees just east of the California border, the winds of war blew together the fates of two beleaguered peoples. In a now familiar tale, 120,000 Japanese Americans were removed from the West Coast and relocated to internment camps after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent U.S. entry into World War II. But in a little known piece of that history, the U.S.

The phone call to Tom Shiokari came last July. The news was unexpected. But after almost 70 years, a wrong was to be set right and a dishonorable chapter in the history of the Antelope Valley's Japanese American community rewritten. Dayle DeBry, director of marketing and historical research at Lancaster Cemetery, was on the line. A memorial erected in 1938 to honor Japanese citizens who had lived and died in the Antelope Valley was finally going to be restored.

FROM 1941 TO 1945, the United States government kidnapped 2,264 ethnic Japanese people from 13 Latin American countries on the grounds that they posed a threat to national security. The Japanese Latinos were imprisoned in U.S. internment camps, and about 800 were eventually sent to Japan in exchange for U.S. prisoners of war in Japan. Some were never heard from again. After the war, more than 900 were forcibly deported to Japan, and about 100 returned to Latin America.

The Census Bureau turned over confidential information, including names and addresses, to help the U.S. government identify individual Japanese Americans during World War II, according to government documents released by two scholars Friday. The documents validate long-held suspicions among Japanese Americans that information about them collected under confidentiality pledges was released to the government.

"A \o7combined \f7\o7throng of 600 dance lovers jammed the coronation ballrooms ... to pay tribute to queens Kideko Maeyama and Chiya Sokino in the Farm Management-sponsored 'social of the year.' " -- Gila (Ariz.) News-Courier, Nov. 28, 1942 \f7\o7"On tiny \f7\o7suede \f7\o7match covers bearing the inscription, 'It's a match -- Ruby and George,' the engagement of Miss Ruby Kanaya to Pfc. George K. Suzuki of Ft. Sam Houston, Tex., was made known before a group of 16 girls at the betrothed's home."