Japanese American Museum of San Jose

This week I got to work at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, or JAMsj for short. One thing that is amazing about JAMsj is that all of the workers are volunteer, yet they are still able to keep the museum running very smoothly. One of the reasons for this is their president, Aggie Idemoto, who I got to spend some time with throughout the week talking about leadership development and working with other people.

Aggie was just one of the people I got to meet while with the museum. Jimi Yamaichi gave a tour of Japantown, pointing out some of the historic sights. He also talked about how things were in the 1920s and 1930s in Japantown, for he has lived in San Jose most of his life. An intern of Tule Lake and a draft resister, Jimi had tons of information as he also gave a tour of the museum. Rebecca Karabatos is the librarian at the museum. For a library project, she had me search recent books about Japanese Americans that JAMsj could add to its collection, plus organize some material about the 442nd Regiment and internment. I also met Barbara Kawamoto, the director of communications at JAMsj. We had an engaging discussion of bringing some of the college Japanese American clubs together for a bonding activity. And this was just Monday.

I also got to meet other people involved in the community outside of JAMsj. Lynn Yamaichi is the director for the Lotus Preschool, and she showed me around and told me what the kids would do and learn. I had a phone conference with Cynthia Konda, director of Okaasan & Me, a bilingual program that involves both children and their parents to educate them both. I met a little with Joe Yasutake, of the museum, talking with Aggie Idemoto about having youth involved with the community. I was able to talk to Curt Fukuda and Ralph Pearce, authors of the upcoming San Jose Japantown book. This included an interesting conversation of how to conduct interviews and why they started writing the book. I also talked to Tom Izu and Steve Fugita about Asian American Studies in higher education. I already knew a little bit of this information, as I took an Asian American Studies class at UC Berkeley and am a History minor. This was a fun conversation that went from talking about the Japanese American community today with the Yonsei, Shin-Nisei, hapas, and non JAs who are interested in being a part of this community, to Tom Izu's role in sparking the Niseis into talking of camp for redress.

On Thursday, we had our first Norcal Intern day in San Francisco. First we were given a walking tour of San Francisco Japantown by the Nation Japanese American Historical Society NCI interns. Then we had a meeting with Jon Osaki of the Japanese Community Youth Council (JCYC), an organization that provides activities and programs for the younger generation. He emphasized that the current youth are the future of Japanese American culture. Later that day, a couple NCI alums came and led a scavenger hunt in SF Japantown.

There were a couple other highlights of this week. One is that I attended the JCC's meeting on Tuesday night, and got to see a little bit of how the JCC is run and what they do. Then on Saturday, I helped out at a CATS event called Hidden Legacy. I worked with Reiko Iwanaga as they showed the documentary on Japanese American Culture in camp, especially Obon dances, kabuki, and playing the koto.