About the Nichi Bei Times

• Columnists
• History

Columnists

• The Gochiso Gourmet - http://gochisogourmet.com

  The Gochiso Gourmet is Ryan Tatsumoto. He earned his Bachelors degree in Nutritional Science from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, his doctorate in pharmacy from the University of California at San Francisco and is currently an Ambulatory Care Clinical Pharmacist. He began writing for the Nichi Bei Times as a food, wine and nutrition columnist in the January 2003 issue. Tatsumoto writes from Hawai'i.

• Two Japanee Bruddahs - http://twojapaneebruddahs.com

  Kyle Tatsumoto wen go Castle. Keith Kamisugi wen go Mililani. So wot? Two Japanee Bruddahs is a monthly column in the Nichi Bei Times.

• Annie Kim Tomita Noguchi - Wuz Crackin, My Asian Homies?

  Annie Kim Tomita Noguchi, 19, is a UC Berkeley freshman who has been writing a youth column for the Nichi Bei Times since age 13. She enjoys dancing, music, reading, eating and hanging out. Send comments, criticisms, and plenty of Cheetos her way to nikkei@nichibeitimes.com.

• Jeff Asai - Fantastic Voyage

  Jeff Asai, a Yonsei originally from Northern California's South Bay Area, writes from the town of Asuka, Nara Prefecture, Japan, where he is teaching English in the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program. He can be reached via e-mail at jeffasai@gmail.com.

• Kent Wong - He Got Games

  Kent Wong, a former J-League baller and current college student, is an avid gamer who possesses the Sony PS2, Nintendo Game Cube, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Sony PS3 and even the handheld Sony PSP and Nintendo DS Lite. Simply put, he got games. He can be reached at hanbagaa@hotmail.com.

• The Kaeru Kid - Travel and Leisure Column

  The Kaeru Kid writes about his various adventure travels. He lives in Las Vegas and includes tidbits about the city at the end of each article. He can be reached at KaeruKid@yahoo.com.

• Chizu Omori - Rabbit Ramblings

  Chizu Omori is the co-producer of the award-winning film "Rabbit in the Moon." She writes from Seattle, Wash. and can be reached by e-mail at chizuomori@earthlink.net.

• Fred Oshima - Keeping Posted

  A Nisei originally from Lodi, Fred Oshima now writes from Salinas, Calif.

• Twila Tomita - Nikkei Parenting

  Twila Tomita is a school teacher in Sacramento, Calif.

History

Nichi Bei Times:
May 18, 1946 Began a New Chapter in a Storied Legacy

The Nichi Bei Times, which printed its first edition on May 18, 1946, is the oldest Japanese American bilingual newspaper in Northern California, and continues a legacy of community leadership established with the 1899 founding of the Nichi Bei Shimbun. The Nichi Bei Times was established in 1946 to get the Japanese American community "reconnected" after their wartime incarceration in American concentration camps.

"When we came back out here after the war, we didn't know where everyone was," recalled late former President Tsutomu Umezu in the late 1990s. "So we got together to make a newspaper...It was a way to reconnect."

Nichi Bei Times founder Shichinosuke Asano, in a 1976 San Francisco Chronicle article, recalled the early beginnings.

"Some of us who had worked for newspapers before pooled our money, and the community wanted a paper again so much that about 100 people put their own money, as an investment, into the Nichi Bei," he told the Chronicle.

Although it retained some of the same staff as the pre-war Nichi Bei Shimbun — founded by legendary newspaperman Kyutaro Abiko — the Nichi Bei Times was set up as a totally different corporation.

According to Umezu, the Nichi Bei Times was founded by six main individuals: Shichinosuke Asano, the long-time head of the company; Yasuo Abiko, Kyutaro's only child and long-time vice president; Tsugio Kobayashi and Kazumi Kawaoka, treasurers; Umezu, who initially served as secretary; and Kando Ikeda, a board member.

On the editorial staff was Asano, who served as chief editor and was also a long-time correspondent to Japan's Asahi Shimbun; Shiro Uyeno, Japanese editor; Iwao Namekawa, Japanese editorial staff; Yasuo Abiko, English section editor; and Iwao Kawakami, sports editor.

Since the paper's inception, it has been situated at three different locations. Initially, the Nichi Bei Times office was located at 1775 Sutter St. in San Francisco's Japantown. Within a year, the business had relocated to 1375 Eddy St. in the Western Addition. Due to the redevelopment of the area, the Nichi Bei Times was forced to relocate to its present location, 2211 Bush St., in November of 1972.

When it first began, the Nichi Bei Times was printed every other day on painstaking linotype — with three pages in Japanese and one in English. Soon thereafter, the production was increased to six days a week.

Over the years, the newspaper has covered wide areas of community interest and concern, including myriad topics reflective of a vibrant immigrant community and a rapidly expanding Japanese American population.

Issues covered have included Japanese American redress, struggle for community buildings in Japantowns, and many other stories.

Today, the Nichi Bei Times strives to be the glue that holds the community together — culturally, historically, socially, emotionally, spiritually and politically.

A Legacy of Building Bridges Between the U.S. and Japan

The year 2006 marks the 60th anniversary of the Nichi Bei Times. The Nichi Bei legacy — both pre-war and post-war — is one filled with strong leaders who forged new paths in U.S.-Japan relations.

In 1946, Nichi Bei Times founder Shichinosuke Asano led Bay Area efforts to raise money for post-war relief goods for a war-devastated Japan under the Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA) program.

Some 16 tons of relief goods — including food, dry milk, clothing, medicine, shoes, soap and school products — were sent to the war-torn country, with 20 percent of the goods coming from some 36 Japanese American groups throughout North and South America. The rest came from established agencies such as the Salvation Army, YMCA/YWCA, Catholic Relief Societies, etc.

While the Japanese American community had very little themselves — having just come out of wartime concentration camps in America — leaders such as Asano realized that those in Japan had less.

In San Francisco, the Nihon Nanmin Kyusai Kai (Association for the Relief of Displaced People in Japan) was one of the Nikkei groups formed to support relief efforts.

Asano wrote the group's prospectus and used the Nichi Bei Times as a vehicle to inform the public of relief efforts, said historian Masako Iino.

"He was trying to call Japanese Americans in the community to pay attention to how the Japanese people were suffering in Japan," said Iino, the president of Tsuda College in Tokyo who has written a scholarly article on the LARA program.

For his efforts to bridge U.S.-Japan relations, Asano received an unusual three kunsho, or medals of honor, from the Japanese government. In 2004 he was enshrined in the Morioka Memorial Museum of Great Predecessors in his native prefecture of Iwate, Japan.

Asano was a protégé of Takashi (Kei) Hara, regarded as the first democratic prime minister of Japan, who was assassinated in 1921 by a Japanese nationalist.

"He helped me get my first newspaper job in Japan," Asano said of Hara in the 1976 San Francisco Chronicle article. "When I left for America, he told me, 'Do not go just to make money. Help people.'"

While almost completely forgotten or unknown by today's Japanese American community, the efforts by Japanese Americans such as Asano have not gone unnoticed in Japan.

At the Yokohama Pier, a stone memorial stands in appreciation of Japanese American efforts to help a war-devastated Japan, which includes a poem written by the late empress. An owner of a kimono factory in Tokyo has, over the years, donated more than $1 million in kimonos to the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival queens in appreciation for the post-war efforts by Japanese Americans.

New Directions

In response to changing demographics and community interests the Nichi Bei Times launched an new all-English weekly edition in January 2006 while changing its Japanese edition to three days a week. The paper remains a bilingual publication, with each section more sharply focused on their respective readerships, with an added option for those who wish to subscribe to the English edition only.

The English Weekly is geared towards younger and succeeding generations of Japanese Americans, and includes new sections such as Entertainment and the Arts, Food and Health, and expanded sports. There are also more youth and family-oriented features such as Japanese lessons, activities, and comics, as well as a new Community Service Directory.

The Nichi Bei Times strives to be the glue that holds the community together, continuing its mission of keeping the Japanese American community connected, informed and empowered.

The 'Nichi Bei' Legacy

The Nichi Bei legacy is filled with examples of community leadership and bridging U.S.-Japan ties.

Kyutaro Abiko, the founder of the Nichi Bei Shimbun on April 3, 1899, remains one of Japanese America's most legendary Issei pioneers. He reportedly ran away to Tokyo at the age of 14, and arrived in 1885 in San Francisco with only a dollar in his pocket.

He became a labor contractor and one of the founders of the Japanese American Industrial Corporation. His company, founded in 1902, became one of the largest labor contracting agencies in California, supplying Japanese laborers to various industries.

In addition to founding the Nichi Bei Shimbun — the most influential pre-war Japanese American newspaper — he founded the American Land and Produce Company, which purchased 3,200 acres of underdeveloped desert land near the San Joaquin Valley town of Livingston. They were parceled into 40-acre lots and sold to Japanese farmers. In total he helped to formed three Japanese farming colonies in the Central California towns of Cortez, Cressey and Livingston (also known as the Yamato Colony).

At its peak in the 1920s, the Nichi Bei Shimbun was the most widely read Issei newspaper with a reported circulation of 25,000 and an office in Los Angeles. It reflected Abiko's beliefs that the Issei should shun intentions of returning to Japan in favor of setting up roots in America. The Nichi Bei Shimbun decried California's Alien Land Laws of 1913 and 1920, and championed the fight for naturalization.

Kyutaro Abiko's wife, Yona (Tsuda) Abiko, took over as publisher of the Nichi Bei Shimbun after his death in the 1930s. She raised money in Japan to help purchase the Japanese YWCA in San Francisco's Japantown. The building was the subject of some struggle in recent years, as when the YWCA decided to sell the building in 1996, community members found evidence that the property was purchased by the YWCA "in trust" for the Japanese American community, since Japanese immigrants themselves could not buy land due to the racist alien land laws of the time. A settlement was reached, and today it serves as the home to Nihonmachi Little Friends.

Mrs. Abiko's older sister, Umeko Tsuda, remains a historical figure in Japan. After Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan open in the 1850s, the government of Japan — which had been in self-isolation for several decades — sent a delegation to the U.S. and Europe in an attempt to renegotiate what it thought to be unfair treaties and to learn from the industrialized countries in what was referred to as the Iwakura Mission.

Among the five young girls sent to study in America was 7-year-old Umeko Tsuda, the older sister of Yona Abiko. Tsuda would study at Bryn Mawr College, and returned to Japan to be a pioneer of women's education in Japan. The college she founded for women in 1900, Tsuda College in Tokyo, remains to be a well-known institution of higher learning recognized by most Japanese.

Yasuo Abiko, the only child of Yona and Kyutaro Abiko, was one of the founders of the post-war Nichi Bei Times, serving as its long-time vice president and English section editor. His wife, Lily (Tani) Abiko, was also deeply involved with the company.

Ken Abiko, the son of Yasuo and Lily Abiko, grandson of Kyutaro and Yona Abiko and grand nephew of Umeko Tsuda, is the current chairperson of the Nichi Bei Times Board of Directors.