By ALEC YOSHIO MacDONALD
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

No other event in Japanese American history receives more attention than the wartime incarceration of those of Japanese descent. Scholars, writers, filmmakers, and artists have produced copious documentation of this infamous episode of the nation’s past. And while the details don’t appear prominently in school textbooks, any curious person can find a wealth of information on the subject at the local library.

But what about the years directly following internment? It’s not as if Japanese Americans simply left camp and returned to their normal lives.

By MARTHA NAKAGAWA
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

LOS ANGELES -- On the corner of First Street and Central Avenue in downtown Los Angeles is a mural depicting Little Tokyo history. An African American blows his saxophone in one corner of the collage.

That is the only image in Little Tokyo indicating the area had once been a thriving African American enclave called Bronzeville during World War II.

By TAKESHI NAKAYAMA
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

LOS ANGELES -- Little Tokyo is dying, many observers said not too long ago. But now, the local ethnic Japanese hub has gained a new lease on life, thanks to the addition of numerous new residential units and a future gymnasium and recreation center.

By BILLIE LEE
Nichi Bei Times Correspondent

SAN JOSE -- Although Japanese Americans have a great stake in the upcoming development of the San Jose Corporation Yard, Chinese Americans also have a great interest in the property.

By KENJI G. TAGUMA
Nichi Bei Times

As Japanese Americans started to piece their lives back together after World War II, they had little to their name. Gone was much personal property, which had to be sold off in fireside sales as they could take only what they could carry into wartime concentration camps in desolate areas of America.

By KATHY AOKI
Nichi Bei Times

It’s never easy for any community organization to find a new home.

“The problem is most people do not want to sell their property to a non-profit organization,” said Dean Ito Taylor, executive director of Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach (APILO).

By KATHY AOKI
Nichi Bei Times

Steve Hobbs knows what it takes to win an election.

“A lot of hard work,” he says. “If you are willing to get up early and do sign waving, phone calling, ringing door bells to meet your constituents you might be a successful candidate.”

By KATHY AOKI
Nichi Bei Times

Takashi Oda is a man of action.

Oda has been photographer for a J-League professional soccer team, obtained credentials to teach English to junior and senior high school students in Japan, and even thought about a career as a maritime radio operator.

By LESLIE TOKIWA
Nichi Bei Times

There is a horde of children in my living room. To all appearances, they are having epileptic attacks.

Upon closer inspection, you will note that they are grasping small white controllers in their outflung hands. Brandishing these in the air like clubs, they are shouting incomprehensible things about drops and strikes and hits.

By JEFF ASAI
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

Recently, Japan has been looking to make English its second official language. The gesture is a well-intentioned one, based on the need for internationalization. The big hurdle, however, is getting the population to speak English. English is a compulsory course in most middle and high schools (and even some elementary schools)! But this does not mean that most people speak English.

By BEN HAMAMOTO
Nichi Bei Times

Engrish has become pretty popular in the West, with entire Websites and online retailers devoted to the amusing misuse of the English language. Though in recent years ex-pats and their Internet connections have been bringing it to amused Westerners, Japanese video games have long been a source for early Engrish fans. In those days, games were often poorly translated, as the industry was not as big and respected as it is today.

By GREG YANO
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

He sings. He’s done kendo. His I.Q. is 180. And he’s even been on the cover of Time Magazine (albeit for a 1987 story on “Asian American Whiz Kids,” not “Person of the Year”).

By BEN HAMAMOTO
Nichi Bei Times

Clint Eastwood’s new film, “Letters from Iwo Jima,” is making a big impression. The critics all seem to love it and the National Board of Review has named it the best film of the year. I don’t know if it’s really the best film of the year or not, but it’s definitely a very good film and in some ways, it’s an important film for Asian Pacific Islanders.

By KATHY AOKI
Nichi Bei Times

Brian Mitsuhiro Wong is a 22-year-old Gosei (fifth generation Japanese American) who knows how to make beautiful music.

IMPOUNDED: DOROTHEA LANGE AND THE CENSORED IMAGES OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT

By Dorothea Lange. Edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., November 2006, 288 pp., $29.95 hardcover).

Reviewed by WAYNE MAEDA
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

As the nation remembers the 65th year of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Linda Gordon, an award-winning historian and Gary Okihiro, an equally renown historian, brought into the light of day some of Dorothea Lange’s photographs that were censored, suppressed, and literally marked “impounded” that were stored in the National Archives.

DEFIANT GARDENS: MAKING GARDENS IN WARTIME

By Kenneth I. Helphand. (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2006, 320 pp., $34.95 hardcover).

Reviewed by KERRY KUMABE
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

“In defiant situations, humans display a surprising resourcefulness in design and function, in formal arrangement, and in the appropriation of, gathering, and use of materials.” Kenneth I. Helphand’s “Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime” closely examines how gardening serves as an act of creative resistance in times of conflict. From the Western Front “trench gardens” of WWI to the “ghetto gardens” of Nazi Europe and the “stone gardens” of the Japanese American internment, Helphand analyzes the form, function and meaning of defiant gardens.

Black, Brown, Yellow & Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles

By Laura Pulido. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, 361 pp., $21.95 paperback

Reviewed by MARTHA NAKAGAWA
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

Most today will probably give you a blank stare if you asked them what East Wind is. They may guess it’s a restaurant. But almost everyone will be familiar with the Black Panther Party (BPP).

BENTO BOX IN THE HEARTLAND

By Linda Furiya. (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, December 2006, 276 pp., $15.95 paperback).

Reviewed by KERRY KUMABE
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

Walk into any school cafeteria and you will witness complex lunchtime negotiations -- potato chip and pretzel trades as fierce as any on the New York Stock Exchange floor.

KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES: JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT

By Susan Dudley Gold. (Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2006, 129 pp., $39.93).

Reviewed by Kerry Kumabe
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

“Korematsu v. United States: Japanese-American Internment” is part of the “Supreme Court Milestones” series published by Marshall Cavendish for middle school and high school students. The book gives an overview of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, highlights the key issues of the Korematsu case, discusses the prejudicial implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling and describes the District Court decision that finally led to reparations.

ACROSS TWO WORLDS: MEMOIRS OF A NISEI FLOWER GROWER

By Yoshimi Shibata. (Pasadena: Midori Books, 2006, 194 pp., $16.95, paperback).

Reviewed by WAYNE MAEDA
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

If there ever was a singular story that metaphorically has all the elements of the Japanese American experience in America, “Across Two Worlds” would be have to be a close first. Yoshimi Shibata’s memoir begins his story with how his Issei father came from a small town in Kagoshima, Japan around 1898 to America by way of a Hawaiian sugar plantation, working in Alaskan fish canneries, itinerant laborer, houseboy, and eventually settling down in the Oakland area to grow flowers.

BEFORE INTERNMENT: ESSAYS IN PREWAR JAPANESE AMERICAN HISTORY

By Yuji Ichioka. Eds. Gordon H. Chang and Eiichiro Azuma. (California: Stanford University Press, 2006, 392 pp., $50 hardcover).

Reviewed by WAYNE MAEDA
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

Editors Gordon Chang and Eiichiro Azuma have produced a masterful collection of both published and unpublished essays by the late historian, Yuji Ichioka of UCLA. Those who have had the privilege of knowing and working with Yuji will instantly recognize this collection of his ground-breaking works that captures his shift from being the pre-eminently renown historian on the Issei experience to the subjects of the complexities of the Nisei in the interwar period.

MECHADEMIA 1: EMERGING WORLDS OF ANIME AND MANGA

Edited by Frenchy Lunning (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, December 2006, 184 pp., $19.95 paperback)

Reviewed by TOMO HIRAI
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

With the rise of anime and manga into popular culture in America, academic studies of Japanese culture in contrast to American culture have become much more prevalent. “Mechademia” is one such publication aiming to compile such studies and thoughts to better understand the concept of what anime is, and what is behind the increasing popularity of anime outside of the Japan.

AKIRA TO ZOLTAN: TWENTY-SIX MEN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD

By Cynthia Chin-Lee, illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy. (Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing, www.charlesbridge.com, 2006, 32 pages, $15.95 hardcover).

Reviewed by TWILA TOMITA
Nichi Bei Times Columnist

Alphabet books are usually fun. This one is geared toward an older child than the usual primary ABC book, but it is equally enjoyable. The theme is men who changed the world through peaceful means.