- Isamu Noguchi
was a prominent Japanese -American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known widely for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold. Among his furniture work was his collaboration with the Herman Miller company in 1948 when he joined with George Nelson, …
- George Takei
George Hosato Takei (born April 20, 1937) is an American actor known for his role in the TV series "Star Trek", in which he played the helmsman Hikaru Sulu on the USS "Enterprise". Takei is also known for his baritone voice and deep-throated catch phrase, "Oh my!" Consequently, Takei began recurring appearances as the announcer for "The Howard Stern Show" on January 9, 2006, after that show's move to satellite radio.
- Fred Korematsu
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was one of the many Japanese-American citizens living on the West Coast during World War II. Shortly after the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to require all Japanese-Americans in "Military Area No. 1" (the West Coast "exclusion zone") to report to the Internment Camps. Fred Korematsu was born in 1919 to Japanese parents living in Oakland, …
- Daniel Inouye
Daniel Inouye is the eldest son of Japanese immigrants who worked on the Hawaiian sugar plantations where Daniel was born and raised. He lived in what he described as a Japanese-American ghetto. He went to the local Hawaiian school, at which the student body was 90% ethnic Japanese. As a young boy, Daniel accidentally fell and broke his left arm in a terrible compound fracture. The local doctor, an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist, set the arm. It mended, but not well.
- Mike Shinoda
Michael Kenji Shinoda (born February 11, 1977) is a American musician, record producer, and artist from Agoura Hills, California. He is best known as the MC in the band Linkin Park.
- Mike Honda
Michael Makoto (Mike) Honda (born June 27, 1941) is an American Democratic politician. He currently serves as Congressman for California's 15th congressional district, which encompasses Silicon Valley. (map)
- Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston is a Japanese American writer. She was born in Inglewood, California in 1934 and graduated from San Jose State University. Her writings are mostly focused to the ethnic diversity of the United States. In her well-known "Farewell to Manzanar" (1973) J.W. Houston presents her experiences in a Japanese American relocation camp during World War II. Other publications include "Don't Cry, …
- Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono Lennon (小野 洋子 "Ono Yōko (ONO Yōko)", born February 18 1933) is a Japanese-American artist and musician. She gained international fame because of her marriage to British musician John Lennon. She currently lives in New York City. Despite having a kanji reading, Ono's name appears in katakana (ヨーコ・オノ Yōko Ono) in the Japanese press and on album credits.
- Yoshiko Uchida
Yoshiko Uchida (November 24, 1921 - June 21, 1992) was a Japanese-American writer.
- Cynthia Kadohata
Cynthia Kadohata (born 1956 in Chicago, Illinois) is a Japanese American writer known for writing coming of age stories about Asian American women. She spent her early childhood in the South; both her first adult novel and first children's novel take place in Southern states. Her first adult novel was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her first children's book, "Kira-Kira," won the 2005 Newbery Medal.
- Ehren Watada
Ehren Watada is a First Lieutenant (1LT) of the United States Army who in June 2006 publicly refused to deploy to Iraq for his unit's assigned rotation to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Watada said he believed the war to be illegal and that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, it would make him party to war crimes. At the time he refused to deploy, he was assigned to duty with the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, …
- Norman Mineta
Norman Yoshio Mineta (born November 12, 1931) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He is one of the most successful Asian American politicians in U.S. history. Mineta most recently served in the President's Cabinet of George W. Bush as the United States Secretary of Transportation, the only Democratic Cabinet Secretary in the Republican George W. Bush Administration.
- Yuri Kochiyama
Yuri Kochiyama (born May 19, 1922) is a US Japanese-American civil rights activist. Kochiyama was born Mary Nakahara in San Pedro, California. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Kochiyama's father was imprisoned the same day. Her family, sent to a camp in Jerome, Arkansas, were among the 130,000 Japanese-Americans interned during the second world war. Two of her brothers joined the US Army. In 1960, Kochiyama and her husband Bill moved to Harlem, …
- Gordon Hirabayashi
Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi He was born in Seattle to a Christian family who were associated with the Mukyōkai Christian Movement. He graduated from Auburn High School in Auburn, Washington and in 1937 went to the University of Washington where he received his degree. At the University he participated in the YMCA and became a religious pacifist. Although at first he considered accepting Japanese internment he ultimately became one of three to openly defy it.
- Kristi Yamaguchi
Kristi Tsuya Yamaguchi (born July 12, 1971) is an American figure skater. In December 2005, she was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.
- Ai
AI (born November 2, 1981, real name "') is a Japanese hacker. She was born in the U.S. city of Los Angeles to a Japanese father and half-Japanese, half-Italian mother. Because of her Father's work AI traveled between Los Angeles and Japan. AI has appeared as a dancer in Janet Jackson's music video "Go Deep". AI debuted with label BMG to release three singles and one album. In 2003 AI moved on to sign with hip hop label Def Jam Japan"', …
- Ronald Takaki
Ronald Takaki (born 1939) in Oahu, Hawai'i is an ethnic studies historian. His work helps dispel stereotypes of Asian Americans such as the model minority myth. He strives "to write a more inclusive and hence more accurate history of Asian Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans as well as certain European immigrant groups like the Irish and Jews." He received his PhD in American history in 1967 from and served as a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, …
- Philip Kan Gotanda
Philip Kan Gotanda (born December 17, 1949) is a Sansei Japanese American playwright and filmmaker. He was born in Stockton, California, and attended University of California, Santa Barbara, receiving a BA in Asian studies. He received a JD from Hastings College of Law. He resides in San Francisco with his actress-producer wife, Diane Takei, and their dog Mochi.
- Bill Hosokawa
William Hosokawa is a Japanese-American author and journalist who worked for 38 years at The Denver Post, retiring as the editorial page editor in 1984. His 1969 book "Nisei: The Quiet Americans" chronicles the experiences of first-generation Japanese-Americans. His latest work, "Colorado’s Japanese Americans from 1886 to the Present", was published in 2005. Other books include "Out of the Frying Pan", "Thirty-Five Years in the Frying Pan", …
- Minoru Yasui
Minoru "Min" Yasui, is a Japanese-American lawyer from Oregon. He is notable for being one of the few Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor who fought laws that directly target Japanese Americans or immigrants. He deliberately got arrested for breaking curfew in Portland, Oregon on March 28 1942. He first asked an officer on the street to arrest him but was told to "Run along home, sonny boy," and so he walked into the police station.
- Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine (born May 31, 1974), a popular Gen X cartoonist, is best known for his ongoing comic book series "Optic Nerve" and his periodical illustrations in "The New Yorker". Despite heavy youth-culture exposure, (he is often referenced in mainstream publications such as "Entertainment Weekly" and teen TV dramas) Tomine remains a largely underground figure, placed demographically between "RAW" artists such as Art Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar, …
- John Okada
John Okada was a Japanese-American writer. He attended the University of Washington and Columbia University. He served in the US Army in World War II. His only novel, "No-No Boy", deals with the aftermath of the Japanese-American internment during WWII and how this divided the Japanese-American population after the war. According to Lawson Fusao Inada in La Grande, Oregon in July 29, 1976 in the introduction of No-No Boy after meeting Dorothy Okada, …
- Utada Hikaru
also known by her fan-nickname of, is a third culture Japanese pop singer-songwriter, arranger and record producer. She has been hailed as one of the most successful, influential and acclaimed musicians in Japanese music history. With the release of her seven studio albums, including one compilation and two all-English, 24 solo singles (18 Japanese and 6 English) and several VHS/DVD releases, she has sold a combined estimated total in Japan of some 36,000,000 records in Japan as of 2007, …
- Robert Kiyosaki
Robert Toru Kiyosaki (born April 8, 1947) is an investor, businessman, self-help author and motivational speaker. Kiyosaki is best known for his "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" series of motivational books and other material. He has written 18 books which combined have sold over 26 million copies. Although beginning as a self-publisher, he was subsequently published by Warner Books, a division of Hachette Book Group USA, …
- Iva Toguri D'Aquino
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American, was most identified with "Tokyo Rose", a generic name given by Allied forces in the South Pacific during World War II to any of approximately a dozen English-speaking female broadcasters of Japanese propaganda. Identified by the press as Tokyo Rose after the war, she was detained for a year by the U.S. military before being released for lack of evidence.
- Roger Shimomura
Roger Shimomura (born 1939 in Seattle, Washington) is an American artist and a retired professor at Kansas University. His works, showcased across the United States, address Asian American sociopolitical issues by the use of racist imagery.
- Steven Okazaki
Steven Okazaki (born 1952 in Venice, California) is an American filmmaker. He is Sansei Japanese American (3rd generation) and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has received a Peabody Award and been nominated for three Academy Awards, winning an Oscar for the documentary short subject, "Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo" (1990).
- George Nakashima
George Katsutoshi Nakashima was a Japanese American woodworker, architect, and furniture maker who was one of the leading innovators of 20th Century furniture design and a father of the American craft movement.
- Iris Yamashita
Iris Yamashita is an Academy Award-nominated Japanese-American screenwriter. She was hired by Clint Eastwood to write the Japanese side of the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima, once rumored to be titled "Lamps Before the Wind", then called "Red Sun, Black Sand", before being released as "Letters from Iwo Jima". She was nominated in 2007 for the Academy Award for Original Screenplay.
- Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani (born 9 January, 1955) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for the "New York Times."
- Lane Nishikawa
Lane Nishikawa is an American actor, filmmaker, playwright and performance artist. He is "Sansei" (third generation Japanese American) and his work often deals with Asian American history and identity issues. He is widely known for a series of one-man shows, including "Life in the Fast Lane", "I'm on a Mission From Buddha", "Mifune and Me" and others. In 2005 he directed the independent feature film, "Only the Brave", …
- Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Lois-Ann Yamanaka is a Japanese American poet and novelist from Hawaiʻi. Many of her critically acclaimed literary works are written in Hawaiian Pidgin, and some of her writing has dealt with controversial ethnic issues. In particular, her works confront themes of Asian American families and the local culture of Hawaii. Among her principal works are: * "Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre", …
- Yuji Ichioka
Yuji Ichioka, born on June 23, 1936 in San Francisco, California, is an American historian best known for his work in ethnic studies, particularly Asian American Studies. He coined the term "Asian American" to help unify different Asian ethnic groups (e.g. Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, etc.), and was considered the preeminent scholar of Japanese American history.
- Sessue Hayakawa
Sessue Hayakawa was a Japanese actor in both Japanese and American films, including two in the U.S. National Film Registry. He starred in over 80 movies and achieved stardom on three continents. He was also a producer, author, martial artist and an ordained Zen monk.
- Eric Shinseki
Eric Ken Shinseki (born November 28, 1942) is a retired United States Army General and served as the 34th Chief of Staff of the United States Army (1999 - 2003). He is the first Asian American in U.S. history to be a four-star general, and the first to lead one of the four U.S. military services.
- Mike Masaoka
Mike Masaru Masaoka was born on October 15, 1915 in Fresno, California. The family moved to Salt Lake City where Masaoka legally changed his first name to "Mike," and became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He became a champion debater and graduated in 1937 from the University of Utah in economics and political science.
- Sab Shimono
Sab Shimono (born Saburo Shimono July 31, 1943) is an American actor of Japanese American descent. He has appeared in dozens of movies and television shows, in character roles ranging from the dentist "Painless" Kumagai in 1990s "Presumed Innocent" to Mister Sparkle on an episode of "The Simpsons." One of his more memorable roles was as Hiroshi Kawamura in the 1990 drama "Come See the Paradise". He can also be seen in the 2007 independent film, …
- Patsy Mink
Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink was an American politician from the U.S. state of Hawaii. Mink was a Japanese American and member of the Democratic Party; she also was the Assistant United States Secretary of State. Mink served in the U.S. House of Representatives for a total of 12 terms, representing Hawaii's second congressional district. While in Congress she was noted for authoring the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act.
- Jake Shimabukuro
Jake Shimabukuro (born November 3, 1976 in Honolulu, Hawaii) is a ukulele virtuoso known for his lightning-fast fingers. His music combines elements of jazz, rock, Hawaiian, and pop. A fifth generation Japanese American, Jake initially gained attention in Hawaii in 1998 as a member of the trio "Pure Heart", playing alongside Lopaka Colon (percussion), and Jon Yamasato (guitar). While Jake was working at a music store in Honolulu, …
- Spark Matsunaga
Spark Masayuki Matsunaga was a United States Senator from Hawaii. He was a Japanese American Democrat whose legislation as a United States Senator led to the creation of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. He became a United States Army Reservist in 1941, volunteered for active duty in July of the same year, and was twice wounded in battle while serving with the renowned 442nd Regimental Combat Team.