Nisei

George Yamada

George Kiyoshi Yamada was the publisher and editor of the Rikka* newsletter, an important publication for the Japanese Canadian community in Toronto, for almost two decades. Yamada was born in Nebraska, and studied at San Francisco State College and Mexico City College. In 1941, he was drafted by the United States army, and declared himself […]

Kazuo Hamasaki

Kazuo Richard Hamasaki was a Nisei painter trained in the Nanga tradition of Japanese painting. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries across Canada and the United States, including Hawaii, as well as in Japan and Brazil. They can also be found in private and corporate collections around the world: in the US and Canada […]

Sally Nakamura

Satoshi (Sally) Nakamura was born on Powell Street in Vancouver. He enjoyed a varied artistic life as a singer, actor and entertainer. In Vancouver, he took voice training with Gideon Hicks, a well-known baritone, conductor, and music teacher. He also loved to sing popular songs and would entertain at the Japanese language school. He could […]

Sam Furuya

Sam Furuya was a Nisei singer who was active before, during, and after the Second World War. His trademark song was Someone to Watch Over Me, and he settled in Toronto after the war.

Harry Kumano

Harry Kumano was a Nisei singer and actor. An active member of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Toronto, he is well known as the founder, director, and conductor of the Sansei Choir. He also did film work, appearing in several commercials. He once had an ambition to ‘play all the Buddhist churches up and […]

Grace Terakita

Grace Fujie Terakita was a well-known Nisei soprano singer before, during, and after the Second World War. When living in BC before the war, she recorded her trademark song Shinna no Yoru (China Nights). She lived in the Winnipeg area after the war. Her accompanist in BC was Vernon Hakkaku. In Manitoba, Terakita sang with […]

Jess

‘Jess’ is the pen name of a Nisei who wished to remain anonymous when he wrote his autobiography, the self-published Ignomy. Ignomy is a heart-wrenching portrait of an angry and bitter Nisei that follows his life from childhood through to the internment experience. Ignomy is a raw early account of a survivor of the Japanese […]

Diana Morita Cole

Diana Morita Cole received the 2017 Richard Carver Award for Emerging Artists for her book, Sideways: Memoir of a Misfit, which tells of her birth behind barbed wires in a Minidoka incarceration site. Cole grew up in a ghetto on the Near North Side of Chicago, where she was coddled by her 80-year-old grandfather, who […]

Saeko Usukawa

Saeko Usukawa was an editor for everything from alternative-culture magazines to major publishing house Douglas & McIntyre. Born in Lemon Creek internment camp, Saeko grew up in Toronto. After studying briefly at university, she quickly became the youngest editor at Macmillan Publishers. She also became involved in the women’s movement and protests against Apartheid and […]

Joe Naito

Joe Naito was an architect who practiced for over forty years in Edmonton. He was born and raised in Kelowna, BC, and studied architecture at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1957. He practiced privately through the firm Sinclair & Naito Architects Limited in Edmonton, and worked on projects throughout Alberta including the University […]

Stanley Hiroaki Osaka

Stanley Hiroaki Osaka was born on July 23, 1931 in Richmond, British Columbia, to Otokichi and Midori Osaka. During the Second World War, he and his parents and sister, Kimiko, were interned at Tashme Internment Camp, British Columbia, by order of the Canadian Government. After the war, he relocated to Montreal to attend McGill University, […]

Vernon Hakkaku

Vernon Hakkaku was a well-known piano accompanist for many Nisei singers during and after the Second World War. He was known for having a distinctively Japanese style which suited the Nisei singers well. Terry Watada recalls: ‘Vernon Hakkaku was a postal worker in Toronto. His house in Cabbagetown was sparsely furnished, with only a baby […]

Tom Morimoto

Tom Morimoto is the author of the memoir, Breaking Trail: From Canada’s Northern Frontier to the Oil Fields of Dubai. He was born in Edmonton and grew up in Fort McMurray, one of seven brothers. As a young man, he worked in his father’s garden and on a scow on the Athabasca River with the […]

Yon Shimizu

Yoshio ‘Yon’ Shimizu was the author of The Exiles: An Archival History of the World War II Japanese Road Camps in British Columbia and Ontario. Born in Victoria, Shimizu was a young man just about to finish high school when the government ordered the removal of all Japanese Canadians from the west coast. Shimizu was […]

Michael Hoshiko

Michael Hoshiko was the author of Who was Who: Pioneer Japanese Families in Delta and Surrey (1998). A speech pathologist by profession, Hoshiko’s interest in Japanese Canadian history led him to become a repeat contributor to The New Canadian and the Nikkei Voice.