In this article, the author shares her family's sad experience after being thrown in internment camps as part of the enforcement of the Executive Order 9066 following the Japanese's bombardment of Pearl Harbor. Japanese Americans were evacuated from their homes. In one day everything they had was stolen--even their pictures. It broke her mother's…

This article explores citizenship's multiple meanings in Los Angeles by describing five different types of Americanization, or immigrant education, in the city of angels from 1910 to 1940. The federal racialization of access to citizenship influenced these alternative approaches to Americanization at a local level. In the context of Supreme Court…

Japanese immigrants have been living in the United States for nearly 150 years. Yet, despite the continued presence of this population, there is not a lot of research to suggest why Japanese families have not become more active participants in preschools across the United States (US). In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, this paper…

In this interview study involving the analysis of narratives collected from Japanese American professionals teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) who have lived more than ten years in Japan, I focus on how the participants negotiated their often contested identities in the TESOL context in Japan. I use the notion of identity…

International revulsion at the violation of human rights during World War II helped spark a global movement to define and protect individual human rights. Starting with the creation of war crimes tribunals after the war, this newfound awareness stimulated a concerted international effort to establish human rights for all, both in periods of war…

The purpose of this study was to examine Japanese parents of children with disabilities' perceptions towards special education in the United States. This study included 40 participants who were born and raised in Japan and they are now living in the United States. The results revealed that most Japanese parents still maintained some negative…

This study adds to the research on the education of Asian immigrant adolescents by situating how generation, language, nationality, and race complexly impacted how a group of 1.5-generation Japanese youth have made sense of their multiple "non-dominant" identities as immigrant Americans and transnational students within an urban high…

Building upon paradigms of language and languaging practices as "local" phenomena (Canagarajah, 2013; Pennycook, 2010, Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes, 2013), this paper narrates a teacher's experience in an undergraduate seminar in applied language studies as an exploration in transdisciplinarity-as-localization. Taught by the author in…

This qualitative interview study investigated Japanese understandings of spirituality, religion, and The Divine. Thirteen native Japanese living in central Ohio (6 male, 7 female) answered open-ended questions about spiritual or religious activities they engaged in, motivations for engaging in them, what constitutes sacredness, why humanity and…

Millions of children around the world are out of school due to conflict, poverty, lack of education systems and infrastructure, and other issues. Educating children living in difficult contexts is the best way to empower them with the knowledge and competencies to rise to their full potential despite the challenges they face. Dedicated and…

This article reports on a case study that investigated how six Japanese American youth interpreted the effectiveness and relevance of extra-curricular diversity initiatives at their Midwestern middle and secondary public schools. These initiatives were intended to raise cultural awareness, but ultimately promoted cultural fetishism and racially…

What did art education look like within the confines of the Japanese American Internment Camp classrooms? Did the art education in the camps reflect the same curriculum that was being taught outside the camps and what other factors may have played a part in the students' experience? I propose that there were at least three significant…

In this article, we describe just one activity from an interdisciplinary social justice unit taught to two fifth-grade social studies classes with the use of Cynthia Kadohata's multicultural historical fiction novel "Weedflower." Often, our younger students feel their voices are silenced...their messages are not heard. Like many of…

Cultural variation in relations and moment-to-moment contingencies of infant-mother person-oriented and object-oriented interactions were compared in 118 Japanese, Japanese American immigrant, and European American dyads with 5.5-month-olds. Infant and mother person-oriented behaviors were related in all cultural groups, but infant and mother…

Many folk dances reflect the everyday activities of the people, celebrating the commonplace through physical forms of expression. The traditional Japanese folk dance, Tanko Bushi, is still performed in Japan and among Japanese-Americans today, and its theme of coal mining makes it relatable to many cultures around the world. With its traditional…