PACOIMA — The Japanese American Historical Society of Southern California (JAHSSC) and the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center will co-sponsor a panel/reading of “Nanka Nikkei Voices: The Japanese American Family” on Sunday, Sept. 23, from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at SFVJACC, 12953 Branford St., Pacoima.
Brandon Shindo, a Yonsei, graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in psychology and an Asian American studies minor. He will attend graduate school this fall at CSU Dominguez Hills as a Master of Social Work student and will also continue to work for Professor Lane Hirabayashi at UCLA. He recently finished an internship at Little Tokyo Service Center with Professor Susan Nakaoka.
Yonsei Molly Serizawa is a senior at Scripps College working towards a B.A. in humanities interdisciplinary cultural studies with emphases in sociology and anthropology. She just returned from a semester abroad at the University of York in northern England, where she studied the difference between British and American responses to social media in preparation for her upcoming 100-page thesis.
Serizawa is president and founder of CARE (Creating Academic Relations Through Education), a five-college student organization that collaborates with a local elementary school to foster intergenerational interaction and provide students with aspirations to go into teaching and higher education. This past summer, she was very involved with the JA community, working as a program facilitator for San Fernando JACL’s Katarou Histories program, as well as a youth outreach coordinator at the Japanese Chamber of Commerce of Southern California.
Future plans include a master’s degree in international business, followed by law school.
Sansei Gwen Muranaka is English editor of The Rafu Shimpo. She grew up in San Pedro, and attended Japanese school at Long Beach Japanese Community Center. Muranaka graduated from UCLA with a degree in English literature, and worked at The Pacific Citizen and at The Japan Times in Tokyo before joining The Rafu in 2000.
In addition to this issue of Nanka Nikkei Voices, she also contributed a story to NNV #3, “Little Tokyo: Changing Faces, Changing Times.”
Copies of NNV will be available at the event for $25. A portion of the proceeds will go to SFVJACC.
For questions, contact Iku Kiriyama, NNV editor, at (310) 326-0608 or Nancy Oda, SFVJACC board president, at nancyoda@juno.com.