Author Archives: Gwen Muranaka

Gwen Muranaka is a fourth generation Japanese American and is senior editor of The Rafu Shimpo. For the last 20 years, she has covered numerous events in the Southern California Japanese American community, including the development of transit in Little Tokyo, the Terasaki Budokan and the Nisei Diploma Project, which honored to Japanese American students forced to leave school due to the internment. Throughout her career she has interviewed many notable figures in the Japanese American community, both nationally and locally.

At The Rafu, she manages the staff of the newspaper, overseeing a team of reporters, graphic designers and outside contributors in the production of the newspaper, as well as special-themed publications.

Muranaka is an active volunteer, serving as a board member of the Little Tokyo Community Council, the Nichibei Fujinkai (Japanese Women's Society) and Zentoku Foundation. She graduated from UCLA and spent one year abroad at Waseda University in Tokyo. She also worked in Tokyo as a staff editor, writer and cartoonist at The Japan Times and as assistant editor at the Pacific Citizen, the national publication of the Japanese American Citizens League.