About Iku Kiriyama

Iku Kiriyama is an elder behind-the-scenes community rock through her work for over 3 decades with the Japanese American Historical Society of Southern California and an eternal educator and presenter of many talks and forums on health and history in relation to the Japanese American community. She also comes from an education background and has been writing from the time she was a child. Here are two pieces she wrote much more recently:

http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2015/7/8/sugi-kiriyama/
http://genkiwoman.org/2015/03/10/iku-kiriyama-shares-her-personal-story/

She inspired her daughter, Traci, who initiated this page and the Generations of War, Peace & Action (GOWPA) site.
Professor Glenn Omatsu is a big source of support for the GOWPA project and is the partnering professor and main contact for the Aratani CARE grant (that led to the main resource of support of this site). He and Traci agreed it would be good and fun to have a page on Iku on the GOWPA site.

Iku is also featured in the Densho Digital Archive (you can sign up with a new account, or just click through the "guest account" in order to view the feature on Iku:

http://archive.densho.org/Core/SegmentsByInterview.aspx?id=467

More to come about Iku!

About The Legacy of Japanese American Activism

The Legacy of Japanese American Activism Facebook page started when planning for a conference (of the same name) that happened in November, 2011, at the Japanese American National Museum. It was sponsored by the JAHSSC (Japanese American Historical Society of Southern California) and initiated by its principal active board member, Iku Kiriyama.

Iku wanted to help educate herself and others on the Asian American Movement and the local JA activist tie to the Movement, and was hoping to create a conference gathering to do so. She brought together folks including Professor Glenn Omatsu, Evelyn Yoshimura, Kathy Masaoka, Alan Nishio (and later Tony Osumi, Kristin Fukushima, Sean Miura, traci kato-kiriyama and others) - all folks who actively engage in community building and engagement work. They were not interested in getting together with people just to reminisce, which they worried a conference might do. So the entire group together formulated the conference into a very active space, to highlight various issues currently affecting the community. A very rich cadre of facilitators brought together over 200 people into engaged conversations.

The Facebook page remained active, with people continuing to post articles and essays and news. Click here to join in and contribute to the thread :)