Ina Sugihara
A leading Nisei activist in the 1940s, Ina Sugihara (1919–2004) was a frequent contributor to the press, both Japanese American and outside, and built coalitions for civil rights across racial lines.
Category Archives: Activism
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Janice Mirikitani
Award-winning poet, dancer, activist and educator Janice Mirikitani (1942–2021) was internationally known and respected for her life-long commitment to addressing the horrors of war and for advocating against institutional racism and the enslavement of women and the poor.
Lily Okamoto
A Hawai’i-born, politically active Sansei who was the first woman in the Islands to be both a certified public accountant and licensed attorney.
Mari Okazaki
Mari Okazaki (1916-2005) was a psychiatric social worker who participated in the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS) as a researcher and continued her career in social care in the postwar years.
Mari Sabusawa Michener
Mari Sabusawa Michener (1920–94) was a Japanese American activist and philanthropist.
Georgia Elliott
Pioneer in the Deaf women’s rights movement
Miya Sannomiya Kikuchi
Cultural ambassador and journalist.
Mothers of Topaz
In response to the restoration of Selective Service for Nisei, some Issei mothers in Topaz organized to write a petition protesting the continued discrimination against their sons’ citizenship rights.
Mary Smeltzer
Peace activist, teacher at Manzanar, and manager of resettlement-era hostels in Chicago and New York.
Michi Nishiura Weglyn
Activist and author of Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps, the first comprehensive book about the World War II incarceration of Japanese-Americans written by a Nisei.