The Hope of Another Spring: Takuichi Fujii, Artists and Wartime Witness brings Fujii’s art to a broader audience with the stunning pages from a diary he kept while incarcerated during World War II. Written by Barbara Johns and with an introduction by the artist’s grandson Sandy Kita, this book offers a historical, art historical, and also deeply personal insight on to Takuichi Fujii. The first half delves into Fujii’s biography, providing an overview of his life in Seattle and the position of Japanese issei artists within the West Coast art scene, before delving into his family’s forced relocation first to the detention camp in Puyallup, Washington, and then to Minidoka, Idaho. The author also provides a as thorough an accounting of Fujii’s career and life work as possible.

But the gem of this book is the reproduction of Fujii’s diary that takes up the second half. His sketches and their accompanying notes (diary entires of a sort) provide a detailed look at life inside a Japanese internment camp and the emotional turmoil of that experience. The text ranged from a simple description to more of a thought out musing. It’s very poetic in styling and voice. All told, the works provide an intimate portrait of this life behind barbed wire fences. The Hope of Another Spring offers an issei artist’s perspective to our understanding of Japanese American’s wartime incarceration, while also bringing a valuable study of Fujii and his artistic journey and long career.

Heroine Worship by Sarah Kuhn is the riveting sequel to Heroine Complex, starring not just one, but two badass Asian American superheroines. You may or may not recall that I loved Heroine Complex when it came out last summer. The first book in this series followed Evie Tanaka as she morphed from sidekick to full blown superhero with fire throwing powers. Throw in a budding romance thrown in and an at times testy relationship with her best friend, boss, and San Francisco’s beloved superhero Aveda Jupiter, and it’s a thrill of a read. Now in Heroine Worship we switch gears to focus on Aveda, formerly Annie Chang, who is now sharing the spotlight with Evie. We follow Aveda/Annie as she struggles with a demon-less SF, deals with the fact that she’s been a less than great friend to Evie, and where she falls in the Aveda-Annie spectrum. The plot revolves around Evie’s engagement and impending wedding. That backdrop provides all the necessary quirky props, settings, and bridal beasts, but in the end, like the first book, this one is really about Evie and Aveda/Annie’s friendship.

Heroine Worship starts a bit more slowly than its predecessor. And I think it’s only natural that fans of Complex love Evie a little more and Aveda a little less. Aveda spends the first half or so behaving in expected Aveda ways (mostly a belief that she knows best), but in the second half, the novel really takes flight. We get more of Aveda/Annie’s back story, including a wonderful and deep set of scenes with her Chinese parents about expectations, pride, and family. We get a fun and sweet romantic line. We get more feelings (FEELINGS!). And we watch Aveda become comfortable with herself as Annie and what that means. It’s really in that journey that she ultimately enamors herself to us readers.

Heroine Complex is the book I immediately sent to my friends. I have already followed up with them for Heroine Worship, accompanied with the advice, “Keep reading, it’s worth it.” And when you’re done, schedule a viewing of The Heroic Trio.

 

I was surprised to see this commercial. Not that Asian Americans don’t need Depend adult diapers, but that this commercial highlighted a use case I had not thought about – firefighters wearing Depend’s:

“On Jon’s crew, every second counts. See how the breathable fabric of Depend® Real Fit® briefs helps him manage his bladder leakage so he can stay prepared for whatever lies ahead.”

The commercial highlights that “Jon S.” is an actual Depend user. If I hadn’t moved to California, I would have experienced “California Asian American Culture Shock” – seeing an Asian American firefighter, especially in a television commercial!

The one minute version of the commercial goes into more details regarding “Jon S.”:

These commercials were first posted back in January 2017 – so I’m not sure why I haven’t seen them until now … The again, Depend customers are probably generally older than I am, so maybe I’m not watching the same program as the elderly. Though “Jon S.” is definitely not the stereotypical Depend user.

In April of this year, I was asked by Southern California Public Radio to do a presentation about my family as part of their new series called, Unheard LA. The following is the video from my talk, followed by my original speech (broken into two parts). Please note, the text is from the original draft of the speech, so at points is considerably different than the actual talk I gave.

Be sure to read, Part 1. 

CHAPTER 5: The story (cont.)

The “camp” my family was sent to was in Topaz, Utah.

Now imagine: People going from sunny and WARM Hawaii to the high deserts of Utah—where in the winter there was a snow on the ground and in the summer it was often over 100 degrees. They couldn’t have been prepared for that.

It is important not only to know where they were but why. In 1943, America needed soldiers and people to help the war effort. And there were 120,000 Japanese Americans sitting idly in these “camps.” But the problem was that the government couldn’t tell the “good” Japanese Americans versus the “bad” Japanese Americans. So, they created a loyalty questionnaire.

The two most important questions were questions 27-28.

There were only two possible answers to these questions. Yes, Yes and No, No. Answering one of them no, meant you were answering them both no. These two questions literally divided my community and its effects can still be felt today.

So why did people answer yes-yes? It’s pretty simple actually. They were loyal and willing to prove it. And they had no allegiances to any other country. The No-Nos were a bit more complicated. Some said, take me out of camp, take me out of this prison, I’m willing to answer yes, until then: No. And they believed Question 28 was a trick question, because the basic underlying assumption was that you had allegiances to another country.

How did my grandfather answer these questions? No Question 27 and No to Question 28.

Here are my grandfather’s words on why he answered the way he did:

1. As an American citizen, he was insulted.
2. He thought if he answered yes-yes, he and his family would be released on the mainland where they had no friends and family and into communities where anti-Japanese sentiment prevailed.
3. If they were going to be deported anyway – as my grandfather believed – a ‘yes’ answer would not look good.

And, because of his answer, they were sent to Tule Lake.

…where all the “bad” Japanese were sent.

In 1944, the US government passed a law that allowed American born citizens to renounce their citizenship voluntarily during wartime. The bill was designed to pave the way for the mass deportation of Japanese Americans after the war.

It was under this law that my grandfather (and other Japanese Americans like him) renounced his citizenship. He said he did this because he was convinced that Japanese Americans were going to be deported to Japan and it’s better to be first rather than last in line. Secondly, there were pro-Japanese factions in camps that threatened him and his family if he didn’t renounce his citizenship.

Once Tule Lake closed, they were sent to Crystal City, Texas.

This camp was for an “enemy aliens” and had to adhere to the Geneva Conventions, meaning better food and shelter than the “regular camps”. And when I looked into it, there was a swimming pool in Crystal City

After the war, my grandfather and other Japanese Americans realized renouncing their citizenship was a mistake. They worked with Wayne Collins, a wonderful lawyer from San Francisco, who said, “You can no more resign your citizenship in a time of war than you can resign from the human race.” He argued their renunciations had been the result of the unlawful detention and the terrible conditions in Tule Lake and not their decision.

My grandfather argued he was an American by birth. His rights had been violated. But he wanted to remain in the country.

After much hand wringing, my grandfather and his family were allowed to stay…

… they were given $25 dollars each and one way tickets back to Hawaii. Their citizenship was returned to them 10 years later.

I don’t look at my grandfather’s story through rose-colored glasses. There are many disturbing things about his story. In fact, the first time I read it I thought he was a spy. Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away before I was born. I have so many questions I wish I could ask him. The most important being, did he know about Pearl Harbor.

But even without those answers, I no longer believe he was a spy. He just got caught in a wave of hysteria and was making the decisions he thought was best for him and his family. Blaming my grandfather also takes blame away from the government, who incarcerated 120,000 based entirely on their ethnicity.

Now that I know the story, I use every opportunity to pass the story to my son.

CHAPTER 6: Passing the story

It started with a trip to Manzanar when he was four.

But this was not just a one-time thing. Every time we pass places where Japanese Americans were incarcerated here in Southern California, I make sure to remind him. So that includes Santa Anita Race track, Griffith Park, Pomona Fair Grounds, and Tuna Canyon. I tell him, “this is where they locked up our people.”

This is my life’s work, to share the story of my family and others who were locked up. In fact, I constantly tell my son that we, as decadents of people who were locked up in these “camps,” have a moral responsibility to make sure that it never happens again to anyone ever. And I share it with all of you in the hopes we don’t let history repeat itself again.

Follow me on Twitter @ksakai1.

At my local Trader Joe’s in Silicon Valley, this frozen dish goes for $4.99. I’ve had this dish before where I have stir fried it, so this time around, I microwaved the dish – first the shrimp separately, then adding the shrimp to the rice, for a total microwave time of around 4 to 5 minutes:

Overall, the dish tasted almost as good as stir fried. Overall, I like the dish – it was pretty tasty, and maybe even a little spicy for some. I highly recommend compared to some of the other frozen dishes I’ve had from Trader Joe’s.

In April of this year, I was asked by Southern California Public Radio to do a presentation about my family as part of their new series called, Unheard LA. The following is the video from my talk, followed by my original speech (broken into two parts). Please note, the text is from the original draft of the speech, so at points is considerably different than the actual talk I gave.

CHAPTER 1: My hero

The one part of him that I never understood was what happened to him when he was in “camp.”

CHAPTER 2: My understanding of what happened

“Camp” is shorthand in Japanese American for the “internment camp” or more accurately, “concentration camp.” I know people always freak out when they hear that word. This is no disrespect to what happened in Europe, because those were much worse, those were death camps. What happened here is the picture book definition of a concentration camp. In fact, the people in government originally called it a concentration camp. Calling it an internment camp is a euphemism. Another euphemism from that time is “relocation” instead of what it really was an “incarceration.”

One of the earliest memories I have of my father was him trying to make sense of what happened to him when he was a child. Time, sickness, and age had worn down his memory until he had only three left of his time in camp.

1. His dad worked for the “Japanese government” and that’s why they were taken.
2. That they had been in the Tule Lake, Northern California camp.
3. That the food was really bad.

No one else in the family seemed to remember much more. When I asked my uncle, the oldest child in my father’s family, he told me they were in Topaz, Utah. And my aunt, my dad’s older sister, said they were Crystal City, Texas. My aunt also remembered a swimming pool at Crystal City! A swimming pool? In a concentration camp? What’s unusual about all of this was that most Hawaiian Japanese were not taken to the camps. So why them?

The one thing everyone said was that neither of my grandparents wanted to discuss what happened and that my grandmother would have a visceral reaction when she thought about her time in “camp.”

CHAPTER 3: Trying to find his story

Just because my father wasn’t sure what happened to him, didn’t mean “camp” didn’t keep popping up in our lives.

In 1988, my father received his twenty thousand dollars and an official apology from the government. I remember how much it meant to him when he got it. It was vindication that what happened was wrong.

A few years after that, my father took me to the Japanese American National Museum, which was relatively new when we went. I only remember one thing from the trip, my father looking up his father (my grandfather) in the library. The records indicated that my grandfather was a mechanic. My father didn’t like that! He said he wasn’t a mechanic and we left.

I didn’t see this at the time but my father was yearning to find out answers as to what happened and why.

CHAPTER 4: My path to the story

It wasn’t until I started working at the Japanese American National Museum in my mid-twenties that I started to ask questions about what happened. Being around Japanese American history and culture as well as people who had been in camp, I suddenly needed to know my family’s story. Everyone who knew—including my father—had passed away or didn’t remember much, so I started to do research. I wrote to the National Archives, Dept. of Justice, and the FBI…

CHAPTER 5: The story

… and this is the story I found…  I hope this puts my father’s soul to rest.

My grandfather was a NISEI, a second generation, or in other words an American citizen.

My father had been right, my grandfather worked for the Japanese government. He was a clerk in the consulate’s office in Honolulu which was the equivalent of working for the Taliban in New York City right before 9/11. Not a great place for him to have been.

The FBI believed my grandfather was pro-Japanese with anti-American sentiment, more “old-time Japanese” than anything else.

My grandfather was taken by the FBI and sent to Sand Island in Hawaii. He was accused of three things:

1. In 1937, he and another consulate official took a camera from a naval intelligence officer who was taking a picture of a Japanese ship.

2. During a hearing, he admitted seeing other consulate officials acting suspiciously and did not report it to the proper authorities.

3.  And probably most damming, he was paid to burn paperwork on August 1, 1941.

The charges were vacated but the government considered him so much of a danger thhat he could not be released. So, they sent him (and my family) to the camps on the mainland.

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter @ksakai1.

Recently, NPR interviewed Vincent Chin’s best friend and best nan, Gary Koivu, to remember Chin, on the 35th anniversary of his death:

 

“Gary Koivu met Chin when they were in the first grade and their teacher introduced Chin to the rest of the class. They were friends for more than 20 years and Chin asked Koivu to be the best man in his wedding.
…
There was an auto worker,” Koivu says. “He said to Vincent, ‘Because of little mother f****** like you, a lot of Americans are losing their jobs.’ Vincent wasn’t Japanese. He was Chinese [American], but that didn’t matter. … He was Asian.”

…
Chin died four days later on June 23, 1982.

Ebens and Nitz were sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $3,000.
…
After his death 35 years ago [today], the federal case against Ebens and Nitz was the first time the Civil Rights Act was used in a case involving an Asian-American victim. Chin’s death went on to become a rallying cry for stronger federal hate crime legislation.”

 

I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I first blogged about remembering the 25th anniversary of Chin’s death.

In the age of Trump and his hateful rhetoric, it’s no surprise that violence against Muslims and Hispanics is way up. I grew up in the Eighties, so I do remember the rhetoric against the Japanese as Americans feared that Japan was overtaking the United States as an economic superpower (how did that turn out?)

If you want to learn more about Vincent Chin and the trial, the award winning Who Killed Vincent Chin can be found on YouTube:

A must watch for anybody interested in Asian American history.

I’ve mentioned before that I pretty much love anything paranormal or conspiracy related. Give me a good alien abduction, or haunting, or JFK assassination story and I will be happy for hours. Not that I believe most of it—or any of it for that matter. I find the stories fascinating, especially what they say about us as humans and society itself.

The two areas of my life that rarely meet are my love for the paranormal/conspiracy and my passion for Asian American history and culture. Although, this is not to say they haven’t met before. For example, I’ve written in the past about how some idiots believe the Gray aliens are descendants of Asians and the intriguing theory that what crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in the late 1940s weren’t aliens from outer space but were really from Japan.

As I was figuring out what to write about next, I wanted to find another paranormal story that had something to do with Asian Americans or at least Asian Asians. At first, I was thinking of writing about the Devil’s Sea, aka: Asia’s Bermuda Triangle. In fact, I still may write about it in the future. But during the research, I was curious what kinds of things would come up if I Googled: “Asian American, conspiracy.” To my surprise, the first hit was about the late Senator Daniel Inouye.

Before I get into what I found, let me first say that Senator Inouye is a hero of mine. In fact, he’s such an icon, I refer to him as the “Senator.” In other words, he’s the ONLY senator that matters. Over the course of my career at the Japanese American National Museum, I was lucky enough to not only meet him on numerous occasions but I also interacted and actually got to know him a little. I say all of this only to make it clear that I mean no disrespect to him or his legacy.

I should also give a brief history about the Senator. The Senator was a war hero. He was an officer in the 442nd Regimental Infantry Unit, the all-Japanese American unit in World War II. He won the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart with Cluster. He was the first Japanese American in Congress and served as Hawaii’s Senator from 1962 until 2012. Two years before his death, he was elected the President pro tempore, or in other words, he was third in line for the President. As far as I know, that’s the closet an Asian American has gotten to the Presidency so far.

So what did I find in my Google search? The Senator is listed on countless websites as proof of a conspiracy that there is a secret government really running things. This is based on something he said during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987.

Here is a transcript of what he said:

There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.

It’s amazing how many websites cite this quote as proof of the existence of a secret government that is really running things. I’ve even read on some message boards that claim that the Senator wasn’t just talking about a secret government within the United States but a secret world-wide government, also known as the New World Order.

The interesting thing about the people who cite the Senator’s Iran-Contra quote is that they fail to note the circumstances—the Iran-Contra hearings. The Senator was referring specifically to the facts in the case itself. There WAS a conspiracy to get arms into Iran by a secret faction of the United States government that went around proper channels. But I do not believe that he was referring to anything more than that.

I guess one could make the leap that if there is a shadow government in this one case, there could be a secret government all the time, but there is no evidence that the Senator actually believed that.

Interestingly, this wasn’t the Senator’s only brush with government conspiracies:

Inouye also chaired the 1976 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The Committee was established to set up regulations for undercover operations abroad and internal operations against American citizens by the intelligence community. The regulations were a response to revelations that U.S. intelligence organizations had engaged in assassination plots and other international conspiracies. (Source)

What do you think? Do you think the Senator’s words are proof of the existence of a shadow-government? Let me know.

I would be remiss not to mention another conspiracy associated with the Senator that surrounds his death bed letter. I don’t know nearly enough about it to comment so that’s all I’ll say.

Follow me on Twitter @ksakai1.

If you hadn’t heard recently, there was a Supreme Court decision involving the Asian American band called The Slants, that was settled in their favor:

“Members of the Asian-American rock band The Slants have the right to call themselves by a disparaging name, the Supreme Court says, in a ruling that could have broad impact on how the First Amendment is applied in other trademark cases.

The Slants’ frontman, Simon Tam, filed a lawsuit after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office kept the band from registering its name and rejected its appeal, citing the Lanham Act, which prohibits any trademark that could “disparage … or bring … into contemp[t] or disrepute” any “persons, living or dead,” as the court states.

After a federal court agreed with Tam and his band, the Patent and Trademark Office sued to avoid being compelled to register its name as a trademark. On Monday, the Supreme Court sided with The Slants.”

The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng interviews The Slants to find out why the Asian American musicians went to the Supreme Court to fight for their right to use the racially insensitive band name – basically because of the principal. Personally, I agree with the Supreme Court ruling. I don’t necessarily agree with The Slants calling themselves The Slants, but they have the right to, according to the First Amendment and now with the Supreme Court ruling. Hopefully The Slants will be known more for their music, than the court ruling, since I’ve only heard of the band because of the Supreme Court case. – unlike Far East Movement, where I didn’t even know they were an Asian American band – only that they had a hit song, Like a G6.

EDITOR’S NOTE FROM JOZ:
Simon Tam of The Slants had previously written two guest posts at 8Asians about the subject:
Slanted Process: US Trademark Office Says Anyone (Except Asians) Can Trademark “The Slants” [2/23/2013] and Simon Tam of The Slants: “I am not the floodgate of racism that some think I am.” [8/4/2015]

By Michael Aushenker

Opening June 23 and going wide July 14, Kumail Nanjiani stars in The Big Sick, his autobiographical pet project—based on his real-life courtship with future wife Emily V. Gordon and their struggle after she is diagnosed with adult-onset Stills disease—and between the film’s Sundance buzz this year and Nanjiani’s signature butt-of-all-jokes geek Dinesh on HBO’s Silicon Valley, this Lionsgate-Amazon co-release arrives on a wave of anticipation.

Nanjiani and Gordon co-wrote the screenplay with the guidance of producer and comedy zeitgeist filmmaker Judd Apatow. Michael Showalter (best known as co-writer with David Wain of the Wet Hot American Summer franchise) takes a major career step forward directing.

The movie also co-stars Ray Romano and Holly Hunter as the parents of Emily, played here by Zoe Kazan.

In THE BIG SICK, Nanjiani plays a years-ago version of himself as a struggling stand-up comic in Chicago who becomes caught in the cross-cultural crossfire of his Pakistani immigrant family and his deepening romance with Emily, a blond Caucasian he meets after she heckles him during one of his comedy club routines.

Reeling from the toggle between Kumail’s overbearingly traditional Pakistani immigrant parents (who hilariously and repeatedly try to set Kumail up in an arranged marriage) and the trappings of modern romance, Kumail and Emily’s budding relationship has its ups and downs right before Emily is plunged into darkness due to her emerging illness. After Emily lands in a medically induced coma, the tense situation creates an unlikely trio, yoking Kumail with Emily’s parents, Terry (Romano) and Beth (Hunter), in a weeks-long triangle of worry and antics.

Comedy nerds may experience some déjà vu watching The Big Stick. Medical dilemma aside, Kumail and Emily’s grand love affair and its cross-cultural obstacles had its thunder stolen by season one of Master of None, where many of these issues were already explored and entertained (more deftly and with more depth) in the grand love affair between Dev and Rachel.

But like with that couple, it is the actress who is the secret weapon here: just as Noel Wells brought much nuance and naturalistic charm to her role opposite Aziz Ansari, Kazan does so here with Emily.  Which is not to say Nanjiani is merely rehashing Dinesh here.  He’s not. However, he’s not as good a dramatic actor when the movie calls him to be.

The Big Sick is entertaining enough, if overlong and melodramatic; not the kind of wearing-out-its-welcome-early bloat found in Apatow-helmed features Funny People and This Is 40 (Barry Mendel, producer of those movies, also co-produces this film), but dragging in places (perhaps suffering from a touch of Apatow-style self-indulgence). Meanwhile, a few minor details, such as Kumail’s “bag of devotion,” could’ve used more set-up earlier in the film.

To be expected by anyone familiar with Nanjiani’s stand-up act and interviews (such as in last month’s New Yorker), the dramedy comes loaded with jokes riffing off of Kumail’s cultural identity issues as a Pakistani American afloat in mainstream white culture, but it’s not enough to lift the film out of the soapy suds.

On an aside, Apatow’s own films have received criticism for its conspicuous placement of ethnicity in the background of his stories, and in The Big Sick, the only Asian faces in the film—Nanjiani, his family and family friends aside—are (you guessed it!) the doctors and nurses at the hospital. But this is a minor stray observation, not a major complaint, given the movie’s A-story, which benefits from richly comedic performances of Adeel Akhtar as Kumail’s brother Naveed; and Anupam Kehr and Zenobia Shroff as Kumail’s parents. Concurrently, Romano plays Terry as a straight man to Hunter’s feisty, two-fisted Beth.

The movie has its contrivances, especially when Kumail’s and Emily’s parents are stuck together. And even the most casual of viewers schooled on enough rom-coms will see that very Hollywood-ish last scene coming a mile away.

However, it’s great to see multicultural stories being told at a time when we obviously need more human-sized stories at our year-round CG-saturated multiplexes.

I heart professional sports. I love baseball, basketball, and football. I’m mostly obsessed with my local teams (Dodgers, Lakers, USC, and now Chargers). To prove it, I spend way too much time on fantasy sports. (On a side note, I’m the commissioner of a dynasty football league and we’re looking for a new owner so if interested, hit me up). That’s why when I tried to figure out what I should write about, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t done a top five Asian American athletes article for 8Asians before.

Figuring out a top five was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. First, I’ll be honest, the list was going to be a top ten. However, I realized right away that finding ten Asian American athletes I wanted to talk about was going to be a lot harder than I originally thought. Five seemed way more manageable.

Then, I had to decide which sports to include. Because I’m most knowledge about the three major sports in the United States, I decided to limit it to those—so baseball, basketball, and football. This means that I don’t mention the Olympians (Kristi Yamaguchi, Apolo Anton Ohno, Michelle Kwan, Sammy Lee, and others that I’m probably missing), golfers (Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie), or a tennis star (Michael Chang). My apologies to all of them. They are all amazing athletes and some played formative roles in my life. You can’t find a Japanese American who was around in the 1990s who didn’t swell with pride watching Kristi Yamaguchi in the Olympics or an Asian American kid from the late 80s, who didn’t play tennis because of Michael Chang.

And finally, this list does not include any Asian Asians (in other words, people who were born in Asia and do not consider themselves Asian American). This means that stars such as Hideo Nomo, Chan Ho Park, Yao Ming, Ichiro Suzuki, Yu Darvish or countless others are not eligible.

Because the list was limited to my top five, there were some names I had to leave off. Here are some of the other athletes that I considered for this list that deserve to be mentioned: Major League Baseball players Ron Darling, Don Wakamatsu, Kurt Suzuki, Travis Ishikawa, NBA and Los Angeles Lakers guard Jordan Clarkson, and NFL football players Hines Ward, Tedy Bruschi, Troy Polamalu, Rey Maualuga, Edward Wang. Also, it should be mentioned that on principle, I cannot include any San Francisco Giant. So Tim Lincecum is not eligible. Sorry Giant fans—your team sucks this year by the way.

Without further ado, here is my list of top five Asian American athletes.

#5: DAT NGUYEN

Dat was a star linebacker for Texas A&M and played five years for the Dallas Cowboys. He has the tenth most career tackles in Dallas history. He was the first Vietnamese American to play in the NFL.

Why I chose Dat? Despite being a USC Trojans fan, I remember what it meant to me to see Dat Nguyen on the field at Texas and then later Dallas. Everyone said he was too small and slow to play in the NFL, but he never listened to his critics. He took pride in being the baddest linebacker on any field he played on.

#4: KENICHI ZENIMURA

Kenichi is known as the “Father of Japanese American baseball.” Among many accomplishments, he was responsible for bringing Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig on a barnstorming tour of Japan, which is credited for baseball’s popularity in the country. But most importantly, he was instrumental in creating a baseball league in the Gila Riva Interment camp.

Why did I chose Kenichi? Unlike the other athletes on this list, Kenichi’s role was more of an ambassador than a player. He was the main force behind a Japanese American baseball league in the deserts of an internment camp that made life just a little more bearable and fun for those incarcerated.

#3: WATARU “WAT” MISAKA

Wat was the first non-white player and first Asian American to play in the NBA.

Why did I chose Wat? Despite having only played three games in the NBA, he is a legend in my book. He broke the NBA’s color barrier the same year that Jackie Robinson did it in baseball. But the thing that people forget about Wat, he was actually a hell of a basketball player. At five feet and seven inches, he led his college basketball team to an NCAA championship in 1944.

#2: TIANA BAUL SEAU JR. aka: JUNIOR SEAU

Junior is a hall of fame linebacker who played nineteen years in the NFL for the San Diego Charger, Miami Dolphins, and the New England Patriots.

Why I chose Junior? Junior was a stud. First round draft pick. Defense player of the year. Multiple Pro-Bowls. Linebacker of the Year. Super Bowl Champion. Hall of famer.  And of course USC alumni. But what I remember about him was the 1994 championship game where he played with a pinched nerve in his neck and somehow still managed to get 16 tackles.

#1 Jeremy Lin

Jeremy is an NBA guard who has played for the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, Charlotte Hornets and Brooklyn Nets. He has averaged twelve points and four and a half assists in his career. 

Why I chose Jeremy? This was a rather obvious choice. All I have to say is Linsanity. Most people remember him because of those few weeks in New York. But the reality is that he’s had a very successful career. And frankly, he’s the guy every young Asian American basketball player who has ever played the game wants to be.

Follow me on Twitter at @ksakai1

If you’re not aware, there is a closely watched special Congressional election coming this Tuesday, June 20th in Georgia – in a suburb of Atlanta (Georgia’s 6th Congressional District between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff), and Asian Americans could be the difference in having a Democrat win over a traditionally Republican district:

“Based on the district’s demographic makeup, Asian-American residents like Kolichala could play a major role in determining the final winner. While there are approximately 420,000 Asian Americans living in Georgia — roughly 4.2 percent of the state’s total population, according to the U.S. Census bureau — Asian Americans make up more than 10 percent of the 6th District.

Certain subsections of the district are also known for their high concentration of Asian Americans, including Johns Creek, where approximately a quarter of the city’s population identifies as Asian.

“Generally what attracts a lot of first generation Asian Americans to the area are the good school districts,” Sam Park, a Georgia state legislator and current Asian outreach director for Ossoff’s campaign, told NBC News. The son of Korean immigrants, Park grew up in the 6th District.”

This kind of reminds me of back in 2008 when Asian Americans were making a possible difference in Virginia – and they did when Obama won the state. In a special election, voter turnout tends to be much lower than presidential elections conducted in November. So it will be very interesting to see, if there is exit polling data, how Asian Americans voted. Nationally, Asian Americans are usually independent or lean Democratic, but that is because most Asian Americans live in California or New York. I imagine that in Georgia, Asian Americans tend to be more on the Independent or Republican leaning side.