Gil Asakawa

Gil Asakawa is a journalist, editor, author and blogger who covers Asian American issues and culture in several blogs and social media.

His main blog, Nikkei View, is about pop culture from an Asian American perspective. He also posts short commentary about pop culture at http://gilasakawa.posterous.com, and short commentary about media and technology at gilasakawa.tumblr.com, and he's active on Facebook and Twitter.

He is a nationally known speaker, panelist and expert on Asian American and Japanese American issues. He served as the Editorial Board Chair for the Pacific Citizen and a member of the national Board of Directors for the JACL. He is a past president of the Mile Hi Chapter of the JACL.

In 2009 Gil and his partner, Erin Yoshimura launched visualizAsian, a live online interview show featuring conversations with Asian American leaders and newsmakers.

Articles by Gil Asakawa:

Capture Your Family's Food Culture Before It's Too Late

More than other Asian American communities, Japanese Americans are losing our institutional cultural knowledge as our elders die. The Nisei are, like Tom Brokaw's “Greatest Generation,” passing on. Many Sansei (including myself) are on the older end of the Baby Boomer scale and we're no spring chickens either. Some Asian ethnic ...Read More

Anti-Chinese Sentiment Lingers, Even After U.S. Senate Apologizes

It took four decades before Japanese Americans received a formal apology for the WWII internment. The apology was part of the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. The Chinese in America are still waiting for an apology from the top, 129 years after the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed by President Chester ...Read More

Traveling to Japan

Seven months after the earthquake and tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster hit Japan, my wife Erin and I are going to do the one thing that I think will help Japan the most, even more than the hundreds of dollars we’ve donated to various aid efforts. We’re going to visit Japan — with my mother in tow — and spend money the...Read More

Support Concentration Camp Preservation, Across the States

It's a fact: The 10 concentration camps built during World War II to imprison 120,000 people of Japanese descent — more than half U.S.-born and therefore American citizens, and most of them mere children — were in godforsaken corners of the country. No offense to people who live near the sites of these former "relocation cente...Read More

Appreciating Asian American Culture at the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival

It struck me towards the end of the first day of the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival that the clash of cultures I had just witnessed perfectly encapsulates why I've been a volunteer for this event since it was started in 2001. Full disclosure: Last year, my partner Erin Yoshimura took on the role as executive director of the festival, after volu...Read More