Darryl Mori

Darryl Mori is a writer based in Los Angeles, specializing in the arts and the nonprofit sector. A Sansei and a native of Southern California, he has written for UCLA and the Japanese American National Museum, where he serves as a volunteer. He currently works in fundraising and external relations for Art Center College of Design.

Updated December 2012

community en

Stories of The Unsung Great: Author Greg Robinson on Exploring Japanese American History

By Darryl Mori
28 May 2021

“I have told many times the story of how years ago I came across some of Franklin D. Roosevelt's writings from the 1920s, in which he endorsed legal discrimination against Japanese immigrants on the grounds that it helped preserve white ‘racial purity’ against interracial marriage,” scholar and author Greg Robinson recalls. “It was a great shock to me, and started me thinking about his role in Executive Order 9066.” For Robinson, a historian by training, the discovery motivated him to devote much of his professional career to researching and writing about…

war en

Echoes of History: Sound Artist Alan Nakagawa and the Hiroshima Legacy

By Darryl Mori
10 Mar 2020

“You could feel everyone in the park staring,” Alan Nakagawa says. “Why do they get to go in the Dome? It was like being a goldfish in a goldfish bowl. However, the moment we were inside, having only an hour of access, we went straight to work.” The Los Angeles native recalls the day he and videographer Tom Clancey walked into the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Japan. The iconic structure, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the half-destroyed ruin of a building near the detonation point of the atomic bomb dropped on the city on August 6, 1945. Nakagawa, an artist speci…

culture en

Visual Communications and 50 Years of Asian Pacific American Stories

By Darryl Mori
30 Jul 2019

“Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, we were subjected to stereotypical portraits or invisibility,” Eddie Wong recalls. “We knew we could make a difference by providing an alternative in the form of books, photo exhibits, and eventually films and video.” Wong, together with colleagues Duane Kubo, Robert (Bob) Nakamura and Alan Ohashi, started Visual Communications (VC) in 1970—a pioneering nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Asian American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and media artists. In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of VC’s …

culture en

Faces of Civil Rights, Then and Now: Paul Kitagaki Jr.'s Gambatte! Project

By Darryl Mori
24 Jan 2019

“The faces from the photographs staring up at me as I searched for my family in the National Archives have always haunted me,” Paul Kitagaki Jr., recalls. “I wanted to know the story behind the faces and discover how they survived and created a new life after the war.” The noted photographer and videographer—a Sansei whose work has been honored with dozens of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize—had family members who had been unjustly incarcerated in American concentration camps during World War II. “I learned of Executive Order 9066 in my 10th g…

politics en

Commemorating a Justice Landmark: 30 Years of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988

By Darryl Mori
12 Dec 2018

It took just seconds for U.S. President Ronald Reagan to sign the document. Yet the journey to that moment spanned more than four decades. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was the culmination of a multiyear movement to seek justice for Japanese Americans forced to live in wartime concentration camps solely because of their Japanese ancestry. After Reagan signed it into law, the Act granted reparations of $20,000 and a formal presidential apology to every surviving U.S. citizen or legal resident immigrant of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during World War II. The act cited “racial pre…

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Darryl Mori

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Journal Entry #Lesson 3450: "Sharpen Your Pencils!"

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