Esther Newman

Esther Newman grew up in California. After college and a career in marketing and media production for Ohio’s Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, she returned to school to study twentieth century American history. While in graduate school, she became interested in her family’s history which led to research on topics affecting the Japanese Diaspora including internment, migration and assimilation. She is retired but her interest in writing about and supporting organizations related to these subjects continues.

Updated November 2021

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Inspire Forward: Nikkei Heroes Under 30

Miye Sugino—Art as Advocacy: “To me, art is a reclamation of identity”

  • By Esther Newman
  • 2 Jan 2023
As one of JANM’s 30 Changemakers Under 30, Miye Sugino had amassed an impressive body of work and accomplishment most adults never achieve, all before receiving her high school diploma. Miye’s art and writing has gained national and international recognition including being one of twenty U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts through the National Young Arts Foundation. In addition, she has been an art mentor at San Quentin Prison through Empowerment Avenue and an intern at Loyola Law School’s Project for the Innocent. Miye, born in Chicago to a Japanese American father an…

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Power of Our Stories

The Power of Persistence: Tour Manzanar with Nell Yukiye Murphy

  • By Esther Newman
  • 24 Oct 2022
Nell Yukiye Murphy knows the importance of keeping a significant part of Japanese American history alive and she also knows the power of persistence. That makes her a natural choice to be profiled for Discover Nikkei’s series, The Power of Our Stories. Nell has developed and produced a virtual tour of Manzanar, “Journey to Manzanar,” and thanks to her persistence, it’s now accessible to everyone.  Nell Murphy is from Northeast Los Angeles and at 18 years of age, she’s already seen quite a bit of the world. Interviewed via email, Nell wrote, “As a ki…

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Inspire Forward: Nikkei Heroes Under 30

Vini Taguchi, A Civil Engineer for Social Justice—Part 2

  • By Esther Newman
  • 28 Jul 2022
Read Part 1 >> Joining the JACL The Kakehashi program was Vini’s first experience where all the participants were Asian and Pacific Islander Americans. “I immediately discovered that I felt more at home in this community than I ever had with my Japanese friends because suddenly I was in a diverse group of Americans with varying racial identities and Japanese language abilities where my background was still unique but not so ‘different’ as it normally was.” “After the Kakehashi trip,” wrote Vini, “I longed to stay connected with m…

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Inspire Forward: Nikkei Heroes Under 30

Vini Taguchi: A Civil Engineer for Social Justice—Part 1

  • By Esther Newman
  • 27 Jul 2022
Vinicius “Vini” Taguchi personifies the cross cultural, interconnected reach of today’s Nikkei community. His outlook is as broad as his background while his occupation and vocation focus on social justice. He’s both issei and gosei (a first generation immigrant more culturally aligned with 4th and 5th generation Japanese Americans), Brazilian and American, a civil engineer and a community activist. And, like the others in this series of Inspire Forward: Nikkei Heroes Under 30, he’s just getting started. Family Background Vini has assembled family stories, docu…

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Telling the Story to Understand the History

  • By Esther Newman
  • 26 Apr 2022
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and the United States entered WWII, thousands of American citizens who shared ancestry and facial features with the enemy and suddenly faced an overwhelming question. What would they, Japanese Americans, have to do to prove their loyalty to the country of their birth? Daniel James Brown’s Facing the Mountain examines the price of patriotism Japanese Americans paid through the lives of four young Nisei men—Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, Kats Miho, and Gordon Hirabayashi—three of whom were members of the 442nd Regimental Comba…

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