William Smittcamp talks about his business, Wawona Frozen Foods, his family, his involvement in the community and his thoughts on receiving the Leon S. Peters Distinguished Service Award.
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Mathias “Matty” Matoian talks about growing up in Fresno, his family and his business, OK Produce and the importance of giving back to the community and doing the right thing in business.
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Saburo and Marion Masada recount their story growing up in the incarceration camps during World War II and life before and after the war. They also tell the larger story of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II in general.
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Robert Ogata talks about his family, how his father’s side came from Fukuoka in Japan and his mother’s from Hiroshima and how they immigrated to the United States, how his parents met and married, first farming strawberries in Anaheim before moving to Selma. He discusses how his mother lost her citizenship by marrying an Issei, […]
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Ken Taniguchi talks about being born in Fresno in 1951, attending Roeding Elementary, Cooper Junior High School and Fresno High School, then UC San Diego, UC Davis and then law school. He talks about his siblings, then about his paternal grandparents and how they immigrated from Wakayama Ken in Japan, and where his maternal grandparents […]
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Ralph Kumano talks about his family origins in Japan and being born in the Gila River Relocation Center, working in the farm industry growing up, before working for the National Park Service and as a teacher. He discusses teaching in Southern California for 18 years before moving back to Fresno and teaching at Kings Canyon […]
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Debbie Ikeda talks about her family and educational background, the Valley’s educational needs, how her grandfather immigrated to the United States, settling in Santa Monica and starting a nursery. She talks about how her family was sent to the Manzanar War Relocation Center, the photographer Toyo Miyatake, and Mexican American Ralph Lazzo who decided to […]
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Yutaka Yamamoto talks about his grandparents immigrating to the United States from Hiroshima, Japan, how his grandfather was a carpenter who fixed the doors of Fresno’s Chinatown’s gambling dens after police raids, Alien Land Laws and how they affected his father being able to buy a farm, the family’s laundry business, the Pearl Harbor attack, […]
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