Common Ground: The Japanese American National Museum and the Culture of Collaborations

Editors and Contributors

EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS 213 Editors and Contributors Frank L. Ellsworth, president of the Japan Society in New York, is currently working on Pop Art: Japan and the United States, a research project in art history. He is chairman of the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy and a trustee of the Japanese American National Museum; Global Partners, Canada; Southwestern University School of Law (Los Angeles); and Endowments, Capital Research, and Management Company; former president of Independent Colleges of Southern California; and a life trustee of Pitzer College. Clement Hanami is the art director/production manager of the Japanese American National Museum, responsible for the overall design, installation, fabrication, and maintenance of the museum’s exhibitions. As program developer for the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, Hanami is responsible for coordination of the various programmatic components for this new initiative. Hanami is a recipient of a J. Paul Getty Midcareer Visual Artist Fellowship, awarded by the California Community Foundation, and recently completed the JASON PROJECT, an educational Web site funded by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program. EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS 214 Arthur A. Hansen is a senior historian at the National Museum and served as a scholarly consultant to the REgenerations Project. He is an emeritus professor of history and Asian American studies at California State University, Fullerton, where he directs the Center for Oral and Public History and its Japanese American Project. In 2002–2003 he was president of the Oral History Association. James A. Hirabayashi, a Harvard University graduate in anthropology, is professor emeritus , San Francisco State University. His distinguished thirty-year academic career includes the position of dean of undergraduate studies and dean of ethnic studies at San Francisco State. Hirabayashi provides overall guidance and direction to the Japanese American National Museum’s educational and curatorial programs. Lane Ryo Hirabayashi is professor of Asian American and Latino studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His most recent book is the coedited anthology Reversing the Lens: Ethnicity, Race, Gender, and Sexuality Through Film (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2003). Naomi Hirahara is a writer and editor of nonfiction books on the Japanese American experience, including two biographies for the Japanese American National Museum. She previously worked as an editor and reporter for the Rafu Shimpo, a bilingual Japanese American daily newspaper in Los Angeles. She is also the author of the Mas Arai mystery series, which begins with the novel Summer of the Big Bachi (New York: Bantam, DeltaTrade Paperback, 2004). Irene Y. Hirano is president and chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Hirano serves as a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities by presidential appointment, and her professional and community involvement includes serving as a member of the American Association of Museums Accreditation Commission, a member of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Board, and board member and secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. Hirano is also a member of the Toyota North American Diversity Advisory Board and vice chair of the California Japanese American Community Leadership Council. Darcie C. Iki directed the Life History Program at the Japanese American National Museum from its founding in 1994 until her retirement in 2002. In this capacity, she oversaw the REgenerations Oral History Project throughout its existence. During her tenure at the National Museum, she was actively involved in the Southwest Oral History Association, the Oral History Association, and the Association for Asian American Studies. Karen L. Ishizuka is a senior producer at the Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center, a state-ofthe -art digital media production unit of the Japanese American National Museum. An award-winning producer and writer, Ishizuka and Artistic Director Robert A. Nakamura have garnered over twenty-five awards for museum productions. They were named among the Top 100 Producers of 1999 by AV Video Multimedia Producer magazine and were honored by the Smithsonian Institution with a twenty-five-year retrospective of their work in 1998. Ishizuka has been an international and national advocate for the study and preservation of home movies as a historical and cultural resource. She was recently reappointed to the National Film Preservation Board by the Librarian of Congress and is coediting an EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS 215 anthology based on the symposium entitled Mining the Home Movie: Excavations into Historical and Cultural Memories, sponsored by the...