On Saturday, Jan. 25, there will be a film screening of Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement. A live performance by Miyamoto with musical guests, and a Q&A will follow the screening at Fulkerson Hall in the Music B building from 5-7:30 p.m.
In addition to Miyamoto, the Saturday film screening and performance will include Derek Nakamoto (piano), Juan Perez (bass), and Cal Poly Humboldt alumna Chizuko Endo (taiko). Endo is a pioneer in the world of Taiko arts who has traveled the globe performing and teaching in addition to raising two sons and co-founding and running the Taiko Center of the Pacific in Hawaii.
On Monday, Jan. 27, Miyamoto will take the stage again at the Native American Forum in the Behavioral Social Science building from 5:30-7 p.m. to reflect upon and read excerpts from her memoir, Not Yo’ Butterfly.
Monday’s events will also include a conversation with Endo and Not Yo’ Butterfly editor Deborah Wong. Copies of the memoir will be available for purchase.
Miyamoto is an icon of Asian American music and activism. Born in Los Angeles, Miyamoto was only two years old when she was imprisoned in the Santa Anita temporary detention center. Upon returning to L.A., she pursued dance and wrote A Grain of Sand, the first Asian American album, released in 1973. Since the early 1970s, she has been exploring ways to reclaim and re-spirit minds, bodies, histories, and communities, using the arts to create social change and forge solidarity. In 1978 she founded Great Leap, an L.A.-based multicultural arts organization that uses art as both performance and creative practice to deepen relations among people of diverse cultures and faith and to transform how we live on Earth. Great Leap is rooted in the Asian American community and promotes cross-cultural exchange with local and nationwide audiences and communities.
In 2021 she published her memoir, Not Yo’ Butterfly. Beginning with the harrowing early years of her life as a Japanese American child navigating a fearful West Coast during World War II, Miyamoto leads readers into the landscapes that defined the experiences of 20th-century America and also foreground the struggles of people of color who reclaimed their histories, identities, and power through activism and art.
Featuring rare archival footage, the 2024 documentary Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement tells the story of a changing community through one of its most beloved storytellers as she reflects on decades of groundbreaking cultural work and a life that has bridged coasts, industries, families, and history. A co-production with PBS SoCal, the documentary debuted as part of PBS SoCal’s ARTBOUND series in November 2024.
Events will be facilitated by Paul Michael Leonardo Atienza, Department of Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies with partnership from the Asian Desi Pacific Islander-Middle East & North African Collective (ADPI-MENA), Student Life, and Humboldt Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity (HAPI).
Fred Korematsu received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998 after he won a federal court case that overturned his conviction under President Roosevelt’s post-Pearl Harbor executive order. The order authorized the secretary of war and military commanders to incarcerate all individuals of Japanese ancestry in internment camps. An Oakland, California native who worked as a youngster in his family’s flower business, Korematsu reported for military duty but the Navy rejected him due to stomach ulcers and he could find no employment after Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of Roosevelt’s internment order, but Korematsu’s conviction was thrown out decades later with the disclosure of new evidence that had been withheld from the courts by the federal government during the war. The new evidence refuted the necessity of internment.
In the years before Korematsu’s death in 2005, he served on the Constitution Project’s bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee. The project is a think tank that advocates the rule of law and criminal justice programs.