George and Sakaye Aratani

GEORGE ARATANI

A continuing legacy of hope for Japanese Americans and all Americans have been made possible by the high-impact, but “quiet,” Japanese American philanthropist George Aratani - the founder of the Kenwood Electronics Corporation and the Mikasa Chinaware firm. He has utilized the wisdom gained from his wartime internment tragedies to use philanthropy to fight the prejudice and fear that many Japanese Americans lived through that is at the root of his giving of approximately $10 million dollars: His goal is to help institutions involved with Japanese Americans help others with similar legacies of discrimination and loss.

Southern California’s largest donor to Japanese American causes is recognized nationally for his visionary entrepreneurship and where he acquired the reputation of being a remarkably successful and innovative business leader. He is a vivid example of the ability of Japanese Americans to create their own American success stories and one of the most respected members of our business community.

For decades, this hard-driving and successful entrepreneur has been a towering leader in the Japanese American community in Los Angeles as well as nationwide. Through his philanthropic generosity and commitments, he has played a singularly decisive role in supporting major cornerstone programs that enriched the lives of Japanese Americans and Americans for generations to come. His generosity spans a wide spectrum that mainly targets Japanese American organizations that includes the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, The National Japanese American Memorial in Washington, DC and the Asian American Studies Center at UCLAA.

The impressive breadth of his vision is matched only by his extraordinary ability to effect change. From prejudice and injustice, desolate concentration camps, impounded wealth, and savaged spirits, he has created a living legacy of fulfillment and achievement. His Aratani Foundation helps support about 100 recipients.

This community leader was born to a prosperous farmer tycoon in Guadalupe – a California seaside and agricultural town located 170 miles north of Los Angeles. His aspiration was to become a professional baseball career, not his family’s farming business, before injuring his leg. Despite being accepted at Stanford, he followed his father’s advice by attending Keio University - a prestigious private school in Tokyo.

His father’s death a year before WWII forced him (at the age of 24) to return to run the family agribusiness (i.e. farming, farm equipment, shipping and packing businesses). After Pearl Harbor, his entire family was interned at Arizona’s Gila River camp, along with 120,313 other Japanese Americans sent to 10 camps throughout the West as the result of then-President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 that started on February 19, 1042 and continued for three years. (Note: Sakaye, his wife, was interned at Arizona’s Poston camp.)

As a result, his family lost everything that they owned - an estimated $20 million to non-Japanese associates. He ended up losing most of it but never sued his partners. "If the president of the United States could put us behind barbed wire, what chance would I have in court when the war was going on?" he said.

After serving in the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Service teaching Japanese to American soldiers, he traveled to Japan with only a vague idea about what he would import from the war-devastated nation before starting Mikasa, Kenwood and a third business in Japan to import U.S. medical equipment.

Through his business ties with Japan, later in life, he has always been sensitive to the necessity of maintaining a strong and healthy relationship between Japan and the United States. His involvement in support of cultural exchange between these two nations is legendary.

He and his wife, who have two daughters, have lived in the same three-bedroom home for more than 40 years: a retreat in the Hollywood Hills featuring a Japanese garden and tatami room. He says he is just as happy at Burger King as at the finest geisha houses in Japan.

George Aratani states that his giving and entrepreneurial spirit is inspired by the example of his father, Setsuo Aratani.

MELISSA ARATANI KWEE
Ms Melissa Aratani Kwee is the oldest daughter (she has three younger sisters and brother) of Kwee Liong Tek and his Japanese American wife, a property tycoon who is the chairman of Pontiac Land - her family owns post properties such as Millenia Walk, Ritz Carlton and Conrad International). Her heritage includes being the granddaughter of George Aratani – the Kenwood electronics-empire founder, who became her role model. (She adapted his surname, Aratani, as her middle name as a sign of respect) Her family instilled in her a 'very strong ethic or value of playing your part, doing your bit and contributing what you have'.

This Harvard anthropology graduate has chosen to be a social activist beneath her well-cut clothes and transatlantic accent, as oppose to the life of a socialite. As a result, she often exudes a quiet conviction, self-confidence and a social conscience that money cannot buy. She has stated that “money is only a tool - use it but do not let it use you.” As a result, she has a definite idea of how she wants to spend the rest of her life - to make a difference in other people's lives.

As a girl, she says, she was always hatching plans to 'solve the world's problems'. Her teenage years including participating in various social service projects, such as raising funds for flood victims, trying to save the rainforests in Malaysia, worked with a conversation group in Nepal (where she learn how to speak Nepali and taught English at a local high school) and reading to depressed teenagers at Woodbridge hospital.

Upon her graduation from Harvard, she returned to Singapore in 1995 and set up a non-profit group for the development of women and youth called Project Access. She attributes her heightened social consciousness to the school she attended here, United World College, and its 'incredibly-compelling vision of young people being a positive force in their communities'.

Melissa spends much of her time doing corporate communications for the Pontiac Land group while sitting on a number of organizations such as the United Nations Development Fund for Women (Unifem), the Singapore Repertory Theatre and the United World College school board, either doing review work or 'organizing, advocating or connecting people. This in addition to her activities of speaking to youths or conducting workshops on various topics like volunteering, global awareness, leadership and family, or dabbling in schemes from Aids awareness projects to fundraisers for East Timor.

She subscribes to the proverb “To those to whom much has been given, much is expected.”

SETSUO & YOSHIKO ARATANI
A Hiroshima native, Setsuo Aratani (1885-1940), with his wife Yoshiko (1889-1935), overcame racist land laws to become a prosperous farmer and entrepreneur in the California seaside town of Guadalupe, near Santa Maria.

At one time, before World War II, he was one of the “Big Three” (Aratani, Minami and Tomooka – along with others such as the Idedas) who were prominent Japanese farmers that dominated the region of Guadalupe in Central California since the early 1900s. They were Japanese immigrants who tilled thousands of acres of farmland and harvested tons of carrots, lettuce, peas, and chili peppers; the produce was packed in ice and shipped as far as Texas and the East Coast. They had a major impact on the agricultural development of the Central Coast.

Before the arrival of the Big Three farmers, Chinese laborers, hoes in hand, broke the arid ground and planted sugar beets for the Union Sugar Mill in Betteravia, established in 1899.

Setsuo grew lettuce, carrots, strawberries and other produce on 5,000 leased acres in the Santa Maria and Lompoc valleys. He also sold farm equipment, operated two packing sheds (including Guadalupe Produce), ran a packing and shipping business and launched other entrepreneurial ventures.

He quickly became known as "Boss," sharing his leadership and wealth. According to Hirahara's book, he gave — not loaned — money to friends, bought a new car for the local Buddhist monk and organized a Japanese cooperative to raise money for local schools.

Of the Big Three farmers, Setsuo (aka “Ace” for his golfing and poker expertise) was probably the most ambitious – as noted in his Spanish-style house, as compared to the other wood-framed homes. He began one of the first packing operations, and he always thought big. He diversified his crops and his businesses, dabbled in the sale of sake (rice wine), from his hometown, and he launched a hog farm, a chili dehydrating plant, and a fertilizer plant, as well as investing in a wholesale produce market in Los Angeles.

For two decades in Guadalupe, the town -- at least superficially -- disregarded color barriers and joined together for picnics where Japanese, European Americans, Mexicans and Filipinos sat together to eat mesquite barbecue and watch performances by locals.

By 1928, Setsuo's business was doing so well that he sent his company baseball team to Japan. Setsuo had spent $3,000 on the tour, a small fortune at that time. His advice to his son was "if you want to get into business and continue to grow, you have to surround yourself with capable people you must treat them as part of the company. There are only 24 hours in a day. When the business gets bigger and bigger, there are so many things to do. You need good people to take on various important responsibilities. Then you can continue to make progress and grow bigger. But first you have to work as a team, just like the team that went to Japan." This philosophy was taken to heart by George Aratani.

	George and Sakaye Aratani

ARATANI FOUNDATION
Mr. Aratani is currently Chair of the Aratani Foundation in Los Angeles, California. In 1994, the Aratani Foundation was created to help support non-profit organizations that serve the Asian Pacific American community. The Foundation was named after George Aratani who founded three international corporations: Mikasa - a leading tableware company, Kenwood - a high fidelity electronics enterprise and AMCO - a medical supply business.

KENWOOD ELECTRONICS
In 1961, George Aratani, Bill Kasuga, and Yoichi Nakase decided that what the country needed was a better stereo. Rather than building something from scratch, they located Trio – a Japanese company who was already making advanced stereo equipment that they could market. Upon a few years of marketing their new line of Kenwood Electronics, they were making the most popular receiver in the United States and by 1986 the Kenwood name was so well known that the Trio corporation in Japan changed its name to Kenwood worldwide. Ambition and engineering excellence has been key factors constantly associated with Kenwood products. Today, Kenwood products are distributed in over 120 countries around the world, and Kenwood USA markets more than 250 products.

CHIURA OBATA

Chiura Obata was born in 1885 in Okayama and came to California in 1903.

He earned his living in California as illustrator for different newspapers and as commercial designer.

During this period his favorite subjects were Californian mountain landscapes. In 1927 he visited Yosemite park and the Sierra Nevada - painting and making sketches. Obata stayed in the USA until the death of his father in 1928.

Between 1928 and 1932 he worked in Tokyo as a painter and transformed his California landscape watercolors and sketches into a portfolio of 35 woodblock prints titled World Landscape Series - America. The prints were published by Takamizawa, Tokyo, as a limited edition of hundred.

In 1932 Obata Chiura returned to the US. He had received a post as an art instructor at the renowned University of California, Berkeley.

In 1942 Obata Chiura and his wife Haruko were among the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans who were moved from their homes at the West coast into ten relocation camps. During his internment in different camps, the artist made about hundred sketches and paintings until his release in 1945 that can be seen in the book Topaz Moon.

During his confinement at Topaz in Utah, he organized an art school for the 8,000 Japanese Americans in Topaz. The Topaz Art School had over 600 students with 16 art instructors.

After 1945, Obata Chiura could continue his former post as an art teacher at University of California at Berkley until his retirement in 1954. He continued to paint, sketch and to travel through the American countryside. In 1965 he received an order from the Japanese Emperor for promoting cultural exchange between the United States and Japan. Chiura Obata died at the age of 90.