30th Anniversary Virtual Celebration and Fundraiser Stories That Endure

Naomi Ostwald Kawamura is the Executive Director of Densho. Born and raised in San Diego, California, Naomi holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Washington, a Master’s degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of British Columbia. Her scholarly research focuses on cultural memory practices in Japanese American and Japanese Canadian communities and she has contributed as a guest editor and author in peer-reviewed journals and editions. Prior to Densho, Naomi was the Executive Director of the Nikkei Place Foundation, a Japanese Canadian organization based in British Columbia. She has held leadership positions at the San Diego History Center, the Museum Education Roundtable, and BAVC Media, among others.

Tom Ikeda (he/him) is the founding Executive Director of Densho. Tom is a sansei (third generation Japanese American) who was born and raised in Seattle. Tom’s parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II at Minidoka, Idaho. In addition to leading the organization for 26 years, Tom has conducted more than 250 video-recorded, oral history interviews with Japanese Americans. Prior to working at Densho, Tom was a General Manager at Microsoft Corporation in the Multimedia Publishing Group. Tom has received numerous awards for his community and historical contributions, including the Humanities Washington Award for outstanding achievement in the public humanities, the National JACL Japanese American of the Biennium Award, the Microsoft Alumni Integral Fellows Award, the Japanese American National Museum Founder’s Award, and the Robert Gray Medal from the Washington State Historical Society.

Duncan Ryūken Williams is Project Director for the Irei Project. He is also a professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Religion, and the Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. Williams’ latest monograph, American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019) is the winner of the 2022 Grawemeyer Religion Award and a LA Times bestseller. Williams is also the author of The Other Side of Zen (Princeton) and editor of seven volumes including Hapa Japan (Kaya), Issei Buddhism in the Americas (Illinois), American Buddhism (Routledge), and Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard). Find him online at duncanryukenwilliams.com.

Brynn Saito is the author of three books of poetry, including Under a Future Sky (Red Hen Press, 2023), inspired by her visit with her father to Gila River, AZ. She also co-edited with Brandon Shimoda The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (Haymarket Books, 2025). A fourth generation Korean American and Japanese American, Brynn teaches Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno, located on Yokuts and Mono lands.

Lisa Doi is a Yonsei who grew up in Chicago, where her family resettled after being incarcerated during WWII. She has a BA in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in American Studies from Indiana University. Her dissertation project was an ethnography of Japanese American pilgrimages. In addition, Lisa was the founding staff member at Tsuru for Solidarity and continues to serve on the Leadership Council. She is also the past president and board member of JACL Chicago. Finally, she is an active member of the Midwest Buddhist Temple. Lisa is joining after working for over five years at the Japanese American National Museum. There, she was on a team that redeveloped the new core exhibition, In the Future We Call Now, which tells the comprehensive history of Japanese America from early immigration to the present.

At Densho, Lisa is interested in making Japanese American history meaningful to the community. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Lisa is invested in how we make sense of the past in the present. She deeply appreciates the opportunity to steward community memory and to continue to build trust and bring care into the archive.