Interviewed by Leonard Chan

Rita Takahashi is one of the many friends of AACP that I have met over the years. We would most often see her at educational conferences.

I remember that she organized an event, back in 2015, with the Japanese American National Library where they had Professor Charles Wollenberg (author of “Rebel Lawyer: Wayne Collins and the Defense of Japanese American Rights”) and our very own, Mas Hongo on the program. That’s when I first became more aware of some of the things she did, including teaching at San Francisco State University.

Recently she emailed me to find out if we still carried a book called “Ten Visits” which was about how to visit the ten Japanese American World War II incarceration centers and what you would find there. This was a book that AACP helped publish awhile ago. Sadly, we no longer have that book.

In her email, Rita told me about how she no longer taught at SF State and about the business she had started. When she informed me of her work to highlight historical AAPI places with her business, I thought an interview with her would be perfect for this month's travel theme for the AACP newsletter.

Hello Rita. I’ve known you for quite awhile now – at least 13 years (from email records with you). I’m guessing that you knew Florence and Mas Hongo (chief members of AACP) for even longer than I may have known you. Oddly enough, I don’t know much about your academic work, such as your field of study and the subjects that you’ve taught. Could you start off by giving us some of your background and interests?

By Leonard Chan and Olivia Caballero

This is our tenth edition of our AAPI related summer travel series (link to our prior articles – 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2021, 2022, and 2023; note: some of the links from the articles may be broken, but you can still find most of these places by doing an online search).

Let’s get right into our suggestions.

------------------

Sing Peak Yosemite and Other Chinese Historical Places Within the Park

By Leonard Chan

I believe I first learned of this peak from our volunteer Kyla Cheung who told me about a hiking trip she had taken in Yosemite to see the only mountain named after a Chinese American in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.