Kenji G. Taguma

Award-winning journalist Kenji G. Taguma, a native of Sacramento, CA is the founding president and board chair of the Nichi Bei Foundation.

Currently, Kenji serves as the President of the Nichi Bei Foundation, the Editor-in-Chief of the Nichi Bei News and the current Chair of the Northern CA Soy and Tofu Festival.  He is also Executive Producer of the Foundation’s Films of Remembrance, an annual showcase of films related to the Japanese American incarceration during WWII. He also helped to launch pilgrimages to two historic sites relative to the Japanese American experience: the Angel Island Immigration Station and the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony.

Prior to his work at the Nichi Bei Times, Kenji was the Community Information Officer at the Human Rights/Fair Housing Commission of the City and County of Sacramento.

While at CA State University, Sacramento, Kenji also published his own Asian American newspaper, the AsiAmerican Journal.  He also organized numerous forums dealing with issues such as hate crimes, affirmative action, an anti-immigrant ballot initiative and ethnic studies, as well as a series of film events.  In 1998, Kenji received the distinguished Alumni Honors Award from CSUS. 

While working to renovate the English section of the Nichi Bei Times, the newspaper was presented the first-ever Pioneer Award from New California Media, a coalition of now more than 2,000 ethnic news organizations and supporters throughout the country.

In 1999 Kenji received the Community Service Award from New CA Media for an article that documented the struggle for Redress by Japanese American railroad and mine worker families, whose family heads were fired from their jobs during WWII at the hands of U.S. government.  Less than two months after the story ran, the victims were granted redress from the U.S. government.

In 2004, Kenji helped to lead a team of Nichi Bei Times staff members who put together a joint Japanese-English series dealing with the issue of whether or not Japanese Americans had a responsibility to serve as a bridge between U.S.-Japan relations, as we;; as dealing with the issue of cross-cultural communications between English-speaking and Japanese-speaking members of the community.  That series won the 2005 Grand Prize Award from the Overseas Japanese Press Association in Tokyo, Japan.

In May of 2013, he was awarded a Consul General Award from Consul General of Japan in San Francisco, Hiroshi Inomata, for his “distinguished achievements in contributing to mutual understanding and friendship between Japan and California.”