The Art And Activism of Nobuko Miyamoto: How She Became One Of LA's Most Enduring Performers

Nobuko Miyamoto sang and wrote on one of the defining albums of the Asian American movement in the 1960s and 1970s.In these challenging times, the need for reliable local reporting has never been greater. Put a value on the impact of our year-round coverage. Help us continue to highlight LA stories, hold the powerful accountable, and amplify community voices. Your support keeps our reporting free for all to use. Stand with us today.

Miyamoto, then a toddler, slept in a horse stall with her family for several months before her father volunteered to harvest sugar beets in Montana as part of the war effort. Workers lived in barracks. Because her dad had a family, they lived in a cabin.The family moved to Idaho then Utah before making it back to L.A. It was in Boyle Heights where Miyamoto discovered ballet.

They protested the Vietnam War — “the third war that I had seen the U.S. killing people who looked like me” — and fought to have Asian American history taught in college.Miyamoto teamed up with fellow activists Ijima and Chin to write folk songs with a defiantly Asian American perspective, and toured the country like troubadours, playing to cities with concentrations of Asian Americans such as L.A., Oakland, Chicago, Boston.

“We know that mainstream media, mainstream education, usually will not include our stories as Asian Americans or if they do, they usually get it wrong,” Nakamura said. “So we take inspiration from artists like Nobuko. We're going to have to do it ourselves because no one else will. We have to really literally fight for our own storytelling.”Miyamoto has been working on a new recording of “We Are The Children” with producer Chucky Kim and singers Treya Lam and Taiyo Na.

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