The Brief

In 1972, something unheard of happened on national television. An Asian American singer-songwriter duo was invited to perform on the widely-watched The Mike Douglas Show by guest hosts John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

“They’re beautiful singers,” Lennon said in his introduction. “And they have a story to tell.”

Cut to Nobuko Miyamoto and Chris Iijima sitting on stools on a dark stage.

“Usually people know very little about Asians, and this is a song about our movement, our people’s plight in America,” Miyamoto said, as Iijima strummed the opening chords to “We Are The Children.”

We are the children of the migrant worker. We are the offspring of the concentration camp.

 Sons and daughters of the railroad builder who leave their stamp on America.

Behind the scenes, Miyamoto had battled to perform that song over the protests of a show producer, who worried it would be too subversive for housewives in the midwest, and the conciliatory overtures of Lennon, who asked them to soften the lyrics.

 Watching war movies with the next door neighbor. Secretly rooting for the other side.

Miyamoto’s lifelong quest to tell Asian American stories is chronicled in a documentary film premiering Saturday in Los Angeles at the VC Film Festival: Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement.

The film, directed by Quyên Nguyen-Le and Tadashi Nakamura, chronicles Miyamoto’s creative journey as a third-generation Japanese American born in Los Angeles at the start of World War II to her run as a performer on Broadway and in films such as West Side Story.

She walked away from it all to focus her energies on the Asian American movement that emerged in the late 1960s.

With Iijima and another activist, Charlie Chin, Miyamoto recorded A Grain of Sand, an album with songs written with an Asian American consciousness like “We Are The Children” that has earned it the title of being one of the first “Asian American” albums.

In the years since, Miyamoto has devoted herself to making community art in L.A. with her multicultural arts organization Great Leap. The group’s collaborations with other artists of color across the city have birthed theater productions, music videos, workshops and the FandangObon festival, which fuses Mexican, Japanese and West African musical traditions.

Nobuko Miyamoto leads dancers outside the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Little Tokyo for the 2014 FangdanObon festival.

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Courtesy Mike Murase

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"A lot of people see what I did with West Side Story," et cetera, as a pinnacle, and I don't see that," Miyamoto said. "The major part of my life and my work and my dedication has been in the community. That's what I'm proudest of."

Her path to Hollywood

After World War II broke out, Miyamoto’s family was detained with other Japanese Americans at the Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia.

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.

Nobuko Miyamoto is flanked by both parents in a 1945 photo with relatives.

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Courtesy Harry Hayashida

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The family moved to Idaho then Utah before making it back to L.A. It was in Boyle Heights where Miyamoto discovered ballet.

“Dance gave me a sense of rootedness because I felt I had some control over my body and what my place was in the world,” Miyamoto said.

Nobuko Miyamoto, pictured here at age 5 or 6, had discovered her love of dancing and movement at a young age.

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Courtesy Harry Hayashida

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She excelled and Hollywood casting directors took notice. Starting in her teen years, she was booking roles in film productions of The King and I and later, West Side Story, in which she played Francisca, one of the “Shark Girls.”

But the high from mainstream success quickly wore off. Miyamoto recalls being on Broadway performing in a 1958 hit production of the Flower Drum Song about a family from San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Nobuko Miyamoto chronicles her seven decades of performing in her memoir "Not Yo' Butterfly."

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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“I felt really uncomfortable and I was confused,” Miyamoto said. “What am I feeling? And later I thought about it, and I realized, 'Oh, we're chop suey. We're Chinese food for white people.' And that started me thinking what, how can we tell our own stories?”

An Asian American album

Miyamoto, who had traveled to New York in the 1960s to help a friend make a film about the Black Panthers, drew inspiration from the Black Power movement. And she found solidarity with Asian Americans of all ethnicities, guided by civil rights leaders such as Yuri Kochiyama.

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.

“In numbers we weren’t that many but together we had more of a force,” Miyamoto said.

In New York, Nobuko Miyamoto wrote and performed with fellow activist Chris Iijima.

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Courtesy Maximo Colon

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Miyamoto teamed up with N.Y.-based activists Iijima 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.

“They made music to help inspire the people they were working with,” said Sojin Kim, a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. "It was so deeply ingrained in this practice of community.”

In 1973, the trio recorded A Grain of Sand in New York with Paredon Records. It’s since been added to the Smithsonian’s folk catalog.

Writer and activist Phil Tajitsu Nash would later describe the album as “the soundtrack for the political and personal awareness taking place in their lives.”

Now an elder

Not only after the release of A Grain of Sand, Miyamoto moved back to L.A. where she raised her son, Kamau, as a single parent and founded her arts organization Great Leap.

Fifty-some years later, Miyamoto hasn’t stopped telling stories. In the last several years, she’s published a memoir "Not ‘Yo Butterfly" and released an album of new and old songs through Smithsonian’s Folkway called "120,000 Stories," referring to the number of those incarcerated during World War II because of their Japanese heritage.

Residing in Mid-City with her filmmaker husband Tarabu Betserai Kirkland, she continues to make visual art like through this video she filmed during the pandemic:

And she serves as a mentor and inspiration to newer artists like the Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement filmmakers who marveled at her commitment and stamina as they pored over archival footage of her and interviewed her many collaborators.

“As an artist myself, I'm always wondering, what can art do, if anything, for society, right?" Nguyen-Le knew said. “Nobuko gives us sort of a map for what it can do and how she's done it over decades of her life.”

Nakamura, whose filmmaker parents were part of the Asian American movement with Miyamoto, grew up knowing her as one of his “aunties.” He took dance workshops that she gave at L.A.'s Senshin Buddhist Temple, where Miyamoto would often bring her son as she taught.

Nobuko Miyamoto with her son, Kamau Ayubbi.

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Courtesy Nobuko Miyamoto

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But now Nakamura understands Miyamoto the artist and it's only reaffirmed his belief in making films that are unapologetically for Asian Americans.

“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,” said Nakamura, who also made a film about Iijima after he died in 2005 called A Song for Ourselves. “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.”

Quyên Nguyen-Le and Tadashi Nakamura co-directed Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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Miyamoto has been working on a new recording of We Are The Children with producer Chucky Kim and singers Treya Lam and Taiyo Na.

The timbre of her voice is different. Her collaborators are from another generation. But her fight for recognition and justice is unchanged.

“I’m here as an elder now to say, ‘Remember, there was an Asian American movement,'” Miyamoto said. “We did stand up. We marched in the streets. We fought for what we wanted. And it's still happening.”

Southern California roads are likely to get more treacherous soon because of El Niño.

The climate pattern’s signature heavy rainstorms are expected to hit over the next few months, and some coastal roads could be impacted by surging sea levels much sooner than that.

We could also get a taste of what that will look like this weekend with Tropical Storm Rachel expected to pass through Baja California and the San Diego area. High surf has already been slamming the coast, and forecasters predict the first widespread rain of the season starting this weekend.

All this rain on the horizon means extra risks for the many Southern Californians who spend a lot of time driving.

Officials are urging residents to get their cars ready now for an especially wet El Niño season.

Preparing your car

As with home, there is a series of steps to take to ensure your car can safely get you around during extreme weather.

First, consider replacing your windshield wipers, especially if they’re worn out. According to AAA, most manufacturers recommend replacing wipers every six to 12 months.

Take a look at your headlights and brake lights too. If they’re broken or their bulbs have burned out, replace them. If the lenses are weathered or hazy, have them cleaned up or restored.

Also replace old or worn tires. AAA recommends replacing tires every six to 10 years or if you see any bulges, bubbles, sidewall damage, separated treads or exposed cords.

You can also use a quarter for a quick, unofficial tire test. If you stick a quarter between your tire’s treads with the top of George Washington facing the tire and can still see the top of his head, the treads are wearing down and due for replacement soon.

Use a tire gauge to check your tire pressure too. The correct psi is usually listed on the inside of your car door or in the owner’s manual. You can add air to your tires at just about any gas station.

It’s also a good idea to keep certain supplies in your car in case you become stranded, including a flashlight and batteries, a cellphone charger, a jacket, gloves and a first-aid kit.

Avoid floodwaters

If you find yourself driving during heavy rain and flooding, never attempt to drive or walk through floodwaters.

Emergency management officials say one of the most common causes of death during storms is flooding, with many of those deaths in vehicles.

“Driving during rain can be hazardous, especially when we're not following the signs and the directions of our first responders and of the road departments,” said Mark Pestrella, director of L.A. County of Public Works. “If you are traveling in L.A. County and it is raining, and there is a sign up that says, ‘Do not go through this water,’ I advise you not to go across that street.”

Even if a flooded street seems shallow, it’s impossible to know exactly how deep the water is or what’s under the surface. Just 6 inches of fast-moving water can knock over an adult, and a foot of water can carry away a car.

Topline:

New data shows Waymo’s robotaxis are crashing less often as they log more miles driven in Los Angeles. Experts recently joined LAist 89.3’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle and said the numbers are encouraging but don’t tell the whole story.

The data: Analyzed by the Los Angeles Times, it found:

• Crash rates are down from 57 crashes per million miles driven in 2023 to under six this year.
• The majority of Waymo-involved crashes happened while the vehicle was stopped. However, Waymos are designed to stop when they encounter issues.

Why safety is improving: Better technology, remote human help, and human drivers getting accustomed to Waymos are likely reasons safety is improving, Matthew Raifman of UC Berkeley told AirTalk listeners.

Concerns: Former federal auto safety regulator and UCLA law professor Ann Carlson stressed on air that Waymo’s improving safety record shouldn’t be extrapolated onto other autonomous car companies like Tesla’s Cybercab or Amazon’s Zoox, both of which have had recent safety issues.

Listen: To the full AirTalk segment above to hear about the challenges involved in making autonomous cars safe in every environment.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s restrictions on generative artificial intelligence have drawn mixed reactions from education experts and students.

The district said in a statement to EdSource that its new Generative AI Ad Hoc Committee is working on specifics and will bring policy recommendations to the school board by the end of this academic year.

Here’s what experts and students have to say about the approach.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Stephen Aguilar, professor of education at USC who leads the Center for Generative A.I. and Society

As a general rule, I am against blanket bans.

The core idea that I try to get across when we’re talking about screen time bans or AI bans is that we’re treating these technologies as though they are uniform, almost like a drug. AI is an umbrella term that refers to lots of different types of technologies.

Before everyone was talking about generative AI, cognitive tutors were AI-based tutoring systems that helped kids learn math. They can be very good at providing hints and diagnosing which concepts specifically students have issues with.

Teachers are often under-resourced and not respected in terms of the decisions that they end up making in the classroom. And policies aside, teachers end up defining almost 100% what the learning environment looks like for the kids that are under their charge.

So, I think that any real solution to this challenge involves giving teachers, and to a lesser extent parents, good information backed by sound science about the effects of different technologies.

Professional development is one way. Teachers need to be responsive to the emerging science about how kids learn — not because learning changes fundamentally, but because the tools we use to learn change.

Lucrecia Santibañez, professor of education and faculty co-director of UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools 

I think [AI bans are] probably the correct approach. As we learn more, some of these policies may be revised.

It is easier to ban it in the elementary grades because kids are learning basic skills. They’re learning how to read, write, do basic math and understand concepts about science.

What gets tricky in high school is that every kid pretty much has a smartphone, so their ability to independently access AI is really high. As teachers get better trained to use AI in their own teaching and assignments, we may see more of a hybrid model.

One of the guiding pedagogical questions for me is: Is doing the tasks themselves an important part of what students are meant to do? If you want students to brainstorm, for example, some of that needs to be practiced first before it is delegated to an AI companion.

An analogy that makes sense is to treat classrooms like gyms. If you want to get fit and be able to run, you have to do it yourself. And it is the same way with education.

Chaitra Sure, senior at Taft Charter High School in Woodland Hills 

I don’t frequently use AI, but I do observe people in the classroom using it. I would say it’s mostly used to give the answer, and then they [students] just move on without really understanding.

I think this ban is mainly because a lot of students don’t know how to use AI effectively in an educational sense. But I don’t think the ban is going to really restrict usage. We can use precedents like the phone ban. I don’t see my peers using phones any less.

But I think what we need right now is some sort of class or lesson integrated into the curriculum that teaches us how to use artificial intelligence more effectively, which we’re not taught.

With the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence and technology beyond high school, in college and in careers, it’s going to become much more important to know how to use AI. I think what would be more effective is having a required curriculum or more opportunity in school to learn how to use artificial intelligence more effectively.

It’s going to be so helpful for the future.

This story was originally published by EdSource.