Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles explores how generations of Japanese Americans in Southern California shaped, and were shaped by, local automobile cultures and industries: from desert lakebeds to concrete speedways, gas stations to design centers, souped-up import tuners to humble gardening trucks. Along the way, cars and trucks became literal and figurative vehicles for Japanese American self-expression, social mobility, community identity, and much more. Cruising J-Town is driven to explore how these diverse relationships between people and the world of cars have steered the Nikkei community’s American stories across the generations.
Oliver Wang is a professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach, and the curator of Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community, produced by the Japanese American National Museum, and hosted at the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena in 2025. Oliver previously wrote Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile Disc Jockey Crews of the San Francisco Bay Area (Duke University Press, 2015) and has written about Asian American music, film, food, sports, and other arts/culture topics since the 1990s. He lives with his wife, Sharon Mizota, in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles.
Naomi Hirahara is an multi-award-winning author and journalist who was born and raised in Pasadena, California. She was a reporter and editor of The Rafu Shimpo during the culmination of the redress and reparations movement for Japanese Americans who were forcibly removed from their homes during World War II. She is the author and/or editor of several books including: Green Makers: Japanese American Gardeners in Southern California (2000), A Taste for Strawberries: The Independent Journey of Nisei Farmer Manabi Hirasaki (2003), A Scent of Flowers: The History of the Southern California Flower Market (2004), among many others. She is also a celebrated author of many mysteries and short stories. She lives in Pasadena.
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