CONVERSATION SERIES
An Interview with Vanessa Hatakeyama
Jaye Bailey: Hi, Vanessa! It’s so great to meet you. I’ve been in California for about eight years, and the first five years I lived in Japantown. I visited the museum, and I’m just fascinated by all the history in Japantown. So it’s a real honor for me to get to talk with you. First, tell me more about the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.
Vanessa Hatakeyama: Oh really?! Wow! The Japanese American Museum of San Jose, which we affectionately call JAMsj, has been located in the historic San Jose Japantown since 1987. Our mission is to collect, preserve, and share Japanese American history, art, and culture, with an emphasis on San Jose and San Jose Japantown. Unfortunately, for a very long time Japanese American incarceration was not included in any textbooks as part of American or local history. Many of JAMsj’ founders were themselves incarcerated when they were young during World War II. The museum came about mostly as an educational resource project. It sought to share information not just about incarceration, it was about the many Japanese American contributions to agriculture and the community. What was a simple project, kept getting bigger. What was once just a one room exhibit in one of our local memorial buildings became the museum that we have today here in Japantown. It is our way to tell our story from our own perspective–rooted in history and we’re making sure that we’re educating the next generation. Art is something that we’re getting more and more involved with, not only because of its role as an expression of resistance and resilience, but art is one of those doorways that sometimes is less intimidating and more accessible for people to come in and experience storytelling and history.
Jaye: What brought you personally into the museum and into the arts generally?
Vanessa: As we got older, my mom started gifting subscriptions or memberships for us for Christmas presents. One year she got us a membership to the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, and so we’d check it out as part of the neighborhood. I wasn’t really involved until the pandemic, when they were looking to hire somebody to help out and one thing led to another, and here I am. So it was a very unexpected, exciting, fast journey to becoming the Executive Director.
I’ve always been passionate about community building. For me, I really do see the Japanese American Museum of San Jose as one of our cornerstones of our Japantown community, fulfilling a role of being able to share and collect the community history of San Jose Japantown. It’s one of the last three remaining Japantowns. I’m really passionate about making those connections to the history like the Heinlenville Chinatown that first existed here, then it became the Pinoytown a Filipino American community that thrived here during the 1920s to late 1950s, to now our Japantown. For me, it’s my love of community that really roped me into this. It’s really what I’m passionate about, and what inspires me to keep doing the work.
Jaye: It certainly is an amazing organization. What are some of the particular challenges that your organization is facing right now?
Vanessa: I think it is part of the question of how to reach a wider audience. We want to share our history, art, and culture with a wider audience and showcase ourselves as an essential part of San Jose’s art, culture, and history scene.
We’re also transitioning from an all volunteer model to a staff driven model. Until around 2017, it was all volunteer run — 100% done by very dedicated volunteers. COVID really forced us to say, “We need to make a change. We need to take that leap.” So now we’re in a big operational and cultural transition to being a mostly staff led model, and we have some really great staff members. We’re updating the processes and how we do everything to match that model, while communicating to everybody and making sure that everybody feels heard in this process, that nobody feels pushed out is where a lot of our energy is going these days.
Jaye: You and the museum have participated in several SVCREATES’ cohort programs this year, SVMindshare Leadership Roundtable, the Smarter Work Learning Cohort, and the Peer Support Roundtable Program. What drew you to those programs?
Vanessa: I’m a new ED who is sort of learning the ropes so being able to connect with a community who understands the challenges of operating a museum, working on subjects like defining identity or representation was wonderful. I’ve been able to see that there’s a community of people who understand what that’s like. While JAMsj has done a great job at serving the Japanese American population in Japantown, there’s a whole San José out there that we really want to connect with. We really want to be part of the network of culture and arts organizations in San José so that we find ways to collaborate, connect, and tie other people’s stories with our own.
Jaye: As a leader of an arts organization, the work can be hard and lonely, right? What have you, individually as a leader, gotten out of those programs?
Vanessa: Validation! Just hearing other people say, “Yes, it is hard.” The support and validation from the programs on a peer level has been really invaluable, and the ability to hear about the amazing things that other groups are doing is inspiring. From day to day, it can sometimes be just a grind. But by meeting with other groups and seeing what they were doing, it was a breath of fresh air. I was able to feel excited about everything that’s going on in the San José arts and culture ecosystem. It was really meaningful to be able to participate in the Smarter Work Learning Cohort to explore how to apply strategic thinking to my work. I found the combination of staff and board participation was invaluable.
Jaye: How have you been able to take what you’ve learned back to your staff or board? How are you keeping up this momentum of learning within the organization?
Vanessa: The learning has set a whole thing in motion. I think it helped us interrupt that cycle of doing things the way we’ve always done them. It helped us realize the need to say, “Okay, we need to take a pause and figure out what are our strategic priorities? Is it feasible to keep doing things the way that we’re doing? Is that the most effective way that we can be fulfilling our mission with the resources that we have? Are we putting too much strain on our board members? Are we asking too much of our volunteers? Are we burning out our staff?” I think those were questions that sometimes you don’t think about when you’re in mission driven work. There’s this expectation, because you’re so passionate about it, you just make it happen. We’ll make it happen, no matter the cost. But, it’s helpful to realize that it’s not a bad thing to slow down and tackle things in a different way.
Jaye: What are you most looking forward to in the coming year?
Vanessa: When I say it, it doesn’t sound exciting since it’s the most unsexy part of the work, but really establishing the process and procedures that we need to be operational in this new model. In addition, re-establishing our foundation and recognizing the bedrock of our culture and our operations.
I am excited, not just about process, creation, and documentation, but also to work with our board on our organizational values. We’ve always had a mission and a vision, but we didn’t have a value statement — so working on those will feel really good, because we will have our North Star. We now will be clear on the behaviors and methods that we’re using to get there. I love having those kinds of conversations that sort of touch on the why as well. A big part of all of this, of course, is supporting our amazing staff to make sure JAMsj is truly a workplace that is sustainable — supporting them so they can do their best work.
Jaye: Absolutely. That’s something that organizations, sadly, don’t spend a lot of time on sometimes and for a small organization, particularly nonprofits, that can be the difference between real success and really just struggling along. How can SVCREATES help you meet those goals and challenges?
Vanessa: I wish a program like the Smarter Work Cohort was all year long. It can be hard in the day to day business of managing and administering an organization to stop and have that time to just think about some of these concepts or strategies. SVCREATES was able to provide that space and made it feel so supportive and valuable, and with actionable learnings. SVCREATES should keep up and expand the programs that you offer that foster that sense of connection with other organizations. The other arts executive directors that I have met through the program are my greatest resources, and everybody has been so willing to share. Our work sometimes is isolating and you can find yourself banging your head against the wall, so having other people to talk with and to work things out with is really helpful.
Jaye: We’re so lucky to have you in the SVCREATES universe. We appreciate everything that you do. And as a board member, I am constantly fascinated by the depth of our arts culture in San José — I never cease to be surprised by how much work is going on out there. We’ve been talking mostly about the business of the arts, but we also know you do your work so that the artists and the creators can do their work. What’s coming up at JAMsj for the public?
Vanessa: We have “Letters from the Camps” exhibit, JAMsj’s first bilingual display, running right now in Japanese and English, and it’s fascinating. We rediscovered letters, documenting a correspondence between two brothers from two different incarceration camps. The letters were written in Japanese, and for some reason the government didn’t censor them. Our team transcribed and translated all of these letters, and tracked down the descendants of the brothers too. Each letter offers an uncensored look at daily life in Tule Lake and Topaz camps.
Jaye: Oh my gosh, that does sound fascinating. I’ll definitely make a point of coming down to JAMsj soon. Vanessa, I look forward to seeing you in person and this has been so much fun. Thank you so much.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Bay Area born and raised, Vanessa Hatakeyama is the Executive Director of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj). A San José Japantown resident for over a decade, Vanessa is deeply rooted in the local community and has fostered collaborations with artists and arts organizations to showcase and celebrate the vibrant creativity, abundant diversity, and rich cultures that thrive in the historic Japantown neighborhood.
As committed to her work and community endeavors as she is, they all come second to her beautiful blended and extended family and her passion for the Hawaiian art of Hula. When she has free time she is an avid listener of podcasts, reader of books, writer of poetry and prose, and enjoys throwing inconsistently shaped mugs, bowls, and plates on the pottery wheel.
