Nobuko JoAnne Miyamoto

Miyamoto was born in Los Angeles, California, on November 14, 1939. According to Miyamoto, her earliest memory is of Santa Anita Park racetrack, where she and her family were being temporarily held before being sent to the incarceration camps for Japanese Americans following President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066, which authorized this mass imprisonment. Miyamoto and her family were sent to Glasgow, Montana, after her father volunteered to work harvesting beets on a farm. They were eventually released to live with Miyamoto's grandfather in Parker, Idaho, and later Ogden, Utah, until the end of World War II. == Dancing career ==

Miyamoto started dancing in the years following the war and began appearing in films and productions, where she was known and credited as Joanne Miya. When she was 15, she appeared in the film version of The King and I (1956). She played Francisca, the girlfriend of one of the Sharks, in the 1961 film version of West Side Story, appearing in all of the Sharks' musical numbers. == Singing and activism ==

In 1968, Miyamoto joined Italian director Antonello Branca as he was filming a documentary about the Black Panthers in New York City, quickly becoming an ally of the Panthers' cause and befriending activist Yuri Kochiyama. She became a vocal anti-Vietnam War activist and was an early proponent of the term "Asian American". In 1972, Miyamoto and Chris Iijima were invited onto the Mike Douglas Show by guest hosts Yoko Ono and John Lennon. There, the duo performed "We Are the Children", a song which proclaimed that "We are the offspring of the concentration camp". Yellow Pearl would make no further television appearances. She moved back to Los Angeles, becoming connected with the Senshin Buddhist Temple where began teaching dance classes. In 1978, Miyamoto founded the buddhist-inspired multicultural arts organization Great Leap. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Miyamoto reoriented the organization's goals toward greater Black-Latino-Asian solidarity. In 2000, she became a fellow of the Boggs Center in Detroit, becoming involved in urban farming. In the years after 9/11, Great Leap began hosting FandangObon, a festival which brings together Japanese, Mexican, and African American music and dance traditions in Los Angeles. The festival was founded by Miyamoto in collaboration with Chicano musician Quetzal Flores. == References ==