A Nikkei gosei and Uchinānchu yonsei, I was born and raised on the island of Kauaʻi. Currently based in Honolulu, I work at the Center for Oral History in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) as associate director, where I help to document and disseminate life history interviews and connect past experiences to current events, working to envision a better future for Hawaiʻi. 

I am also a PhD student in the Department of Second Language Studies at UHM. In my research, I have focused on bridging narrative, identity, and rapport building in the Japanese as a second language classroom and the use of Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English) in public spaces and on social media. More recently, my research focuses on what it means for diaspora to return to the ancestral homeland through oral histories around the Worldwide Uchinaanchu Taikai. I am broadly interested in sociolinguistics, linguistic landscapes, and language documentation, revitalization, and reclamation efforts. I am passionate about language rights as they relate to Pidgin and Loochooan (Ryūkyūan) languages.