After The Hawaiʻi Herald published its final issue last week, a California-based nonprofit has stepped up to help the local Japanese newspaper preserve and continue its storytelling legacy.
The Zentoku Foundation, launched in 2018, houses a collection of stories from the community in collaboration with The Hawaiʻi Herald.
Mark Nakakihara, the director and president of Zentoku, said the foundation is connecting the Herald with other struggling newspapers on the mainland’s West Coast in hopes of merging them into one online publication.
“This has lit a fire to say maybe we can start because there are papers that are struggling in all different states,” he said.
Reporters at The Hawaiʻi Herald will still be writing about their local communities, according to editor Kristen Nemoto Jay. She said some collaborators will be from California and Washington.
Jay said she’s aiming to get stories published by January, although it depends on the discussion among editors and their respective newspapers.
“Getting the stories out there is our number one priority,” she said. “ So we’re going to focus on what we can do with what we have. Then we’ll see where it goes. Maybe we’ll have a once-a-month magazine or newspaper. It’s really up in the air right now.”
The Zentoku Foundation has created a donation page to help raise funds to start the publication.
Nakakihara said the nonprofit is trying to raise funding for a budget that can sustain the Herald for at least six months. The costs would go toward building the website, creating a graphic design template, and software development.
The goal of the foundation is to share stories of the Japanese-American community for future generations.
“The newspapers themselves are fading, and I think that’s more of a generational thing,” Nakakihara said.
“But what is printed on that newspaper is so important because it is exactly how the community realizes what happens in their own community. It’s just a matter of how we get that information to those individuals, and that’s going to be our challenge.”
