A People’s History of the Inland Empire Digital Archive

Meiko Inaba Oral History

2025.001.003

Sound

Meiko Inaba was born in 1938 in Hollywood, California. She was about 4 years old when she was incarcerated at the Santa Anita Racetrack, later being transferred to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. From there, she grew up in Gardena until she went to study at UCLA and briefly taught for a while before moving to Riverside after she got married in 1961 to Mitsuru Inaba. When she first moved to Riverside to the Inaba farm, it was a big change from her life in the Los Angeles area, and she talked about how isolating it was. When she moved into her current home, she was met with racial discrimination regarding the housing prices and vandalism that depicted racial slurs. Later, she got involved with the Japanese American community through her children' s schooling through the PTA, later meeting Sumi Harada and getting involved with the Riverside chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). She helped the JACL in preparing for the Sendai festival, Thanksgiving, Christmas parties, and Easter Egg Hunts for the community. She is also very active in historic and cultural preservation. Her father-in-law had saved a lot of the documents associated with the Inaba property as well as photos, and she was able to donate some of the materials to the Harada House and UCR.

Activism

Affirmative Action

Agriculture

Asian American

BIPOC

Civil Rights Activism

Community Life in Riverside

Cultural Celebrations

Discrimination

Farming

Harada House

Housing Discrimination

Japanese Incarceration during WWII

March Air Force Base

Racism

University of California, Riverside

Vietnam War

Riverside (Calif.)

Los Angeles County (Calif.)

1940s - 2020s

Kahleia Corpuz

Catherine Gudis

Meiko Inaba

2-17-2026

People's History of the IE.

.mp4

eng

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