I Am an American

In this engrossing story covering over 100 years of his family’s history, Walter Imahara describes the long and difficult road to success traveled by a Japanese-American family in the 20th century. After long years of intense labor to build a prosperous family farm in California, Walter’s father lost everything when the family was all forced into wartime relocation camps in 1942. Moving to Louisiana after the war they began from scratch, laboring for others and slowly building a stake, and seeing to it that all nine children eventually graduated from college or professional school. After Walter returned from military service as an Army officer, he launched the new family business, a nursery and landscape company that became one of the largest and best-known in Baton Rouge. Widely known as a hard-driving and goal-oriented executive, Walter was elected to the presidency of several regional and national nursery and landscape professional organizations. Meanwhile, he had become one of the best weightlifters in the U.S. and the world, a six-time U.S. champion and gold medalist at the Pan American Games. After a second career as Chairman of the International Weightlifting Federation Masters Committee, he retired to work on his life-long dream of creating botanical gardens to leave as a legacy to his family and to the people of Louisiana.