Yoshio Kishi (1932- 2012) was an award-winning New York City-based film and sound editor whose credits include such classics as Jerry Schatzberg's "Panic in Needle Park" (1971), Alan Parker's "Fame" (1980), Martin Scorcese's "Raging Bull" (1980), and Wayne Wang's "Dim Sum" (1985). For four decades, Kishi was an avid collector of materials that trace the depiction of Asian Americans in U.S. intellectual and popular culture, and of materials produced by Asian American activists to counter such stereotypical images. His compulsion for collecting Asian Americana began in the mid-1960s when, in the midst of thinking about his identity, he began to regret not knowing more about his ethnic heritage. A second-generation Japanese American, Kishi grew up in a mainly Irish and Italian tenement neighborhood. During World War II, to avoid being labeled as enemy aliens, his father, a houseman, and his mother, a seamstress, had avoided speaking Japanese and joined a local Lutheran Church. In an effort to reclaim his ethnic heritage, Kishi, with the help of Los Angeles-based veteran actress of film, television, and commercials and friend Irene Yah Ling Sun, began to scour flea markets to purchase any materials that related to Asian Americana. Over the years, his collecting efforts preserved and amassed over 10,000 items showcasing both the demonization and activisms of Asian Americans, and to trace their depiction over two centuries of American history.