Irene Hirano Inouye, the museum’s founding Executive Director and later its President and CEO, hired as the museum was preparing to restore a former Buddhist temple as it first home and who oversaw the construction and opening of its current home.

Bruce T. Kaji, a founding Director and the founding President of the museum, who led a group of Little Tokyo businessmen seeking to create a Japanese American museum back in the 1980s.

Tom Ikeda, the current and founding Executive Director of Densho, the Seattle-based organization that uses digital technology to preserve and make accessible primary source materials on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.