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Little Tokyo murals pay homage to Ellison Onizuka
When Ellison Onizuka was a young boy growing up in Kona, Hawaii, he looked up at the night sky and dreamt of floating among the stars. He would grow up to become the first Asian American and the first person of Japanese origin to reach space aboard the Discovery shuttle in 1985. Onizuka became an inspiration to Japanese Americans across the country, and is the subject of a new series of murals painted by multimedia artist Kent Yoshimura in Little Tokyo.
Yoshimura was commissioned by Etco Homes in collaboration with the Little Tokyo Community Council to create two murals on the sides of the new Āto development, a seven-story collection of urban flats taking shape on Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka Street.
