George Aratani

was a Japanese American entrepreneur, philanthropist and the founder of Mikasa china and owner of the Kenwood Electronics corporation.

After graduating from high school, Aratani relocated to Tokyo, following his parents' wishes that he pursue a college education in their home country of Japan. Living with his grandmother in Japan, he spent ten months studying the language before enrolling at Keio University. In December 1935, his mother, who was also staying in Japan at the time, became ill and died. His father remarried Yoshiko's niece, Masuko, and returned to the United States to manage his businesses. Aratani remained in Tokyo and continued his studies at Keio's law school, but he came back to Guadalupe when his father contracted tuberculosis in 1940. Unable to finish his degree at Keio, he enrolled at Stanford University, but after Setsuo's death in April, Aratani, then 22, dropped out to help his stepmother run the Guadalupe Produce Company.

Since Aratani was bilingual, he was allowed to leave the camp in 1944 to serve at the Military Intelligence Service Language School, where he taught Japanese to American soldiers, including many Nisei. Under his guidance and through his contributions, Aratani helped with the restoration of numerous historical buildings in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo and was key to the creation of its Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. The JACCC's Aratani Japan America Theatre, the Japanese American National Museum's George and Sakaye Aratani Central Hall, and the Union Center for the Arts' Aratani Courtyard (all located within Little Tokyo) are named after Aratani and his wife. In 2004, at UCLA, he and Sakaye endowed the United States' first academic chair to study the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans and their efforts to gain redress.

Aratani spent his later years in the couple's Hollywood Hills home (built by Sakaye's brother-in-law in 1958). He died February 19, 2013, at age 95.