Alberto Keinya Fujimori (born 1938) was inaugurated president of Peru on his 52nd birthday, becoming the first person of East Asian descent to lead an American republic.

Fujimori was born in Lima on July 28, 1938--Peru's Independence Day. His parents, Naochi and Matsue Fujimori, had emigrated four years earlier from Shiyajama, Japan, to Peru, where they initially worked as agricultural field hands. This was an especially difficult period for Peru's 17,000-member Japanese community, which often faced racial hostility. During World War II Peru sent nearly 1,800 persons of Japanese extraction (many of them native-born Peruvian citizens) to the United States for internment.

The future president and his two brothers and two sisters were raised in La Victoria, a working-class district of Lima, and attended public schools. The valedictorian of his high school class, Fujimori in 1956 achieved the top score on the examination for admission to Peru's prestigious La Molina National Agrarian...