The face and the voice are instantly familiar to viewers of CNN International's "BizAsia" show. Dalton Tanonaka is the anchor for this daily half-hour coverage of regional economic, corporate and political news, which includes interviews with famous people. Produced out of Hong Kong, "BizAsia" is the longest-running global television program that focuses on Asian business views.
The face and the voice were familiar to viewers of a decade ago who followed NHK's "Japan Business Today." For four years in the early 1990s, Dalton lived in Tokyo and anchored this program. It contributed to his later winning Best News Anchor at the Asian Television Awards in Singapore.
Dalton, with a Japanese family name, is a native American, born and raised in Hawaii, which he calls "one of the few paradises in the world." He is a third-generation Hawaiian, with grandparents on one side originally from Hiroshima, and on the other side from North Korea. "I was the only one out of four in my family to strike out and do a nonconforming kind of job," he said.