• The Asian Culture Center is holding this year's Opening Reception for Asian/Pacific American Heritage month on Friday, March 30, 2007, 4:30-6:30 p.m., at the Faculty Club, Indiana Memorial Union at IU in BJoomington. This year's theme is "A for Asian/Pacific Americans: Providing a Forum for Exploring Shared Heritage." The Asian Culture Center invites you to join Mayor Mark Kruzan and others in sharing a few words to welcome this month. Call (812) 856-5361 or email acc@indiana.edu if interested.

• Congratulations to Gregg Matsumoto who was "pinned" in January, 2007. He is now Lt. Col. and is serving in Iraq. Congratulations also to proud parents, Chuck and Mary Matsumoto.

• Ways & Means Chairpersons Yas and Ken Matsumoto wish to thank all who participated in recent fundraising efforts. They report that the chapter raised $1,319 selling chiyogami balls, and the silent auction at the Shinnenkai yielded $152.

• Nancy Conner won an award for best article in the Indiana Magazine of History last year. Congratulations, Nancy!

• Itoko Maeda is getting along with daily help from caretakers coming to her home. We send greetings and wish her well.

• Call for help! Volunteers are needed to secure ads for the Hoosier Chapter newsletter. Ads run $35 for four issues per year, beginning the month payment is made. Income from ads helps defray newsletter expenses. Contact Elinor Hanasono.

• Yas Matsumoto recommends the book, Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America..A Food Memoir by Linda Furiya. Linda grew up in a small southern Indiana farm community where she was the only Asian in her school, the only girl whose mother packed rice balls and chopsticks in her lunch box. Furiya tells of a childhood that was profoundly affected by her family's obsession with food, the care taken in the preparation of each recipe, and the importance of savoring every meal.

Thank You, John

By Bill Yoshino

NOTE: Many of you have heard about John Tateishi, who is home recovering from an aortic dissection last fall. John has been a major influence in the Japanese American community for decades and an outstanding leader as Director of National JACL. With MDC Director Bill Yoshino's permission, we are printing his excellent and timely tribute to John.

In a 1980 redress article, John Tateishi wrote, "For thirty-eight years, the camp episode has lain at the heart of the Japanese American experience. It has remained an enigma of pride and regret, fettered in the Japanese American psyche without expiation, without a true sense of release from the profundity or the totality of the experience."

This article in the San Francisco JACL convention booklet was a rumination, a reflection of his generation's reaction to an experience unlike that of the Issei or the Nisei who understood the cold reality of being uprooted and confined. The article speaks to an emerging recognition by the children of the camps that their youthful exuberance would be tempered and their lives would be shaped by what happened to them beginning in the summer of 1942.

Between the lines, the article is a personal journey of how John came to the issue of redress and why he believed in it so fervently as to want to lead the JACL redress campaign following the Salt Lake City convention in 1978. The issue of redress was about pursuing some important goals such as remedying a grave injustice and addressing constitutional breaches. For John, it was that and more. It was also about establishing a legacy to recognize the enduring qualities and sacrifices of the Issei and Nisei for our future generations. In the years I worked with John on the redress campaign, it was evident to me that he always looked to the human side of the internment and the manner in which that tragedy affected individuals, and ultimately the community. John understood how the trauma of 1942 forced individuals and the community inward.

Toaru Ishiyama, a psychologist, once observed that when internees revisited the camps decades later, their first reaction was to cry because they didn't in 1942. For John, an important and calculated part of the redress campaign was the opportunity that would be provided by the commission hearings where former internees shared their personal stories. He knew that in those stories lay the beginning of awareness and understanding by the American public of the injustice of the internment, and a catharsis for the internees.

John's years as the JACL national director carried the same moral imperatives and passion for social justice as did his work on redress. On the day following September 11th, John issued a cautionary public statement saying, "It is in times of national tragedies such as this that the character and the will of the American public are tested as well as the strength and value of the Constitution." In the weeks and months that followed, the lessons of 1942 shaped John's actions and the policy positions of the JACL to speak against an erosion of civil liberties. In recent months, this became a source of frustration for John as he advocated his support for the civil liberties of Lt. Ehren Watada, a position that holds great merit for many of us, and a position consistent with John's beliefs as expressed in that 1980 redress article when he said, ". . . we perhaps too easily accepted that the right of citizenship carried with it the concomitant demand to fight this nation's wars without question, and for this we have on occasion paid a dear price."

Whether in meetings with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue or Congressman Howard Coble or representatives of companies such as Adidas, AT&T Wireless or Jerry Bruckheimer Films, John was quick to respond to defamation or inaccurate portrayals of Japanese and Asian Americans. He used his position to amplify our concerns on affirmative action, federal hate crimes legislation, immigration and on nominees for the Supreme Court. It's a record that anyone would point to with pride.

It's somehow fitting that John finalized his decision to retire last June as he reflected amid the desolate surroundings at Gila River, a lifetime and a time apart from his early childhood in the desolation of Manzanar. It's saying a lot, but it's not an exaggeration to say that John helped make our community whole.

Senator Barack Obama is fond of a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr., ". . . the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Senator Obama adds that the arc doesn't bend by itself. Thanks, John, for adding your weight to that arc.

Graffiti in Indy: "Don't Buy Jap Crap"

Over a period of several weeks in December, there was disturbing graffiti spray-painted on at least three utility or traffic light boxes in a quiet residential area in northeast Indianapolis: "Don't buy Jap crap." In one case (the corner of Kessler and Winthrop), the graffiti was reapplied some time after it was removed (covered over with paint). The other locations were nearby at Allisonville Rd. and 65^th Street and Allisonville Rd. and 71^st Street.

The removal of the offensive words was likely done by the Mayor's Action Center, which was notified by several chapter members. Monitoring for reoccurrence of this hateful activity will continue.

Hoosier Chapter Board Members for 2007