[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 111 (Tuesday, July 24, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1308-E1309]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         HONORING MEI T. NAKANO

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. LYNN C. WOOLSEY

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 24, 2012

  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise with pride today to honor Mei T. 
Nakano of Sebastopol, CA. Ms. Nakano has spoken out about her life in a 
World War II internment camp and has become a powerful advocate for 
human rights, justice, and world peace.
  Born in Colorado in 1924 to Japanese immigrants who farmed there, Ms. 
Nakano was later interned in a camp in Amache, Colorado, for three 
years during World War II. She met and married her husband Shiro there 
and then saw him drafted into the U.S. Military Intelligence Service.
  After the war, she raised three children, and, inspired by women's 
liberation and civil rights movements, went back to school and earned a 
Master's Degree in Language and Literature at age 51. According to Mei, 
``The Japanese American community finally began to claim its history 
during the 1970s in the foment of the liberation movements. 
Simultaneously, we began to feel the full rights of citizenship and 
entitlements due us.''
  After working for several years as an English instructor at Laney 
College and Diablo Valley College, Ms. Nakano became a partner and 
editor at Mina Press Publishing. She turned increasingly to free-lance 
writing and human rights activism, becoming well known for her 
depictions of the Japanese American experience and the importance of 
social just and multiculturalism.
  One of her seminal books, Japanese American Women: Three Generations, 
first published by Minna Press in 1991 and now in its fifth printing, 
was hailed as the first of its kind historical survey of Japanese 
American women from the initial immigrant generation trying to adapt 
their cultural values to America through later generations who balanced 
these values with those of the society they were born into. For Mei's 
generation, the second, the experience of the World War II 
concentration camps defined everything that followed.
  Mei Nakano organized the first Asian American Women's conference in 
Oakland, in 1992 and continues to speak out movingly and cogently about 
her beliefs and experiences at high schools, colleges, other 
institutions, and public events. ``The salient point to be made,'' she 
says, ``is how pernicious and destructive racism is, how anti-human. It 
can cause people to defer their aspirations, lose hope, and, at times, 
strike out in anti-social behavior. Others may go down that sinkhole of 
safety of `having done well enough . . .'' The issue of injustice 
because of `otherness' is not done. It takes vigilance to recognize it, 
a commitment to be moved to do something about it.''
  Ms. Nakano has always been very active in her local community. Since 
1979, she has been a member of the Executive Board of the Sonoma County 
Japanese American Citizens League, and she was an organizer of the 
successful effort to establish the Sonoma County Commission on Human 
Rights. She served as the Commission's first chair (1992).
  In speaking out on the injustices she sees, Mei Nakano also gives us 
a message of hope: ``Finally, I need to say that I rejoice in the fact 
that we've come a long way here in America

[[Page E1309]]

regarding the issue of `otherness,' not the least of which is the 
extraordinary fact of electing an African American president. For me, 
the `foreign-ness' which I felt so starkly in childhood and in my 
growing years, has gradually dissipated as I find myself tossed in the 
salad bowl of American society, proud to be in the skin I'm in.''
  Mr. Speaker, Mei T. Nakano has used the experiences of her life to 
inspire others and is now enjoying time with her husband of 69 years 
and her three children as well as her grandchildren and great 
grandchildren. She is also gardening, reading, responding to requests 
for writing articles, working on book of short stories, and, of course, 
speaking out when the need arises. Please join me in honoring this 
special activist who reminds us of the causes worth fighting for.

                          ____________________