Week 2: Health and Human Services, Days 3 & 4

On Wednesday we met with Curt Fukuda who told us a little about his experience with interviewing as he is completing his book about the history of Japantown. He gave us a little background of what he learned through his research and through talking to the older generations. What stuck out to me is how he described what makes San Jose Japantown unique from Los Angeles and San Francisco, a topic that ties in more to last week’s. Curt expressed how San Jose’s Japantown “has an incredibly rich history that you won’t get from looking at it,” and how this living, family-operated neighborhood is what has been preserving this community and keeping it strong.

Next we had the chance to talk to Richard Konda the executive director of the Asian Law Alliance, an individual who is deeply involved in the community. At the ALA, they work with direct legal services, domestic violence, housing, community education, and police education to name a few. When asked about what social service issues are facing the Nikkei in our community, he spoke about the 2^nd generation health care, immigrant issues, and the understanding of cultural responsibilities. As the Nisei being to age, health care has begun to become a major issue. Also many immigrants, not just the Japanese, have difficulty understanding some of their legal responsibilities, such as if they get in a car accident, being scared of the situation and driving away is against the law. One story that Richard told us that particularly made an impression on me was about Cau Bich Tran who was shot and killed by a San Jose Police Office in front of her family on July 13^th, 2003. Although Tran did have a somewhat unstable past and posed no threat to the officers being under 5’ tall and weighing less than 100 pounds. The officer that shot her felt threatened because Tran was holding a Vietnamese vegetable peeler and could not speak English. The police had come in response to a neighbor’s call and within seconds of their arrival, she was shot and killed. This incident shows how certain cultural differences can result in misunderstandings and wrongful deaths. The ALA works to try and prevent situations like this. We also asked Richard what difference he sees in being a Japanese American highly involved in City Council. He replied saying the he sees himself as more of an Asian American rather than specifically Japanese and they can sometimes use this fact to their advantage when dealing with issues related to the Asian American community.

Lastly, we drove over to City Hall to speak with Robert Lopez and Wayne Chen of the Housing Department. The two of them work on policy development and specifically the affordable housing programs in San Jose. The main thing that I got from talking with them was that they use affording housing to strengthen and build a community. A lot of people have the “not in my backyard” stigma, believing that these affordable housing communities will be like the projects and residents do not want a building made to house poor people in their neighborhoods. However, by looking at these upscale housing complexes we can see that it is not the case. The buildings offer community centers, pools, and one is even designed specifically for senior living. They are also modernly designed and by looking at the pictures, they look like they would be extremely expensive to live in. Maybe in the future they will be able to plan affordable housing complexes designed for college students or recent graduates with low income.

On Thursday we had our first Intern Day up in San Francisco where we got to spend time with the other interns up there. It started off with a meeting where we decided that we will be selling curry and rice and Hawaiian Sun at the Nihonmachi Street Fair in August as a fundraiser for the program. We also had the chance to talk with Kaz Maniwa, an attorney at law in San Francisco’s Japantown. He spoke to us a little about the situation with the Japantown Center Mall and big corporations who are trying to make more money. Kaz also showed us his collection of pictures with famous people he has met such as sumo wrestlers and political leaders. He is most proud however of his 1 million dollar Turkish bill that he has framed. Although it is only work 97 cents in the United States, he can still say he is a Turkish millionaire. We then had a presentation with Kenji Taguma of the Nichi Bei Times. It was interesting to see how this newspaper transformed over the years into fully printed copies in English. It was also funny to see that Kenji knew someone who knew pretty much each and every one of us interns. For example, his nieces when to high school with me and we played basketball together. I’m beginning to see more and more of how small of a world the JA community is and I'm excited to see what he has to say in his article about our interns. We ended the intern day with a workshop led by Aya Ino. We learned about direct service programs, education, self-help, advocacy, and direct action and looked at how the organizations we have worked with fall under each of these categories along with which groups of people they serve (JA youth, seniors, families, new immigrants, non-JA, etc.) From this exercise we learned that although we have several direct service and education programs available, we are lacking in the advocacy and self-help areas. As a future leader, we can improve this by empowering others and supporting certain issues that are important to our community.