An Admiral and a General Salute the Veterans

It was an action-packed 11th Annual Evening of Aloha Gala Dinner on October 13 at The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in downtown Los Angeles.

Our thanks to the almost 900 people who attended this year's event, shopped at our silent auction, participated in our live auction and opened their wallets during our Rally the Troops at the close of the evening.

The highlight of the evening is always the veterans' procession which kicks off the evening's festivities. This year, 41 veterans from the 100th Infantry, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and Military Intelligence Service marched into the ballroom to the sound of the Emerald Society Pipe and Drums and very loud applause from the dinner patrons.

The theme of the evening was "Medal of Honor" and the evening's emcee, David Ono of ABC7, debuted a moving short documentary about the four Medal of Honor recipients who are buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights near downtown Los Angeles: Joe Hayashi, Sadao Munemori, Kiyoshi Muranaga, and Ted Tanouye.

For those who are looking for another good cause to support and want to once again hear the beautiful music of Daniel Ho: the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center is hosting "OHANA: Celebrating Community" at the JACCC in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, November 24th.

The benefit concert features Daniel Ho & Friends, Keali'i Ceballos and Halau, Nobuko Miyamoto, On Ensemble and COLD TOFU Improv.

For more information, please visit www.jaccc.org/OHANA.php.

A new release of our award winning "A Tradition of Honor" is now available. To order your copy, visit our General Store at: http://www.goforbroke.org/about_us/about_us_support_general.asp

A Tradition of Honor masterfully interweaves recollections of Japanese American veterans as they share their personal journey into war, with vivid recounting of difficult battles and reflections on how it altered their lives, and our nation's understanding of what it means to be an American.

Theirs is a story of iron courage that is – to this day – unmatched in the history of the US Army. Their battles in the European Theater are legendary: their valiant rescue of a Texas battalion, considered one of the top 10 battles in US Army history; their ingenious attack strategy that in 34 minutes breached the Gothic Line that had stymied Allied forces for six months; their gut-wrenching charge through a seemingly impenetrable German barricade that led to the liberation of Rome.

On the other side of the world, Japanese American soldiers serving in a top secret linguistic unit intercepted and decoded crucial messages, thus shortening the war in the Pacific and saving countless thousands of lives.

All this, while many had families living behind barbed wire fences in makeshift incarceration camps simply for the "crime" of looking like the enemy.

Bonus features include a moving tribute to the Nisei soldiers with photographic portraits by Shane Sato and music by Harold Payne, plus over 20 minutes of bonus footage that was not included in the first release.

Our thanks to Craig Yahata for producing this new release.

In February, our Hanashi Oral History volunteers shared their knowledge and experience with Thuy Vo Dang, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Irvine's Department of Asian American Studies. She is the lead researcher/project coordinator for the Vietnamese American Oral History Project (VAOHP).

It was with great pleasure that we received word that the VAOHP website is up and running, and we joined her project team on October 24th for the unveiling of their new website, http://sites.uci.edu/vaohp/.

VAOHP is a multi-year project that assembles, preserves, and disseminates the life stories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. The project expands the archives on Vietnamese Americans with the goal of capturing first generation stories. In Fall 2011, Thuy's project team began interviewing Vietnamese Americans and worked closely with the UC Irvine Libraries' Southeast Asian Archive [seaa.lib.uci.edu] to build a website for these stories to be presented and used by researchers, students, and the community.

Thuy noted, "Hanashi is one of the most impressive regional video archives we look to for inspiration, so we seized the opportunity to learn more about their interviewing strategies, production of the oral histories, and training of volunteers. We met some of the dedicated Go For Broke volunteers whose commitment to preserving Japanese American stories became clear through their painstaking attention to interviewing techniques and handling complicated video, audio, and lighting equipment.

"What Hanashi has shown is the importance of community history. This program also asserts that we are the keepers of our community's past and this means we must put meticulous effort into preserving these stories to the best of our ability.

"The Vietnamese American Oral History Project is ever grateful for the spirit of sharing that Hanashi has shown through its training program and it has inspired us to think of ways to bring a "talk story" workshop series to the Vietnamese American community."

In 1916, author Lily Hardy Hammond wrote, "You don't pay love back; you pay it forward."

We can never pay back the love that fueled the Issei and Nisei's selflessness and sacrifice.

But we can pay it forward by passing their values and life lessons on to our children and grandchildren.

If you aren't already a member (or haven't renewed your membership), please consider signing up for membership today to help us make a positive impact in the world by passing forward the legacy of the Nisei soldiers.

Join today!