San Francisco Giants Ready for 2009!

The finishing touches of a giant makeover are being applied prior to one of the city's biggest celebrations of the year...the opening of the San Francisco Giants' 2009 baseball season.


Down at the AT & T Park, home of the Giants at China Basin, staff can be seen working both inside and outside the stadium.

At the grand entrance at Willie Mays Plaza, people have been on their knees this week polishing the thousands of bricks inscribed with the names of donors that sweep in seven arcs across the front.

And with the help of a cherry-picker today, men were standing on the heavy glass and steel frames that overhang the entrance, brushing and washing down.

Already, new turf has been laid and stands are being readied.

All this for the Giants' party on Opening Day on Tuesday, April 7, when the area around King Street and McCovey Cove will turn into a bobbing sea of orange and black .

In the opening game, currently scheduled for *1.05 pm, fans will watch their beloved team pitch against Milwaukee Brewers. The match continues on Wednesday at 7.15 pm and Thursday at 4.05 pm.

Prior to the home game, the team can be see in action in a series of exhibition games after returning from their Spring Training in Scottsdale, Arizona. They will be in Oakland on Thursday, April 2, and Friday, April 3, and then in Los Angeles on Sunday, April 5.

Games throughout the season are broadcast on TV and radio and this info, along with downloadable and printable match schedules, directions, videos and all up-to-date commentaries and info about the Giants community - along with a countdown to the minute to Opening Day! - is on their website: www.sfgiants.com

*** The Giants advise: 'Game times do change and fans should check the online schedule for the most up-to-date game information.'

pics show the gleaming bricks and, just visible, men cleaning the glass and steel frames above the entrance

California Supreme Court Hearing on Marriage

It was a colourful and peaceful gathering of hundreds of people outside of the Civic Center and California Supreme Court early this morning.

Both supporters and opponents of Prop 8, the election vote that overturned the Court's ruling allowing same-sex marriage in California, were there to campaign and watch a live broadcast of the hearing set up on a large screen outside the Civic Center.

Across the plaza, seven Supreme Court justices were preparing to listen to arguments on both sides on three issues:

Is Prop 8 invalid because it constitutes a 'revision of' rather than an 'amendment to' the state Constitution? Does it violate the 'separation of powers' doctrine? And the thorny question, if Prop 8 is valid, what effect if any will it have on the 18,000 couples who entered into same-sex marriage between June, when the Supreme Court ruling came into effect, and November when the electoral vote put a stop to such marriages.

But while the crowd, largely those in favour of same-sex marriage, waited for the Court hearing to begin at 9 am, a rally had been organized with speakers, two of them gay and lesbian church ministers.

The first minister said he had married his partner in Canada and had been in activism for 40 years.

He urged the crowd to live in hope that one day they would win the battle for same-sex marriage.

'You can't live one second without hope,' he said. 'We've already won the battle.'

In a jibe at the Mormon church who helped finance the campaign to restore a definition of traditional marriage to the state Constitution, he said, 'I want to thank God for the Mormon church this morning,' ie for their example of polygamy. All we're requesting is one!'

'I'm not here to destroy anybody's marriage,' he said. 'I'm here to have my own.'

Next to him, a Pentecostal minister who said she had had a lesbian partner for 25 years, spoke of the history of the church finally solemnizing slave marriages, a parallel that she saw to the current debate.

'Banning same-sex marriage is a form of gay bashing and would do nothing to protect traditional marriage,' she said.

Carrying posters, however, as they walked past the Civic Center towards the Supreme Court that conveyed the message, 'The people have voted twice!' were Kelly, Karen and Eva. They were making the point that Californians have

'We're here to support and stand up for the will of the majority for voters in the state of California who have voted twice on this issue in 2000 and 2008 and we object to judicial activism and hope that the justices are not swayed by political opinion,' said Karen.

Back at the podium another speaker from the black community spoke against the black vote on Prop 8 - it has been measured at 59 per cent, above the average vote of other groupings - claiming that blacks had been wrongly influenced.

'Many ministers initially told their congregations homosexuality is a sin,' she said.

She said that if Prop 8 was allowed to stand, it would mean that any rights could be taken away from any community.

The Executive Director of Equality California, Geoff Kors, speaking of the enactment of Prop 8 said, 'What if a simple majority can decide my 80-year-old parents don't have the right to medical care?'

Standing listening were a large group of Prop 8 supporters who had travelled in from Sacramento. They stood quietly with giant banners that simply read 'Tradtional Marriage' with a large red tick in a ballot square painted alongside.

However, they did not wish to make public comment.

Outside the Supreme Court I met Kelly, Karen and Eva again and asked them about the issue of 'rights'.

'What is defined as a fundamental right?,' said Karen who has a legal background. 'There are protected classes. Gender is one of them and has a higher level of scrutiny. The other class is race,' she said.

There were laws against misogyny and sexual discrimination, but that it was not a 'right' to marry.

The issue of blacks marrying whites, a racial precedent that supporters of same-sex marriage were using in argument, was a different issue, she said.

'The California Supreme Court has found a way of saying that gay marriage is a fundamental right, thus giving it the highest level of scrutiny.

'We felt we needed to protect the traditional definition of marriage, we shouldn't have to,' she said.

At that point, Daniel, a young gay man who had been listening, joined in.

'This is the first instance discrimination has been written into the Constitution,' he said.

As they debated, Karen reiterated, 'It's about protecting the traditional definition of marriage.'

'So where can you stop?' said Daniel, asking about how restrictive laws could be made on gay couples.

'They can marry the same way we can. They have the same rights,' said Eva.

Leaving the discussion I turned to go back to the screen as the Court hearing was starting and passed a group from the Assembly of the Living God, San Francisco, engaging in prayer.

The Supreme Court hearing report to follow

pics show: Kelly, Karen, Eva; gay and lesbian ministers; supporters of traditional marriage; supporters of same-sex marriage

for an album of pics click here:

California Supreme Court on Marriage Definition

Supporters of the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman are confident of success in their historic legal battle that takes place tomorrow in San Francisco at the California Supreme Court.

On the eve of the debate over the legality of 'Prop 8' in the November elections, when Californians voted to uphold the traditional definition of marriage, Protect Marriage said in a statement, 'We have confidence that the Court will uphold Proposition 8. Why do we believe this? Because the law is clearly on our side....'

At issue is whether Prop 8 that allowed people to vote on the definition of marriage is legal. The November vote overturned a Supreme Court ruling in May when justices ruled by 4-3 to allow same-sex marriage.

'...we are very confident that the Court will respect the right of the people to have decided this issue. The people have reserved to themselves the sovereign right to define their constitution. By a 600,000 vote margin, they voted to enshrine the traditional definition of marriage in the constitution,' said Protect Marriage.

Their Lead Counsel is Kenneth W. Starr, the former US Solicitor General who attempted to have Bill Clinton impeached over the Monica Lewinsky affair. He also served as a Judge for the Court of Appeals, DC Circuit.

Protect Marriage's statement continued, 'As Dean Kenneth W. Starr has told the court in his brilliantly written briefs, “The constitution has now been amended by the sovereign people who are its creators. That is the beginning and end of this case.”'

A total of 52.5% of Californians voted for traditional marriage in November while 47.5% voted against.

Supporters of same-sex marriage argue that Prop 8 was a 'revision' of the Constitution rather than an 'amendment', so that it could only be placed on the ballot by a legislative vote or a new statewide Constitutional Convention. The last time such a convention took place was in 1879.

Tomorrow's hearing before seven justices has weighty supporters of same-sex marriage. In favour are Mayor Gavin Newsom and the city of San Francisco, California's Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and both houses of the Legislature, and the state's Attorney General, Jerry Brown, the city of Los Angeles and the county of Santa Clara.

A detailed article giving legal background and analysis can be found in the San Francisco Chronicle - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/03/04/MN6I16807P.DTL

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer, reports that the Supreme Court's senior justice, Joyce Kennard, who originally voted for same-sex marriage, 'seemed to signal shortly after Prop. 8 passed that she was inclined to uphold it.

When the court voted to take up the lawsuits challenging Prop. 8 two weeks after the election, Kennard cast the lone dissenting vote. She said the only issue that the court needed to review was whether the 18,000 same-sex marriages conducted before the election were valid.'

Opponents, say the Chronicle, argue that dissolving pre-election marriages would amount to a state-compelled divorce, trampling on 18,000 couples' family and property rights.

They also argue that it interferes with judges' authority to shield minorities - racial, religious, political or sexual - from discrimination.

Protect Marriage counter, 'On the Attorney General’s novel contention that even though 'Proposition 8 was a validly enacted amendment, it should still be invalidated as violating the right to liberty of same-sex couples, “[This position is] utterly without foundation in this Court’s case law. His theory fails at every level. The Attorney General is inviting this Court to declare a constitutional revolution that would fundamentally alter the role of the judiciary, putting judges in the role of supreme overseer of the people’s constitution-making power, a result patently contrary to popular sovereignty.”

Tomorrow's hearing begins at 9 am and can be viewed live on television: 9:00am pacific time on the California Channel and online at www.calchannel.com.

pic shows supporters and opposers of same-sex marriage when the first of the marriages were held at the Civic Center after the ruling came into effect in June last year

Day of Remembrance 2009 for Japanese Americans

The 30th anniversary of the Day of Remembrance for Japanese Americans who were evicted from their homes and sent to American internment camps during World War II was held last Sunday.

Over 200 people gathered to commemorate the fateful day of February 19, 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that allowed for the exclusion, eviction and imprisonment of about 120,000 Japanese American citizens and residents who were living in Hawaii state and the West Coast..see previous blogs

Kiku Hori Funabiki, now in her eighties, is working as a contributer on a book recounting the release and resettlement experiences of former camp internees.

Still angry at the treatment which she believes led to her father's early death after the war, she said, 'We were behind barbed wire. We had searchlights. We were supposed to be being protected. Why were they aiming the searchlights at us!'

Kiku, who was born in San Francisco, was seized as a 17-year-old about to graduate high school and sent with her invalid mother and two older brothers to the Heart Mountain camp, Wyoming. Already her father had been rounded up by security services and taken to a stricter Department of Justice Camp for those considered to be more of a security threat.

She stayed in the camp for three years, choosing to remain with her mother who was receiving medical care while her brothers were allowed to leave earlier. Her brothers, however, could not go back to the West Coast as it had been declared a military exclusion zone for 'enemy aliens.' Eventually her father rejoined his family in Heart Mountain.

In a moving poem in an earlier anthology to which she contributed, entitled 'Silence...No More', she wrote of her father, Sojiro Hori...

for a father detained in five
prisoner-of-war camps in America
for the crime of being Japanese
and joined his loved ones
in yet another barbed wire compound
then returned home to die at seventy-three
in San Francisco...

After the war, Kiku studied at UC Berkeley and worked in the airlines industry. But she also became an ambassador for the redress and reparations movement, fighting successfully in the campaign that led to President Ronald Reagan issuing a formal apology on behalf of America in 1988 for the unjust treatment of Japanese Americans, along with a token $20,000 award to every former internee, and an educational grant to publicize to future generations the horror of what had taken place.

Her poem* details some harrowing experiences of people in the camps, written after she appeared before the Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. She then read it when she gave testimony before the Committee on the Judiciary in Washington D.C. in 1984.

Through her campaigning she became friends with Michi Weglyn, a young girl interned in the Gila River camp who became a costume designer in New York and the authoress of the first book to prove the injustice of the internment, 'Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps'.

'She gave me a couple of fashion plates - design templates - from the "King and I",' Kiku reminisced.

On Sunday Kiku appeared on stage, with the writers and producer of a short documentary on the life of Michi Weglyn, for the lighting of a candle in honour of those who were in the Gila River camp.

What did she think of the Day?

'It's essential,' she said, echoing one of the themes of the event, a consciousness of the passage of time and the importance for people to tell their stories while they still can.

With the new anthology due, Kiku is leading the way.

*Her poem can be read on a San Francisco State University website: http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/silencenomore.html

Pics show: Kiku; a pic of the first anthology Kiku contributed to, titled 'From Our Side of the Fence: Growing up in America's Concentration Camps' and edited by Brian Komei Dempster.
The pic is taken from the Kearny Street Workshop website: http://www.kearnystreet.org/programs/publications/index.html

Day of Remembrance 2009 for Japanese Americans - 3

The 30th anniversary of the Day of Remembrance for Japanese Americans who were evicted from their homes and sent to American internment camps during World War II was held yesterday afternoon.

Over 200 people gathered to commemorate the fateful day of February 19, 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that allowed for the exclusion, eviction and imprisonment of about 120,000 Japanese American citizens and residents who were living in Hawaii state and the West Coast..see previous blogs

Hiroshi's father, the Rev Yoshiaki Fukuda, was picked up in San Jose on the very day that Pearl Harbor was bombed.

As a founder of the Konko Church of San Francisco and a leader of the Konko Church in America, he happened to be in San Jose that day. He and other leaders of the Japanese community were instantly rounded up and sent to a Department of Justice camp to be held under a strict regime.

Hiroshi, at eight months old, was soon afterwards sent with his mother and five brothers and sisters to an internment camp. Over the years the family were moved around several different camps, but spent the longest time in Crystal City, Texas. At one point, his father was briefly allowed to join them.

Towards the end of the war, two of Hiroshi's older brothers were allowed to leave their camp, but Hiroshi and the rest of the family remained until 1947, two years after the end of the war, because of the political activities of his father. Hiroshi was six-years-old when he left.

Crystal City was the last camp to close, which is where his father was at the end. The camp had a huge contingent of Peruvian Japanese, as well as Japanese from other Central and South American countries, Germans and Italians. His father worked in the camps as a political activist especially on behalf of the Peruvian Japanese on the issue of repatriation.

At the end of the war the Central and South American governments would not allow Japanese people back into their countries. More than 600 Peruvian Japanese went to live in Japan but some resisted repatriation. Finally in 1947, the US government allowed them to remain in the country, Crystal City was closed and Hiroshi's father was released.

The history of the camp can be found, among many other places online, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_City,_Texas
and the personal story of Rev Fukuda, written by Hiroshi's brother, Nobusuke, can be read here:
http://www.discovernikkei.org/forum/en/node/2446

The family settled back in the city and his father wrote a book published in 1957, 'My Six Years of Internment: An Issei's Struggle for Justice.

It is listed along with many other fascinating-looking books on a Public Broadcasting Service website devoted to the 'Children of the Camps': http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/resources/books.html

What reaction to the internment did his parents show within the family?

'They never expressed hatred against the government but I think they felt they had to be leaders and pick everyone up,' said Hiroshi.

Of his own generation, he said, 'I think we felt the school experience. We felt like onlookers in a way, that we were an enemy being released. It took a while to feel that we were completely an American.'

The Japanese community also had another problem among themselves after the war, and that was a feeling of mistrust and of being let down by the Japanese American Citizens League.

The JACL had cooperated with the government, providing information about its members.

'To this day I don't think they were strong enough,' said Hiroshi.

Frances was a teenager when her family exchanged their home for a horse stall. That was when they were taken to an assembly center at the then Tanforan Race Track in San Bruno, about ten miles south of San Francisco, where internees were housed in the stables.

She can't remember exactly how old she was, about 16 or 17 years, when she left home with her mother, father, brother and sister.

What she does remember is the short period of time they had to get ready as a family. People were taken to the camps at two-week intervals, and although she is not clear whether they had two weeks to prepare, or four or even six, she knows that it was very rapid.

Two weeks final notice at most. 'It was very unpleasant,' she said.

Of Tanforan, which is now a shopping mall with a Japanese garden, she said, 'They were starting to build barracks with bathrooms in the centre. They were called 'latrines' which none of us understood!'

Later she was moved to Topaz in the Utah desert. 'Most people in San Francisco went to Topaz,' she said.

How did she cope with the abrupt change from home to internment?

'At 16, you take what it is. You shout and holler but you do nothing,' she replied.

I asked her about the conditions of the camp.

'They gave us food. My father was a cook in the mess hall,' she began, commenting that perhaps she wasn't the best person to ask what people thought of the food!

'We were getting a lot of food that nobody liked, but it was food.' By that she meant the type of American food it was, not her father's cooking.

'Cottage cheese was one of the things nobody liked,' she said, but they also had fish which was more popular.

'They gave us a lot of eggs,' she also recalled. 'I don't remember if they gave us bacon. But they did give us breakfast, lunch and dinner. They did give us a lot of food.'

Yoshihiro, was born in a camp but apart from that time has lived in San Francisco all his life.

'It was very unjust,' he said of the internment, 'but it brought the community together because we were all forced to be together'.

'We shared the same common experience, which ironically meant something positive coming out of something terrible.'

In my next blog I meet writer Kiku Hori Funabiki

pics show: Yoshihiro; Hiroshi; the reception at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California

Day of Remembrance 2009 for Japanese Americans - 2

The 30th anniversary of the Day of Remembrance for Japanese Americans who were evicted from their homes and sent to American internment camps during World War II was held yesterday afternoon.

Over 200 people gathered to commemorate the fateful day of February 19, 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that allowed for the exclusion, eviction and imprisonment of about 120,000 Japanese American citizens and residents who were living in Hawaii state and the West Coast..see previous blog

A fascinating, new documentary on the life of the young Japanese American author who exposed the weakness of the American government's case for exclusion and internment was screened as one the highlights of the remembrance ceremony.

'Out of Infamy,' a twenty-minute documentary, uses archived material that brings to life the story of Michi Nishiura Weglyn, and was shown with filmmakers Nancy Kapitanoff and Sharon Yamato in the audience.

It follows the story of Michi as a Californian farm girl and internee in the Gila river, Arizona, camp, rising to become an artistic costume designer for the Perry Como Show, a researcher, author and political activist. She married Walter Weglyn, a German Jew who narrowly escaped death in Holland, and died in New York in 1999 at the age of 72 years.

Her book, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps, published in 1976, proved the falsehood of the government's claims that imprisonment had been a 'military necessity.'

Instead, with painstaking research through library archives she showed that 'our government had in its possession proof that not one Japanese American, citizen or not, had engaged in espionage, not one had committed any act of sabotage.'

Her book also included information on Japanese Latin Americans, who were used as exchange prisoners between America and Japan during the war, and gave impetus to the redress movement.

At the opening of the Day of Remembrance, another moving film was shown of photos of the internment years with a voiceover by 'Sox' Kitashima.

'Let Us Not Forget' portrayed one harrowing account of a mother of two small children shot by two military police as she sat waiting for her husband to return. The police also wrecked her home.

Later on in the war, said the film, Japanese Americans were asked to bear arms for America and many from the prison camps volunteered.

Mistress of Ceremonies yesterday was Carole Hayashino, Vice President of University Advancement at California State University, Sacramento. She presented the 2009 Clifford Uyeda Peace and Humanitarian Award to Bay Area human rights activists Chizu and Ernest Iiyama.

'We would like to share this award with activists all over the world for peace and justice,' said Chizu.

The couple met as internees in the Topaz Relocation Center in the Utah desert where they were both working in organizations that provided support and education to internees.

A former Poet Laureate of San Francisco, who was interned in Rohwer, Arkansas, read one of her poems entitled 'Letter to My Daughter'.

Janice Mirikitani is a 'sansei', a third-generation Japanese American, who is also a Founding President of the Glide Foundation, a non-profit organization with the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, and married to the Rev Cecil Williams, Founder and Minister of Liberation at Glide.

During the afternoon the audience heard updates from Congressman Mike Honda in his keynote address and Mariko Nakanishi of Campaign for Justice - Redress Now! on campaigns to gain redress for excluded Japanese Americans who were not interned, German and Italian Americans, and Japanese Latin Americans.

Congressman Honda was particularly hopeful in the light of President Obama's election.

'We have a new administration, I believe we have renewed hope,' he said.

He is also hoping to recover $45 million that he believes is owed from the educational grant awarded in 1988 to raise public awareness of the camps, and to bring about the repeal of one final Act on the statute books that allows incarceration without the benefit of due process, ie can be used where there is suspicion without proof.

This is the Alien Friends Act (officially An Act Concerning Aliens) that authorized President John Adams to deport any resident alien considered 'dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,' and which was aimed largely at Irish immigrants and French refugees critical of the administration.

The Act, along with three others that either expired or were repealed by 1802, were considered by Thomas Jefferson to be unconstitutional and void - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts for further info.

The final speaker was Banafsheh Akhlaghi, Founder of the National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement, whose concern is American treatment of Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian peoples in the wake of 9/11.

In my next blog are interviews with people who were interned in the camps...

pics show: the candlelight procession in the rain to the reception at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California; Michi Weglyn, taken from the Day of Remembrance 2009 programme

Day of Remembrance 2009 for Japanese Americans

The 30th anniversary of the Day of Remembrance for Japanese Americans who were evicted from their homes and sent to American internment camps during World War II was held yesterday afternoon.

Over 200 people gathered to commemorate the fateful day of February 19, 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that allowed for the exclusion, eviction and imprisonment of about 120,000 Japanese American citizens and residents who were living in Hawaii state and the West Coast.

Yesterday's memorial service included rough cuts of a new documentary of the event, poetry, speeches and a candle-lighting ceremony with inter-faith rituals and prayers.

Afterwards, people spilled out of the Sundance Kabuki Theater in Japan Town and onto the rainy streets for a short procession to the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California for a reception.

The keynote address was given by Congressman Mike Honda who said that 'the genius of this country is that we can correct our mistakes', but that it was a 'greater genius not to make those mistakes.'

Participating in the event and in the audience were people who had lived in the camps as children. The camps had been set up immediately after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor with special Department of Justice camps for those most feared as an 'enemy within', for example, religious and business leaders and newspaper editors among the Japanese community, and ten other camps that President Roosevelt referred to as 'concentration camps.'

With many human rights activists also there, the Day of Remembrance was not only to reflect on the past, but to continue a fight for what they called 'unfinished business', seeking redress for over 2,200 Japanese Latin Americans who were forcibly deported during the War and used in prisoner of war exchanges between America and Japan, and to pursue a 'Never Again!' campaign against internment, focussing on post 9/11 attitudes to Arabs and Muslims living in America.

With little or no notice, Japanese Americans had had to leave their homes and businesses, sometimes selling up in haste at reduced value. Some families were separated and when they were released, were not allowed to return to certain areas. The trauma also had a long-term effect on health.

In 1988, after a long political campaign, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Known as the Japanese American Redress Bill, this awarded $20,000 to every internee and was sent with a signed apology by President Ronald Reagan on behalf of the government. Money was also awarded for an educational fund to provide education about the internment but, it was said yesterday, little of this has been given.

According to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, the internment had been 'motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.'

For reports on the afternoon and interviews with former prisoners in the camps, see next blogs

pic shows posters with photos of the internment; and some of the candles representing the ten concentration camps and total of over 110,000 Japanese Americans who were held in government camps