AR282,

Thanks. Well-put. When I was working with a human rights org. in WY, one of my regular op/ed pieces included a story about an American of Asian descent physician and her husband, also a physician, basically being run out of town because of her ethnicity. It was descpicable. There were many of us who protested through commmunity meetings, marches, etc. By the time it was all over, she and her husband felt they had no choice but to leave, nor no desire to stay in such a place. It still seems incredible to me that this nation, fighting a war for others' rights, still waged such a war on its own citizens as was done to Americans of Japanese descent during WWII. We never heard about that in history class.

Lest you think all of WY is like though, I am happy to say an Honourary Consul-General to Japan, Mako Miller, lives in the same town I was in and organised some wonderful "Japan Arts Days" and is a tirelss advocate for human rights. Here's some info on her:

November 29, 2000

JOHNSON CITY –Mariko Terasaki Miller, East Tennessee State University's 1998 Outstanding Alumna and an Honorary Consul-General of Japan, will return to her alma mater to deliver the fall 2000 commencement address on Saturday, Dec. 16. The graduation ceremony begins at 10 a.m. in Memorial Center.

On May 1, 1995, the Government of Japan officially appointed Miller an Honorary Consul-General of Japan in Casper, Wyoming -- the first woman ever to hold the title. That achievement was announced a week early during her April 1995 visit to the ETSU campus to speak about her personal multicultural odyssey.

"I am an internationalist. I was brought up as an internationalist. And I come, by rights, to this internationalism. I was born in the international section of Shanghai with an American mother, a Japanese father, a Scottish doctor, and Chinese and British nurses," Miller has said.

Mariko Terasaki Miller is the daughter of the late Gwen Harold Terasaki of Johnson City and the late Hidenari Terasaki, a Japanese diplomat, who met at the Japanese Embassy in Washington and were married in 1931. The story of the Terasaki family's early life, the return to Japan after Pearl Harbor and the war years there, Japan's surrender, and the American occupation is told in Gwen Terasaki's book Bridge to the Sun, published in 1957. A movie based on the book had its world premiere in Johnson City in 1961.