Members of the JACL National Board and National Staff present at the organization’s San Francisco headquarters on Feb. 4. Pictured (from left, front row) are Phillip Ozaki, Dominique Mashburn, Carol Kawamoto, Larry Oda, Carol Kawase and Sheldon Arakaki and (standing, from left) are Bridgette Watson, Bridget Keaveney, Ashley Bucher, Patty Wada, Matthew Weisbly, Claire Inouye, Seia Watanabe, KC Mukai, Michael Tanaka, Victor Kimura, Michael Asada, Eric Langowski, Ryan Yoshikawa, Lisa Olsen, Michael Nakamura, David Inoue and Cheyenne Cheng. (Photo: George Toshio Johnston)
Annual National Convention, documentary, HQ improvements loom.
By P.C. Staff
SAN FRANCISCO — The rain and cold were not enough to stop the Feb. 4 meeting of the JACL National Board, which conducted its first quarterly business meeting of 2023.
National President Larry Oda ran the proceedings as his cabinet of officers, new appointees and JACL staffers provided updates regarding their respective areas of responsibility.
Oda began by announcing that during the monthly calls, Gary Nakamura of Houston, Texas, accepted the role of vp for planning and development, while John Saito Jr. of Los Angeles — who has served on the Pacific Citizen Editorial Board for several years — accepted the role of P.C. Editorial board chair. One position that still needs to be filled is that of national legal counsel.
David Inoue (left) gives his executive director’s report as JACL National President Larry Oda listens intently. (Photo: George Toshio Johnston)
Reporting first was JACL Executive Director David Inoue. He began on an upbeat note from before the previous year’s end, recalling that a pair of funding initiatives — the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Act and the Japanese American World War II History Network Act —managed to get included in President Joe Biden’s $1.65 trillion omnibus bill signed on Dec. 29. “We were very happy about that,” said Inoue, adding he was also “very happy to have now a third Japanese American serving in Congress in Jill Tokuda from Hawaii.”
On the lighter side, Inoue also reported on attending the first-ever Lunar New Year reception at the residence of VP Kamala Harris on Jan. 31. Joining Inoue and representing the JACL National Board were Oda, VP for Public Affairs Seia Watanabe, VP for 1000 Club and Membership Dominique Mashburn and Eastern District Gov. Michael Asada. JACL staffers in attendance were Norman Y. Mineta Fellow Bridget Keaveney and Daniel K. Inouye Fellow Michael Tanaka.
(From left) JACL’s Dominique Mashburn, vp of 1000 Club and Membership; Victor Kimura, secretary/treasurer; and Michael Asada, EDC governor (Photo: George Toshio Johnston)
Inoue then provided an update on the Lava Ridge Wind Farm, a 400-unit wind turbine field on 73,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management adjacent to what was Idaho’s Minidoka War Relocation Authority Center, one of the 10 WRA sites where ethnic Japanese, both U.S. citizens and legal resident aliens then-ineligible to become naturalized U.S. citizens, were incarcerated during WWII.
He noted that JACL is working with Friends of Minidoka, which has stated its opposition to the wind farm, with its multistory wind turbines that will be intrusively visible from the Minidoka National Historic Site.
“We’re supporting [Friends of Minidoka] as much as possible, we are going to be asking for an extension,” referring to the BLM’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which has a public comment period that ends March 21. According to Inoue, the BLM has stated “this project is going to go forward no matter what.”
Inoue also mentioned that JACL has met with Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), the Senate’s co-sponsor of the Teaching Asian Pacific American History Act, to see what can be done in a current political climate where there has been a push by some politicians at the local level to reduce or eliminate the teaching of ethnic studies classes in publicly funded schools. He also mentioned that JACL is still keeping vigilant regarding incidents of anti-Asian violence by working with other groups on the issue, even with two recent high-profile mass murders in which the perpetrators — and many of the victims — were Asians.
Along with other still-in-the-works legislative initiatives, Inoue noted that in preparation for the 2023 JACL National Convention, which will take place in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, he noted that staff has been working with Carol Kawamoot, JACL vp of general operations, and representatives of the Pacific Southwest District, with a site visit having taken place. Also, he noted that the JACL will hold its leadership conference with OCA April 29-May 2.
Regarding the Kakehashi program, Inoue said the 37 participants chosen from 127 applicants will be visiting Japan March 6-14 for the first time since the pandemic. As for the documentary about JACL, “League of Dreams,” by filmmaker Lane Nishikawa, Inoue gave a progress report and said it might be completed by year’s end.
Inoue also gave recognition to Fund Development Director Phillip Ozaki and Membership Manager Ashley Bucher for shepherding “a grant from the San Francisco Japantown Foundation to do some cosmetic refurbishment on the front of the building and the exterior,” referring to “all that peeling paint” in front of the JACL National Headquarters building. (On a related note, Ozaki reported after the meeting that JACL received $177,880 from the California Department of Emergency Services from its Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which will help pay for security video cameras, a fence upgrade and improved illumination.)
Next up was Kawamoto, who deferred to Youth and Programs Manager Cheyenne Cheng to provide an update on the still-developing plans for the JACL National Convention, which takes place at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Little Tokyo from July 19-23. Cheng reported on the different venues inside and outside the hotel — including the Japanese American National Museum and the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center — that are under consideration.
In VP for 1000 Club and Membership Dominique Mashburn’s report, with regard to JACL’s membership, she said, “Although there was a decrease, as you can see, at the end of year five, it was smaller compared to other years. And we do believe that if we did more activities, more targeted campaigns, we can be in the positive for this year. It’s really encouraging. And I hope that really gives that extra oomph to everyone that we can really change the trend compared to past years. And we really are excited to see what we can accomplish.”
Membership VP Dominique Mashburn is confident that with increased activities and more targeted campaigns, JACL membership numbers can be in positive figures for 2023 and beyond.
Mashburn reported that 300 JACL memberships lapsed as of Dec. 31 — but that JACL “ended up receiving many large gifts at the end of 2022 between the last board meeting in November to end of the year, Dec.31, which accounted for nearly an additional $100,000.”
Mashburn then asked Bucher to share the latest on the report of the Otoshidama (gift membership) Campaign. Bucher reported that the campaign raised $9,458, which included 98 gifted members, 65 of whom were new, for a total of 112 “years gifted,” a figure from variable Otoshidama with an option to give one year, two years or three years.
There were also 14 new Pacific Citizen print edition subscribers and one Thousand Club Life membership, which brought in $2,850. She reported that among the orders, 11 were via the mail. “Providing an option to mail in an Otoshidama was important for a lot of people,” Bucher said.” So, we’ll continue to do that.” She also reported that by the end of 2022 “we were at 56” Millennium Club Members.
Oda next called on Secretary/Treasurer Victor Kimura to give his report. Prefacing his report, he said, “I’m not going to talk about the finances. I’m going to talk about something called fund accounting.”
Kimura explained that in fund accounting, anytime an organization received a donation for a specific purpose, it was a “restricted donation,” meaning it needed to be isolated and kept in a separate fund that is “tracked all the way through to the very end.”
Kimura said he was interested in doing two-fund accounting that tracks all of the money that comes in, how it’s spent and what the balances are. The importance of this, he stressed, was so that if the “general unrestricted funds get to a certain low point, then we as an organization are then allowed to raid the Legacy Fund up to a certain extent in order to take that money and put it into unrestricted general funds. The problem is, I don’t think anybody can, at this point, tell what the actual balances in the Legacy Fund … because it’s not listed separately. It’s just mushed in.”
Kimura said his goal as secretary/treasurer was, as he wrote in the Jan. 27, 2023, Pacific Citizen, a wish list that included a way to “immediately tell what the balances are for each of the various funds within JACL National.”
Providing the National Youth/Student Council report were Claire Inouye and KC Mukai, serving as alternates for, respectively, National Youth/Student Chair Mika Chan and National Youth/Student Council Representative Sheera Tamura.
Inouye reported 10 new youth members had joined within the month before the board meeting, thanks to events and presentations sponsored by the NY/SC. She also noted that the NY/SC had been preparing for the then-upcoming Day of Remembrance by working on a social media project. Mukai, meantime, reported that April 14-16 would be the group’s retreat in Chicago. She also said NY/SC was planning a youth orientation and a pair of workshops for the JACL’s National Convention in July.
The Pacific Citizen Editorial Board report was given by Saito. (Also present via Zoom was Executive Editor Allison Haramoto.) Saito noted that the P.C. was able to “give over $15,000 in chapter commissions” from the 2022 Holiday Issue. He also noted that the newspaper’s Little Tokyo office moved down one floor in Weller Court to a larger space it shares with the Pacific Southwest District and other Southern California-based JACL staff.
Saito also reported that Phase Two of the P.C.’s digital archiving project, a digital photo archive, was nearing completion. He also said the annual Spring Campaign raised $27,375. “Those donations were up more than 60 percent from the previous year,” he said. “We take it as a sign that donors are returning following the uncertainty brought up by the pandemic.”
Additionally Saito said obituary tribute advertising raised almost $7,000, the annual scholarship issue brought in more than $3,600 in advertising revenue and that overall ad revenue was $53,242.
He closed by saying, “If you have any advertising inquiries, contact Susan (Yokoyama), our business manager. And then if you have any story ideas, please go ahead and contact Allison or George (Johnston) or myself, and we’ll make sure to try and get some coverage for your chapters and districts.”
JACL governors and officers listen to organizational updates and business matters. (Photo: George Toshio Johnston)
Next on the agenda, Oda gave the floor to CCDC’s Dale Ikeda regarding the Legacy Endowment Fund and an amendment to the constitution and bylaws (CBL) that would change the status quo by allowing the National Board to access up to 2 percent of the Legacy Fund balance by having the current National Board revisit a CBL amendment — Section 5.f. — that had been approved by the previous National Board in 2022 that was to be presented to the National Council at the 2022 National Convention — but because it missed a filing deadline, it was not presented.
To Ikeda, making the change would allow the JACL National Board to access the money in the Legacy Fund if necessary under special circumstances and time constraints that the JACL National Council — which only meets annually — would be unable to approve.
“I’ve seen organizations have money that they cannot access, and then they go downhill. And JACL has actually experienced that on occasion. We’ve had to lay off staff while we sat on millions of dollars in the Legacy Fund and were unable to spend it,” Ikeda said. “The question is, do we want to continue tying the hands of the organization from accessing the funds?”
The first sentence of Section 5.f., in reference to Board Authority, reads: “In any calendar year, the National Board may withdraw up to two percent (2 percent) of the Legacy Fund balance, which shall be in addition to any allocation included in the approved national budget, provided (a) that the National Board determines by a three-fourths majority vote of the Board that there is good cause due to extraordinary, unforeseen and exigent circumstances; (b) both the National JACL Reserve Fund have or will have no balance prior to any withdrawal from the Legacy Fund; and (c) that it is prudent to make such additional withdrawal.”
The second sentence reads:
“Separately upon a majority vote, the National Council may reduce or temporarily suspend any and all expenditures from the Legacy Fund, including any chapter rebates and Legacy Fund grant distributions or awards, subject to any required bylaw amendments”.
Ikeda was in favor of having the National Board to introduce a resolution reintroducing Section 5.f. on the National Council’s agenda for the 2023 Convention.
“I am of the view that even though you want to preserve the funds for the future, that you need a mechanism to maintain the organization in the short term, otherwise you’re going to end up shorting yourself,” he said.
Paul Uyehara of the Philadelphia JACL chapter was, however, opposed to such action. In attendance via Zoom, he said, “I’m not sure why it should be discussed at all at this point because that provision of the policy was removed at the convention, and it’s not part of the policy. And the reason it was removed was because it’s in conflict with the bylaws. It required the bylaws to be amended in order for it to be effective.”
On that, Ikeda disagreed. “It wasn’t removed at the last convention,” he said. “What was submitted to the National Council did not include 5.f. because the Constitution and Bylaws Committee said that the bylaw amendment that would have implemented 5.f. was not timely.”
Uyehara replied, “The management policy was adopted by the National Council, and I think it’s pretty dubious for the Board to essentially try to undo the adoption of a policy by changing it before the National Council considers it again.”
After further discussion, Ikeda said, “All right, I’m gonna make a motion and people either approve it up or down. I move that the board reaffirm its position in adopting section 5.f. as an amendment to the Legacy Fund Management Policy along with submitting a bylaw amendment, implementing the same as previously submitted and approved by the board. If there’s no second, that’s it, and I can go on my with my life.”
PNW Gov. Sheldon Arakaki seconded the motion and opened discussion on the topic. During the discussion, Uyehara said, “The proposal that was filed last year doesn’t match this language. So, it makes it even doubly wasteful and inappropriate to adopt a policy that not only violates the bylaws, but if the amendment is adopted, it’s going to still violate the bylaws.”
Hearing that, Ikeda said, “Well, once we have a national legal counsel, we can get a ruling on whether or not the two are in conflict.”
Oda, noting that “we have a motion on the table,” called the question. Getting verbal “ayes” and no opposition, he called for a roll call vote, and the motion failed.
Abstaining were Nakamura and the alternates for Chan and Tamura. Voting “yes” were Ikeda, Ryan Yoshikawa and Eric Langowski. Voting “no” were Kawamoto, Watanabe, Mashburn, Arakaki, Carol Kawase, Lisa Olsen, Michael Asada and Kimura for a total of eight.
Under new business, Oda brought up the need to find a new legal counsel and asked the board for prospects. He then expressed his desire to pass a resolution to form a Visioning Committee. Nakamura made the motion, Arakaki seconded. Facing no opposition, it was approved. After the next 2023 National Board meetings were set for May 6, in July at the National Convention and Nov. 4 and 5, the meeting was adjourned.
