2005 January 9 San Francisco Chronicle John Wildermuth
News P: A4
Mourners remember Matsui's devotion to roots

More than 1,000 mourners remembered Rep. Robert Matsui Saturday as a hometown boy who never forgot the people he represented for more than 30 years, both on the Sacramento City Council and in Congress.

"You saw him talking all the time to people in the grocery store or standing in movie lines," Grantland Johnson, former secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, told a crowd gathered for a service at the city's Memorial Auditorium. "He cared what they thought."

The memorial service and the private funeral that followed ended a week of remembrances for the 63-year-old Matsui, who died New Year's Day of pneumonia, a complication of a rare blood disease that was recently diagnosed. His death came less than two months after he was easily re-elected to a 14th term in Congress.

Former President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Dennis Hastert were among the speakers at a Wednesday service in the statuary hall of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington. Thousands of people filed by Matsui's casket Thursday and Friday as he lay in state in the rotunda of the state Capitol.

Matsui was best known for his successful effort to get an apology and reparations from the government for the World War II internment of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry. Matsui spent his earliest years in the Tule Lake internment camp, where his parents were sent after the United States entered the war.

While the congressman was known as an expert on Social Security and led last year's unsuccessful effort to get more Democrats elected to the House, it was his quiet work for the Sacramento area that most people wanted to talk about Saturday.

"We will miss his leadership, we will miss his guidance, we will miss his advocacy, and we will miss his friendship," Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo told the crowd in the city's aging downtown auditorium.

Matsui was a fierce and liberal Democrat, but he was willing and able to work with Republicans to get things done. And while he and his conservative Republican neighbor, Rep. John Doolittle, R-Rocklin, battled mightily for years on issues like flood control and water management, "Bob and I never personally exchanged a cross word," Doolittle remembered.

Matsui's personal history also inspired a generation of minority students who saw how someone could move from the relocation camps into a legal career, the Sacramento City Council and Congress, while still staying true to his roots in the community.

He is survived by his widow, Doris, a former aide in the Clinton White House; a son, Brian; and a granddaughter, Anna.