2005 January 3 The Associated Press Laura Wides
State and Regional
Japanese-Americans remember Rep. Robert Matsui as a champion

When then-House Speaker "Tip" O'Neal tapped freshman Rep. Robert Matsui for the House Immigration Committee, the first-generation Japanese-American demurred and instead sought a post on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Matsui, who as an infant was sent with his family to an internment camp during World War II, entered Congress determined not to be pigeonholed as the Asian-American representative. Still, he never forgot his roots and went on to champion the fight for reparations for internees.

On Monday Japanese-Americans across the state mourned the charismatic Democrat, who died Saturday of complications related to bone marrow cancer, months after winning a 14th term representing a Sacramento-area district.

Some took the loss particularly hard because the number of Japanese-Americans in Congress is in decline.

Matsui, 63, was extremely private and didn't even tell his top aides about his illness.

"I still can't believe it," said Rose Ochi, a Los Angeles police commissioner, who was interned at a camp in Arkansas.

Matsui, who rose to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is credited with helping pass the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which promised $20,000 to each of the approximately 120,000 residents of Japanese ancestry who were rounded up and put in internment camps during World War II.

He also was instrumental in making the Manzanar internment camp in California into a national historic site.

Peggy Tokushige, 74, a receptionist at Yu-Ai Kai, a Japanese-American community senior service in San Jose, briefly shared quarters in Fresno with Matsui's family before being sent to an internment camp in 1942.

"At that time we had no inkling of what he was going to become," Tokushige said. "He has done so much for the Japanese community... It's kind of a big loss to the Japanese people because we don't have that much representation right now."

Matsui is the third Japanese-American serving in Congress to die in recent years. Patsy Takomato Mink, D-Hawaii, died in 2002. Spark Matsanaga, a congressman and senator from Hawaii, died in 1990. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, is the remaining Japanese American in the House of Representatives, along with Hawaii Democrats Daniel Akata and Daniel Inouye in the Senate.

On occasion Matsui spoke publicly about his internment experience, describing a friend in the school yard who once asked him if he had been in "jail" because he was a spy.

"I was never given a trial. I never went before any magistrate, nor did my parents. To this day, I do not know what the charges that were lodged against me or my deceased parents at this time," he said in a 2001 speech at the John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation.

But in private he did not dwell on the past and sought to make his mark in broader areas, fighting against privatization of Social Security, working on tax and trade issues and helping provide health care coverage for uninsured children.

He was passionate, but he did not pound his fist on tables to get his point across, recalled, U.S. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, who served in Congress with Matsui.
Mineta remembered only once seeing Matsui lose his composure. When witnesses came to Congress to testify about their experience in the camps, "I turned and looked at him, and he had tears in his eyes," Mineta said.