work to live.

One of my favorite places to eat when I'm in LA is in Little Tokyo. After a satisfying meal we walked around and for the first time took notice of a statue of a seated gentleman, a memorial which was apparently erected in 2002. As we read the plaque and as I did more research when I got home, I realized the great historical significance of this unknown gentleman but wondered why we had never learned about or heard of him before?

The statue is of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese Schindler as it were. In 1939 and 1940 Sugihara was the Japanese Consulate in Lithuania during the Soviet takeover and the growing Nazi movement. It is said that Sugihara, cutting through the governmental red tape and violating orders, hand wrote visas for Polish and Lithuania Jewish refugees so that they could escape and live in Japan, saving 6,000 to 10,000 jews from a doomed fate. He spent 18-20 hours a day writing visas that would normally take a month to accomplish. Upon being asked to resign in 1947 from the foreign office, Sugihara returned to Japan and took menial jobs, such as selling light bulbs door-to-door, to support his family. He lived an anonymous life and died on July 31, 1986 at the age of 86.
 
During an interview the year before he died, he was asked why he risked his career to save other people, he answered by quoting an old samurai saying, "Even a hunter cannot kill a bird which flies to him for refuge." In spite of the publicity given him in Israel and other nations, he remained virtually unknown in his home country. Only when a large Jewish delegation from around the world, including the Israeli ambassador to Japan, showed up at his funeral did his neighbors find out what he had done.

My Jewish friend, Zoe, symbolically accepting a visa from Chiune Sugihara.

I recently revisited a town called Locke with my mom. The last time we were there was many years ago when I was about 10 years old. Nothing has changed except my perspective. Everything looks so much more miniaturized than I remembered. But one thing remained the same, it still looks like a western movie set on a hollywood lot - with a twist: all the stores bare Chinese names and calligraphic signs.
 
Located 75 miles from San Francisco, in the Sacramento river Delta, Locke is the only remaining authentic Chinese village in the United States of America. Although many cities in America have a Chinatown, Locke is the only separate Chinese community that was built by, and exclusively for, Chinese immigrants. The town was founded in 1915 by a group of merchants on land owned by George Locke after a fire in the neighboring town of Walnut Grove destroyed the city's Chinatown. The town's development finished in 1920 and much of it remains the same to this day. At one time, 600 residents, all of whom were Chinese, lived in this three square block community. Now the permanent population of the town is less than 100, and less than a dozen of the residents are Chinese.

                           

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