WHAT'S NEW - in JANUARY 2002!

LATEST NEWS FOR JAN 2002

As we enter 2002, join us as we are eagerly anticipate the many great things will happen to the Asian Pacific American communities.

Our invitation is extended to discover various Asian American leaders listed below, information on our past victories and the many great things that are presently happening in our communities.

YOUR MUSICAL INPUT IS NEEDED as we seek identify the best songs from our music artists.

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FEATURED ARTISTS & LEADERS

KIM NG

She is the Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, one of only three women to hold such a position, joining Elaine Weddington Steward of the Boston Red Sox and Jean Afterman of the New York Yankees.

Her primary responsibility is to assist in every area of the baseball operations of the Dodgers.

Her experiences include working with Dan Evans at the Chicago White Sox, handling arbitration and contraction negotiations, and with the New York Yankees.

Kim Ng is the first Asian woman to hold such a position in Major League Baseball and, at 29, the youngest assistant GM in the Majors while with the New York Yankees.

NIKKI S. LEE

She is a New York artist born in South Korea and whose Korean name is Seug Hee, has investigated cultural and ethnic identity through appearance through her photo work. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum.

Ms. Lee creates a new identity that in each project introduces her to a new culture, like that of indigent white Midwesterners, suburban skateboarders and urban swing kids.

Her social documentary photography portfolio include the Hip-Hop Project, Yuppie Project, Senior's Project Hispanic Project and others. She gains access and acceptance the way anyone gets in anywhere: with hair, makeup and clothing.

She was raised in Geo- Chang South Korea, the daughter of a homemaker and a business man who operates wedding-banquet halls. She moved to New York in 1994 to study commercial photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

"My work is very much about identity," she stated. It was important, in all her work, to be photographed in a group, by a member of the group that she adopted and who adopted her for a project. "In Western culture, identity is always `me,' she said. "In Eastern culture, the identity is `we.' Identity is awareness of others."

NATHAN WONG

When he was nine, he was studied musical theory and composition at USC. He graduated from Pomona College.

He received a Fullbright Fellowship to study at Oxford University in England for two years.

He has worked with Steven Spielberg three times. The first was a composition for a television documentary The Lost Children of Berlin which earned Nathan a Cable Ace award for Best Documentary. He worked with Hans Zimmer on Spielberg's "The Last Days" (an Academy Award winner).

TV work includes Fox's animated series Eekstravanza, Warner Brother's China Beach, HBO's Tales from the Crypt, CBS's That's Life, Fox's Likely Suspects, Dreamwork's Toonsylvania and Disney's Pith Possum.

CD Interactive Game experience include The Mupppets Treasure Island and The Return to Zork. His work in animation includes Felix the Cat, Bruno the Kid (with Bruce Willis), Disney's Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show and Eek the Cat.

Movie credits include Natural Causes and Jackie Chan's Asian version of Rumble in the Bronx, First Strike and Who Am I?

Current projects include Nickelodeon's Fat Dog Mendoza" and has been commissioned to write an opera for the Los Angeles Opera Company.

SOJIN
Sojin, whose real name is Sojin Kamiyama, was born January 30, 1891 and died on July 28, 1954.

He started as a stage magician and worked in many U.S. films. He was generally cast as an exotic villain and had a screen presence that was sinister, yet charismatic.

His films include The Thief of Bagdad (United Artist, 1924), Proud Flesh (MGM, 1925) directed by King Vidor, The Sea Beast (Warner Bros., 1926) with John Barrymore, Road to Mandalay (MGM, 1926) with Lon Chaney, King of Kings (DeMille Pictures, 1927) directed by Cecil B. DeMille, Devil Dancer (Samuel Goldwyn Inc. 1927) directed by Fred Niblo, Old San Francisco (Warner Bros., 1927), with Warner Oland/Anna May Wong and many others.

Sojin's ability to steal scenes was legendary and not missed by one reviewer from the N.Y. Times, who described vividly and acurately the Sojin touch in his role in The Thief Of Bagdad, "Sojin is remarkable for his undemonstrative countenance, cruel and comfortable, with just a scintillation of a smile when dirty work is to be done." The Sojin smile was delivered with the Sojin style!

During his tenure in America, Sojin suffered from the same stereotyping and prejudice that plagued other great Asian stars in Hollywood, like Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa.

DEBORAH CHUNG
Deborah Chung invented (along with Zeng-Qiang Shi) and patented "smart concrete."

By mixing a small amount of short carbon fibers with ordinary concrete, the volume electrical resistivity of "smart concrete" can be measured. The resistance of "smart concrete" changes with strains put on it. In effect, "smart concrete" is a sensor that can be measured for stress.

"A highway made with smart concrete would be able to tell where each vehicle was and what its weight and speed were," says Chung. "Vehicles could be weighed while travelling normally on the highway."

Also, "smart concrete" withstands greater forces and controls cracking better than ordinary concrete.

EVENTS IN HISTORY

IN 1869
- Memphis TN conference of plantation owners proposed substituting Chinese labor for black slaves.

IN 1871
- Nineteen Chinese were massacred in Los Angeles. October 24 marked the worst incident of Anti-Chinese violence in America up to that time.

IN 1879
- the Arizona Weekly Star ran an editorial in 1879 portraying Chinese Americans as "an ignorant, filthy, leprous horde" and "the most pernicious and degraded race on the globe." Chinese workers were attacked in railroad camps and mining towns and driven out of Arizona's mines and railroads.

IN 1923
- Justice Sutherland, speaking for the Supreme Court in 1923, said that Bhagat Singh Thind and other Asian Indians were aliens ineligible to citizenship because they were not white, as only whites and blacks could become citizens.

IN 1924
- In the Hanapepe Massacre, police attack union headquarters in Hanapepe, HI where 16 sugar plantation workers and 4 policemen are killed.

IN 1930
- Anti-Filipino riot occurred in Watsonville, California and in Kent Washington. The Japanese American Citizens League's first national convention was held in Seattle on August 29.

IN 1930
- Nearly 3000 Filipinos working in Alaskan canneries.

IN 1947
- Truman grants full pardon to the Japanese Americans who had been convicted for resisting the draft while they and their families were held in concentration camps.

IN 1949
- FBI arrests the Hawaii Seven for communist activity. Their fines and jail terms are overturned in January 1958.

IN 1959
- Confession Program pardons undocumented Chinese immigrant

IN 1959
- First Chinese American to be elected to the United States Senate.

IN 1959
- Wing Luke is the son of an immigrant laundryman. When Luke won a seat on the Seattle City Council in 1962, he became the first Asian American elected official in the Pacific Northwest. After his tragic death in a 1965 plane crash, the community fulfilled his dream by establishing a multi-cultural Asian American museum in 1967.

IN 1971
- Japanese American Citizens League wins its fight to repeal the Emergency Detention Act of 1950, thereby eliminating the threat of ever reactivating concentration camps in America.

IN 1971
- Lea Salonga (actress seen/heard in Ms. Saigon, Mulan and Flower Drum Song - Mark Taper Forum production) is born

IN 2001
- Patrick Oliphant's racist cartoon was an offshoot of the recent stand off between the U.S. and China over the U.S. spy plane incident.


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