I asked if she experienced and “difficulty” or racial prejudice during her mainland travels and she said she didn’t. “The only comment anyone made to me about race was a man on a train in Wyoming who told me he knew I couldn’t be a mainland (U.S.) Japanese. He said something like, ‘I don’t know who you are but you don’t walk with your head down.’ Then he asked me if I was Mrs. Chaing Kai Shek.” She smiled. “I had been thought of as Mata Hari before, but never Mrs. Chaing Kai Shek.
“The only other time race was considered was while I was at Fort Mc Coy. It was the day we declared Victory over Europe and the Commandant of the base, told me not to go off the post and I had a sergeant escort.”
When I asked what she was most proud of among her World War II accomplishment, the sum of her answer was simple. “Years later, my mother would meet people who told her that I helped them during the war with this or that and she was so proud.”
In 1990, during an interview about his wife, Kinji Kanazawa remarked about her impact on their children. He said, “I take no credit in raising the kids. I think she gave them the right kind of down-to-earth philosophy and that the progress they make in life is the kind of growth they can make by helping other people.”
For Shim Kanazawa, family, family values, and the Buddhist value of dana have been central forces and focuses of her life. Among her accomplishments is her appointment as the first woman director and chair of the Board of Kuakini Medical Center. She was the first nisei woman on the board of the Aloha United Way. Governor Quinn appointed her as the chairperson of the Life and Law Committee which studied Hawaii laws study affecting family life and youth; it was her work there that spearheaded the creation of the Family Court. She has been lauded by the Hawaii State Senate, the U.S. Congress, the Public Schools Foundation, the George Washington Honor Medal for Individual Achievement, the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, the Moiliili Community Center among many other organizations. She has been declared a “Living Legacy” by the Honpa Hongwanji Buddhist Mission and has received an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Hawaii. Shim Kanazawa’s current passion is Project Dana. (Dana, pronounced “donna,” is a Buddhist concept meaning selfless giving.) Project Dana is an interfaith program that assists the elderly and disabled to live with dignity and independence. Despite all her accolades and accomplishments, Shim Ryusaki Kanazawa still thinks of herself as “a country girl with a Red Cross heart.” And as for her accomplishments in life, she credits, her late husband Kinji. “I could never have fulfilled my aspirations and dreams without a true believer and giver in the person of my late husband, Kinji, and without the love and inspiration of our children, Sidney and Joni, our daughter-in-law, Millicent, and our grandchildren, Kurt and Madeleine.
Kinji Kanazawa died on October 8, 2003; he was 86 years old. His twin, Kanemi, died weeks later, on November 1, 2003. Kinji was a Honolulu attorney with his own firm who also established a school for real estate. Before going to law school, Kinji worked as a stevedore and a beekeeper. Kanemi was a long-time dentist. Before the war, Kanemi was a Honolulu Police Department detective attached to the F.B.I to do counter espionage investigation. During the war he served with the Military Intelligence.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government confiscated much of Japanese-owned property, and Kanazawa
Kinji Kanazawa, credited with saving the Moiliili Community Center from government confiscation during World War II. He saved the land beneath the Moiliili Japanese Language School by persuading prominent Caucasians to sit on the Moiliili Community Association's board of directors.
After the war, they resigned to allow the Japanese founders of the school, including Kanazawa's father, to resume their positions.
Kinji and his identical twin, Kanemi, were the last of seven children born to Sakijiro and Haru Kanazawa. He graduated from McKinley High School, the University of Hawaii and Boston College Law School. He worked as an attorney, Realtor, developer, chemist, stevedore and beekeeper. His son, Sidney, also a lawyer, said his father would say, "You can't make money practicing law."
But it was how he practiced law that couldn't make money, his son said. Kanazawa donated his services to Buddhist temples for 50 years and helped many people who asked, he said.
”My father would say, 'Try your best and do it with a good heart,'" he said.
Kanazawa contracted tuberculosis in 1942. "I think he appreciated life a lot, and every day was a gift," his son said.
Kanazawa was also committed to preserving the legacy of Japanese culture. He was a founding organizer of the Moiliili Community Center in 1942 and chaired the board of trustees until his death.
At the 100th anniversary of the center's language school in December, Kanazawa said: "What I envisioned in those days was for the center to be the 'great leveler.' It was a place where everyone could come together and could experience being equal.
"We should appreciate each other's unique background without losing our basic culture, a tossed salad rather than a mixing pot."
Please contact Project Dana at www.projectdana.org for more information.
PHOTO: Collections of Shim Kanazawa and used with her permission. The second photo is of Shim the day she received an honarary doctorate from the University of Hawaii. The third is Shim and her husband on a vacation cruise.
