nwasianweekly.com
Nov. 19, 2005

(Photo by Kathy Sauber/University of Washington Photography)
Dr. Larry Matsuda has been a strong advocate for students and the Asian American community for more than three decades. A loyal Husky, he earned his bachelor’s, teaching certificate, master’s and doctorate from the UW.

Past injustice drives Matsuda

By James Tabafunda
For the Northwest Asian Weekly

If he could travel back in time, Dr. Larry Matsuda would go to 1945 and visit the Minidoka internment camp in Hunt, Idaho. He would go directly to his birthplace, Block 26. Later, he would go to Minidoka’s front gate to view Fujitaro Kubota’s garden.

Returning to 2005, he would describe the garden to Allan Kubota, Fujitaro Kubota’s grandson and the designer of Matsuda’s current project, Seattle University’s Japanese American Remembrance Garden.

Matsuda, a career educator in Seattle, spent the first nine months of his life in Minidoka. Now 60, he puts his internment camp experience into perspective: “I am from a different America, and being from a different America, one needs to contribute to the larger society to make America a better place for the next generation.”

Even though he was a victim of discrimination early on, he believes it is his duty to turn tragedy into a positive experience. For his continued dedication to serving the community, Matsuda will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award on Dec. 8. The award presentation will be part of the Top Contributors to the Asian Community dinner, an annual event organized by the Northwest Asian Weekly.

While both of his parents suffered during the internment, he credits his mother for teaching him and his older brother the importance of social responsibility. After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, she sent boxes filled with various items — coffee, clothing and shoes among them — to the few relatives who survived and were living only 1,000 meters from ground zero. Despite his family’s limited resources, she sent these boxes once a month without fail.

“She was really connected to these people,” recalls Matsuda. “We, as kids, would see this. We would always watch as some good things (for the care packages) would come in and they would go out. That’s just how life was.”

As a University of Washington student in the early 1960s, he remembers a reluctant Bruce Lee joining his small group of friends for a game of pinochle. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in education in 1967, Matsuda began teaching in the Seattle Public Schools. Matsuda taught the first Asian American history class in the state, at what used to be Sharples Junior High School, in 1969.

That same year, he and other activist members of the Asian Coalition for Equality pushed for the admission of Asian students into the UW’s Special Education Program (now known as the Equal Opportunity Program). Their success has helped thousands in the Asian community attend the UW.

Longtime friend Alan Sugiyama also credits the Asian Coalition for Equality for getting Asians hired into the trades. “It’s the first activist organization that helped the civil rights movement in Seattle,” said the executive director of Center for Career Alternatives.

In addition to his bachelor’s, Matsuda earned his teaching certificate, master’s degree and doctorate from the UW.

He married his wife Karen in 1968 and together they have a 22-year-old son, Matthew.

He’s worked as a teacher, counselor, bilingual coordinator and principal in the Seattle schools. In 1990, he became the district’s first Asian American assistant superintendent. He stayed in that role until his retirement in 1993. A few years later, he returned to the district as a K-8 principal, then retired again in 2000.

A proud Husky, Matsuda continues to show his loyalty to the UW in a number of ways. In 1996, he served as president of the vast UW Alumni Association, becoming the first Asian American male to do so. During that time, he helped establish the group’s first Diversity Committee to promote diversity and cultural values within both the UWAA and the UW. In 2004, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the UWAA.

One of his proudest accomplishments was helping found “First Day at Red Square,” during which members of UWAA hand out coffee and bagels to students on the first day of classes in the fall.

Sugiyama said he admires Matsuda for his “longevity.” “He’s been just a strong advocate for the Asian community and students for the last 30 years, if not more. His whole history has been helping out the students and the community,” he said.

Matsuda acknowledges that there is also much work left to be done in the Asian community. The challenges include bilingualism, jobs and discrimination, according to Matsuda.

“At some point in time, we also have to do something to record our history,” he added. “They (multiracial children) really won’t know their heritage, and I think that’s important. In three or four generations, many of us will not only be gone, but even signs of us will be gone.”

Throughout his career as an educator and his volunteer service, Matsuda’s motivation has remained the same. “Deep down, a motivating force is being a Japanese American who was interned,” he said. “Knowing injustice, living with injustice” makes him want to make sure that injustice doesn’t happen again.

Matsuda admits that “in terms of my career, the only failure I’ve had was retirement.”

Instead of retiring to spend more time salmon fishing and writing poems, Matsuda currently helps children with behavior disorders in Steilacoom learn self-management skills. He is also a visiting professor in Seattle University’s School of Education.

As chair of the Japanese American Remembrance Garden committee, his recent fund-raising efforts netted more than $100,000 for the project. Believed to be the only memorial of its kind at a major university, it is scheduled to be dedicated in early 2006.

Matsuda said it is a way to remember the Japanese Americans who used to live on the land now owned by Seattle University. That area had been an important part of the pre-WWII Japanese American community in Seattle. Located near the School of Theology and Ministry, the garden also pays tribute to Fujitaro Kubota, the creator of nine other gardens at the university.

“For me,” Matsuda said, “it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a living legacy that honors social justice and the experiences of Japanese Americans. Looking back on it, it has been my life’s work.” 

James Tabafunda can be reached at scpnwan@nwlink.com.

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