The process of applying for a Spokane JACL scholarship in Spring 2024 will mostly remain the same. The one update is that the Scholarship Committee will decide which scholarship will be awarded rather than having the applicant apply for a specific one. As stated in previous years, scholarships will not be awarded on the basis of a single criterion, as factors such as scholastic/academic achievement, involvement in Nikkei and/or Asian community activities, community service acts helping those less fortunate, and intent to pursue a trade school, 2-year or 4-year post-secondary certificate or degree, will all be considered when determining those who receive a scholarship offered by the Spokane JACL.

Please return your scholarship application in a timely manner, postmarked no later than May 31, 2024. The May 31 deadline will be in effect each year regardless of which day of the week it lands on in the current calendar year.  The Spokane JACL board wishes all applicants the best as you pursue your future dreams and careers. Stay strong, determined to finish what you start as your generation and those that came after our Issei and Nisei community, have been given opportunities to pursue things that they were not able to pursue.  This will be your legacy to past generations: that you have completed what you set out to do.

Applications may be found on our website at spokanejacl.org under the Scholarship App tab. Completed applications may be scanned and emailed to spokanejacl@gmail.com or mailed to:

attn: Scholarship Committee
Spokane JACL
PO Box 2772
Spokane, WA 99220-2772

Justine Kondo was also awarded the Atsuhiko Tateuchi Memorial Scholarship from the Seattle Foundation, which she is using to pay for her Masters in Elementary Teaching Degree.

2023 Scholarship Recipients (Left to Right):
Michael Tsuchida, Justine Kondo, and Tyler Furukawa (not pictured)

For three years, the Spokane Chapter has supported the annual Get Lit! Festival in Spokane, working with them to bring Japanese American authors to the festival. Get Lit!, a non-profit literary arts organization housed within Eastern Washington University, is a four-day festival with readings, writing workshops, craft classes, open mics, panel discussions, literary happy hours, and more.

Our mission is to support authors who share the history, traditions, culture and experiences of Japanese Americans. This year we sponsored “Celebrating the Japanese American Experience with Betsy Aoki and Elaine Cockrell” on April 23, 2023. Betsy Aoki is a poet, fiction writer and game producer, who blends technology and the Asian American experience in her writing. Elaine Cockrell wrote the fiction book “A Shrug of the Shoulders”, about the Portland assembly center, internment camps, and the Farm Security Administration labor camp near Nyssa, Oregon.

Open Letter to the Mayor of Seattle
September 14, 2023
Seattle Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League
 
Dear Seattle JACL members and supporters,

Last night at around 5:15 p.m., a man with a sledgehammer smashed nine windows of the Wing Luke Museum along Canton Alley South. The man said that the attack on this community anchor was driven by anti-Asian beliefs. Stan Shikuma, Seattle JACL Co-President, was at the Wing Luke Museum leading a tour as part of Tsuru for Solidarity's 2023 retreat when it happened.

Multiple people called the Seattle Police Department but were told that they could not immediately respond because it was a vandalism incident where no one was hurt. Frustrated by the lack of response, Shikuma sent the letter below to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office:
 
Dear Mayor,

An older white man just took a sledgehammer and broke 8 windows of the Wing Luke Museum in Canton Alley. He says he did it because “the Chinese have ruined my life” and  ”I came to Chinatown because something had to be done”.

The Wing Luke staff are quite traumatized by the attack on their building and quite upset that 911 said they WILL NOT RESPOND!

This is outrageous and unacceptable - that a major community institution is attacked and vandalized (to the tune of thousands of dollars, maybe even tens of thousands) and Seattle Police basically said they can’t be bothered!
 This is yet another instance of neglect and lack of respect and concern for Asian Americans in general and the CID in particular.
 
I am appalled and very, very angry.

Stanley N Shikuma, Co-President
Seattle Chapter Japanese American Citizens League
 
The Seattle Times reported the break-in. The article link:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/wing-luke-museum-vandalized-man-arrested-for-alleged-hate-crime/

for JACL Members Only
Monday, September 25 - 1:30pm
Spokane Buddhist Temple
927 S Perry, Spokane
(Come in the basement door on Perry)

The 2023 JACL Sponsored BOSANKAI SERVICE
Sunday May 21, 2023 at 1 pm
at Greenwood Cemetery's Upper Terrace
211 N Government Way, Spokane 

Each year we recognize and remember the people from the Spokane Japanese community, or those who have strong ties to the Japanese community, who have passed away around prior May to current May of each year. 

In-person event
Sunday April 23, 2023
​12:30pm - 1:30pm
Montvale Event Center: Third Floor Ballroom 1019 W 1st Ave

Come meet writers Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki and Elaine Cockrell whose work illuminates and celebrates the Japanese American experience.

Betsy is a poet, fiction writer, and game designer whose award-winning first collection Breakpoint combines lyrical free verse with found “code poems” to explore the technological and societal landscape. Betsy infuses both her Japanese heritage and her love for tech into her poetry which takes readers on a powerful journey through Japanese folklore, family stories, and internment camps using modern and magical imagery.

Through exhaustive research and her own family stories, Elaine Cockrell’s historical novel A Shrug of the Shoulders paints a vivid picture of the forced internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Through multiple points of view and dozens of vivid settings, author Elaine Cockrell creates a mosaic of Japanese-American perseverance: one tiled with humor, frustration, despair, anger, and love.

​EWU Get Lit! presents this cross-genre event in collaboration with the sponsorship of the Spokane Chapter JACL.

To attend this event, you must purchase a Book Fair & Events Pass which covers entry into the two-day Book Fair and all 17 events taking place at the Montvale Event Center. Tickets will go on sale Monday, March 20th at 8am. 

source: Pacific Citizen

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the proposed Lava Ridge Wind Project in south central Idaho, which would threaten the future of the Minidoka Pilgrimage, has been released by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The public comment period will end on April 20, 2023. ​

For more information on how to get involved, please visit the following links:

​Call to Action:
https://www.minidokapilgrimage.org/call-to-action

Latest updates on the Lava Ridge Project:
https://www.minidokapilgrimage.org/issue-lava-ridge-wind-project

Links to news media:
https://www.minidokapilgrimage.org/media

source: Pacific Citizen

In observance of the 2023 Day of Remembrance, the FDR Presidential Library and Museum presented a conversation with author Bradford Pearson, author of “The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration and Resistance in World War II America.”

“One of Ten Best History Books of 2021.” —Smithsonian Magazine

For fans of The Boys in the Boat and The Storm on Our Shores, this impeccably researched, deeply moving, never-before-told “tale that ultimately stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit” (Garrett M. Graff, New York Times bestselling author) about a World War II incarceration camp in Wyoming and its extraordinary high school football team.

More information on the book can be found here at Simon & Schuster.