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December, 1999, LOS ANGELES, CA - Does the year seem to speed by as fast for you as it does for me? 1999 literally seems to have gone at warp speed. Here it is December already! Not only the end of the year but almost the century and the millennium as well. It's exhausting just to think of it -- much less recount all that has happened in the last twelve months.

January began for me with a celebratory splash. I was privileged to serve as the master of ceremonies of the gala festivities that go with the opening of a spectacular new building, the Pavilion of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. It is an 85,000-square-foot expansion building of the museum on whose board of trustees I had been serving for the last thirteen years. The opening exhibit called "Common Ground" is on all that we share and that interlinks us as Americans in a pluralistic nation. Of interest to Star Trek fans is the fact that the exhibit includes the Captain Sulu uniform that I wore in the motion picture, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

That theme of common ground was extended on to the international scene in February. I serve on a federal commission called the Japan-United States Friendship Commission. The U.S. commissioners joined with our Japanese counterparts in a joint meeting, the Japan-U.S. Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange, called CULCON for short, in Tokyo and later, Naha, Okinawa. Our mission, in short, is to deepen mutual understanding through culture and education. I proposed that our next joint meeting, to be held in the year 2001, be convened in Los Angeles with the venue to be the Japanese American National Museum. The unanimous approval was great, but that is going to mean a lot of work for me, as well as the staffs of both the commission and the museum, preparing for this important bi-annual, bi-national conference. We're going to make this the best conference yet since President John Kennedy initiated these exchanges during his administration. And it is a wonderful opportunity to show off our museum and my hometown as well. After the conference in Okinawa, I toured Hiroshima and the ancient capital of Japan, Kyoto. The trip was for me a personally enriching cultural and educational experience.

The year was crammed with speaking engagements at universities, corporate meetings and other gatherings that had me trekking all over the country from one coast to the other, from the Canadian to the Mexican border. I can't tell you how earnestly I pray for the early development of the transporter when I'll be able to just sparkle for a few seconds and simply "beam" over to whatever destination.

In all my travels in 1999, I had the most fun participating in the "Fab Four" Star Trek conventions organized by empresarios extraordinaire, Dave and Jackie Scott. It has been wonderful sharing a lively weekend with Nichelle Nichols, Jimmy Doohan and Walter Koenig and all the faithful fans in so many cities all over the country. These cons really were like warm family reunions.

One of these conventions, however, was a sad one for all of us. It was at a Fabulous Four con in San Francisco that we learned of DeForest Kelley's passing. Our hearts were heavy, but we decided, instead of grieving over his death, to make the convention a celebration of his life and a sharing of our joyful memories of a dear friend and gifted colleague. De will always be in our hearts and fond memories. He has left his widow Carolyn and all of us a glorious legacy.

The year ends with a completion of a great circle back to the Japanese American National Museum, whose trustees elected me Chairman of the Board effective January 1, 2000. It will be an engaging challenge and I know that the museum can count on the enthusiastic support of a great many people across the nation. I invite you all to visit the museum when you are in Los Angeles or when one of our traveling exhibits visits your city. Let's all boldly go into a new millennium where we have never gone before.

I send to all of you my heartiest holiday cheers and very best wishes for a stellar Y2K.

June, 2001, LOS ANGELES - What an undreamed of invitation -- the Kentucky Derby! I had been to Kentucky many times before. My niece, Akemi Takei, the broadcast journalist in the family, had worked at a television station in Lexington. So I had visited her when she was there. And, of course, there had been many Star Trek conventions in Kentucky. I like the lush and gracious landscape and the warm hospitality of the people of Kentucky. But I'd never expected to actually be at the legendary Kentucky Derby at fabled Churchill Downs. This was fantastic!

Before departing L.A., on my way to the airport, I swung around to Twentieth Century Fox studios. I was squeezing in a quick voice-dubbing gig on another episode of "The Simpsons." It didn't take much time. I was off to the airport and Louisville, Kentucky, in about an hour.

On the flight, seated in the row just behind me, I recognized actor Bill Brochtrup from "NYPD Blue." In conversation with him, we discovered that we were guests of the same host, Michael Berry of the Kentucky Derby Festival. We would both be riding in the Kentucky Derby Festival's Pegasus Parade and going to the same Derby festivities. This was going to be great fun.

Immediately upon arrival, we were swept up into a whirlwind of activities - lunches, dinners, parties galore, and, on the Thursday before the Derby, the Pegasus Parade. The parade's Grand Marshal was none other than the second man to walk on the moon, astronaut Buzz Aldrin. I had met Buzz and his lovely wife Lois before -- at a charity fund-raising event at Paramount Studios. Our paths seem to have a way of crossing in the most interesting ways, in fiction as well as in fact.

In the parade, our vehicles were, unlike the futuristic crafts with which Buzz and I are associated, handsome treasures from the past. Buzz's car was an elegantly restored antique that I couldn't identify and mine was a classic red Corvette. The crowd was wildly enthusiastic and I shouted myself hoarse. That night, we recovered over dinner at Jicama Grill, a trendy restaurant that serves delectably exotic Latin American cuisine.

Kentucky Derby day was sunny and hot. But the dress, we were told, was sports coat and tie. As we boarded the air-conditioned luxury bus that was to transport us to Churchill Downs, I couldn't help but be taken by the elegantly dressed women who, almost without exception, wore enormous confections of feathers, flowers, silk or gossamer on their heads. The practicality of a large hat on a sun-scorched day was contradicted by the preposterous creations that almost covered their faces like some fantastical umbrella balanced over their heads. But as the bus approached Churchill Downs, I noticed that the mass of people surging toward the grandstand carrying their picnic baskets and aluminum lawn chairs, wore tank tops, halters and practical wide brimmed straw hats. There was clearly a two-tier dress code.

Indeed, when the bus parked, we were escorted directly to a bank of elevators that swiftly lifted us up to the sixth-floor clubhouse. It was air-conditioned, well provisioned with a beautiful buffet and a panoramic glass window that provided a spectacular view of the sun drenched racetrack below. In this cool and luxuriously coddled setting, the colossal hats seemed even more wacky. Friends greeting the behatted women couldn't reach them under those massive canopies - all they could do was blow friendly air kisses toward the faces hidden under the huge hats.

They told me that you have to have a strategy in the betting process. I had never bet on horses before. I knew nothing about racehorses. What was I to do? The Kentucky Derby itself was the eighth race of the afternoon. I decided to prepare by observing the betting process during the first race. People were talking about the lineage of each horse, their track records, how they looked in their warm up runs the morning before. They might as well have been speaking in Swahili. I knew then that I was on my own. I would have to depend on sheer luck. Nevertheless, I would try to craft a strategy.

I decided to dive in on the second race. I studied the list of horses on my program. The third horse on the list was named Lake Pontchartrain. It reminded me of the delicious Blackened Red Fish from Lake Pontchartrain that I enjoyed when I was in New Orleans. Aha! I had a connection with that horse. This strategy should be as good as any. I bet $2 on Lake Pontchartrain to win. The race began and the horses were off and running. They were all bunched together. I couldn't make out which horse was Lake Pontchartrain. A batch of horses came thundering in with one nosing out all the others. I couldn't tell which one that was. We all waited for the scoreboard to show the final result. At last, the board lit up with the name of the winner. It said Lake Pontchartrain! I had won on my first try! Astoundingly, my $2 bet won me $32!!! Lady Luck was definitely with this beginner horseplayer.

But she is a fickle lady. She left me for others for the next five races. My $32 was reduced to $22. Now the big one was on us - the Kentucky Derby. I studied my program. There it was - the twelfth horse - seductively beckoning out to me. Startac! This was such an obviously clear message. Could anything be closer to Star Trek? But there also was another horse with the word star in its name -- Balto Star. Not as close as Startac, but it still had the word star in it. And if you dropped the B from Balto, you would have alto, which in Spanish means "high." Star Trek soars high. This too could be telling me something a bit more subtly. I decided to bet $10 on both Startac and Balto Star.

The gates opened and horses were off and running. The announcer's booming voice narrated the race. "Balto Star is second," he intoned. The crowd and I cheered. "Come on Balto Star," I shouted. Thank goodness I covered my bet with two horses, I thought. But after the second bend, Balto Star began to fall behind. "Come on Balto Star! You can do it!" I urged. But that horse continued to fall back. Then the booming voice announced, "Startac is passing Balto Star." My gosh, I still have a chance! "Go Startac," I yelled. But Startac wouldn't move ahead. It continued to maintain its place in the pack. "Go Startac. Go," I pleaded. Suddenly, out from nowhere - literally from the back of the pack - came an incredible horse. It galloped past every one of the others and was thundering toward the finish all by itself. "Monarchos is ahead by four lengths," the announcer's voice bellowed excitedly. It was an awesome sight to see. A magnificent animal moving with powerful grace dashed across the finish line. "Monarchos has won the Kentucky Derby," the ecstatic voice announced. It was later declared that Monarchos' time, 1:59.97 minutes, was the second fastest in the Kentucky Derby's 127-year history. The fastest was Secretariat with l:59.4 minutes in 1973. This was an awe-inspiring experience - but I was poorer by $20. Startac came in tenth and Balto Star was fourteenth. My $32 winning from the second race was reduced now to $2 - the very amount I first bet on Lake Pontchartrain. At least I broke even. Thank you Michael Berry and all the wonderful people of Kentucky for an unforgettable - and not too costly - experience.

Two days after returning to Los Angeles, I dove into another major event - this one, a binational conference called the Japan-United States Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange at the Japanese American National Museum. As well as serving as the Chairman of the Board of the Museum, I am a member of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, a non-governmental federal agency. So I was doubly invested in this conference. It turned out a great success. Our panelists from throughout the U.S and senior officials from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education, distinguished leaders from academia, business and culture were in accord that this conference in Los Angeles was one of the best ever held in its forty-year history.

I had another quick voiceover gig before flying off again. This one was the popular "Jackie Chan" Saturday morning animated series. I was the voice of a wise and benign Buddhist priest. Jackie Chan was voiced by a versatile young actor named James Tse. Then, I was off to Atlanta, Georgia, for Vulcon, another Star Trek convention.

The lucky bonus with this trip was that my good friend, gifted writer Peter David, was getting married to his love, Kathleen, a stage manager, puppeteer, editor and all around renaissance woman, in Atlanta on the same weekend as the convention. What blessed serendipity! I arranged with Joe Motes, the organizer of the convention, so that I could manage both the wedding and the convention. He was most cooperative.

Peter and Kathleen were married in a charming chapel on the picturesque campus of Emory University. It was a lovely ceremony. But it was the reception that really captured the spirit of the couple. The venue was a converted former warehouse now called the Shakespeare Tavern. It is a theater patterned after the old Globe Theater of Elizabethan London. So eminently appropriate. Both Peter and Kathleen are theatrical people - she literally and Peter in every sense of the word. His personality, if anything, is colorfully theatrical. His bountiful talent is of the theater as well as literature. Indeed, he even looks like he could play Shakespeare's Falstaff. To top off the theatricality of the reception, the best man at the wedding also became the master of the revels of the reception. He was none other than literary lion, incendiary raconteur and volcanically outspoken convention speaker - Harlan Ellison. He was touching in his fondness of the couple; he was hilarious with anecdotes about their relationship; he was ribald with his jokes; he was inexhaustible and never-ending. Finally, Peter broke in. Peter too is an expert raconteur. The afternoon became a bountiful banquet table of words, words, words as well as good food. Among the guests was Bill Mumy, who you might remember as young Will Robinson in the television series, "Lost In Space." We laughed, we ate and we drank - much too much. It was a fantastical wedding reception - as it should be for Peter and Kathleen. May this marriage live long and prosper.

July, 2001, LOS ANGELES - Tom Brokaw called them the "greatest generation" -- the men and women who served in the U.S. military during World War II. They fought against the forces of fascism defending the ideals of our democracy. We as Americans are deeply indebted to that generation.

I have a profoundly special debt to an extraordinary collection of men and women of that group of remarkable Americans. They are the Japanese Americans of the World War II generation.

Two events occurred last month on both coasts of this country that underscored the importance of my debt.

In Los Angeles, we commemorated the second year of the dedication of the "Go For Broke" Memorial.

This giant black granite cylinder, angled toward the southern sun, has the names of all Japanese Americans who served in the U.S. military etched into it. The "Go For Broke" name of the memorial comes from the motto of the all Japanese American unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. "Go For Broke" was their battle cry. They went "for broke" as they fought on the battlefields of Italy. They faced the fierce resistance of the Nazis in the Rhineland campaign in France and went "for broke." Their "Go for broke" determination helped crack the Gothic Line in the mountains of Apennines. The 442nd suffered the highest casualty rate and was the most decorated unit in military history. They gave it their all. This "Go For Broke" monument is also a tribute to all Japanese Americans who served in the U.S. armed forces -- in the Military Intelligence Service, in the 100th Infantry Battalion as well as with the 442nd. They are all amazing American heroes.

What makes their gallantry so extraordinary is that they served despite initially being classified as "enemy non aliens" by their own government simply because they "looked like the enemy." What makes them so amazing is that they wore the same uniform as that worn by the soldiers guarding over their families incarcerated behind the barbed wires of American concentration camps back in the U.S. What makes my debt to them so profound is that their valor under these incredible circumstances transformed America for me and my generation. These men and women unquestionably added another dimension to the meaning of Americanism. President Harry Truman, greeting them on the White House grounds on their return to the U.S. stated, "You not only fought the enemy but you fought prejudice -- and you won."

After the commemoration ceremony of the "Go For Broke" Memorial, I chatted with the veterans, proudly wearing their Veterans of Foreign Wars caps. Many were now unsteady in their steps. A few were in wheelchairs. Their thin and reedy voices had few words. They were modest in receiving our gratitude. The passage of time had altered the robust soldiers they once were. But I could see their pride beaming from their faces.

What they did over half a century ago had transformed this nation. Because of their incredible gallantry, their immigrant parents could, for the first time, become naturalized American citizens; their sons and daughters today are able to rise as far as their abilities could take them; live wherever they could afford to live and participate fully in the life of America. What they did on the battlefields of World War II gave substance to the campaign to win redress for Japanese Americans for their incarceration during that war. They indisputably made this nation a better democracy for all Americans. They did this with their courage, their blood -- and the lives of their buddies. The gratitude we felt was as big and as solid as the great granite memorial that stood in front of us.

I walked up to the monument and found the name of the U.S. Senator from Hawaii, Daniel Inouye.

He left his right arm on a bloody battleground in Italy. Last year, I attended the White House ceremony where, together with 21 others, he received a much belated Medal of Honor from President Bill Clinton for his heroism of over 50 years ago. Also on the monument I found the name of my mother's late cousin, Kay Kashiwabara. I touched their names with my fingertips and felt the grainy earthiness of the engraving. I stepped back to view the whole massive expanse of names etched onto the granite -- hundreds and hundreds of Japanese American names. Some died in battle. Some carried their wounds of battle throughout their lives. All served as Americans under the most incredible of circumstances. Staring at all those names, I whispered a silent "thank you."

The other event happened in our capitol, Washington, D.C. It was the commemoration of another monument to Japanese Americans, the National Japanese American Memorial. It is located on a triangular plaza just north of the Capitol. I could not be there in person for this ceremony, but I most certainly was there in spirit.

The granite wall of this memorial bears, not only the names of those Japanese American soldiers who perished in battle, but, as well, the names of all ten U.S. concentration camps scattered throughout the country from California to Arkansas where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during the war. The wall also carries quotations from distinguished Japanese Americans such as Senator Inouye, Cabinet Secretary Norman Mineta, and Congressman Robert Matsui.

The Memorial also holds a quote from the controversial wartime Executive Secretary of the Japanese American Citizens League, Mike Masaoka.

His is a stirringly patriotic quote. In part, it reads, "I am proud that I am an American citizen of Japanese ancestry, for my very background makes me appreciate more fully the wonderful advantages of this nation. I believe in her institutions, ideals and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future." He wrote this in 1940. It was a time of limited opportunities for minorities; educated Japanese Americans were working at fruit stands. It was a time of restrictive housing covenants that gave rise to the Little Tokyo and Japantown racial ghettos. And it was a time when the dark cloud of the internment of Japanese Americans was looming ominously on the horizon. Indeed, when Executive Order 9066 ordered the internment, Masaoka was so eager to "prove" his loyalty that he cooperated with the government in the mass removal of Japanese Americans. The anguished irony of his super patriotic words heightened the angst and the division that the internment order wreaked on the Japanese American community.

Masaoka's tortured patriotism had a balancing counterpart of bold Americanism. They were the young men who took a courageous stand on the fundamental principles of this nation. When they were ordered to serve in the U.S. military while interned, they took the position that they would serve willingly if they could report to their hometown draft boards and with their families back in their own homes.

But they refused to go from behind the barbed wire fences of incarceration leaving their families behind in U.S. concentration camps. It was an audacious stand. For this principled stance, they were tried in court, found guilty of draft resistance and sent to federal penitentiaries. After the war and after they were exonerated, many of them served with honor in the Korean War. Although these patriots' names are not on the Memorial, by the inclusion of Mike Masaoka's ironically extravagant quotation, I am reminded of and honor the gutsy integrity of these young men who resisted military service on very American principles.

I owe my America to all these men and women whom we honor with the two memorials on both coasts of this nation. I take my inspiration from their contributions together with all those who have contributed to the making of this country. The greatness of this nation is that it is a constant work in progress guided by the core ideals of our Constitution. The challenge of this nation is that we all can and must contribute to this great work in progress to make it a better and truer democracy.