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Our Human Linkage

September, 1999

Our Human Linkage
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September, 1999, ATLANTA — Last month I marveled at the myriad ways in which we are now interconnected technologically -- satellite communication, supersonic transportation and the internet (see "What's New" for August). On a recent trip to Atlanta I experienced the substance of our human interconnectedness more profoundly than I have ever felt before.

As a trustee of the Japanese American National Museum, I flew to Atlanta for the opening of two of our traveling exhibits, "America's Concentration Camps" and "Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers."

"America's Concentration Camps" is an exhibit on a dark chapter of American history that is also a story of my early boyhood. When I was 4 years old, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. was plunged into the fires of World War II. Our nation -- despite its ideals -- failed to draw the distinction between the imperialism of Japan and the citizenship of Americans of Japanese ancestry. With no charges and no trial, but simply based on race, Japanese Americans were forcibly rounded up from our homes on the West Coast and herded into 10 barbed wire camps in some of the most god-forsaken parts of the country.

As detailed in my autobiography To the Stars, I was taken with my family from our home in Los Angeles to a camp in the swamps of Arkansas. A year later we were moved to a desolate, wind-swept dry lakebed in northern California near the Oregon border. Four years of my childhood were spent confined behind the barbed wire fences of American concentration camps. Not until the end of the war did we return to Los Angeles.

For my parents, it was the most horrific experience of their lives. Everything was lost — property, business and, most of all, freedom. As astonishing as this story may seem to many Americans, it did happen right here in this country. The "America's Concentration Camps" exhibit had closed at the Ellis Island Museum in New York after a year-long run and opened in August at Atlanta's William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.

A second exhibit, "Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers," is another extraordinary story with an ironic linkage with the Jewish community. Despite the incarceration of their families, an amazing number of young Japanese American men and women put on the uniforms of the U.S. military and fought with uncommon valor in both the European and Pacific theaters of the war. The all-Japanese American, 442nd Regimental Combat Team returned from the battlefields of Europe as the single most decorated American military outfit.

A strange irony of this war, however, is that another Japanese American outfit, the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, forced open the gates to Dachau, the Nazi death camp that held Jewish, Gypsy and homosexual inmates from throughout Europe. While their own families were confined behind American barbed wire fences, these Japanese American soldiers were liberating the prisoners of the Nazis from their barbed wire incarceration. Certainly, the American concentration camps came nowhere close to the grotesque horrors the Japanese American soldiers found in the Nazi death camps. Providentially, there was no American policy of systematic elimination of people. But these Japanese American soldiers undoubtedly felt some poignancy in their linkage with the Jewish prisoners.

I certainly felt this linkage as I mingled among the people gathered for the opening of the exhibits at the Breman Jewish Heritage Museum. After the formal program where I shared the stage with Daniel Inouye, the war hero and U.S. Senator from Hawaii, my duty was to informally impart some of my childhood memories with the people in attendance as I moved among the exhibits. I found myself in turn deeply moved and enlightened by the stories that the Jewish people there shared with me of relatives lost to the Nazi holocaust. There is a horrific difference of degree in our stories but the lesson to be learned from both our histories is a common one. Bigotry combined with hysteria is the hideous ingredient of massive injustice.

This very same lesson was underscored the following day on a visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Atlanta, an important landmark of the American civil rights movement. Dr. King's birthplace is there, as is the Ebinezer Baptist Church where he, his father and his grandfather preached. His marble tomb rests on an island in the middle of a calm reflecting pool. Across the street is a museum of Dr. King's life and the civil rights movement.

As I moved through the exhibits, I was struck again by our interconnectedness. Bigotry takes on many forms. It manifests itself in different ways. Dr. King and the civil rights movement challenged the stony face of institutionalized bigotry. But he also confronted the bigotry and violence of his own people -- the rage that rises out of abject despair. His courage in facing down both the Black Panthers as well as a Sheriff "Bull" Connors, the personifications of racism in both races, was profoundly inspiring. He refused to be lowered to the depths of any bigot -- black or white. He was a firm apostle of non-violent social change.

I remembered a long ago day in the 60s, when I met Dr. King. I was performing in a civil rights musical titled "Fly Blackbird" in Los Angeles. The cast was asked to sing a few numbers from the show at a huge rally where Dr. King was to be the main speaker. It was a massive gathering at the L. A. Sports Arena. When he spoke, Dr. King's words connected mightily. He transported the crowd with his soaring eloquence. It was after this speech that we were escorted to Dr. King's dressing room. I will never forget this meeting. I remember taking his proffered hand. I remember the thrill of the human connection with an extraordinary man. Through his touch, I felt somehow linked to his ideals, his vision and his courage. It was this linkage that surely strengthened my participation in the civil rights movement. It was certainly this inspiration that galvanized me toward the movement to gain redress for Japanese Americans for our incarceration during World War II. It was his faith in the power of the American system and its ideals that invigorated me. And in 1988 -- more than four decades late, but ultimately nevertheless, this nation acknowledged its terrible mistake and Congress passed the redress bill for the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Dr. King's spirit was there with me in this struggle as well.

Our lives and our communities are not separate. We are inextricably interlinked. What happens to one group impacts another. Yes, we may live in an amazing technologically interconnected world. But ultimately, what gives substance to the technology is our human interconnection.

Global Interchange

July, 2000

July, 2000, TORONTO - The theme running through this past month turned out to be interchange; interchange of many kinds - international, cultural, technological and generational. And it had me traveling over half this globe to three nations.

The first country I traveled to was Japan. I am a commissioner on the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, an independent Federal agency that has as its mission, broadly put, to enrich mutual understanding. One of our projects is to utilize the internet by building a site that chronicles the past fifty-year history of the cultural and educational interchange between our two nations. The U.S. working group, of which I am a member, met with our Japanese counterparts to set the basic architecture of the prototype and to outline the content of the site.

Our two-day agenda was fully packed. June was the rainy season in Tokyo and, true to the time of year, it rained both days of our meeting. The air was dense and steamy but, thankfully, air-conditioning made our working time productive. In concert, we set the structure of the project and arrived at mutual agreements on the subjects to be addressed on the site. The bi-national internet interchange project is off to a good start. Our timetable is to have the prototype ready by next spring.

The next day, changing roles, I put on my hat as the Chairman of the Japanese American National Museum for a series of meetings arranged by the Tokyo office of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. Our strategy is to increase tourism by the Japanese to Los Angeles - or people interchange -- by highlighting the Japanese American National Museum. The meetings were with Japanese travel bureaus and agency representatives. Lunch was with about a dozen Japanese travel journalists at a Chinese restaurant. I discovered, however, that my attraction to these people was -- not so much my chairmanship of the Japanese American National Museum -- but as Captain Sulu of Star Trek. One of the journalists even brought his collection of Star Trek books as well as the blueprint of the Starship Enterprise to be autographed. I noted for him that my Captain Sulu uniform from "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" was on display at the Japanese American National Museum. Whatever the occasion, Star Trek is an inevitable part of anything with which I might be associated. As long as my primary mission is served - in this case, increased attendance at the Japanese American National Museum - I am a willing Captain Sulu. Star Trek is a powerful magnet for any good cause.

The next evening, however, was an unadulterated Star Trek event. Russ Haslage of the Excelsior campaign had arranged via the internet for me to meet with a small group of Japanese Star Trek fans that are supporters of the Excelsior campaign for a relaxed evening over sushi. The enthusiasm for a new "Star Trek: Excelsior" television series, it seems, spans this globe.

I discovered that many of the Japanese fans were studying English. So I proposed that we make our evening an opportunity for some linguistic interchange. I promised to speak to them in Japanese if they would try to speak to me in English. It was an engaging evening of lively conversations in broken accents and laughter mixed with mangled syntaxes.

A week in Tokyo seems to fly at warp speed. Before an electrifying performance of Kabuki at the famed Kabuki-za Theater or a day trip to the dazzling new development complexes built on land fill in Yokohama could become fond memories, I found myself on a plane bound for home. I left Tokyo at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and, after a numbing ten-hour flight, arrived back in Los Angeles at 9 a.m. on that same Saturday morning! I was back before I had even left! Not only was I jet-lagged, I had to live through another Saturday. What unanticipated forms of punishment will warp speed impose?

With only the two Saturdays and a Sunday for recovery back in Los Angeles, I was off to Washington D.C. for a momentous event. Twenty-two Asian American veterans of World War II were to be granted the Medal of Honor, the highest military accolade this country can grant. At the end of the war more than fifty years ago, they had been given the second highest honor, the Silver Star. But because of the prevailing attitudes toward Asian Americans at the time, and especially toward Japanese Americans, the Pentagon was requested to again review the records of the Asian American Silver Star recipients. Twenty-two of them - twenty being Japanese Americans with one Chinese and one Filipino- were found to be worthy of the Medal of Honor. The greatest honor a soldier can receive was to be awarded at a White House ceremony by the President and, on the following day, they were to be inducted into the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon. I was again to represent the Japanese American National Museum at both events and I had the honor of serving as the master of ceremonies of the celebration reception in the evening. But I also had a personal responsibility to be there as well. I owed an enormous debt to these veterans.

The America that I enjoy today is a vastly different world from that before World War II. The opportunities I enjoy today, where Asian Americans can choose to live wherever we want, receive the education for which we qualify, have the freedom to pursue the careers that we want, are possible in large measure because of the gallantry of these extraordinary men. They fought for a nation that had incarcerated their families behind the barbed wires of internment camps. Their country had failed the ideals to which these young men had pledged their allegiance every day in school -- but they had not. Their incredible faith in those ideals and their extraordinary valor changed, not only the course of the war, but the hearts and minds of a nation. I owe so much to them. The legacy of their generation to mine is enormous. I owe my America to them. My pride as an American is solidly based on the awesome price they paid. To witness the seven surviving veterans, some of who are now frail and unsteady in their steps, receiving the Medal of Honor from the President in the White House was a profoundly moving experience. One of them was my friend, U.S. Senator from Hawaii, Daniel Inouye. I will never forget that moment.

A quick shuttle flight for a meeting in New York and I was again back in Los Angeles to perch briefly at home. But two days later, I was back in what is now becoming my second home -- an airline seat - bound for Toronto, Canada. I am working on the narration of a documentary on Canada's effort to develop a new, low-cost and clean source of energy - nuclear fusion.

A sobering fact is that world energy consumption will at least double by the year 2010 - only ten years off. Canada's campaign to develop fusion energy, or energy produced by the combining of atoms -- as opposed to fission, or the splitting of atoms -- is in concert with a consortium of nations. As a citizen of the U.S., but also as a futurist and an environmentalist, I am excited to be participating, if only as an actor-narrator, on this visionary project. I certainly feel I have a duty to make up for the part I have played in my heavy consumption of energy jetting all over our much-beleaguered planet.

Rockin' in the Northwest


August, 2000, SEATTLE - Have you ever seen music? I mean seen with your eyes the lunging energy of rock? Or the wail of blues? Or the joyful syncopation of ragtime? Have you ever seen music actually take on visual shape and architectural form? I have. I saw music transformed into wild, swoopy, fantastical shapes and spaces at the Experience Music Project, the new rock music museum in Seattle, Washington. The building is music as architecture and an architecture that becomes singularly musical.

Because the trustees of the Japanese American National Museum come from across the nation, we move our board meetings around the country. This quarter, the meeting moved to Seattle. So, while we were in town, we had the opportunity to visit, alas, only too briefly, the museum that is the sensation of Seattle and of the museum world.

Situated right next to the landmark Space Needle and a children's play land, with an elevated people mover system gliding right through it, the Experience Music Project is a structure that seems to have swelled up organically around its fanciful setting. It is an architectural crescendo of bright colors, wild forms and pulsating rhythms. Frank Gehry, the architect of the much-lauded Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is the master-builder whose imagination produced this fantastical composition in ripples, swoons and hard rock riffs.

The inner workings of this singular structure are as futuristic as its architecture, dare I say, as high tech as the starship Enterprise. Everything runs on fiber optic sensitivity. On entering, I was fitted with what can only be called a Star Fleet tricorder, a set of earphones and handed a device like a TV remote control. You point the remote to a number on an exhibit and you hear either music or narrative. For me, all this advanced technology became simply a nostalgic transporter that took me back in time to my teen-age days of Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, and, later, the Beatles and Ramsey Lewis. Cutting edge technology was my vehicle for a sentimental journey back to music that defined a time, a mood and sentiments that no longer exist today.

Another part of the museum, however, is hands on immediacy. I became the drummer in a virtual rock band performing in a huge virtual concert hall.

Members of my band were made up of -- would you believe -- the trustees of the Japanese American National Museum! Our lead singer was Dr. Margaret Oda, a professor of education and an elegant lady. The virtual curtain parted to the deafening roar of a raucously expectant rock crowd. The music started and it was as deafening as the cheering from the virtual audience. I began drumming away wildly. Dr. Oda wailed out "wild thing�" like a rock legend. In the frenzy of my drumming, I lost my grip and my drumstick went flying off into the darkness. Dr. Oda continued wailing "wild thing." The music came down to a crashing crescendo. The sound of the wildly cheering crowd turned riotous. And the virtual curtain came down. Our concert was over. As we stepped out of the chamber, we were each handed a copy of the poster of our rock band taken as we were performing. It was rockin' good fun. The Board of Trustees meeting that followed seemed more energized than usual.

After our two-day board meeting, on my way back to Los Angeles, I stopped off in Portland, Oregon, for another wonderful event. It touched on three concerns that are important to me -- historic preservation, medical research and, inevitably, Star Trek.

The Friends of the Parkinson's Center of Oregon is an organization dedicated to research in finding a preventative and cure for Parkinson's disease. The organization's mission is to find creative ways to raise funds to support this important research. They knew the combination of baits to attract me. They combined their efforts with another dedicated group known as the Oregon Film and Video Foundation. This group of passionate people is committed to the revitalization of an historic movie palace. Built in 1925, the Hollywood Theater has a richly Byzantine exterior with an ornate rococo tower. In 1983, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. With so many of these unique palaces of entertainment having been lost throughout the nation, the Oregon Film and Video Foundation's effort to restore and bring new life to this beautiful movie house was something not only to be applauded but actively supported.

For the combined fund-raiser, the two organizations had decided to screen my favorite Star Trek movie, "Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country." It was an irresistible package. And the evening turned out to be an enchanting success. Yes, it was a kind of Star Trek convention. The Klingon nation, as well as the Federation, was well represented. There were the expected photo ops. There was the usual and unending autograph line. I signed until past 11:30 p.m. But this was a different kind of Star Trek convention. The proceeds went to support the revitalization of a beautiful historic legacy and the fueling of research to cure a dreaded disease. May the good spirit of philanthropy live long and prosper in Portland, Oregon.

Hanover Expo 2000

September, 2000, HANOVER, Germany - What a perfect combination it was! A Star Trek convention and a World Expo, both in the astonishingly engaging city of Hanover, Germany.

Star Trek is a future-oriented show with a philosophy of responsibility for the environment we inhabit. The Hanover World Expo is an international fair with a strategy not only of displaying today's cutting edge technology together with ecological consciousness, but of planning that consciousness into the urban design of the long-term development of Hanover. And the city of Hanover that I visited this month was at once gracious and raucous, urban and sylvan, traditional and boldly moving into the future. It was a fascinating visit and I had a great time.

The Expo Trek convention was a wonderful extended family reunion. I visited with fans who had become friends over the years from the countless conventions and cruises we had shared. But this Star Trek convention was unique. Creative convention organizers par excellence, Dirk Bartholomae and Gerhard Raible, put this one in a huge revival meeting tent on a rustic campground. They included thought-provoking panel discussion topics new to Star Trek conventions on human rights and religious diversity. The topics seemed particularly pertinent in a Germany that is experiencing a disturbing resurgence of neo-Nazi activities. These panels were the sobering issues part of a wholly uplifting convention. The ovation at the conclusion of the closing ceremony, with sunflower presentations, was overwhelming. The fans "transported" me - with no help needed from Scotty at all.

The Expo, too, was transporting in its own extraordinary way - figuratively as well as literally. What first struck me was its size. It was vast. The guides told me it covered 160 hectares, which meant nothing to me. But I could see from the transport pod that carried me high above the expo grounds that 160 hectares was enormous. From this bird's eye view, I saw buildings in the shape of cones, pyramids, cubes, domes and countless other variations on geometric forms. A few even looked like shuttlecrafts and starships. Some were made of glass, others shone metallically and some had shimmering sheets of water cascading down its skin. They were strikingly futuristic. The guide told me that the theme of the Expo was "Humankind - Nature - Technology: A New World Arising."

All of the pavilions, however, were not avant-garde New World. Some, like those representing Bhutan, Thailand and Nepal, were decidedly traditional. They recreated richly ornate, time-honored temple structures of their respective cultures. Yemen even built a replica of a middle-eastern palace surrounded by a swarming market bazaar. They looked strangely anachronistic, and, to me, rather unexciting.

The most successful pavilions, I thought, were the ones that most imaginatively addressed the use of technology in humankind's relationship to nature. The Japan Pavilion was a spectacular example. It was an immense structure, but at the same time, light, graceful and undulating. The soaring vault-like construction was made entirely of recycled paper. The support structure members were made of paper rolled up tight and hard into rods as strong as bamboo poles. These brown bamboo-like tubes were woven in great arches to shape the multi-story structure. A white, translucent, weather resistant skin made of a combination of paper and plastic covered this construction. The brown bamboo-like poles formed an elegantly lacy pattern outlined by the soft white natural light seeping through the luminous skin. The pavilion was altogether fresh, strikingly contemporary and subtly Japanese in its aesthetics.

The pavilion representing the Netherlands also impressed me. The structure covered only 10 percent of the land. The rest was a vast garden landscape representing the varied flora of Holland. This land use illustrated the Dutch talent for making optimum use of their scarce land reclaimed from the sea. The pavilion itself was a wondrous structure stacked onto six levels, each lush with the elements of nature. I took the elevator to the top and gradually worked my way down either ramps or stairways. The roof level was a body of water with a grassy island in the middle with windmills as an alternative form of energy production. I descended to the next level, which was a theater and exhibition area sheltered from the outside by a curtain wall of water representing rainfall. The next level down was a living forest with real trees imported from Holland. The support structure holding up the upper levels were natural tree trunks. Each descending level artfully displayed the diverse flora of the land and the peoples' interrelationship with nature. The Netherlands Pavilion succeeded wonderfully in presenting virtually every facet of the life of the Dutch people and capturing the theme of the Expo in a limited space.

Limited space is a challenge but so is time. I had only scratched the surface of this gigantic exposition. There were many other tantalizing pavilions I wanted to visit but time was my great limitation. What I did experience, however, was dazzling. I will savor the memory for a lifetime.

I wanted to make time for Hanover itself. The city was a delightful discovery. Among Germans, Hanover has the reputation of being a staid, rather boring municipality. I discovered that to be totally false. The people were warm and gracious. The hospitality of Claudia Wolff and her mother Karin, both natives of Hanover and fans who have become friends, and a host of others like Sussanne, Andreas, Jan, and Filip, was terrific. Their love for Hanover was infectious. I came to love the city as well.

Hanover is most certainly not a staid city. I was introduced to how wildly riotous it can be on a Saturday afternoon. From morning on, I kept hearing an unrelenting, rhythmic drumbeat off in the distance. It seemed to be coming closer to my hotel. I asked the clerk at the reception desk about it. He smiled a cryptically insinuating smile and informed me that it was the Reincarnation Parade held annually in Hanover. It sounded like some religious observance to me. When the parade finally arrived, however, wildly thumping dance music and all, I discovered to my wide-eyed amazement that what I had thought to be a spiritual pageant was, instead, the most outlandish rave parade I had ever seen. Actually, it was the first one I'd ever seen -- mile after unending mile of writhing, swaying bodies - some with very little on - dancing in sheer ecstasy. In fact, more than a few seemed to be on some chemical ecstasy. There were flat bed trucks overflowing with prancing, jiggling bodies. There were double-decker buses crammed with dancing bodies. And the street was a sea of writhing, surging bacchanalia. I'm from Hollywood but Hanover sure showed me a thing or two. One thing for sure - Hanover ain't staid.

And Hanover is urbane. The centerpiece of the city is it's "new" town hall or rathaus built in 1913. The neo-Renaissance building with its high domed cupola looming over the city was damaged badly during the bombing of the Second World War but has been carefully rebuilt. In the great rotunda are four large models of Hanover at different periods in its history. The model of the ruined city in 1945 was a sobering reminder of the madness of war. Andreas and Sussanne took me up to the very top of the building in a unique incline elevator that traverses the curve of the dome. The view from the top was breathtaking. On another morning, Claudia, who works in the city's urban planning department, took me for a walk around the lovely park and pond behind the town hall. She told me that Hanover is a city that loves its parks and gardens and is considered one of the greenest cities in Germany. I agreed. I told her I loved my hotel overlooking a man made lake, Maschsee, with a forested park around it with running, walking and bicycling paths. I jogged around the lake every morning.

Hanover is, as well, a sophisticated modern city. There is a controversial new bank high rise building looming up over the treetops. Some in Hanover are opposed to the glassy new presence on the skyline and others love it. The debate is healthy evidence of the passion the people feel for their city. I think it is a dazzling building and will be an enhancement of the Hanover skyline as well as its streetscape. I'll stay tuned to the debate.

On a trolley ride through the city, I noticed another eye-catching new building under construction. The medium rise office structure was twisted in place with staggered window placements, like a building caught in the middle of a whirlwind. I recognized it instantly as the signature style of Californian architect, Frank Gehry who designed the much-discussed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

I was visually stopped even by some of the trolley stops. They were contemporary art pieces in themselves. One was a fanciful composition of bright yellow and black blocks. Another looked like a sculptural tortoise shell. We rode past the once controversial, now much loved Nana statues - three colorfully whimsical polyester sculptures of rotund dancing female figures - sort of like sculptural rave dancers in the Reincarnation Parade. Taking the trolley through the streets of Hanover was like a trip through an outdoor contemporary art gallery. Hanover is a bold, culturally venturesome city.

It also seems to be a foresighted planner of its urban development. Claudia showed me a model in the lobby of her office building of a new town called Kronsberg being built in concert with the Expo. The residential units built for the staff of Expo will become housing for the Kronsberg community to come. The new public transportation system built for Expo will also be the transit system to support the new town. The structures built for Expo itself will be reused after the exposition as cinemas, academic institutions, and retail and office buildings that will become a part of the Kronsberg job, shopping, education and service sector. Small community green space is either already built or designed into the future residential districts. Rainwater is planned to be captured and recycled to keep the public parks lush and green. The Expo theme of "Humankind - Nature - Technology: A New World Arising" is not just a trendy slogan. It is indeed the driving philosophy of this fascinating city. I know I'll be coming back to Hanover to see how this New World rises in the future.

The Mother of an Actor

October, 2000, LOS ANGELES - I was en route to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., on my way home from my commission meeting when it happened. But I didn't learn of it until I landed back at LAX, in Los Angeles. Brad Altman, my business manager, informed me that my mother, Fumiko Emily Takei, had been rushed to the hospital and undergone emergency surgery.

I raced directly to the hospital. I was told that she had just come out of the operating room and was now in the intensive care ward. They said I was allowed to see her. I went in expecting the worst but I was still shaken when I saw Mama. My mother had tubes coming out of every part of her body - from her nose, through her mouth, from her stomach and so many from her thin, shriveled arms. Her half lidded eyes were dim and unseeing. It was devastating to see Mama like that.

The doctor told me that she had a perforation in her stomach through which gastric acid and blood were pouring into her abdomen causing her excruciating pain. If she hadn't been brought to the hospital in time, he said, it could have been fatal. I asked for her prognosis but he would not venture anything -- only that they would monitor the situation and go in 24-hour increments. That weekend at the hospital was to be the most harrowing of my life. Finally, on Monday, they told me that she had survived the surgery and that there was guarded expectation of a slow recovery.

We had such happy plans for her. The following week, on September 29, she was to have turned 88 years old and we had a gala birthday party scheduled for her at the Japanese American National Museum. Forty of her friends and relatives were to have gathered from near and as far away as Toronto, Canada, to help her celebrate this special birthday. All that now had to be postponed. Mama turned 88 in a hospital room with masses of life-sustaining tubes connected to her small body. But she did have a bevy of flowers and lots of get well cards surrounding her.

Mama has been living with me for the past two years. I moved her from the house in which she had been living for almost fifty years, the house she had shared with my father for thirty years until his death in 1979, the house in which I grew up. It was a house so filled with life memories. But she had to be moved from there into my house because she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. She was forgetting to take her medication, the cause of her first hospitalization. At my house, her care would be better monitored. I have a caregiver and my trusted business manager and friend, Brad, to help me out. At first, Mama thrived in my home.

But I began to sense some strange behaviors from Mama. She complained constantly of dust in the house. I was puzzled. My housekeeper keeps my home immaculate. I'd run my finger over the furniture to show her that there was no dust. Still, she complained. She habitually placed paper napkins over exposed food in the house, saying it's to protect them from the dust. Some mornings, she said that she'd wake up with a coat of dust on her face. So, I went into her room the next morning and woke her up by running my hand over her face. "See Mama," I pointed out to her. "There's no dust on your face." Yet, she would not stop. Her dust complaints were ceaseless and it was getting irritating. Then it dawned on me. When we were in the internment camp at Tule Lake during the war, I remembered dust everywhere. The cold wind blew the hard, gritty dust in through the spaces in the floorboard and through the knotholes into our flimsy barrack rooms. The mess hall where we took our meals always covered exposed food to protect them from the dust. Dust was a constant, relentless problem in camp. Mama, I realized, was reverting back to our days of incarceration in that World War II internment camp. It was heartbreaking.

But there were also times of joy and sharing. I used to take my mother on daily walks around the neighborhood. I'd point out the new flowers that had bloomed or the billowy white clouds up in the sky. And she would point out a great, old pine tree and tell me that it was a giant "bonsai." Once she told me of the time when I was a toddler and she used to take me out for walks. My favorite ways of teasing her, she said, was my running away from her and, when she tried to chase after me, I would run farther away giggling with great glee. These experiences from only a month ago before her hospitalization now seem like stories out of some distant past.

Mama came back from the hospital last Wednesday. Her scar from the surgery is healing steadily. But the trauma of the operation had dramatically altered her mental condition. It seems as though there is a new person inhabiting my Mama every twelve hours. At times, she adamantly refuses to talk - only a nod or a shake of the head, only a demanding point to things she wants. Then there are times when she is as charming as a coquettish little girl followed by other times when she is as feisty and combative as a bad drunk.

I savor the small joys when and where I can find them -- like this morning at breakfast. She was looking sleepy so I put my brightly smiling face right in front of her. She promptly mimicked my beaming face. Then I put on an expression of surprise and she immediately put on an exaggerated look of astonishment. When I frowned, she frowned. We spent breakfast time mugging and laughing. She is truly the mother of an actor.

I'm hoping that her return from the hospital to known surroundings and familiar patterns will help slow down the inevitable and relentless process of her disease. But I also know that I'm saying many good-byes every day to the Mama that I had.