Under a golden afternoon sun we gathered to celebrate the blessing and groundbreaking for our Education Building.

The Education Building will include 2100 square feet for an archive room, classroom and office space on the lower floor, and a 2100 square foot open pavilion on the upper floor. 

The archive room is temperature-and-humidity controlled to preserve the recorded interviews with veterans of the 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military Intelligence Service, along with documents, wartime photos, and letters home from the battlefront. 

These materials will be used to develop educational programs to teach schoolchildren and youth groups about the values and principles that guided the Nisei soldiers through some of the most difficult battles overseas, and the battle to overcome prejudice in their own country.

The Reverend Shinkai Murakami of Wailuku Hongwanji Mission gave a Buddhist blessing, and The Reverend Kalani Wong gave a Christian and Hawaiian blessing.

The veterans were asked to stand to be recognized - and thanked - by all who had assembled to celebrate the groundbreaking of our Education Building.

Executive director
Barbara Watanabe
talks about the importance
of the Education Building and its outreach to the community.

"The sad fact is that there is no specific mention of the Nisei soldiers in the Hawaii State curriculum.

"Every year we are graduating students who have no awareness of the impact the Nisei soldiers had on the State of Hawaii or their nation at large.

"No knowledge of how the Nisei veterans changed the social, political and economic landscape of Hawaii, or of how their actions as a segregated unit had a profound effect on the civil right movement of the 1960s.

"Our goal is that 50 years from now – long after most of us standing here today are gone - students graduating from high school will learn about these veterans.  About what they stood for, and what they withstood.  About the challenges they faced, and how they challenged their country to honor the words of its Constitution that all men are created equal."