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By Mina Harada Eimon (AACP Board Member)

I wanted to share some highlights of meeting these amazing souls.

My child, then a high schooler, and I used to walk into the store to listen to their stories of them growing up, or what it was like during the war. We were so lucky to hear the stories firsthand. During one of such talks, Mas showed us his Congressional Gold Medal and photos of his visit to the White House. My favorite is of him in his military uniform! Consequently, Mas and Florence inspired my child to take many Asian American courses during college, and to read a lot of Asian American books, for which I am really thankful. It emphasized how relevant their work continues to be for the young generation. Florence, with her compassionate and courageous energy, was a constant source of inspiration to me. She always radiated such love and positivity. I feel INCREDIBLY lucky I got to collaborate on a children's bilingual book with Florence! I will always remember their generous hearts, infectious laughter, and vivacious spirits. I sure miss them.

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By Pia Ceres (AACP Board Member)

Here is a photo of me, Mas, and Angela at the Teachers 4 Social Justice conference in October 2019. We each picked our favorite children's book and posed with it. Mas picked Fred Korematsu Speaks Up. Mas was the best, most cheerful presence at our events—he was always joking arround with us and making us laugh :)

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By Leonard Chan

One day in 1997, I walked by a bookstore in San Mateo that I had not seen before – that store was AACP. I was quite surprised to see the AAPI related books in the window. I had taken a couple of Asian American Studies courses in college and did not expect to see such a store anywhere else besides near a college campus, least of all in San Mateo.

I went in and that was the start of my relationship with Florence and Mas Hongo, and AACP. I don’t really remember many details of our first encounters, but Florence expressed AACP’s need for a website and Internet access, and I was interested in helping them with that.

My first encounter was not too different from many of the others that have been a part of AACP – we first walked in to the store or saw their display at some event, marveled at all the great books, started talking with Florence and Mas, and got so interested in their cause that we decided to stick around to help out.

I’ve been reading the great comments from some of the people that knew Florence and Mas, and of their enjoyable experiences of their encounters with them. These accounts made me realize how fortunate I was to have spent so much time with the two of them over the past 25 years. Perhaps the routine of seeing them so often made me less aware of how special they were to everyone.

Often times, when I was at events with Florence and Mas, people would ask or assume that I was Florence and Mas’ son. I would inform them that I was not, but that Florence and Mas felt like my uncle and aunt. In truth, I think I spent much more time with the two of them than any of my uncles or aunts. Like with most people that have worked at a place for a long while, your coworkers are often some of your closest friends.

Other than the times that I would see Florence and Mas at the store, I went on countless outings with them – from places as far away as Salt Lake City to places all over the Bay Area and California. My rough guess is that I probably traveled over 20,000 miles with the two of them and that was all by car.

Even though the times and opportunities may have changed or been a little different during the 27 years prior to my arrival, I can only imagine the total distance that Florence and Mas had traveled over their complete tenure with AACP. Florence would often recount traveling around in a VW Bug from Arizona to Washington state or flying to all parts of the country. I even recall Florence being called to participate as an essay reviewer at a conference in Washington, DC, early on during my time with AACP. I think she told me that this was a common occurrence in the past.

Another thing that immediately impressed me was a framed photo at the store of Florence being given an award at the Association of Asian American Studies Conference by my former Asian American studies professor. What a small world. Florence really did know a lot of people, including academics in the ethnic studies field.

 There’s so much that I can tell you about Florence and Mas. Florence and the other founding board members that I knew always wanted us to write a book about the early days of AACP (or JACP, for Japanese American Curriculum Project, as it was known then), but time and money always prevented us from doing that project. On my last meeting with Florence, I mentioned to her how I was trying to describe some of those early days to a new volunteer and wasn’t sure if I was telling the story correctly. She immediately lit up and proceeded to tell us parts of the story again. We told her that she should try to get it written down. I had even mentioned to her at a previous discussion, that she should try writing or even doing audio recordings like we did for Mas. I had imagined that we would have enough time to get to it, but sadly I was wrong.

When I started this article, the two things I thought I should tell you about Florence and Mas (and also AACP) was that they did have an important role in the redress and reparations movements, and that Mas played a major role with AACP.

I’ve been seeing books, articles, and even documentaries about the Japanese American redress and reparations movement. So many others have claimed their importance to the movement, but little is ever written about the role of education. This is an important point now that there is much discussion in government and in the media about the redress and reparation movements for other groups such as African Americans, Native Americans, Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders.

Education is so important in allowing us to learn of and correct for the many injustices done in the past. Creating a better society and preventing more injustices in the future require a lot of clear and accurate self evaluation. When Florence and the other founders started JACP, they knew this. There was hardly any educational material on the Japanese American World War II experience in those days and Florence and the other JACP founders stepped into the breach and started to develop, make, and distribute their own materials and any others that they could find.

Florence saw JACP’s role in the redress and reparations movement as arming the activists with information that they could use to convince decision makers. Educating the public too, would go a long way in helping to create the popular consensus that the politicians needed in order to act.

The second point I wanted to tell you about was Mas’ role with AACP. I was recently reminded that Mas would often jokingly introduce himself as the janitor for AACP. He was much more than that. The times that AACP would get recognized for their achievements, Florence being the head and face of the organization would usually get the honors. I was always wondering when Mas would get his turn.

Florence and Mas worked as a team. They each had their function and duties. Florence may have been the ultimate decision maker for AACP, but Mas had much sway with her decisions and the day to day operations of the organization. When Florence reduced her traveling for health reasons, Mas continued traveling with me to events up till the age of 99. During the later years when Mas’ health prevented him from doing as much traveling, whenever I couldn’t find anyone else to help, Mas was still there for me.

Additional Thoughts and Memories

I always liked the opening line at the beginning of the movie “Love Story” – “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me.” It gave you a glimpse of the person that the movie was about in one short paragraph. I’ll try this with Florence and Mas.

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Florence loved mystery novels, blue grass music, and was a big Paul McCartney fan. She would tell me about going to classical music performances with one of her daughters.

Mas loved nonfiction and would load up on used biographies and memoirs whenever he saw a used book sale. Mas could speed read which aided his accumulation of knowledge. He would also read all the local newspapers and know whatever was going on.

Florence’s grew up on a farm. I believe they grew Thompson Seedless Grapes and even made wine from them.

Mas knew a lot about flowers and plants, and knew a lot of people in the flower growing and selling business. Florence knew a lot about flowers too, especially about the wild flowers where she grew up. She would talk about driving through the desert in the spring and catching the wild super blooms.

Florence loved baseball and was a big Giants fan. She used to have season tickets at Candlestick Park right behind home plate and one row up. She would go to watch the Giant’s during spring training and even drove there when she was younger. She named her cat Barry Bonds.

Mas was athletic – he loved swimming and golf and was still able to out walk me when he was in his 80s. Wherever we went, he would tell me of how he played golf at some place nearby.

Florence learned to play the piano at a young age and even played the organ for her church. Florence was a friend of actress and singer Pat Suzuki. They grew up in the same small town and would even put on little shows together.

Mas used to golf with Willie McCovey and McCovey even had a nickname for Mas that I won’t repeat here :).

Whenever we traveled, we usually ended up finding a Japanese restaurant to eat at. Often times, when we came back from a trip, we would end up eating at a Japanese restaurant too.

On long trips they would bring bento and we would eat at rest stops. I remember eating at a rest stop in the Mojave Desert and other places like that. Oh, and all the diners along the way that we ate at, I can’t forget those meals either. Sometimes we would even buy things from the festivals we were at and eat the food on the road to save some time.

Mas was always trying to get a picture of Mt. Shasta whenever we passed it. Perhaps it was because he remembered seeing it when he was incarcerated at the Tule Lake internment camp or maybe it was just because of Shasta’s grandeur. I remember driving in the snow late at night on a dark road near the Oregon and California border, not that far from Shasta, with Mas at my side, keeping me calm and getting me through it.

And the conversations we had – that was the reason why I wanted to record interviews with Mas. We had such interesting conversations on the road. Often times the stories were the same, but told differently and I would learn something new each time.

The Mas interviews featured in the AACP newsletters last year were transcriptions from recordings done at our office/store over a period from May 2016 to September 2019. They were our effort to try to capture some of the things we talked about on the road and to expand on some of it. Obviously we talked about a lot more on our trips than what we were able to capture.

Goodbye Florence and Mas. Thank you for being great people to work with, for looking out for all of us, for imparting your knowledge and wisdom, for all the great conversations, for being the best of friends, and for sharing the journey of life. We’ll miss you tremendously.