NikkeiWest--Northern California Japanese American Newspaper

By J.K. YAMAMOTO

Filmmaker, teacher and advocate Loni Ding, known for her documentaries about the Asian American experience, passed away Feb. 20 at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland. She was 78.

Her critically acclaimed works, which go back nearly 40 years, include two films about Japanese Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II.

Her husband, David Walsh, daughter, May Ying, and son, Elias, had maintained a vigil at the hospital since Ding suffered a stroke on Dec. 6, and the hospital had set aside a cot for the family to be near her.

Long-time friend Harvey Dong, who teaches Asian American studies at UC Berkeley and owns Eastwind Books, took the photo of Ding that accompanies this article shortly before the stroke, from which she never regained consciousness.

“She was upbeat and happy that day, attended a book event at Eastwind Books of Berkeley,” he recalled. “She conversed there about her delight in running into many old friends the evening prior. She and her husband David had attended a film showing on the subject of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in S.F.

“After leaving Eastwind Books that day, she went to the hairdresser down the block on University Avenue. Shortly afterwards was her second stroke. (The first stroke was in the spring of 2009.) We’ll miss her warm, matter-of-fact personality.”

The memorial service will be held Sunday, March 14, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Green Street Mortuary, 649 Green St. in San Francisco’s North Beach. A traditional brass marching band will then lead a procession in Chinatown, where Ding was born, where her parents’ herb store once stood, and where she attended Chinese language school, and in North Beach, where she lived for many years with her husband and children.

Attendees are reminded that Daylight Savings Time begins on March 14, so they should set their clocks an hour ahead the night before in order to be on time for the service.

There will also be a visitation at the Green Street Mortuary on Saturday, March 13, from 5 to 6 p.m.

“We welcome your participation in any of these events to remember and honor our beloved Loni, whose giving spirit will live on in everyone she touched,” the family said in a statement.

The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) plans to pay tribute to Ding at its 30th anniversary gala, which will be held Monday, March 15, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Ana Mandara Restaurant, 891 Beach St. in San Francisco, during the 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, according to Chi-hui Yang, festival director.

Ding was the subject of the SFIAAFF’s first Spotlight Program in 2001.

The program provides an in-depth look at the career achievements of a selected member of the Asian American media arts community. She was one of the founders of CAAM, originally known as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA).

UCB Asian American Studies, where she taught media analysis and hands-on production, and CAAM will organize an event to commemorate her life later this year. CAAM is also developing an award to be named in her honor.

“We are all quite saddened by Loni’s passing,” Yang said. “She was such an important person for so many people.”

Stephen Gong, CAAM executive director, remembered meeting Ding for the first time in 1980 in Washington, D.C., as she was organizing a conference that resulted in the formation of CAAM.  “I was a junior program officer at the National Endowment for the Arts, and because we were one of the very few sources of funding for independent film, Loni encouraged me to attend this first-ever conference of Asian American filmmakers, video producers and media activists at UC Berkeley.

“I say ‘encouraged’ but the truth was, she insisted. This was characteristic of Loni’s power of persuasion, and of her understanding of what it was going to take to create a public media organization supporting programs by and about Asian Americans for the broad public television audience.

“Because she had worked at KQED as well as the San Francisco Chinatown community, Loni understood better than anyone else that the time was right for such an organization but because our numbers were small, it would take everyone who had a stake.

“She pulled us together, but then stepped aside, encouraging other members of the steering committee and then board, and then staff, to develop NAATA/CAAM. Her calling, it turned out was to be a storyteller and educator, and not an administrator.

“And the stories she told in ‘The Color of Honor’ and ‘Ancestors in America,’ and many other wonderful and important documentaries, have changed the way millions of Americans have understood our common history. She taught history and she made history.”

Friend and fellow filmmaker Spencer Nakasako (“aka Don Bonus,” “Refugee”) noted that the service will coincide with the first weekend of this year’s film festival. “Perfect timing, and very Loni. End of an era.”

Robynn Takayama, a community artist and contributor to public radio programs, thanked Ding “for leading the way in Asian American media, touching viewers, students and other media makers.”

Nancy Hom, an artist and former executive director of Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco, commented, “We’ve lost another major icon.”

“Nisei Soldier”

Ding was inspired to tell the Nisei veterans’ stories when she saw Japanese Americans testify about their experiences before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, which held hearings in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities in 1981.

Many had never before spoken publicly about their confinement or their military service.

“Nisei Soldier: Standard Bearer for an Exiled People” (1984, 30 minutes) focused on the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought with distinction in Europe. Noting that many of the soldiers had left behind families in the internment camps, Ding addressed such issues as personal honor, family loyalty, love of country, and what it means to be an American.

The documentary was broadcast on PBS and the BBC, and won several awards, including a Northern California Emmy. Journalist and commentator Bill Moyers described the film as “a mirror of America at her worst and at her best.”

The follow-up, “The Color of Honor” (1989, 90 minutes), explored the topic in more depth. In addition to veterans of the 442nd, Ding interviewed those who served in Asia and the Pacific with the Military Intelligence Service, using their Japanese language skills to intercept messages and interrogate POWs. Unlike the 442nd, the linguists’ work was top secret, as it was crucial that Japan not know that the U.S. had this tactical advantage.

She also talked to resisters who said they could not in good conscience fight for the U.S. overseas as long as their families were being interned in violation of the Constitution. They went to jail for their beliefs, but received a presidential pardon after the war.

The documentary had its premiere at the Smithsonian Institution and was broadcast on PBS. The New York Times said that the film “builds up considerable impact ... The question rubbed in by this admirable program is why the Nisei should have had to prove themselves better citizens than any other Americans.”

In a 1986 interview, Ding said she was fascinated by the varied experiences that could be found in the Japanese American community, and in some cases within one family. For example, she interviewed Ernie Uno, a 442nd veteran in Hawaii, who had two brothers who served in the MIS and another who was a Domei news correspondent with the Japanese army.

When she was making “The Color of Honor,” footage of the MIS was hard to come by, but she was able to get some shots of Howard Furumoto serving with Merrill’s Marauders in Burma after sending the cameraman a copy of “Nisei Soldier.”

“The good work that the Nisei have done accumulates a kind of credit,” she said. “In this project, because it’s about them, I go around collecting debts. When people find out it’s about them, they go all out.”

Regarding the inclusion of the resisters, Ding explained that the different stories in the film represent “legitimate responses” to the circumstances and are “all worthy of being told.”

The film concludes with a federal judge’s ruling in the 1983 reopening of the case of Fred Korematsu, who challenged the constitutionality of the internment. The judge found that the government had lied when it told the wartime Supreme Court that the internment was a military necessity.

Robert Nakamoto, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Japanese American Veterans Association (JAVA), said his organization was “deeply saddened” by Ding’s passing “at the young age of 78.”

“Japanese Americans, especially the Nisei who served in the 442nd RCT and the Military Intelligence Service, are indebted to her for producing … two powerful documentaries depicting Nisei fighting fascism abroad and prejudice at home. These two documentaries, which were shown to members of Congress, no doubt went a long way to persuade them to vote for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (the redress bill).”

Ken Akune, MIS veteran and founding board member of the Go For Broke National Education Center in Los Angeles, said, “We’re thankful to her for producing ‘Nisei Soldier’ and ‘The Color of Honor.’ Nobody else would have done it.”

Socially Conscious

The co-founder of a neighborhood arts program under the San Francisco Arts Commission in the late ’60s, Ding got her start in television by producing a series teaching basic English to Chinese immigrants. She worked as a producer at PBS station KQED in San Francisco for seven years before going independent.

Her body of work includes a number of films that reflect her concerns about social issues. “Willie Lobo, Manchild” (1974) was a musical drama on the ghetto homecoming of a black Vietnam veteran who has been changed by the war.

“Bean Sprouts” (1980) was a five-part PBS children’s series on cultural identity. It focused on Chinese American kids ages 9 to 12, looking at their school life and their relationship with their parents. The music was provided by Dan Kuramoto of the band Hiroshima.

“With Silk Wings” (1982) was a three-part video series. “Four Women” presented the stories of a Chinese American labor organizer, a Japanese American architect, a Filipino American physician, and a Korean American community worker. “Frankly Speaking” was about issues of family, identity and future among Asian American girls and young women. “On New Ground” consisted of vignettes of Asian American women in occupations considered non-traditional, such as a welder, a park ranger and a judge.

“Island of Secret Memories” (1988) was a short film for children about the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay, where Chinese immigrants were detained for months or even years.

“Ancestors in the Americas” (2001), broadcast on PBS in two parts, presented the history and contemporary legacy of early Asian immigrants in the Americas. Part 1 covers Chinese, Filipinos and East Indians who arrived in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Part 2 deals with the influx and settlement of Chinese during the Gold Rush and their emerging identity as Americans.

For “Ancestors in America,” Ding used what she called the “documemoir” method. She explained that it “tells stories from the viewpoint of the Asian American subjects themselves; it is a way of combining research history with fictive storytelling. Fundamentally, we are finding ways to create a first-person voice using historical and cultural materials in which the personal accounts and experiences of Asians in America are conspicuously absent.

“Anglo-Euro writers/historians have written some about Asian Americans, of course, but from an observer’s outsider viewpoint, and mostly in terms of what was ‘done to the Chinese’ or other Asian groups (i.e., ‘victim’ history) rather than what the Chinese themselves thought or tried to do for themselves in response to the opportunities and obstacles they encountered …

“The central storyteller, a fictional Asian time traveler/narrator, guides a subjective journey inside the larger history. Taking expressive liberties, he offers a first-person sense of time, place and voice of the immigrants who filled in the land we stand on, pioneered the field crops that are California’s agricultural glory …”

Moriah Ulinskas of the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) in San Francisco was one of Ding’s assistants during the making of “Ancestors in America.” In a blog posted March 1, she recalled, “For Loni there was no clear distinction between the personal and professional — she committed herself wholeheartedly to her family, her teaching, her filmmaking and her advocacy work in a way that boundaries blurred.

“Her children would often walk across the frame of footage I was digitizing from one of her shoots in China, her home was an office for her staff as well as a meeting site for her husband David’s union gatherings, and her heart was a resting place for the many filmmakers she mentored.”

Ulinskas recounted an amusing incident: “I remember being in the narration booth here at BAVC, and she actually was able to get Pat Morita from ‘Happy Days’ to do the voice-over for her film. She kept stopping him during the recording sessions because she didn’t think he sounded enough like the Pat Morita she wanted on the voice-over, so she actually did an imitation OF him TO him for him to copy.

“We were laughing on the other side of the glass watching her bust into the sound-proof booth to tell him over and over what he should sound like, this Chinese American woman imitating this Japanese American man …

“I pulled up the intro that we recorded at BAVC, to try to remember what the line was that Loni kept reciting to Pat Morita that had us in stitches. I didn’t find it, but I was moved to hear Mr. Morita, also passed now (in 2005), read Loni’s elegantly written opening line, ‘What is history when the reporter does not record and the camera does not see?’

“Loni dedicated her life’s work to addressing this question, by producing films and fostering filmmakers and institutions that would force the camera to see. And for that, and for many other moments of grace and inspiration, we are eternally grateful.”