![]() ![]() Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton also appointed her to the National Advisory Committee on Aging and due to her work in the community, the University of Hawai'i awarded Kanazawa an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree. The project is also designed to give much needed respite to family caregivers, and above all, to provide a network that will make an ongoing assessment of their additional needs, and that will recruit and train volunteers to fill these needs."ĭue to her innovative work on behalf of the elderly, Governor Neil Abercrombie made her a lifetime member of the State Policy Advisory Board for Elderly Affairs as she had served for a number of years in the Executive Office of Aging. According to Kanazawa, "Project Dana serves the frail elderly, housebound and handicapped-those in need of support services and personal contacts. She also helped to create Project Dana, a volunteer interfaith based program that supports Hawai'i's elderly to "age in place" at home and in the community. When they returned to the Islands, Kanazawa worked at Liberty House, Sears, and McInerny department stores while raising their son Sidney and daughter Joanne.Įven with family responsibilities, Kanazawa continued her community activism and she co-chaired a committee along with Judge Betty Vitousek that established Hawai'i's Family Court under Governor William Quinn. The Kanazawas married and for a short period of time, they moved to Boston where Kinji enrolled in an accelerated law program at Boston College and Shim attended the Chamberlain School of Retailing as she hoped to open a bridal store. The national office of the American Red Cross recognized Kanazawa for her actions during World War II and Kanazawa later worked for the Veterans Administration.Īfter the war, Kanazawa wanted to move to Tokyo to work for the American Embassy but met Kinji Kanazawa who was a community organizer who saved the Mō'ili'ili Language School, later known as the Mō'ili'ili Community Center, from being confiscated by government officials. , Texas, internment camp and traveled through thirty-seven states in three months. Kanazawa became known as the "Florence Nightingale of Hawaii" as she once took a group of approximately thirty internees to meet their families in the "My mother sent vegetables from Hawaii" that she gave to these families.ĭuring the war, Kanazawa also inspected the living conditions in the incarceration centers for Japanese Prisoners of War (POWs) and Hawai'i internees and ensured that they were treated in accordance with civil, military, and international laws. She explained that "We had futon and they slept on the floor" and she also bought them winter clothes with her own money and supplied them with food she paid for herself. When women and children arrived from the neighbor islands to O'ahu without money or a place to stay while waiting for ships to the mainland to join their husbands in incarceration centers, Kanazawa put them up in the consulate building. so much crying every day." Empathizing with these families, she often used her own funds to help the families separated by incarceration. As Kanazawa explained, "I had to go down to the Military Intelligence Office and find out why the husbands were taken away, and the parents would come crying on our shoulders because they don't know what to do. Kanazawa explained that Olson wanted someone who spoke Japanese, but more importantly wanted "a girl with a Red Cross heart."ĭue to her job, officials gave Kanazawa a special pass to freely travel throughout the island, and she worked with families whose sons were enlisted in the army or whose husbands or fathers had been incarcerated. ![]() The Swedish Vice Consul had taken over the former Japanese consulate in February 1942 and served as a diplomat, interpreter, legal advisor, and inspector of Prisoner of War (POW) compounds and incarceration centers. , Gustav Olson, who was the Vice Consul of Sweden and administrator of Queen's Hospital which became inundated with civilian war casualties, needed a liaison between the Japanese community and the military government that had instituted military rule in Hawai'i. ![]() After Kanazawa's graduation, she worked at a number of public schools on Hawai'i Island and was promoted to the Department of Education's Vocational Division in Honolulu.
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