[ OUR OPINION ]
Governor is right to veto
funding for cultural centerGOVERNOR Cayetano is correct in vetoing an item in the state budget that would authorize $8 million to purchase the land under the financially troubled Japanese Cultural Center in Moiliili. The appropriation would improperly place taxpayers under considerable financial obligation and has proven to be an embarrassment to the center's supporters.
THE ISSUE Governor Cayetano will veto an appropriation to help the financially ailing Japanese Cultural Center.
The funding was placed in the state budget by Sen. Brian Taniguchi, who is up for re-election from the district in which the center sits and which has a large Japanese-American population. It had gone unnoticed by other legislators and apparently was not discussed before the budget bill was passed. Taniguchi was criticized for slipping the item in, which he contends was not his intention.
Cultural center officials did not initiate the appropriation. Taniguchi explained that he had seen a magazine article about the center's financial problems and had talked about the situation with the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, one of the center's tenants and a key force behind its establishment. The item would have allowed the state to borrow up to $8 million to buy the land and perhaps lease it back to the center for as little as $1 a year.
Susan Kodani, the center's president, said the center welcomed the support, but the Japanese-American community was mortified by the way in which the appropriation was handled. It served to ignite racial discord, as apparent from several letters to the editor in the Star-Bulletin, and to embarrass those who had helped to raise funds to start the center. The governor said his veto was in response to concern "that the way it was done was not right."
As a nonprofit organization, the center already receives help from the state through tax exemptions, but the $8 million bond authorization would have unduly burdened taxpayers.
The center, which conducts many valuable community programs and houses a museum, has a commendable mission of preserving and promoting Japanese culture in Hawaii and recognizing the important role Japanese immigrants and citizens of Japanese descent have played in the islands. It would have been tainted by what critics saw as favoritism for a group that has long prided itself on self-sufficiency and self-reliance.
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Sculpture survives
censorship attemptDESPITE criticism from the principal, one of those pesky bare-breasted bronze statues has popped up at one of Oahu's public schools. A committee of teachers, students and state officials agreed to unveil the 1,500-pound work of art at Ewa Beach's Campbell High School, leaving a modest but vocal group blushing in anger. Fortunately, public art has survived this attempt at censorship.
THE ISSUE A bronze sculpture of a seminude woman from Hawaiian lore has been unveiled at Campbell High School.
The art that the few dissidents don't appreciate is that of Kazu Fukuda and was inspired by a Hawaiian legend of a woman whose daughter, Kaahupahau, was transformed into a shark and became the protector of the people of Ewa. The cast-bronze mother has a pa'u wrapped around her waist but wears nothing above that. The baby half-shark is unclothed, apparently to nobody's objection.
Some school officials and parents asked more than a year ago that the woman's breasts be covered. Fukuda tried to accommodate them, he said, "but it just didn't work. It took away the spirit of the piece. The breasts are symbols of motherhood, nursing and a past culture."
No excuse is needed. Perhaps since ancient Greece some people have tried to cover works of art with eye blockers ranging from fig leaves to cloth. Those include the $8,000 curtains that the Justice Department draped over a scantily clad statue on the podium of the department's Great Hall in January. A department spokesman said the curtains were hung for "aesthetic" reasons, which, of course, is just the opposite of the truth.
Principal Gail Awakuni and a group of parents who objected to the topless figure at Campbell High were overruled. At the sculpture's unveiling and dedication last week, a substitute teacher Mona McRae held signs in protest and quietly repeated: "No nudity in public schools. No nudity."
McRae said Campbell High's students will begin wearing uniforms for the first time next year, and the school's policy about covering up should be consistent. Kaahupahau should be concerned about a movement to have her fitted for a uniform.
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Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
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