Community Corner
Activist for Personal Liberty
Fran Ellis, one of the 2011 CREST Award winners, promotes public awareness of a history she personally experienced and hopes never to see repeat.
While early childhood is normally a blurry memory one barely recollects, it represents an unforgettable history to Fran Ellis, who was born in the Tule Lake Segregation Camp during World War II.
Ellis, a 2011 CREST (Cupertino Recognizes Extra Steps Taken) Award winner for her long-term community service, now has an American last name because of marriage, and speaks American English as a native speaker. But she remembers she was not treated as an American in the first three and half years of her life.
"Not to forget what happened is to ensure it never happens ever again," said Ellis.
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According to Ellis, many Japanese Americans stepped in when the Muslim community suffered post-911 prejudice, thinking they had to prevent the sad history of segregation camps from repeating itself.
It was based on the same belief that Ellis began to involve herself with the bi-annual Tule Lake pilgrimages, which she calls "the most educational" among all such pilgrimages because the Tule Lake experience includes seminars, workshops, panel discussions and cultural performances.
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According to Ellis and her husband Jerry, each Tule Lake pilgrimage attracts hundreds of people, and about half or them are non-Japanese but interested in the history.
Tule Lake pilgrimages started in 1974, but Ellis didn't participate until much later because she was busy raising her three children, all born in the late 1960s.
Ellis met her husband Jerry, then a firefighter, through a mutual friend after studying criminology at University of California-Berkeley. She once planned to use the degree as a probation officer, to help juvenile offenders reform themselves, but she became an accountant instead.
While working and taking care of her family, Ellis didn't have time to think of community service. But in the early 1980s, when her children were in middle school, her family was asked to be one of the host families for the Cupertino-Toyokawa student exchange program. That was the beginning of her involvement with the Cupertino-Toyokawa Sister City Program.
It was also in the 1980s when Ellis saw her children's participation in the Sunnyvale Marching Youth Band and found herself interested in the Cupertino Tournament of Bands, for which she has served as a board member for 15 years.
Ellis became increasingly active in the community in the 1990s, when her children were all grown. She joined the Nihonmache Outreach Committee (NOC), a Japanese-American nonprofit with a mission to educate the public about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, as well as issues regarding Asian-American justice, equality and peace.
Ellis has been even more deeply involved with community service in recent years thanks to her retirement.
According to Virgil and Trish Klein, who nominated Ellis for the 2011 CREST Award, Ellis has served as Cherry Blossom Festival food booth chairperson for seven years and she is also the treasurer of the organization, as well as chair for the annual Toyokawa student delegation visit barbecue for over five years.
This summer Cupertino won't send a student delegation to Toyokawa due to concerns about the aftermath of the 9.0 earthquake in Japan, but the Toyokawa student delegation will come to Cupertino in September as usual, according to Ellis.
Speaking of the student exchange between Cupertino and Toyokawa, Ellis recalled in September 2001 Japanese students brought $3,000 they had raised in Toyokawa for 911 victims, and the City of Cupertino sent the money to New York City.
"It was just amazing and heartwarming," said Ellis.
This year is Cupertino's turn to reciprocate. A fundraiser for earthquake relief was held in April and May to help victims of the March 10 catastrophe.
The net proceeds from the festival "will be set aside to help defray some of the expenses for the 2011 student delegates to go to Toyokawa next year with the students who will be selected as 2012 delegates," she says.
As a Japanese-American, Ellis says she expects the United States and Japan to stay on friendly terms, and hopes the two countries will remain this way forever.
Ellis talked to Cupertino Patch in depth about what lessons to be learned from the history she had witnessed, and what the CREST Award means to her. The video recordings of her speeches are attached to this article.
