[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 2] [Senate] [Page 2179] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]IN MEMORIAM TO DAVE TATSUNO Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to honor the life of Dave Tatsuno, whose courageous documentation of life in a Japanese-American internment camp contributed immensely to our knowledge of this dark time in U.S. history. Mr. Tatsuno passed away on January 26, 2006. He was 92. Mr. Tatsuno, born in 1913 to a family who had come to the United States in the late 19th century, was raised in San Francisco, in my home State of California. Mr. Tatsuno changed his first name from Masaharu to Dave when he successfully ran for student body president of his junior high school; Masaharu was too long to fit on his campaign posters. In 1936, Mr. Tatsuno graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in business and went to work at Nichi Bei Bussan, a department store in San Francisco that his father founded. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forced ``all persons of Japanese ancestry, including aliens and non-aliens'' into internment camps until the end of World War II. Mr. Tatsuno and his family were forced to move to the Topaz Relocation Center, an internment camp in Topaz, AZ. Over the next 3 years, Mr. Tatsuno secretly filmed life in the camp with an 8-millimeter Bell & Howell camera that Walter Honderick, his supervisor at the internment camp's co-op store, helped smuggle in. Because the camera was forbidden, Mr. Tatsuno kept it hidden in a shoe box, taking it out only when guards were not looking. These images of daily life in Topaz--of church services, of people gardening, of birthday celebrations--have left viewers with a stark image of what life was like during those hard years. After the Tatsuno family was released from the internment camp, Mr. Tatsuno's footage of life in Topaz was turned into a 48-minute silent film, ``Topaz.'' In 1996, the Library of Congress placed ``Topaz'' on its National Film Registry, which was established in 1989 by Congress to preserve culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films. Mr. Tatsuno's film is one of only two home movies on the registry's 425-film list; the other film is Abraham Zapruder's footage of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The original footage for ``Topaz'' is now a part of the permanent collection at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. After the war, Mr. Tatsuno helped his father reopen Nichi Bei Bussan and took over the business when his father retired. Through this work, Mr. Tatsuno became a prominent and respected businessman and civic leader in San Francisco and San Jose, where he eventually made his home. He also remained engaged and interested in film. His compassion and thoughtfulness inspired many others and he will be deeply missed. Mr. Tatsuno is survived by three daughters, Arlene Damron, Valerie Sermon, and Melanie Cochran; two sons, Rod Tatsuno and Sheridan Tatsuno; his sister, Chiye Watanabe; four grandchildren; and two great- grandchildren. I extend my deepest sympathies to his family. Dave Tatsuno played down the importance of his role in chronicling the history of the Japanese-American internment camps, always giving credit to Walter Honderick. But Dave Tatsuno will long be remembered for his courage and perseverance in difficult times. His film will have a lasting effect on many generations to come. ____________________