From Phyllis Hayashibara of the Venice Japanese American Memorial Monument committee:
Thank you for your support of the Venice Japanese American Memorial Monument! (The VJAMM Committee recently changed the name of the Memorial in recognition of the monumental size of the 9 foot 6 inch tall obelisk with a 3 foot by 3 foot base.)
We will be having another VJAMM fundraiser at Hama Sushi Restaurant in Venice, California on Wednesday, April 27, 2016. We invite you to pre-order bento so we know how many to prepare for lunch. 100% of bento profits will be donated by Hama Sushi Restaurant to VJAMM. 10% of all dinner sales will be donated to VJAMM, no flyer necessary.
Distribution of the pre-ordered bento will begin at 12 pm noon and end at 2 pm. Dinner begins at 6 pm through 10:30 pm.
Hama Sushi
213 Windward Ave
Venice, CA 90291Pre-orders for lunch bento ($20 each) may be emailed to phyllishayashibara@gmail.com, and checks payable to Hama Sushi may be USPS mailed to:
Phyllis Hayashibara
3361 McLaughlin Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90066Dinner reservations may be made directly by calling Hama Sushi at 310-396-8783. Please see flyer below for more information on the fundraiser, and please visit www.venicejamm.org for more information about the Venice Japanese American Memorial Monument! (Flyers predate the name change to Monument.)
The VJAMM Committee has now secured Los Angeles City signatures on the CalTrans Maintenance Agreement, CalTrans Encroachment Permit, Los Angeles City Permits A and R, and a final extension of the VJAMM grant to June 1, 2017 from the National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program.
We drove to Arvin, California to hand deliver our deposit check to David Williams of Williams Monument Company on March 15, 2016. The VJAMM obelisk will be fabricated of solid black granite from India, and engraved by Mr. Williams in Arvin.
We are cautiously optimistic that the VJAMM will be installed on the northwest corner of Venice and Lincoln in late 2016 or early 2017. In April, 1942, some 1,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from Venice, Santa Monica, and Malibu lined up here with only what they could carry for transport directly to Manzanar. The VJAMM will commemorate this history and remind us to be vigilante about our Constitutional rights, so such a forced removal and incarceration solely on the basis of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion, will never happen to any group again.Estimated expenses for the transport, foundation, and installation of the VJAMM on the northwest corner of Venice and Lincoln Boulevards exceed our previously approved budget, and we continue to raise funds for those expenses as well as for future maintenance of the VJAMM.
