Karleen C. Chinen
Commentary
Welcome to Part 1 of The Hawai‘i Herald’s 35th anniversary edition!
When managing editor Gwen Battad Ishikawa and I began tossing around ideas about how we would celebrate this milestone anniversary in print, I knew it would involve going into the Herald’s archives of over 800 issues so that our subscribers and readers could see the depth and breadth of the stories the Herald has covered in its 35 years of publishing “Hawai‘i’s Japanese American Journal.”
Gwen suggested that we also do short profiles on what had become of the former Hawai‘i Herald staff writers and editors whose gift for sharing interesting, informative and inspiring stories had brought us this far. So began our quest to contact as many writers and editors as we could locate, find out what had become of their lives and ask them to choose a story that they had written while at the Herald that had moved them, or inspired them, or that they had really enjoyed writing because of the subject.
Hello. Had we lost our marbles?! What were we thinking when we settled on that brilliant idea — that we had a staff of 12, instead of just two?! But i mua! . . . gambare! . . . we charged forward and between our regular issues, sent out emails and made phone calls, hunting down the former Herald staffers. What’s that cliché . . . Be careful what you wish for.
We received responses from 22 writers and editors. Twenty-two! There was no way we could fit all 22 stories into one issue . . . which is why we split this 35th anniversary edition into two parts — 11 stories in Part 1, and 11 stories in Part 2, which will be published on July 1.
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