Teacher, civil rights advocate Mas Hashimoto dies
WATSONVILLE Retired Watsonville teacher and renowned civil rights advocate Mas Hashimoto died on Monday from health complications stemming from pulmonary fibrosis.
Born and raised in Watsonville, where he taught for nearly 40 years alongside his wife, Marcia, Hashimoto served as an inspiration to generations of students, community members, and the world at large for his condemnation of racism and bigotry and celebration of diversity.
Born in 1935 in Watsonville, Hashimoto spent his childhood in the Pajaro Valley. In the spring of 1942, a then 6-year-old Hashimoto, his parents, six brothers and roughly 120,000 other Americans of Japanese ancestry, were incarcerated by the United States during World War II, a few months after
the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hashimoto and his family spent more than three years in the Poston Internment Camp in southwestern Arizona.
When the Hashimoto family was finally released in 1945, it returned to Watsonville where young Hashimoto
attended school and worked in the fields as a farmworker harvesting berries during his summer vacations. He graduated with a teaching credential from San Jose State and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1958, where he served in the chemical section of the
Sixth U.S. Army Headquarters in the Presidio of San Francisco.
Hashimoto was a patriot who wasn't afraid to speak out against injustice. In 2002, on the 60th anniversary of Exclusion Order 16, and to draw attention to the racism against Muslims following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Hashimoto and members of the WatsonvilleSanta Cruz Japanese American Citizens League held a demonstration called “Liberty Lost…Lessons in Loyalty,” which was a reenactment of the unjust evacuation of those with Japanese ancestry from Santa Cruz County. The performance was meant to not only highlight injustice but celebrate those who supported them during the internment and resettling periods. “To honor those who did the right thing,” he said.
Hashimoto was an active member of not only the Wat
sonville-Santa Cruz Japanese American Citizens League, but the Watsonville Buddhist Temple, and was a member of the Watsonville community and a loving husband to his wife, Marcia. Mas and Marcia married five years after first meeting in 1965. They delayed their marriage until Marcia graduated from college, and they both began their careers teaching in Pajaro Valley schools.
After he retired from teaching history at Watsonville High School, Hashimoto continued to educate people about the kinds of racism that led to the unjust imprisonment of 120,000 innocent persons of Japanese ancestry and is known worldwide for his TEDx talk titled “Racism and America's Concentration Camps.” During his retirement,
Hashimoto and his wife traveled the world extensively, and he also enjoyed skiing, golfing and creative pursuits such as writing and photography.
In his last entry for the May 2022 Watsonville Japanese American Citizens League newsletter, Hashimoto wrote this in regard to himself and his wife,
Marcia, “We share a commitment of JACL's mission to uphold the civil rights of all peoples, to build an appreciation for our historic culture and heritage, and to educate the community about racism and the unjust incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. Onward!”