Remembrances of Gina Hotta

by Don Misumi

Gina Hotta, Bay Area activist and artist best known as founder and executive producer of APEX Express on station KPFA, died of a heart attack on September 29, 2009. However, in addition to her cultural contributions, she was also an organizer, as Don Misumi, a good friend, describes.

Upon hearing the news of Gina’s passing a flurry of Facebook postings, emails, phone calls, and get-togethers followed. Everyone was so stunned and saddened. No one could believe she was gone so suddenly and so YOUNG. I am here speaking before you to give my own reflections on Gina, but also to try to represent some of the things brought out from the old Jtown gang on one of these get-togethers: Donna, Joyce, Mickey, June, Jeanie, Mike, and Janet. This is our remembrance.

Gina was a very private person. She was always willing to talk politics and music but you never really got inside her. She would not easily open up and she was a bit quirky in that way. There are many of us who have known her for a long time and worked alongside her but few who really knew her well personally. But I think this was a sign of the times as we were of that generation who came of age during the Civil Rights and Vietnam War era. It is not a stretch to say the Asian American Movement began with us. We felt a great sense of urgency; and in a way, politics became everything. This was the context back in the 70s and 80s and those are the memories we have of Gina. Her strengths came to the forefront in the early days of the movement in San Francisco’s Japantown. She was involved in many of the critical issues and struggles of the day.

Gina Hotta was my comrade, my roommate, and my friend. I met her when I first became active in CANE - the Committee Against Nihonmachi Eviction, which was at that time transitioning to doing work on redress for the WWII internment. CANE or JCPA, as it came to be known, eventually became a founding member of the NCRR and our work was instrumental in winning passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. But Gina was involved in CANE long before the redress work was taken up in earnest. She was a member when CANE’s main goal was to stop the physical destruction of our community for the sake of tourism and big business. In CANE she demonstrated, rallied, picketed and linked arms against the police to prevent more residents from being thrown out of their homes. She was an early and ardent supporter of Nobirukai, the Japanese newcomers group. She organized at her workplace, Benihana. Many hours were spent visiting fellow workers, speaking to them in Japanese, urging them to support unionization. She walked the picket line in support of Japanese warehousemen trying to unionize. Her later work in Bay Area Asians for Nuclear Disarmament (BAAND) and with the Hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) helped raise those issues in the community’s conscience.

We also remember Gina for her spacey-ness, her eccentricities, her always deliberate hesitation before she spoke, her laugh that came a split second after everyone else ‘got it.” Yet, she was not dull by any means. She was politically sharp, always spoke her mind and had an unflagging working class perspective. We recall the time a group of us was picketing at the Nishimoto Japanese food warehouse and I got into a fight with one of the bosses and Gina immediately stepped right in between us and said “cool it.” After things calmed down, Eddie Wong, who was taking pictures at the time, and who isn’t easily impressed, was heard to say, “Wow, the sister is STRONG.”

And lastly, we are so happy Gina found her calling at KPFA. Through the years we listened to her on the radio and heard about the great things she’d done. As so many have and will attest to, Gina was a revolutionary and gave voice to the community. Her commitment and passion for peace and justice never waned. We shall deeply miss her.

I don’t think I can do justice to Gina for all that she has done and all the people and events she has impacted. But one thing I can say is that for us, we are proud of you Gina. We are proud of all that you were and all that you stood for. Because in a way, you were a mirror of who we are and the embodiment of what we tried, and are trying, to do. You have inspired a new generation, but for the older generation, you reaffirm that what we were doing was right. And so while you have physically left us, to me you shall live on and I will see you in the new activists who have taken up the torch, I will see you when I get together with my old friends who may not be working in Jtown anymore, but still have the same ideals and are still carrying on the struggle. And I will picture you still walking the picket line with a cigarette in one hand, a heavy purse over your shoulder, and passing out flyers in the other hand. Farewell, my friend.

Some other remembrances: Hypen