Hahn’s Top Aide : Mas Fukai Makes It to Big Leagues

Nearly a half-century has passed, but baseball legend Duke Snider recalls the smiling face of schoolmate Mas Fukai at their 1941 junior high school baseball games. Once in a while, Snider added, Mas--who always took his glove to the games--even filled in at right field.

The Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that, Snider recalled.

“(Fukai) was always a lot of fun to have around,” said Snider, formerly of the Dodgers and now a Montreal Expos announcer. “But right after Pearl Harbor they decided they were going to evacuate all the Japanese; it was really heartbreaking for us because we didn’t think they were any detriment to society.”

Gardena-born Mas Fukai, a 15-year-old with dreams of making it big in professional baseball, was forced with his family to spend the next three years in a relocation camp for other Japanese-Americans in Gila, Ariz.

Fukai emerged a confused and bitter young man . . . .

Four decades later, Mas Fukai, now 60, never made it to the majors but, again in company with a man he looks up to, has achieved prominence of a different kind, and it is growing.

For one thing, he has become a major figure in the effort by Asian-Americans to gain a voice in local politics, both as a member of the Gardena City Council and as an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. His importance in the eyes of the Asian-American community took another step last month when Hahn promoted Fukai to chief deputy, the top job on the supervisor’s 20-member staff.

Members of the Asian Pacific community view Fukai’s appointment in much the same way they hailed Michael Woo’s historic 1985 election as the first Asian to the Los Angeles City Council. Last week, 300 people from Asian-American organizations turned out for a reception honoring Fukai and Dennis Nishikawa, a new city Public Works board member.

But even before his latest promotion, Fukai’s status increased for another reason unrelated to his ties to the Asian community. After Hahn suffered a stroke on Jan. 11, he became inaccessible to all but his immediate family--and Mas Fukai.

Ever since, Fukai has been the only steady link that the news media, and thus the public, has had to the supervisor because he has been the only non-family person permitted to regularly visit Hahn at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital.

Interviewed numerous times about Hahn’s condition, Fukai has issued several unofficial medical bulletins, assuring the public and the 1.5 million residents in Hahn’s district that Hahn will return to his duties soon. But Fukai has parceled out this information carefully so as to protect his boss’s interests. He admitted at one point that political considerations entered into the decision not to reveal that Hahn had had a stroke until nearly a week later.

Though in command of day-to-day operations in Hahn’s office, Fukai contends that he is not filling a power void created by Hahn’s absence.

“I am not going to be Alexander Haig and say ‘I’m in charge,’ ” Fukai joked, referring to the former secretary of state’s famous remark after the 1981 Reagan assassination attempt. “Supervisor Hahn calls the shots; he always has.”

Besides representing Hahn, however, Fukai clearly has his own agenda that both mirrors his county activities and represents deep-seated personal beliefs.

For example, Fukai has been a vocal supporter of redress for the tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans, like himself, who were interned as a security risk during World War II. He has testified several times on the issue at federal hearings.

“My point is not so much redress,” Fukai said in an interview. “(But) money talks in America and somehow that is the only way you’re going to get the attention of the American public to let them know what actually happened in 1942.”

Fukai also has actively worked to expand the influence of Asian-Americans locally. From his longtime association with Hahn for nearly two decades, and as a popular Gardena city councilman for the last dozen years, Fukai has used his ever-expanding political knowledge to guide other Asians into elective office.

“To anybody who has any idea about government, Mas is kind of our model,” said Michael Mitoma, president of the Pacific Business Bank in Carson. “He firmly believes that Asian Pacifics ought to be active in politics.”

Mitoma speaks from experience. Fukai was instrumental in persuading Mitoma to run for the Carson City Council, a seat that he won last week as the first Asian-American to hold public office in that city.

“He’s kind of our guru,” Mitoma said of Fukai.

Fukai has also spent years working with youngsters, guiding them, through sports, past drugs and delinquency. His love of baseball has not diminished and over the years he has coached hundreds of Gardena-area youngsters.

A former insurance salesman, Fukai also has strongly fought, along with Hahn, so-called insurance “redlining” in which motorists living in certain areas must either pay more for coverage or are unable to obtain it at all.

In Gardena, Councilman Fukai fought successfully 12 years ago for a $500 campaign contribution limit, a forerunner of similar ordinances now in effect in other cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego. Fukai’s targets were the several poker clubs in Gardena that he said were too influential.

“We disagreed on that (campaign contribution limit ordinance) furiously and seriously,” said George Anthony, owner of the Eldorado Club. “(Fukai) felt the card clubs controlled the council and that was not so. I felt that if I wanted to give more money to a campaign, I should be able to.” Anthony, however, described Fukai, now in his fourth term, as a “good politician” who is “really a qualified man for what he is doing.”

Fukai also is pioneering an effort for the city to act as insurance carrier for Gardena’s businesses and motorists--a national first for Gardena if it is implemented, according to City Manager Kenneth Landau.

In an interview, Fukai, a soft-spoken man with a quick sense of humor, downplayed these accomplishments and, in a voice filled with awe, attributed them to Hahn.

“Kenny Hahn, outside of my own immediate family, is the closest person that I have ever been with,” Fukai said. “I’ve always had an inferiority complex until I came with him and he has taught me with his logic and common sense that you can meet anybody, you can talk to anybody.

“He took me to the White House, he took me to see the President and the vice president and the governors and all that. . . . He’s given me self-confidence.”

Fukai says he has no ambitions to hold higher elective office or desire to leave Hahn’s staff.

When Mas Fukai, one of four children born to a Gardena farmer, was growing up it was always thought that he would be the one who went to college. But the war and its aftermath, as it shattered his boyhood dreams of becoming a famous baseball player, also discouraged a more mature Fukai from pursuing a professional career.

In the waning days of World War II, Fukai was drafted into the Army. Discharged in 1947, Fukai returned to Gardena and a hostile reception.

“Right on Gardena Boulevard, cars would come by and people would spit on you and yell at you,” Fukai said. “The barber shops, coffee shops had signs, ‘No Japs Allowed.’

“You can’t help but still have a chip on your shoulder,” said Fukai, who claims that he is no longer bitter about the internment.

Fukai went to a trade school, learned body and fender repair skills and for 13 years worked first in a local General Motors plant and then opened a Texaco station with his brother before setting up his own body shop. Later came his stint as an insurance salesman.

With two children of his own, Fukai helped organize a sports league in the Gardena area with its principal aim to divert attention from drugs through sports.

It was this activity that brought him to the attention of Supervisor Kenneth Hahn in 1971. Hahn named Fukai to a post on the county’s Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Commission.

Three years later, Fukai ran for Gardena City Council and won, becoming one of only a few Asian-Americans in elective office in the county. A short time later, Hahn asked him to join his staff, telling him that he needed an Asian-American to act as a liaison with the rapidly growing Asian community in the 2nd Supervisorial District.

Fukai abandoned his insurance practice and plunged into county business, acting as Hahn’s representative “at anything to do with the Asian community.”

In this role, Fukai became increasingly visible and influential, both in the Asian community and on the Gardena City Council.

“He keeps on top of what’s happening and is responsive to people in his city,” said former Gardena Mayor Ed Russ, who served eight years on the council with Fukai. “A lot of councilmen aren’t that way. That comes from being connected with Hahn.”

Russ said that Fukai’s involvement with county government also has worked to Gardena’s advantage, because Hahn’s deputy would tip off the city when money might be available through the county for local projects.

Fukai said his activities all flow from his admiration of Hahn as a “political master.” Through his work with the supervisor, he has gained “the guts” to speak out on issues.

“For him to have as much confidence in me--little Mas Fukai, body and fender man, to run this office, to run an office with a $950,000 budget--it’s very rewarding to me,” said Fukai. However, there are some inherent dangers, he added.

“There’s an added pressure on me because I am Japanese and I know what I do is going to have a great reflection on the entire community.

“There are people out there who hope that I fall on my ass.”