Advisory Circle

Translators

Bay Area Working Group

advisory Circle

Don Mee Choi | Yoko Fukumura | Michiko Hase | | Gwyn Kirk | Deborah Lee |
Martha Matsuoka | Margo Okazawa-Rey | Nobu Tomita

Don Mee Choi is from South Korea.  She received her Ph.D. from The Union Institute & University in interdisciplinary studies with a focus on modern Korean literature.  She lives in Seattle and translates contemporary Korean women's poetry.  She serves as an interpreter and translator for the Network and the U.S. group.  She is interested in the politics of interpretation in the context of transnational feminist organizing and solidarity building and Korean women's demilitarization and decolonization movements.  She is currently involved in Peace Activists' Dictionary, postcards, and publishing projects.

Yoko Fukumura is a doctoral student in the Department of History at UC Santa Cruz.  She is a member of Okinawa Women Act Against Militarism.  Her research focuses on women’s history in Okinawa with perspectives of Japanese colonialism and nationalism (late nineteenth and early twentieth century) and U.S. colonialism in the Okinawan Islands.  In 2006-7 she will be teaching classes in Okinawan history and gender studies at Okinawa Christian University.

Michiko Hase is originally from Japan, where she received undergraduate degrees in history and economics and a master’s in economics. She holds a Ph.D. in American studies and taught women's studies at San Jose State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder. While teaching women’s human rights, Michiko grew interested in international humanitarian law, and is currently studying law at the University of Washington. Michiko’s research and writing includes sexual violence as a weapon of war and the transnational feminist movement to redress Japan's military sexual slavery. As a bilingual person, she is interested in the politics of translation, accent/linguistic discrimination, and the global supremacy of English. She has served as an interpreter at the Network's international meetings and worked on the Peace Activists’ Dictionary and postcard projects.

Deborah Lee is an activist, educator and minister with particular interest in the intersection of social justice and faith.  She has been active in issues relating to U.S. militarism in Asia and Central America, Asian American community issues, race and gender in the United States, youth leadership, and anti-globalization.  She completed her undergraduate studies in Peace and Conflict Studies, and graduate work in theology. She has previously worked as a training director for the Center for Ethics and Economic Policy, a community developer in Recife, Brazil working with Brazilian women and youth, and currently serves as Program director of PANA, the Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific Asian North American Religion, a center of Pacific School of Religion.  She is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, and the co-editor of the book, UnFaithing U.S. Colonialism (1999), commemorating the centennial of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines, Guam, Hawai’i, Samoa, Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Martha Matsuoka comes to the movement for genuine security with a background in urban planning, environmental justice, and community development.  She is currently finishing her dissertation at UCLA that documents the regional scale organizing by community-based organizations in Southeast Los Angeles.  The work is informed and inspired by numerous organizations and experiences: the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, an environmental justice organization in Oakland, California and the East Asia-US-Puerto Rico Women's Network Against Militarism, where she serves as a founding Board member; and as an advisory member to CIPHER, the research arm of SCOPE/The Los Angeles Metropolitan Alliance. She has worked on military base closure and conversion projects at the Presidio of San Francisco and the Alameda Naval Air Station and the redevelopment of former industrial sites in urban neighborhoods.  She provides strategic planning and facilitation support to social change organizations. She is currently a research associate with the Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community at UC Santa Cruz where she works on topics of regional equity and community organizing efforts across the country. In 2005-6 she will be teaching classes in community organizing and environmental justice at Occidental College.

Margo Okazawa-Rey is among the first generation of mixed-race children born to a Japanese “war bride” and an African-American soldier. She was born in Japan and raised there until the age of 10, with Japanese as her first language. She is interested in others whose lives are inextricably linked to the US military. Currently, she is Professor in the PhD Program, School of Human and Organizational Development at Fielding Graduate University, and Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University. She has held endowed chairs at Hamilton College, Scripps College, University of Hartford, and University of Washington. She is the author of “Children of GI Town: Invisible Legacy of Militarized Prostitution” and, with Gwyn Kirk, co-editor of Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives (4th ed., 2007). In the 1970s, she was a member of the Combahee River Collective, a black feminist group that developed the theory of intersectionality as a basis for feminist praxis. She is a board member of the Women of Color Resource Center in Oakland. Her work examines the connections between militarism, economic globalization and impacts on women of color.  Since the spring of 2005 she has been Feminist Research Consultant at the Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling in East Jerusalem, Palestine.

Nobu Tomita