Jacce S. Mikulanec

A deep-rooted commitment to social justice motivates Jacce S. Mikulanec, whether he is advocating for gay rights, universal preschool or the preservation of the Honouliuli Internment Camp.

"I probably get it from my grandfather, who’s a Methodist minister. He has inspired me and encouraged me my whole life. He’s 94 now and I still talk to him every week," said Mikulanec, 38, an Iowa native who moved to Hawaii in 1999 for graduate studies in archaeology.

His research included field work on Rapa Nui, Vatulele, Fiji, and the island of Hawaii, and resulted in a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii-Manoa, building on a bachelor’s degree in the same subject from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Having grown up around the Iowa Caucuses in a politically active family, Mikulanec gravitated naturally toward civic engagement, and decided to pursue that path rather than continuing toward a doctorate.

He’s worked for Brian Schatz (when Schatz was in the state House and again when he was lieutenant governor), Donovan Dela Cruz (while on the Hono-lulu City Council) and Blake Oshiro (while state House majority leader). Later Mikulanec was with the nonprofit Good Beginnings Alliance, pushing for expanded access to preschool. Now he’s settling into a new job as a business analyst and government relations specialist for Hawaii Medical Service Association.

Mikulanec also is a longtime leader of Equality Hawaii and the Honolulu chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, and it’s that latter affiliation that has him in the news lately. He and many others have worked to include Honouliuli in the national park system as a way to honor the Japanese-Americans and others who were wrongly imprisoned there during World War II, and to highlight a dark chapter of U.S. history so that such discrimination is not repeated. The movement achieved a major milestone last week with the president designating the Oahu site as a national monument.

An avid reader, museum-goer and marathon runner, Mikulanec sees his professional and personal beliefs coalesce in the Honouliuli advocacy and anticipates work ahead to ensure that the remote site becomes widely accessible to the public. "It’s a really important thing to help accomplish and it helps to take the long view."

QUESTION: Regarding Honouliuli, President Barack Obama signed the monument declaration (last week). You were there, right?

ANSWER: Yes. … It was super exciting. Several years ago I was very fortunate to get asked by several friends to join the Japanese American Citizens League chapter here in Honolulu, in Hawaii, and as part of that work, I’ve worked closely with Carole Hayashino at the JCCH (Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii) on a resolution that put together a working group to examine creating Honouliuli as a national park, a national monument. And from that work and everything that came out of it, we were able to then work with the Department of the Interior, and Monsanto, and the university and our local leaders here to actually get the designation made. And so the culmination of this first effort happened just in Washington, D.C., with the president.

Q: What’s next now that the designation has been attained? Clearly there’s a lot of work ahead.

A: Yes, there’s so much work ahead. Any time you create a monument like that and have the cooperation of the National Park System, there’s now an understanding and a hope that the National Park System and the (Interior) department will continue to develop the site into a place that people from around the country and around the world can come to and learn about Honouliuli in the context of World War II and especially in the context of Pearl Harbor. … What’s so critical in my mind, and from the point of view of the Japanese American Citizens League, which is a civil rights-oriented organization, is that when we tell the story of that huge moment in American history, that it’s not just about that bombing and the eventual resolution of the war but also about the internment of and the incarceration of thousands and thousands people around our country. Citizens — American citizens — that were interned. That’s an important chapter that even people here in Hawaii … don’t always understand and have forgotten about. Telling that story so that we don’t repeat what happened then is critical to our state and to the country. …

Q: How, specifically, do you expect the Japanese American Citizens League to be involved moving forward?

A: One of the ways that I think is important is just the general education, partnering with our friends at the JCCH in terms of bringing capacity to the effort. We need to bring awareness … that this site is out there. That’s important. One of the things that specifically I think we will be able to bring as a civil rights organization is this focus on not repeating what happened in the past. When we allow public leaders and elected leaders to make policy based on fear and prejudice, we see the outcome. … And when you look at discrimination faced by our COFA friends here in Hawaii or folks who are in a lower socioeconomic bracket, or any minority, or anyone who is discriminated against — Honouliuli is an example of why we can’t do that. And I think what we will do as JACL is to remind folks that as you are telling the story of Honouliuli, it’s not only a story of the past and honoring our friends and family who were incarcerated there, but always using it as a way to talk about current issues and the future that we want to avoid.

Q: How long have you been involved with the JACL and how did that come about?

A: I’ve been in the JACL for the last five years. I was elected president in November of last year. I was asked to come on the board by my friends Trisha Nakamura and Liann Ebesugawa, who are past presidents. They asked me to come on board after I worked on the civil unions bill that first passed back when Blake Oshiro was majority leader in the state House. I was working for him at the time and the work that I did with outreach to the community and some of the internal work that I did at the House, in their mind, felt like that was a demonstration of civil rights advocacy, and they asked me to come on the board. …

Q: You don’t have to be Japanese to be involved?

A: No, no, not at all. And I am not the first non-Japanese-American to serve as president of the board. … One of the great things about the JACL board locally is the diversity that’s there. We have so many backgrounds, professionally, ethnically, age-wise and so forth that it’s a very rich group and a committed group of leaders, really committed to civil rights in this state. … We have programs throughout the year that call attention to different civil rights issues facing our state, whether it’s around issues of immigration, gay and lesbian rights, discrimination faced by our COFA friends and family, to give you a few examples. …

Q: You mentioned the same-sex marriage bill and I think that’s where a lot of folks will remember you from. You were pretty high profile with Equality Hawaii. Are you still active in the group?

A: Yes, I am. I still serve on their board and it’s a great kind of combined effort between Equality Hawaii and JACL. Because as you know, JACL was one of the first non-LGBT groups to come out and support marriage equality, way back when the Baehr v. Lewin decision was made (in the 1990s).

Q: In terms of the marriage-equality law (approved in 2013), how do you think it’s playing out? …

A: I think the proof is in the pudding. … We’ve seen thousands of couples get married. The world’s kept turning. (As for) our state lawmakers, I think nearly everybody was re-elected who voted for the bill. Things are playing out well. I think the next round of focus will be on these secondary issues, the Pono Choices and sex-ed issues, some of the religious exclusions and so forth will still be points of contention. But just like the conversations that happened around same-sex marriage, these conversations will be great for the community. The dialogue that happened about same-sex marriage as a kitchen-table issue was really important. And I think it led to the passage.

Q: You mentioned that most of the people who were for it were re-elected. Gov. (Neil) Abercrombie was not, and he actually made a point of saying that he thought it was his support of same-sex marriage that hurt his re-election. … What did you think when you heard him say that?

A: Gov. Abercrombie, like many folks in the public spotlight all the time, are sometimes caught off guard and misspeak sometimes. I think he meant to express that this was in many people’s minds a pivotal moment in the administration, that it could have an effect on how people will remember him. But I think at the end of the day, as he said when he left office, one of his greatest accomplishments was signing marriage equality into law. …

Q: You also mentioned Pono Choices (a sexual health-education curriculum that has been controversial in some Hawaii public schools). … Do you think that there’s a compromise that can be reached? …

A: Absolutely. … This isn’t just about gay and lesbian kids, this is about heterosexual kids, this is about kids who have different types of parents, this is about kids who are accessing things from the Internet and TV and the media from a much younger age today. So for anyone to think that our youth aren’t getting lots of information and being asked to make choices and to understand things without any context is just unbelievable. So I think the work that the DOE (Department of Education) is doing and our legislators and that parent groups are doing around this issue is pivotal. They’ve got to come to a consensus. There are community groups like Equality Hawaii and others that are working in a really concerted effort to be able to find some sort of middle ground and move forward. …

Q: Besides JACL and Equality Hawaii, you also were high profile with the Good Beginnings Alliance … advocating for passage of a constitutional amendment that would have allowed private preschools to receive state funding. (Question 4 failed last November). … Do you think that question will be posed to voters again?

A: Well, I think the jury’s out. And I don’t want to speak for GBA, because I’m no longer there. But from when I left, I would say, we really now are turning to a new governor, a new Legislature and of course HSTA to see what they will do to expand (access to preschool) with the tools that they were given after the election, which are limited now. There’s Preschool Open Doors and we have our public schools. … My worry and my concern is that we’re not going to move quickly enough to get the education to those 4-year-olds and their families. … I think that big change takes time, and especially for our neighbor islands and folks in rural communities, this election, as we saw, demonstrated that they want change. It won on the neighbor islands.

Q: Question 4?

A: Right. I think that as this issue percolates further, our elected leaders are going to be hard-pressed not to do something creative and meaningful. … Parents need options and our kids can’t wait. That’s the other thing that I think is weighing on elected leaders now. That in this increasingly global community that we live in, our students can’t afford to wait anymore. … There are too many other communities that are investing in their kids and our kids are missing out. For families who can’t afford preschool, … it’s really unfortunate that they’re not getting the support they need to give those kids a great start in education.