voting for obama

I like this. From the Nichi Bei Times, published back in January, an opinion piece by Wayne Nishioka on why he—and his 94-year-old father—are voting for Barack Obama for President: A Lesson from My Father: Vote for Obama. Here's an excerpt:

At 94, going on 95, my dad is voting for Barack Obama.

Why? Because he likes Obama's judgment and the fact that Obama's multi-faceted life forces him to see life from many different perspectives and gives him a fuller understanding of people. My dad also likes Tiger Woods a lot, but Tiger isn't running for president.

I support Obama because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I respect my dad's judgment. I studied Obama, read his books, and learned of the Asians in his family, his growing up surrounded by Asian influences in Hawaii, and his feeling the effects of harsh government policies while living in Indonesia for four years.

Obama's living in Hawaii gave him a historic and an everyday perspective of Asian life. Obama, in describing his family's arrival in Hawaii in 1959, makes historical reference to the indenturing system that kept Japanese, Chinese and Filipino immigrants stooped sunup to sunset in the sugarcane fields and pineapple plantations of Hawaii. My dad was in Hawaii for a number of months, living with an uncle, before his final leap to America. Obama also vividly recounts that a Japanese American man named Freddy, who ran a small market near his family's house in Hawaii, would save his family the choicest cuts of aku for sashimi and give him rice candy with edible wrappers. When I was young, I remember the fun of eating the "wrapper" around the rice candy.

Like Wayne's father, my whole family and I are voting for Barack Obama too. All eyes are on Pennsylvania today, where Hillary Clinton goes into today's primary trailing Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. Once again, it's going to be another interesting day...