Internment camp experience shaped Matsui's political sensibilities

Sacramento's 13-term Democratic congressman Robert Matsui, who as a 5-month-old infant was sent with his family to an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, has died at age 63 of complications from a rare disorder, his family said Sunday.

Matsui, who headed his party's unsuccessful campaign to retake the House in the November election and who was expected to play a key role in debates on changing Social Security in the new Congress that opens Tuesday, died Saturday night at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., a Washington suburb.

The immediate cause was pneumonia, a complication from myelodysplastic disorder, a stem cell disease that makes bone marrow unable to produce such blood products as red and white blood cells and platelets. The disorder compromises sufferers' immune systems, leaving them with less ability to fight complications.

Matsui, a slight, soft-spoken and affable native of Sacramento born just 2 1/2 months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, had entered the Bethesda hospital on Dec. 24 with pneumonia. One of the nation's most influential Asian American politicians, he had kept publicly quiet about his illness and had been active in the Social Security debate until his hospitalization.

A 1963 graduate of UC Berkeley and a 1966 graduate of UC's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, Matsui was first elected to the House in 1978 after serving on Sacramento's City Council for seven years. He was Sacramento's vice mayor for a year. In November, he was re-elected to his 14th term, which would have started Tuesday, with 71.4 percent of the vote.

"Bob wanted me to express his most profound gratitude to all of those he had the honor to serve and who made his life so extraordinary," his wife, Doris Matsui, said in a statement issued Sunday.

Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., issued a statement saying, "Bob Matsui leaves behind a rich legacy of service that improved the lives of his own constituents, all Americans and people throughout the world."

After she was elected House minority leader in November 2002, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, had handpicked Matsui, the Democrats' third-ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee, to head his party's uphill effort to retake the House in last November's elections. Pelosi and Matsui were sorely disappointed that instead of gaining seats the party actually lost three seats.

"When it came to politics, Bob Matsui was a maestro, orchestrating campaigns across the country that addressed the aspirations of the American people, particularly on his signature issues of economic opportunity, civil liberties and retirement security,'' Pelosi said in a statement. One reason that Pelosi, a year older than Matsui, felt so close to her colleague was that both said they were inspired to enter politics by President John Kennedy's 1961 inaugural speech in which he called for Americans to give back to their nation.

After their Nov. 2 disappointment, Pelosi said the decision on Matsui staying on as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was up to him. House aides said Sunday that even if his disease went into remission, he planned to step down from the post.

Pelosi, who also praised Matsui's "dignity, integrity and passion,'' may name a new campaign chairman in the next several days. Among those mentioned as possible choices shortly after the November election was Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who has been active as a party fund-raiser. However, it's considered likely that Pelosi will now look for someone from outside California to head the campaign efforts.

Matsui was his party's ranking member on the Ways and Means subcommittee dealing with Social Security. Even after he was diagnosed with the disorder that eventually led to his death, Matsui spoke out against President Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security by allowing workers to divert a portion of their contributions to the retirement system to personal investment accounts.

"Social Security is not in crisis, and the financial challenges facing the system are manageable," Matsui said late last year.

Matsui was also known for his pro-trade stand, including his work to win passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and for his concern with protecting the downtrodden. He also got flood control and transportation funding for his hometown.

The third-generation American's concern with helping the marginalized probably stemmed from his experiences as an infant, when he was sent to the Tule Lake camp in far northern California along with his family. His father was forced to give up his produce business in Sacramento when the family was interned for more than three years.

In 1998, Matsui told a press conference how the experience had left an impression. Asked as a schoolboy if he had been in a camp, Matsui said he denied it. "The mere fact that I was incarcerated would've raised the specter that perhaps I was a spy," he said. "That still lives with me.''

In 1988, Matsui helped pass legislation providing redress to the Japanese Americans who were interned during the war. He also helped get national historic status for Manzanar, the bleak site in the eastern Sierra of a large wartime internment camp, and helped create a national monument to the internment experience just off the National Mall in Washington.

"His vision of fairness and principle for how to take care of the disadvantaged and poor was unparalleled in the political arena,'' said another colleague, Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez. Matsui's seat in a heavily Democratic district will be filled in a special election to be called by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The date for the vote was still unscheduled as of Sunday.

The Democrats considered most likely to seek Matsui's seat include state Sen. Deborah Ortiz of Sacramento, whose term ends in 2006; former state Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, who represented Sacramento until he was forced out by term limits in 2004; and Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo, who was elected to a second term in March.

In addition to his wife, with whom he shared homes in Sacramento and Bethesda, Matsui is survived by a son, Brian, and his wife, Amy, and a granddaughter, Anna, all of Bethesda.

Matsui's Washington staff said public services are being planned for Washington and Sacramento.

Contributions can be sent to The Matsui Foundation for Public Service, P.O. Box 1347, Sacramento, CA 95812.