“Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!”
arcadiaweekly.com
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19 - NOVEMBER 25, 2009 VOLUME 14, NO.93
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Federal Stimulus to Fund Improvements to Santa Anita Ave. Clarifying Usage and Adding Bicycle Lanes Top List BY SAMEEA KAMAL
With funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the City of Arcadia is preparing to re-stripe the pavement on Santa Anita Avenue in order to clarify lanes and add a bike lane. The stimulus project involves re-striping the street from Foothill Boulevard to the northern city limits, where there is currently no marking
Arcadia Receives Federal Grant for Water Wells The City of Arcadia had recently obtained a $242,500 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. This money will help fund the construction of two new water wells that will replace existing wells at Camino Real and Longley Way providing improved safety and seismic reliability as well as a higher storage capacity. Since 1996 the City of Arcadia has received approximately $9.3 million in federal grants to improve their water system. These funds have been obtained through ongoing cooperation and contact with key members of the California Congressional Delegation by City staff and the city’s legislative advocacy group, The Ferguson Group. Much of the money that has been received has gone toward improving the seismic reliability, quality, and capacity of the systems that provide water service to the cities of Arcadia and Sierra Madre.
Letter to the Editor I commend the APD for the courage it must require to approach and kill a couple of Brown Bear Cubs. This act demands a barrel of fortitude. Perhaps we should issue a Medal of Honor to those who participated. I have a suspicion that I could have run out and kicked each in the butt and they’d have skidded for the woods. Big question is, why Fish and Game and the Arcadia Gestapo decided
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it shouldn’t be that way.” Wray said the city receives many complaints from drivers confused about the number of lanes, and that the re-striping will stop “daredevils” who try to pass. Due to the low volume of cars on the street, the restriping will not increase traffic, he said. At the next meeting, the city council will approve the
contract to enter into a construction contract, Wray said. The striping will likely begin right after the first of the month. A bike lane will also be added to the wide road, which staff reports say has the potential to be a significant bike corridor for both recreational and residential uses. According to Develop-
Arcadia Historical Museum Honors Japanese Americans
Kelly Kovacic, Receives State Teacher of the Year Award
for how many lanes there are. “It’s an interesting situation because its wide with a median, but each side of the street is wide enough for two cars to drive side by side when it’s really just intended to be one lane and parking lane,” said City Engineer Phil Wray. “But people derive it; they drive two cars on the road and
-Photo by Terry Miller
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BY SAMEEA KAMAL
1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate “military areas” as “exclusion zones,” from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps. It took a mere 46 years for Congress to pass, and President Ronald Reagan sign, legislation which apolo-
Kelly Kovacic, an Arcadia High School graduate and daughter of councilman Gary Kovacic, was selected as one of the five California Teachers of the Year, announced by the state superintendent earlier this month. Kovacic was also selected as California’s nominee for the prestigious National Teacher of the Year competition. The teachers are nominated by their faculty and go through a series of interviews and evaluations at the county and state levels till the pool is narrowed down to five teachers in the state. “Our five California Teachers of the Year are outstanding educators and amazing instructional leaders,” said State Superintendent Jack O’Connell in a statement. “Each Teacher of the Year has many stories to tell about overcoming obstacles, achieving goals, and igniting inspiration. I am honored to congratulate each of them, and I hope that their successes will encourage other educators and aspiring teachers who are working hard each day to make a difference in students’ lives.” Kovacic is a Social Studies teacher for eleventh and twelfth graders at The Preuss School, an intensive college preparatory school for lowincome student populations located on the University of California San Diego campus in La Jolla. “I was really honored to be recognized and it was obvi-
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Taka and Michi Nomura were two of the thousands of Japanese Americans who were forcibly “relocated” from their home in Pasadena in Photos by Terry Miller 1942. The couple now in their 90’s visited the museum Saturday. BY TERRY MILLER
As we approach the 68th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, the curators at a local museum have decided to honor thousands of Japanese Americans who were forced from their homes under an order from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The exhibit, at the Ruth and Charles Gilb Arcadia Historical Museum, explores the temporary assembly center at Santa Anita Race track which was used for the detention of Japanese and Japanese
Americans during World War II. The events that took place nine weeks after Pearl Harbor honors those who were forcibly removed from their homes in the aftermath of the war hysteria and ensuing prejudice. Japanese American internment was the forcible relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese residing in the United States to camps called “War Relocation Camps,” in the wake of Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The
internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally throughout the United States. Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast of the United States were all interned, whereas in Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans composed nearly a third of that territory’s population, only 1,200 to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned. Of those interned, 62 percent were United States citizens. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066 on February 19,