For immediate release:

Rose Ochi to Participate in
Little Rock “Life Interrupted” Conference

Los Angeles, CA -- Rose Ochi, a former internee of Rohwer War Relocation Center, will be participating in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Japanese American National Museum’s landmark partnership project, Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in World War II Arkansas, September 23-26, 2004. With support from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, the multi-faceted conference presents the experiences of Japanese Americans at Jerome and Rohwer, the two War Relocation Authority camps located within Arkansas.

As pro bono counsel, Rose Ochi led the effort to establish Manzanar National Historic Site as a part of the National Park System. Manzanar, in California, was one of ten and the first of the permanent War Relocation Centers at which Japanese Americans were confined during World War II.

Director of the Community Relations Service of the Department of Justice from 1997-2001, Ochi was unanimously confirmed to that post by the U.S. Senate and was the first Asian Pacific American woman to serve at the assistant attorney general level. At the helm of the federal government’s race relation’s arm, Ochi represented the Department in the President’s Initiative on Race White House Task Force, where she emerged as a key figure in fostering national racial reconciliation. She was a major partner in the President’s Hate Crime, Race and Justice Initiatives and Church Arson efforts.

She is currently a Los Angeles Police Commissioner, and the executive director of the California Forensic Science Institute housed at California State University, Los Angeles.

WORKING FOR CALIFORNIA – California State University, Los Angeles: A comprehensive university at the heart of a major metropolitan city. The 175-acre hilltop campus is located five miles east of Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. Since 1947, Cal State L.A. has been a leader in providing quality higher education. Today, the campus comprises a faculty of internationally recognized scholars and artists, and more than 20,000 students with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds that reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Cal State L.A. is one of 23 campuses in the CSU system.

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