Breaking The Silence -- An Evening Of Deja Vu . . .

IT IS early Friday evening at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle's International District, and I'm feeling like this has all happened before.

It is more than just a feeling of deja vu, or once again experiencing the calm, dignity and strength that fills the Wing Luke and symbolizes centuries of history and proud traditions embodied in the various exhibits.

Being here triggers something - something sad and poignant but triumphant and courageous, all at the same time.

My first visit to the Wing Luke was almost a year and a half ago, when I met with Bob Santos, executive director of the Chinatown International District Preservation & Development Authority.

Santos, who will be 57 tomorrow, is the unofficial mayor of the International District - commonly called the ID - and has been witness to and catalyst for much of the development there in the past generation.

It was with a loving proprietorship that he showed me the Danny Woo Memorial Garden, where Asian elders till the soil on terraced ground in the midst of the city. There was that same sense of pride and concern when we visited the Denise Louie Early Childhood Education Center, where a cultivation of a different type is practiced at the opposite end of the age spectrum.

The Wing Luke was part of my walking tour of the ID in September 1989, but it is more than that initial visit gnawing at me now, distracting me from the business at hand.

Friday's host is the International Examiner, a bimonthly English-language newspaper billed as the journal of Seattle/King County's Asian communities. We are here to meet Danny Howe, the new editor of the Examiner, and to honor three of his predecessors for their past and present accomplishments.

Mayumi Tsutakawa edited the Examiner in the early days of its 18-year existence, and was recently named director of the King County Arts Commission. Ron Chew, who left the Examiner in 1987, is the new director of the Wing Luke Museum. Bob Shimabukuro, most recent editor of the Examiner, has stepped down to return to his profession as a custom-furniture maker.

Seeing Shimabukuro intensifies the deja vu.

He became editor of the Examiner almost two years ago after editing a local newspaper in Los Angeles and returning to the Northwest to be closer to his daughter.

He said he accepted the job because he felt the newspaper had a special mission: Unlike many Asian publications in the United States, it is written in English and covers all Asian communities rather than one specific ethnic group.

"It allows all Asian American communities to learn about each other," said Shimabukuro. "That was unique and unifying, and unlike almost anything happening in the nation at that time."

We first met about a year ago. Each time our paths crossed at various community events since then, I have been impressed by his commitment and his dedication to purpose.

This setting at the Wing Luke, with Shimabukuro standing across the room, is what keeps haunting me. It dawns on me that is almost an instant replay of another reception held at the Wing Luke exactly one week before.

Then as now, Shimabukuro stood across the room, and the International Examiner was a sponsor. But also joining in the sponsorship were the Asian Pacific AIDS Council, the People of Color Against AIDS (POCAN), the ID community Health Clinic, the ID Housing Alliance, and state Rep. Cal Anderson.

These groups had come together to announce the printing of red, white and black brochures in seven languages - Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Samoan, Lao, Khmer and Tagalog - that tell about the dangers of AIDS.

The evening was called "Breaking Through the Silence," and it changed the way I will feel each time I enter the Wing Luke, and each time I think of Bob Shimabukuro.

Speakers at the first reception talked about the difficulties in getting reluctant local state and federal governments to respond to the AIDS crisis.

Catlin Fullwood, director of POCAN, noted the billions being spent on the savings-and-loan bailout and the war in the Persian Gulf, while only $6 million was allocated by the federal government for AIDS funding this year.

State Rep. Gary Locke pointed to the continuing battle to get AIDS funding in Olympia, and significant gains such as state funding of insurance for people with AIDS so "people need not be impoverished to qualify for assistance."

Then Locke spoke to the theme of the evening:

"This is a great day, when we can be open about AIDS in the Asian community and be willing to spread the word and be honest."

Openness and honesty had been hard to come by. It was difficult to print in seven different languages to seven different cultures about sex and condoms and drugs in a way that was acceptable to each of those communities. It had been hard to get many members of various Asian communities to break the silence about AIDS that frequently exists within tight-knit ethnic communities.

Shimabukuro knew he had to break the silence when his brother Sam's cough - a cough that would not go away - was diagnosed as AIDS in May 1987. Bob and Sam began speaking out about AIDS until Sam died at age 44, in December 1988.

Shimabukuro continued to be a spokesman on an unpopular subject in communities reluctant to recognize that AIDS knows no racial, ethnic, religious or cultural boundaries. In 1989, Bob and other activists worked with POCAN to create the Asian Pacific AIDS Council.

Shimabukuro's act of courage was honored that night for engaging in a battle that he did not have to fight and for standing against mainstream opinion because he knew more people might die if he remained silent.

So, there's a little deja in the Wing Luke and with Bob Shimabukuro on this Friday night. There's also a fitting tribute to a valiant warrior and an outstanding journalist. I wish him well.

We'll talk more later.

Don Williamson's column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday on The Times' editorial pages.