Minami cited the league's famous but "temporary victory" of securing reparations for Japanese internees. Then he struck out at author Michelle Malkin, whose book "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror" was released Monday.

"The publication of the book proves that no victory is permanent," Minami said. "This is why we must continue to speak out, why we must continue to teach."

Minami praised the league's decision to extend its reach by speaking out against racial profiling of Muslims and Arab-Americans after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He said the search for new causes must be the goal of the younger members to keep the organization relevant.

"The JACL is another voice making America live up to its promise," he said. "You must find a vision, discover the value of being an Asian-American. The next chapter will be written by you."

"We don't have a distinct, coherent identity," he said. "We've lost our cultural through-line, which was severed during World War II."

The convention's agenda for Day 1 seemed aimed at restoring some of those connections and in educating visitors about Hawai'i's particular cultural mix. There were lessons given in traditional Japanese bon dancing, as well as other ethnic dances, and a session on the mixed-plate culinary feasts.

In the afternoon, experts in pidgin — more formally called Hawaiian Creole English — gave a crash course in the language born of mixed cultures.

Lee Tonouchi, a well-known pidgin writer and humorist, read two of his pidgin poems and handed out quiz papers asking the audience to correct pidgin grammar in sentences such as "We wen seen dat movie already" (Tonouchi said it should read, "We wen see dat movie already").

One of the conferees in the audience, James Tanabe, said he is Hawai'i-born but spent 25 years on the Mainland. He said there's prejudice against Island people who come back speaking standard English, in addition to prejudice against pidgin speakers here. "Sometimes I think it's an inferiority complex we have," Tanabe said.

Kent Sakoda, a member of the University of Hawai'i second-language studies faculty, agreed. "All of us are schizophrenic at times," he said.

Today's convention agenda will turn its focus more toward civil-rights issues, including

hate crimes, the Patriot Act, affirmative action, and Native Hawaiian and multiethnic concerns.

Ryozo Kato, the Japanese ambassador to the United States, will give an address tomorrow on the role that Japanese-Americans can plan in Japan-American relations.

Yesterday Kato and Masatoshi Muto, Japanese consul general in Honolulu, met briefly with Gov. Linda Lingle at her Capitol office and discussed how Hawai'i's tourism industry can benefit from improved economic conditions in Japan.