Yano, Sato helped build Isle identity

Part of what makes a community special is its people, known and unknown, who pass through it and leave their mark.

Two individuals who had a huge impact on the cultural and social soul of the Islands passed away this past week. Their work and their thinking helped shape who we are and how we think about ourselves today.

The first was Maui artist Tadashi Sato, one of a generation of post-World War II artists who combined Island and Asian sensibilities with cutting-edge artistic ideas and techniques.

Sato helped teach us that our art can be our own, not derivative or imitative of others but something that could only come from our own multicultural and tropical environment.

The second was former state senator Vince Yano, a staunch Catholic who nevertheless played a key role in enacting Hawai'i's precedent-setting abortion law. The law, adopted ahead of even the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, effectively took the state out of the abortion question, leaving such matters to a woman and her physician.

Considering the often ugly and contentious ways in which the abortion issue is debated today, it is remarkable that Yano was able to help lead a civil and respectful discussion on this most emotional of issues.

What Yano, the Legislature and the late Gov. John Burns modeled in their handling of this matter echoes through the years.

It teaches that Hawai'i politics can be thoughtful and passionate but also respectful of diversity and the opinions of others.

Yano and Sato, through their work, helped inform us and build an understanding of who we are as a state and as a society.