Incarcerated as a child, he participated in the
1963 March on Washington and ’65 Alabama marches.
By P.C. Staff
Todd Isao Endo, whose participation as an American of Japanese ancestry in a pair of the Civil Rights Movement’s milestone events — 1963’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and one of the three 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama for voting rights — would loom large throughout a life dedicated to achievement, purpose and expansion of equal rights under the law for all, died Aug. 23 at the Goodwin House retirement community near Arlington, Va. He was 83.
Todd Endo
Born to Alice Yuriko Sumida Endo and Frank Aiji Endo in Los Angeles on Dec. 30, 1941 — about three weeks after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II — Endo’s pull toward ensuring and extending civil rights was presaged by the injustice his family and he had experienced.
Along with some 125,000 other ethnic Japanese — U.S. citizens and Japanese nationals barred from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens alike — the Endo family was forcibly removed and incarcerated at one of the 10 War Relocation Authority Centers. In their case, it was the camp at Rohwer, Ark.
When the government began releasing some incarcerated Japanese Americans to areas outside the Western Exclusion Zone, the Endos initially moved to Ohio in 1944 with help from the American Friends Service Committee before resettling in Maryland.
In 1962, as a senior at Oberlin College, Endo attended the JACL National Convention in Seattle and won the oratorical contest (see Pacific Citizen, Aug. 3, 1962, tinyurl.com/ca56vmp5).
The next year, after graduating from Oberlin — he would later earn a master’s degree and Ph.D. in education from Stanford and Harvard — Endo joined the JACL contingent that in August 1963 (see Pacific Citizen, Sept. 6, 1963, tinyurl.com/bte6jm6x) participated in the March on Washington, where he heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream Speech.”
On Aug. 15, 1964, Endo and Paula Tsukamoto married. In the March 26, 1965, issue of the Pacific Citizen (see tinyurl.com/2vyrdbms), Endo wrote of how he had been moved to join the Montgomery to Selma march, from March 15-17, after learning of the ultimately fatal assault on Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister whom he had met briefly.
Fifty years later, Endo’s return to Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge was the cover story of the March 20, 2015, issue of the Pacific Citizen (see tinyurl.com/4jhun6za).
During the 50 years between Endo’s visits to Alabama, he helped lead the Model Urban Cooperative High School in Maryland’s Prince George’s County. He would also find employment with the Department of Education, the RAND Corp., the Arlington, Va., public schools, the Fairfax County, Va., public schools (as director of curriculum and instruction) and as a consultant for the National Institute of Education.
Endo’s sister, Marsha Endo Johnson, related how, in 1991, her brother had “accepted a USAID-funded job as education adviser in Cairo, Egypt. After one year in Cairo, he returned to Arlington and became involved in community-building efforts” and how Todd and Paula “helped found the Urban Alternative, a community nonprofit in the Arlington Mill neighborhood in South Arlington, Va.”
Endo also continued to stay “highly involved in the Columbia Pike revitalization efforts, the Arlington Mill Community Center, Aspire (formerly Greenbrier Learning Center), affordable housing projects, the Arlington Community Foundation and many other causes,” Johnson said.
Endo was predeceased by his parents, Alice Yuriko Sumida Endo and Frank Aiji Endo; sister, Cheryl Johnston; and nephew, Greg Johnson. He is survived by his wife, Paula; sons, Scott (Angie) Endo and Erik (Jen) Endo; sister, Marsha Johnson; and six grandchildren.
A celebration of life is planned for 3 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 28 at Arlington Mill Community Center, 909 S. Dinwiddie Street, Arlington, VA 22204.
Suggestions for those wishing to make donations in Endo’s memory include Affordable Homes and Communities (tinyurl.com/wj8pyh8w) and Aspire Afterschool Learning (tinyurl.com/ycxsxkcz).
