Remembering Bill Sorro

by Peter Kenichi Yamamoto

What would Bill want us to say of his life? That he wasn’t larger than life but that he WAS life itself. As a devoted father and husband, a comrade and friend, a Brother, Bill was of and for “everyday people”. Bill was ALIVE and he provoked you to take part in being human. Bill cared genuinely about people. He laughed easily WITH people and not AT them. He questioned how people were doing and pointed out WHY things were the way they were.

Bill was always teaching about life in a simple and direct way. He was understandable yet he was deep. He saw things exactly as they were with an added dimension of humanness. Bill saw the warmth and the frailty of our individual lives but he wasn’t weak. He was strong and he fought like a tiger for the people he knew and loved. And who did he love? Not only his own Filipino community but also all Asians of the greater community and the African American and the Latino community. Bill was “just folks” and was OF and BY working people. When you thought of neighborhoods and communities you thought of Bill. Not stuck up or a snob, he was approachable. He came forward and MET you. Bill was contact and meeting. He was discussion and collaboration. Bill was THERE.

I remember speaking on a panel with Bill and Al Robles in front of Steve Nakajo’s college social work class about the International Hotel. Bill taught and demonstrated to the young students how the I-Hotel was part of the political movements sweeping the country in the late 1960’s and the 1970’s. He spoke of how the elderly Filipinos, the Manongs, quote “drew a line in the sand and refused to be pushed any further” unquote. They fought for the rights of elderly Filipino working people, housing rights and the very survival of Manilatown on Kearny Street. They were known and supported not only city-wide but nationally and internationally. Bill drew connections between the civil rights movement—the movement for Black Liberation and the I-Hotel. He also drew the connection between the tremendous anti-war in Vietnam movement and the struggle of the I-Hotel. He saw the whole picture.

After an activity in the community Bill and the gang would go out and eat in Chinatown. I remember him sometimes ending up at Woey Loey Goey to chow down. Food was no small thing for him. Bill was a lover of life.

I also remember traveling down to the Manzanar Pilgrimage with Bill, Al Robles, Bob Rosario, Tony Robles and Shirley Anacheta in a rented car. The car CD player was playing Curtis Mayfield, Nobuko Miyamoto and Sarah Vaughan as we drove the miles away.

We traveled along the winding American River and through South Lake Tahoe. We laughed and joked and reminisced about the old days. Bill and I would talk about how we just didn’t like George Bush. It was a personal dislike. Too many people were being hurt by him. And it was the SYSTEM. We talked about how we would be addressing all our problems if we had Socialism instead of the rotten Capitalism we live in.

Then on down Highway 395 to Manzanar. We stayed up late at the motel in Lone Pine laying in the all-night heated whirpool. Then we all did Tai Chi together in the desert before going to the Manzanar ceremony with folks like Sue Embrey and “Mo” Nishida. On the day we left we bathed in the natural hot springs just off the highway near Independence. Then we stopped overnight at South Lake Tahoe, played a little slots and ate at the buffet.

Bill and Al Robles and I also went on the Tule Lake Pilgrimage. The internment of Japanese during World War II was an episode that Bill was very aware of. He was an internationalist. On the bus ride from the Bay Area we rapped, snoozed and watched the videos about the Concentration Camps and the Japanese American experience.

Bill was quick and incisive. He really was a gentle guy. He was relaxed and lay-back but he was also alert and with bright-eyes and light on his feet: both literally and figuratively. He was quick and his comments and his observations were right there.

Bill understood the individual character of all our different racially and nationally oppressed peoples from the belly-up. He understood the music and the rhythms of life and the people. He understood that the fight for internationalism was key to the liberation of the oppressed people. Bill was an activist. He was always active in the community and worked in the ironworkers union and on housing issues. Bill was a Marxist. He was a Socialist. We shouldn’t be afraid to say that.

He was a revolutionary. I say that with the greatest respect and fondness because it is term that I don’t apply to just anyone. If anyone had “vision”, Bill had it.

Losing Bill shouldn’t freeze us into immobility, rather we should see his example as a light to guide us in this beautiful struggle we call life. “Goodbye” dear Brother and comrade!