Midori Shimanouchi Lederer, the founder and president emeritus of Japanese American Social Services, Inc. (familiarly known as JASSI), died on Wednesday, March 9, 2005 at her home in Manhattan. She was 81. The cause was respiratory failure, said her husband Peter Lederer.

She liked to be called a "volunteer for JASSI", which has been serving the social service needs of members of the Japanese and Japanese American community in the New York area since she founded it at her dining table in 1981.

She came to her present role via a circuitous route which began when in 1943 she came to New York from one of the internment camps in which she and the rest of her family were incarcerated during World War II.

Her professional career as a publicist grew out of her work in the fifties for film producer and entrepreneur Michael Todd, whose "Around the World in 80 Days" won an Academy Award. That work led to close friendships that ranged from SJ. Perelman to Ogden Nash and others who worked on the film. In 1960, after Todd's death, she joined the firm Bill Doll & Company to handle publicity for clients such as Federico Fellini, Maurice Chevalier, Judy Garland, Louis Armstrong, Andre Watts and other prominent artists. She roamed as far afield as the Nuremberg and Paris Toy Fairs, and Tokyo, to introduce and publicize Silly Putty® for its then owner, Peter Hodgson.

In 1971 she began doing volunteer work for the Lower East Side Center, a drug rehabilitation agency which had a special program for elderly Chinese drug addicts. Eight years later she became a volunteer for Japanese American Help for the Aging. In 1981 she founded JASSI, which this year celebrates its 24th year of serving senior citizens, undocumented workers, abused women, non-English-speaking hospital patients and others in need of direct help, advocacy, information and referrals. With her boundless energy and organizational skills, she built JASSI into the well-respected agency that it now is. In Tokyo she organized JASSI/Japan, comprised of former JASSI volunteers who have returned to Japan and who focus on raising funds for JASSI through bazaars and other special events. In recognition of her community activism, she received a number of awards, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, an Outstanding Asian Americans Award from Gov. Mario Cuomo, a Justice in Action award from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and The Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Emperor of Japan. A founding member of the board of the Asian American Federation of New York, she has also served on the boards of The Methodist Church Home for the Aged and the Japanese American Association of New York.

Born in California in 1923, Midori was the youngest of five children born to immigrant parents. Her father, until his death in internment camp, was the publisher of a Japanese language newspaper. Her brothers, unable to find work in the California of the 1930's, returned to Japan and had distinguished careers in the Japanese Foreign Service. "Henry" Shimanouchi served as the Consul General to Los Angeles and as Japanese Ambassador to Norway; "George" Shimanouchi last served as the Deputy Consul General in New York.

In addition to her husband Peter, she is survived by her sister, Ida Shimanouchi, of Medford, NJ, and her step-daughter, Patricia Lederer Michaels, of New York.

Midori was a member of ATPAM's Press Agent Chapter since 1964.