BY DENNIS CAMIRE

WASHINGTON - Sen. Daniel Akaka urged Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff yesterday to add Japanese, Chinese and Korean to a new airport welcome program for overseas visitors to be instituted at Honolulu International Airport.

The program, operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, currently includes only English, French, German and Spanish in a video that helps travelers through the customs and immigration process.

Customs is considering other languages for a revised version of the video because the current program materials were put together for last year's test program at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport.

In a letter to Chertoff, Akaka, D-Hawai'i, said the multilingual approach is important to him.

"I am concerned that information provided only in Western European languages will not benefit the majority of foreign visitors to Hawai'i and thus jeopardize the effectiveness of the (program)," said Akaka, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Out of 1.8 million international tourists who visited Hawai'i last year, more than 1.3 million were from Japan and more than 100,000 came from China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, Akaka said.

Customs announced last week that the Honolulu airport and 17 others, including those in San Francisco and Seattle, were being added to the program.

The $40 million "model ports" program also includes a "Welcome to the U.S." brochure and a variety of new bilingual direction signs. In the future, Honolulu and the other airports will be equipped with more video monitors, a welcome message and information on the entry process.

Customs also wants to assemble groups of private and public officials to plan ways to create a better passenger experience.

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