Jerry Yoshitomi, director of the Japanese-American Community Center, Stanford-educated and married to an Irish-Catholic American, is pondering the cultural fate of his two children, his future grandchildren--the entire Japanese-American community.

He recalls his family's 1988 New Year's Day in Los Angeles: "We woke up in the morning and went to Mass at St. Brigid's, which has a black gospel choir. Fantastic. So we had the Catholic black gospel experience. Before or after, we had coffee and doughnuts somewhere, the typical American thing.

"Then we came (to the center) for the Japanese \o7 Oshogatsu \f7 New Year's program and saw Buddhist archers shoot arrows to ward off evil spirits for the year. Then we ate traditional Japanese rice cakes as part of the New Year's service and saw some entertainment done by a young Japanese-American storyteller. . . .

"On the way home, we stopped in Chinatown for a lunch at King Taco. We didn't plan all this, we didn't think about the cultural context of all this until later, or the need for Alka-Seltzer at the end of the day."

This experience, he says, reflects the healthy cultural diversity of Los Angeles and augurs well for Japanese-Americans maintaining a distinct identity if they choose.

But how are they to make this choice when so many Japanese-Americans, particularly the third and fourth generations, know so little of their history and their heritage?

A 60% rate of intermarriage and the rapid pace of social integration has fueled much soul-searching among Japanese-Americans. Is ethnic suicide, as some term it, the price of assimilation?

The trigger for this collective appraisal has been the often divisive, politically galvanizing issue of redress, reparations to the Japanese-Americans thrown into relocation camps during the war and deprived of property and dignity. President Reagan signed redress legislation this year, authorizing $20,000 in reparations to each of the 60,000 surviving former internees.

"I don't think we are committing ethnic suicide, but there is evidence in both directions," says Grant Ujifusa, co-author of "The Almanac of American Politics" and the legislative expert credited with devising the political strategy for the Japanese American Citizens League that led to the President's signing redress legislation.

"Having successfully lobbied redress, I would hope that it reinvigorates the community, stimulates a sense of pride and achievement in being Japanese and in the power of concerted political action," he says.