Okinawa Association of America News

As a mixed-ethnic Yonsei (fourth generation) Nikkei of Japanese and Okinawan descent growing up in southern California, I had a hard time understanding why my mom would say that I was part Okinawan, instead of just Japanese. After all, when I looked at a map of Japan, and saw Okinawa, it seemed that Okinawa was just a part of Japan. It struck me as odd that my mom made the distinction.

When I asked other people to explain it, they couldn't detail anything specific, other than to say, "Okinawans are hairier than Japanese," or "Okinawans are darker." Growing up, and looking at my relatives, they all looked Japanese to me, so I never made much of a distinction. Anyways, at that very early stage in my life, I was having a hard enough time developing my identity in a suburban community in Orange County.

In high school, however, a high school history teacher assigned our class to interview someone who had lived through World War II, and when I asked my mom whom I should talk to, she suggested my paternal grandparents. In talking with my Ba-chan and Ji-chan (my grandmother and grandfather), I learned about how my great-grandfather had come here as a railroad worker, and later had been a farm laborer in the central California valley, before setting up businesses in Los Angeles. From them, I also learned how he had been among the Issei sent to the concentration camps here in America, first at Fort Missoula, then Santa Anita, and later to Rohwer, Arkansas.

Even further, I learned how my grandparents had survived the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, since my Ba-chan had gone back to Japan to marry before the war broke out. My grandparents described in detail the horror of that experience, and the devastation they had lived through.

When I learned of these experiences, I remember being shocked, because I had no idea that my family was so rich in history. During high school the only history books available had a consistent dearth of information on communities of color. Learning about the connection of my family’s history to the broader narrative of society instilled in me a powerful conviction that Asian and Pacific Islanders were a vital, integral part of history and that based upon our experiences, we had a place in discussions about the past, the present, and also the future.

Later, while attending college at UCLA, I persisted in this belief by learning more about my history and the history of other APIs through a double major in English and History, with a specialization in Asian American Studies. Also, during this time, my mom suggested that I contact the Japanese American National Museum, where I learned how to access records on my great-grandfather from the National Archives in Washington D.C.

From then on, I continued to collect oral histories from my relatives and even tracked down my great-grandfather's second wife's son, who lived in Boyle Heights, to learn more about the camp experience. Equipped with this information, I reconstructed a vivid picture of the history of my father's side of the family.

I next proceeded to investigate my mother’s side of the family, since it occurred to me that I had little information on them, though I knew they were from Fukushima and Okinawa. Part of the problem had been that my mother's side was from Hawai'i, and both my maternal grandparents had died when I was still a child. I learned more about their history from relatives and did what I could to learn about their experiences from the plantations to the present, but I still needed answers as far as Okinawans were concerned.

In terms of Okinawan history, an activist friend of mine soon after introduced me to an organization called the Japan Pacific Resource Network, which does research on minority issues in Japan. From them I received an informational pamphlet that had a basic overview on Okinawans and ethnic minorities in Japan.

Intrigued by this history, I later used a senior history seminar on Japanese nationalism as an opportunity to learn more about the issues and history of the Okinawan people. Through this research, however, I was disheartened by the lack of English-language information that existed on Okinawa, not only because of the critical positionality that the colonization of Okinawa played in Japan’s imperialist expansion, but also because the lack of information on Okinawans (Uchinanchu) plays into the popular mythology of Japan as a homogenous society.

In 1995, the rape of a twelve-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemen in Okinawa catapulted the issue of U.S. military bases in Okinawa and Japan into international prominence, as uproar over the issue both in Okinawa and in the United States escalated to levels unheard of in decades.

Through other activists, several interested individuals and I were able to meet people in the Bay Area who had started a group called the Okinawa Peace Network. Together we created a chapter in Los Angeles to establish a local presence on the issue of U.S. military bases and militarism in general, while linking with groups in Hawai’i, around the country, and internationally.

Additionally, through this interest, I became involved with a Young Okinawans group that started out of the Okinawa Association of American (kenjinkai), and continued to stay involved in the community. Through all of this, I have constantly been impressed at the tenacity of an Okinawan identity and community as a minority in a minority group.

My current desire to reenter academia is largely in response to the recent growth of scholarship on Okinawa that has started to appear in print, where very little had existed before. Nonetheless, a dearth of scholarship still persists and gaps in understanding the history and current context of the Okinawan community remain.

It is my goal to fill in the void of information around the issue of how members of the Okinawan diaspora, from the United States and abroad, have interacted with and participated in issues of homeland politics, such as the post-World War II relief effort, issues related to the Reversion of Okinawa to Japan, and the ongoing military base issue.

UCLA’s Asian American Studies program is the ideal location for my work not only because of the presence of prominent scholars such as Japanese American historian Valerie Matsumoto, but also because of other academics such as Henry Yu, Clara Chu, and Shirley Hune who focus on the issues of API diaspora movements.

Additionally, the existence of the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies and noted Japan historians such as Miriam Silverberg, Herman Ooms, and Fred Notehelfer also make UCLA the appropriate choice. The interdepartmental nature of the Asian American Studies MA program also affords me the opportunity to explore a diverse range of disciplines that I can incorporate into my work. I feel that these resources will undoubtedly help develop my critical thinking skills, as I contemplate a doctoral program in the future.

The emphasis on language acquisition in the program will facilitate further Japanese language proficiency on top of my current fluency in Spanish, which will bring additional in-language and international dimensions to my research. Moreover, the location of the program in Los Angeles with its strong Okinawan community, coupled with the resources of the Japanese American National Museum and its International Nikkei Research Project, render UCLA an ideal place to serve my graduate tenure.

All told, I look forward to the opportunity presented by the Asian American Studies MA program and hope others share my enthusiasm for the issues that I hope to focus on.