00:15.350 --> 00:19.129
I've lived in places where people literally
stared at me.

00:19.260 --> 00:25.850
Um, I remember somebody in a grocery store
walking down the aisle and looking at

00:25.850 --> 00:30.850
me so much that she kind of bumped into
these stacked cans that were,

00:31.180 --> 00:33.490
you know, and all these cans went all over the
place.

00:33.819 --> 00:38.619
You know, I mean, I didn't say anything to
her, and she was a little embarrassed about the

00:38.619 --> 00:44.209
whole thing, but I mean, maybe she had
never seen an Asian woman before.

01:11.769 --> 01:14.139
I'm Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro.

01:14.669 --> 01:19.620
Sometimes I think to be Japanese American is to
be neither Japanese nor American.

01:19.949 --> 01:23.819
In Japan, they certainly don't see us as
Japanese, and in America,

01:23.949 --> 01:29.029
where we've lived now for generations, people
still tend to assume that our real home is on

01:29.029 --> 01:30.339
the other side of the world.

01:33.050 --> 01:37.849
I've asked 12 women to join me in speaking
about how it feels to be Japanese American on

01:37.849 --> 01:38.980
the East Coast.

01:39.269 --> 01:44.069
Most of us grew up one of a kind, the only
Asian Americans for miles around.

01:51.620 --> 01:57.980
Our nearest Japanese American friends were in
Philadelphia, so this meant so much to my

01:57.980 --> 02:04.379
family, to my parents really, to see other
Japanese Americans that they were willing to

02:04.379 --> 02:10.690
drive from rural New Hampshire to Philadelphia
every other Thanksgiving, and every other

02:10.690 --> 02:14.380
Thanksgiving that family drove up to be with us.

02:14.779 --> 02:17.860
I remember one day being in the middle of Vermont.

02:18.380 --> 02:23.419
In a store, and people would come up and just
talk to you because you were such a curiosity.

02:23.919 --> 02:30.160
And one of the gentlemen in the store said
you must be one of five Asians in the state of

02:30.160 --> 02:36.240
Vermont, and they could identify three of us from
Bennington, and there was one woman who had

02:36.240 --> 02:42.309
evidently married a Vermonter, and she was
known all over the state.

02:42.440 --> 02:44.869
I came out to the East Coast a couple of years
ago.

02:45.300 --> 02:50.169
To start going to school, and as a Japanese
American coming out here to the East Coast,

02:50.179 --> 02:54.929
it was really a shock to not see any other
Japanese Americans.

02:55.339 --> 02:58.899
We didn't know any other Asian Americans or
Japanese Americans.

02:58.940 --> 03:00.410
There were none in our town.

03:01.360 --> 03:06.419
Um, there were no other minorities in our town
either for a long time.

03:07.169 --> 03:11.779
I never really knew I was different until
probably I was around 10 years old.

03:20.080 --> 03:24.550
Some of us felt that if we went to Japan there
at least we'd blend in.

03:27.009 --> 03:31.410
Growing up in East Lansing, Michigan, I mean,
you don't see many Japanese walking around the

03:31.410 --> 03:35.970
streets, and it was kind of comforting to think
that I'd be someplace where I could get lost in

03:35.970 --> 03:40.330
the crowd.
Well, what ended up happening was that because

03:40.330 --> 03:46.050
I didn't speak Japanese very well, because I
dressed in Midwestern American clothes and I

03:46.050 --> 03:51.729
didn't really act Japanese. I mean, I really
felt isolated because people stared at me much

03:51.729 --> 03:53.809
more there than they did in East Lansing.

03:55.220 --> 04:01.589
So there I am in the middle of my 16 or 17 year
old adolescent traumas in Japan,

04:02.110 --> 04:06.029
can't read, can't write, can't speak, and as
far as I knew,

04:06.199 --> 04:07.309
I looked Japanese.

04:07.559 --> 04:09.389
It was terribly traumatic.

04:10.699 --> 04:15.520
I hear East Coast people talking about wanting
to go to Japan to find out who they are.

04:16.299 --> 04:21.959
Um, for me that was kind of shocking to hear,
because I never thought about going to Japan

04:21.959 --> 04:27.799
and for me, all my family history and
everything is here in the United States,

04:28.010 --> 04:29.459
specifically on the West Coast.

04:29.730 --> 04:34.290
I very much like to go, but I don't have a
romanticized sense that that's the true me in

04:34.290 --> 04:37.570
Japan, um, and that it's not me here in this
country.

04:38.700 --> 04:41.869
My parents, on the other hand, like others in
their generation,

04:42.220 --> 04:47.730
felt just as much at home in Japan as they did
in the States because my father taught Japanese

04:47.730 --> 04:49.609
literature at the University of Michigan.

04:49.859 --> 04:53.929
He and my mother were always shuttling back and
forth between Ann Arbor and Tokyo.

04:54.179 --> 04:56.929
There was a constant stream of visitors from
Japan.

04:57.709 --> 05:00.940
My mother kept up her flower arranging and sand
painting.

05:01.350 --> 05:05.709
Her watercolors of Ann Arbor always turned into
Japanese landscapes.

05:11.119 --> 05:14.640
A wonderful experience was when, uh, my family
stopped in Hawaii.

05:14.720 --> 05:18.100
We were actually on our way to Taiwan.
We weren't even really going to Hawaii,

05:18.200 --> 05:23.029
but I remember getting off the plane and
everything fit,

05:23.119 --> 05:27.200
you know, we went on the buses and we could hold,
we could reach the straps and we went to the

05:27.200 --> 05:33.140
department stores and all the clothes fit and
um, we were shocked and um, happy

05:34.079 --> 05:37.760
made us think a lot about how things didn't fit
so much when we were at home.

05:39.149 --> 05:43.690
I like to walk in Boston's Chinatown because
there I don't look different.

05:44.019 --> 05:48.809
When you're Asian American on the East Coast,
you rarely have the luxury of feeling ordinary

05:48.809 --> 05:51.920
invisible.
There are moments nearly every day when the

05:51.920 --> 05:54.730
person across from you doesn't see you as
another person,

05:54.899 --> 05:57.380
but as a representative of an entire group.

05:58.600 --> 06:04.390
I remember at a rehearsal of one of my plays a
Korean American actor was talking to a Chinese

06:04.390 --> 06:08.059
American reporter and me in front of an
otherwise Caucasian cast.

06:08.269 --> 06:13.670
He said, our grandparents all hated each other,
but to these white guys we all look the same.

06:14.390 --> 06:19.190
Not only do people think we look alike, they
also tend to confuse race with culture.

06:20.839 --> 06:25.140
I asked women of other Asian ethnicities if
they felt the same way.

06:25.350 --> 06:28.899
The statement, "Oh, you speak English so well."
I mean,

06:29.190 --> 06:34.390
there is not one Asian American person in
this country who has not been asked that

06:34.390 --> 06:36.640
question.
I'm convinced.

06:37.380 --> 06:41.329
People usually open up to you once they get to
know you,

06:41.369 --> 06:44.089
but otherwise they think that you're all the
same.

06:44.920 --> 06:51.899
A few recent violent acts committed against
Asian Americans were

06:51.899 --> 06:57.920
because white Americans look upon Asians or
Asian Americans all as one person,

06:58.399 --> 07:01.940
especially at times of war.
Or during conflicts,

07:02.279 --> 07:08.239
all Asian Americans could substitute
for the enemy,

07:08.359 --> 07:11.350
um, that America is punishing.

07:11.880 --> 07:15.750
This guy was really, really upset with me for
not moving further into the car.

07:16.079 --> 07:19.720
I pointed out to him that there was no place
for me to move anyway because it was too packed.

07:19.720 --> 07:23.989
I couldn't hang on to the overhead bar, but
there really wasn't any place for me to go.

07:24.239 --> 07:27.079
Then he looked at me and said, "I could have
fucked your mother."

07:27.809 --> 07:32.959
You could be my daughter," and started talking
about the Vietnam War and how many women he had

07:32.959 --> 07:39.589
assaulted, raped, killed, whatever in Vietnam,
and I was stunned

07:40.239 --> 07:46.750
and equally shocked that, you know, probably
10 people in the 3 ft square area around me

07:47.119 --> 07:50.480
averted their eyes and refused to even look at
me and acknowledge what was happening,

07:50.519 --> 07:52.239
much less do anything to intervene.

07:53.179 --> 07:58.850
All of us have had similar experiences and
brace ourselves for the occasional attack which

07:58.850 --> 08:01.010
always seems completely off the wall.

08:01.459 --> 08:04.980
Just during my lifetime, America's been at war
in Japan,

08:05.220 --> 08:09.769
Korea, and Vietnam, and when feelings darken
towards any Asian country,

08:09.980 --> 08:11.410
they're often turned on us.

08:18.760 --> 08:25.309
I was born in 1940 in California and my
earliest memories are of being in the

08:25.309 --> 08:30.019
concentration camps that were set up for
Japanese Americans during World War II.

08:30.910 --> 08:35.739
My family and 120,000 Japanese Americans.

08:36.460 --> 08:43.260
Two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were
forcibly removed from their homes and taken

08:43.260 --> 08:49.659
first to assembly centers, often in places like
horse tracks or fairgrounds, and then taken to

08:49.659 --> 08:56.530
ten different locations surrounded by guards
with machine guns in very remote areas.

08:57.880 --> 09:04.770
The fact that we grew up, um, feeling like
second

09:04.770 --> 09:09.919
class citizens because they're constantly
reminded by little things,

09:10.409 --> 09:14.900
um, that our teachers said or the shopkeeper
said.

09:15.530 --> 09:22.520
And so on, and so there was, when we were
evacuated to the

09:22.520 --> 09:27.520
camps, we felt a shame rather than, uh

09:29.429 --> 09:34.450
the injustice of it.
And we, we, uh, didn't talk about it like it

09:34.450 --> 09:38.570
was a, uh, we probably were second-class
citizens.

09:38.630 --> 09:40.000
That's why we were there.

09:41.229 --> 09:46.179
It took a lot of years before the real anger
welled up.

09:47.260 --> 09:51.330
It took an entire generation before we felt
american enough to complain.

09:52.090 --> 09:56.960
In San Francisco there were almost 1,000 people
who came out during the days of the hearings to

09:56.960 --> 10:03.760
just listen to the testimony and the, um, the N
women would all preface their remarks by saying

10:03.760 --> 10:07.799
I haven't talked about this for 40 years and
I've been very angry and I've been very ashamed

10:07.799 --> 10:11.349
and very bitter and now you know I have an
opportunity to say something.

10:11.479 --> 10:15.150
It was really moving, I think for me, you know,
i i still think about it,

10:15.200 --> 10:19.159
um, it showed a lot of their strength and and
their courage for them.

10:19.989 --> 10:22.770
You know, stepping forward to talk about what
happened to them,

10:23.219 --> 10:29.099
I think that if I think about the war and I
think about the the fact that there were a

10:29.099 --> 10:34.979
whole bunch of my relatives and Japanese
Americans like myself who were put into camps

10:34.979 --> 10:38.940
because they happen to look different, it
scares me.

10:39.099 --> 10:45.979
Um, I don't think about it very often, but the
fact of the matter is I can never not

10:45.979 --> 10:47.020
be Japanese American.

10:48.039 --> 10:52.919
Today, because we've been here for several
generations, most Japanese Americans are middle

10:52.919 --> 10:57.390
class and tend not to encounter the terrible
problems of recent Asian immigrants.

10:57.760 --> 11:01.349
But after the experience of the camps, one
still feels uneasy,

11:01.559 --> 11:05.559
as if one should keep one's bags packed and
one's horse saddled at the back door.

11:12.260 --> 11:17.330
We try to think, well, okay, we're not Japanese,
but then we're Japanese American.

11:17.580 --> 11:21.479
Our sense is Japanese American is California
Japanese American.

11:21.770 --> 11:25.419
And neither Rosanna nor I are California
Japanese American,

11:25.630 --> 11:29.179
and there's a huge difference.
There's a huge difference.

11:29.780 --> 11:35.280
The people grow up in communities with many
other Japanese Americans in many cases.

11:35.909 --> 11:37.580
They all went to the same church.

11:37.830 --> 11:42.130
There was a very distinctive style and culture
there, um,

11:42.169 --> 11:45.989
and I think one could certainly see it in the,
uh, language,

11:46.070 --> 11:49.710
and the food.
There is a Japanese style to the way of

11:49.710 --> 11:54.049
relating there.
And neither Rosanna nor I grew up in that kind

11:54.049 --> 11:56.809
of community, and that makes for a different
kind of bird.

11:57.979 --> 12:03.450
I think that Japanese American women on the
East Coast are really strange because they

12:03.450 --> 12:08.250
don't, they talk about being Japanese American,
as if it's something that happens later on in

12:08.250 --> 12:12.570
life, that they're not born that way, that they
have to figure that out and that.

12:13.239 --> 12:18.349
It's strange to me that they think. They talk
about growing up in white neighborhoods,

12:18.469 --> 12:21.979
white suburban neighborhoods, and not knowing
that they were Japanese and American.

12:22.469 --> 12:27.710
I wanted to go to graduate school in New
England primarily to get away from the

12:27.710 --> 12:31.979
community and what I felt were the constraints,
and I think coming to New England I felt

12:31.979 --> 12:36.520
liberated.
Um, what's interesting as I've gotten older and

12:36.520 --> 12:41.679
have had kids is that I miss having that
community and having my kids grow up without a

12:41.679 --> 12:48.200
sense of their ethnicity and um I've reached a
point in my life where I'm now seriously

12:48.200 --> 12:50.059
thinking of going back to California.

12:50.400 --> 12:54.690
It seems like it might be nice to have, you
know, have that kind of community as a,

12:55.200 --> 12:57.349
as some place to feel comfortable in.

12:58.039 --> 13:01.619
It's not that you wouldn't find the same
problems on the west coast,

13:01.710 --> 13:06.109
but you would have less far to go to find
someone who was sympathetic and understood.

13:06.940 --> 13:09.309
Um, how you felt and why you felt that way.

13:11.400 --> 13:17.229
Many of us who were born before the 40s don't
have such an idyllic view of life in California.

13:17.559 --> 13:21.150
After all, if I had been living on the West
Coast during the war,

13:21.359 --> 13:23.630
I would have been put behind barbed wire.

13:24.039 --> 13:28.960
But during the 40s and 50s, I had the normal
happy childhood one might expect in a liberal

13:28.960 --> 13:30.599
university town like Ann Arbor.

13:31.369 --> 13:35.520
During the war, my father was head of the
university's Army language school,

13:35.849 --> 13:40.530
so those years were, ironically enough, the only
time in my childhood that I had as many

13:40.530 --> 13:45.729
Japanese American friends as Caucasian ones.
They were the children of the instructors in

13:45.729 --> 13:49.330
the language school, many recruited from the
internment camps.

13:49.950 --> 13:54.700
Amazingly enough, I don't remember a single act
of prejudice directed against me during the war

13:54.700 --> 13:57.900
years.
Right after Pearl Harbor, friends called my

13:57.900 --> 14:00.250
parents telling them not to worry about a thing.

14:00.539 --> 14:04.330
I remember a classmate in nursery school saying,
You're so lucky.

14:04.500 --> 14:06.299
Whichever side wins, you win.

14:13.250 --> 14:20.150
One of the things about being Asian American
and being part of the so-called model minority

14:20.440 --> 14:26.549
is the issue of being relatively quiet.
I think Asian Americans are taught

14:27.280 --> 14:33.070
very early from a very early age to keep their
emotions in check,

14:33.479 --> 14:39.799
uh, to, um, take into consideration any
situation they're in and not to

14:39.799 --> 14:42.440
upset the balance, um.

14:43.340 --> 14:45.520
Uh, of a particular situation.

14:45.849 --> 14:51.179
I remember as a child, my mother always saying
to me, when I always spoke out of turn,

14:51.530 --> 14:54.619
never to pull the tiger's tail while it's
asleep.

14:56.489 --> 15:02.130
Even if you felt the situation was unfair,
uh, you did not speak up,

15:02.169 --> 15:06.200
it would upset people to criticize them, and so
on.

15:06.570 --> 15:12.330
You have to do well, otherwise you disappoint
your family and disappoint your parents and

15:12.330 --> 15:16.570
whatever.
I was taught by my parents to not show my

15:16.570 --> 15:21.159
emotions and to be calm on the outside, which
is useful.

15:22.010 --> 15:23.210
Um, trait.

15:23.969 --> 15:28.530
Japanese American students are known for
getting A's and also for not speaking out in

15:28.530 --> 15:31.729
class.
Like many others, I'm not comfortable with the

15:31.729 --> 15:37.409
term model minority because it suggests other
minorities are not model and it places a

15:37.409 --> 15:41.400
premium on having good manners rather than on
fighting for your rights.

15:41.849 --> 15:46.239
But it seems that certain model minority
characteristics, good and bad,

15:46.489 --> 15:49.419
are deeply ingrained in Japanese American
values.

15:51.369 --> 15:56.440
Looking out for number one, for instance, it's
a very foreign concept to a Japanese person.

15:57.090 --> 16:02.080
There's a saying in Japan that if a nail sticks
up, hammer it down,

16:02.640 --> 16:08.010
and that's a comment about individuality and how that disrupts.
The social dynamic and you are taught not to be

16:08.335 --> 16:13.184
aggressive, uh,
not to assert yourself; that your feelings, your

16:13.434 --> 16:20.315
individuality is not
as important as the family's name and the

16:20.315 --> 16:26.565
family's aspirations. So it's, it's there's a
tremendous conflict and struggle that goes on

16:26.565 --> 16:31.465
between the child and the family.
And between being in an American school which

16:31.900 --> 16:37.169
rewards you for initiative,
for being aggressive, uh, for defining your

16:37.539 --> 16:44.460
individuality and the home and the family
life, which really rewards you for being part of

16:44.460 --> 16:51.330
a group and knowing your place in the, um,
system.

16:51.659 --> 16:54.669
They say my plays are fairly dark and
outrageous, but I'm known to be extremely

16:54.669 --> 16:58.710
polite during rehearsals.

16:58.909 --> 17:02.590
When I was little, my mother often asked me to
play the piano for guests.

17:02.750 --> 17:06.670
My preference was for showy pieces followed by
a demure exit.

17:07.430 --> 17:10.319
When you're visiting somebody's house, you
would never walk in.

17:10.760 --> 17:15.380
And just announce yourself as my American
friends would do,

17:15.630 --> 17:20.030
you always would only come if you were invited,
never walk in unannounced.

17:20.109 --> 17:21.719
Never come empty handed.

17:21.989 --> 17:28.270
One of the things that I unconsciously passed
on to my children is not to be aggressive and

17:28.270 --> 17:30.829
make demands, and it's amusing.

17:31.500 --> 17:37.599
I, I, I evidently did this by just giving them
a dirty look whenever they asked for something

17:37.599 --> 17:41.119
that I thought was inappropriate.
I can recall going to visit some,

17:41.479 --> 17:42.949
you know, friends with my mother.

17:43.760 --> 17:47.680
And the host or hostess would offer you
something to drink.

17:49.020 --> 17:52.920
And my mother never told me this.
I just knew this was the way that you were

17:52.920 --> 17:53.949
supposed to behave.

17:54.479 --> 17:58.079
It was you always declined politely, no thank
you.

17:59.079 --> 18:02.880
And if you were offered a second time, you might
still decline,

18:02.969 --> 18:07.180
maybe two or three times if you were really thirsty,
you might say yes if it's no trouble.

18:07.290 --> 18:08.290
Thank you very much.

18:09.910 --> 18:15.660
I've often dealt with people who find out that
I'm half Japanese and half German and think,

18:15.790 --> 18:18.750
oh, there's some exotic woman on the other end
of the phone.

18:18.829 --> 18:25.750
I love to meet her, and I try to dissuade them
from pursuing that because I

18:25.750 --> 18:31.310
know that when they meet me, I'm not going to
meet their image because I'm not petite and I'm

18:31.310 --> 18:37.829
not submissive and passive and I don't fit what
I think they're expecting.

18:38.550 --> 18:44.489
In a business sort of relationship or personal,
the thing that runs through my mind constantly,

18:44.579 --> 18:49.819
it's always in the back of my mind is what are
they thinking about me looking at this, this

18:49.819 --> 18:54.339
little Asian woman, um, you know, are they
thinking, oh,

18:54.420 --> 19:01.380
she's just so exotic or um and I have had
actually people just blatantly say to

19:01.380 --> 19:03.209
me, you are so exotic.

19:03.459 --> 19:06.189
They felt that they could take.

19:07.069 --> 19:12.209
any of us up and have liberties, I guess, um,
but it made me very angry.

19:12.339 --> 19:16.609
I've had one man personally ask me if Asian
women were louder in bed,

19:16.939 --> 19:22.040
were hornier, had nicer asses than
women.

19:22.290 --> 19:24.619
American, oh excuse me, white women did.

19:24.819 --> 19:31.619
Some people have stereotypes of Asian, Asian
women and um that is being

19:31.619 --> 19:35.020
passive, um being accommodating.

19:35.540 --> 19:41.989
And I think that those characteristics are true,
but I think they're with each

19:41.989 --> 19:48.989
succeeding generation, um, and myself being third
generation, that um that is subsiding,

19:49.040 --> 19:54.260
and I find myself quite assertive in
situations where I need to be.

20:00.750 --> 20:07.050
A Japanese American friend of mine has 25 first
cousins, all of whom have married Caucasians.

20:07.380 --> 20:11.579
So when she married a Japanese American, her
parents were completely shocked.

20:12.560 --> 20:15.229
I myself am married to Gustavo, a Colombian.

20:16.619 --> 20:19.410
on the East Coast, we've become an endangered
species.

20:21.199 --> 20:25.560
Gene grew up in Connecticut, but we actually
met in San Francisco,

20:25.880 --> 20:29.989
California, protesting a racist Fu Manchu
movie.

20:30.479 --> 20:33.890
On the East Coast, we know of no other Japanese
American couple of our generation.

20:36.560 --> 20:41.500
I've been asked whether I would ever marry a
Japanese man or even a Japanese American man,

20:41.750 --> 20:45.310
and my reaction is to the first.

20:46.030 --> 20:51.939
um, category, Japanese man, probably not. I
would not consider it,

20:52.189 --> 20:59.109
um, just because their expectations of a wife
are quite different from what

20:59.109 --> 21:00.780
I could possibly fulfill.

21:01.150 --> 21:07.000
well, Japanese men are sexist, but then I find
men are sexist,

21:07.020 --> 21:09.709
and the exceptions are those who aren't.

21:09.949 --> 21:16.109
I just have not had an opportunity to date that
many Japanese American men growing up on the

21:16.109 --> 21:21.819
East Coast, so my consciousness really is not
particularly towards any particular race,

21:22.280 --> 21:27.380
it's just finding someone that I can
communicate with and be myself with.

21:27.589 --> 21:32.030
With Gustavo and me, we're never quite sure
where culture ends and personality begins.

21:32.699 --> 21:38.130
I'm very messy when Japanese are supposed to be
tidy, and Gustavo looks at the stacks of books

21:38.130 --> 21:42.729
and papers on the floor and says, of course
they'll blame the Hispanic in the house.

21:42.930 --> 21:46.930
I see my family as being very accepting of
Steve, and part of it does come out in a

21:46.930 --> 21:50.040
reserved way, but that's how I've known them to
be,

21:50.089 --> 21:54.369
for my whole life.
I think we share a sense that we're not somehow

21:54.369 --> 21:55.839
part of the mainstream.

21:56.160 --> 21:58.619
certainly as an interracial couple, we're not
part of the mainstream.

21:59.369 --> 22:00.410
It's, it's uh.

22:01.119 --> 22:05.189
it's a little bit sometimes like we're either
outsiders or we're fashionable.

22:05.239 --> 22:06.699
I can't really tell which.

22:07.069 --> 22:12.750
I think we both thought we probably have pretty
kids because kids from interracial

22:12.750 --> 22:15.979
marriages tend to be pretty, but our two
daughters are,

22:15.989 --> 22:20.060
are just amazingly beautiful, and I can remember
the

22:20.069 --> 22:24.109
the birth of my first daughter, how we
were just stunned by the way she seemed to

22:24.109 --> 22:26.540
blend the characteristics of our two faces.

22:26.910 --> 22:32.310
And I made a concerted effort when we were buying dolls
to buy dolls that were, uh, from

22:32.310 --> 22:36.770
various races, but no matter what I do when we play,
my daughter prefers the blonde-haired

22:36.949 --> 22:40.045
blue-eyed Barbie dolls.
There's no way I can change that in her,

22:40.055 --> 22:43.895
and that's, uh, something that I've been grappling with
in terms of the implications of

22:43.895 --> 22:48.454
that and how I feel about it and also allowing her the
freedom to enjoy whatever toys she

22:48.454 --> 22:52.444
wishes to play with, but in my mind I'm very aware
of that racial difference.

22:52.854 --> 22:57.925
In our case, one of our daughters, uh, seems to be, uh,
feel that she's Japanese American and stays

22:58.155 --> 23:02.135
very much with the community and with the family,
and the other is just the opposite, uh,

23:02.135 --> 23:05.574
she seems to.

23:06.140 --> 23:09.250
Uh, identify very much with, with the majority
culture.

23:10.069 --> 23:16.619
Uh, we also have a six-year-old son, uh, so we're anxious
to see what happens with him,

23:16.660 --> 23:19.969
whether he goes, uh, the Japanese American way or
the other way.

23:20.099 --> 23:23.089
I mean, I have, you know, fairly strong links to Japan.

23:23.260 --> 23:26.010
My mother has really strong links to Japan.

23:26.260 --> 23:29.290
My son is going to have kind of tenuous links to Japan,
 

23:29.540 --> 23:32.050
and by the time he gets married, I'll probably, I mean,

23:32.060 --> 23:33.140
those links will.

23:33.689 --> 23:36.189
I don't know.
I don't know if they'll ever be there

23:36.189 --> 23:40.540
again.
When you're half Japanese and half Caucasian,

23:40.869 --> 23:44.790
you feel like, well, my passing is white because a
lot of people automatically assume

23:44.790 --> 23:50.260
that I am 100?ucasian, and they make my name Irish
O'Shima.

23:50.560 --> 23:56.150
And I often wondered, you know, if I were growing up
in another country like South Africa,

23:56.229 --> 24:00.550
what would happen?
I'm half Japanese and thereby would I be

24:00.550 --> 24:02.430
treated as a colored person.

24:03.099 --> 24:08.089
And when I was at college, I was never included in the
Asian groups and they never invited me

24:08.089 --> 24:10.859
to be a member even though my last name was clearly Asian.

24:11.180 --> 24:14.959
My mom was feeding us Velveeta on wholesome white
bread and,

24:15.239 --> 24:20.109
you know, um.
I guess you know the kinds of things that she

24:20.109 --> 24:26.109
saw on American TV as being idolized as, you know, what
good American housewives fed their

24:26.109 --> 24:32.069
kids, and when she would make her own food she would
apologize for the stinky food she was

24:32.069 --> 24:38.949
making, and we ate both, but I think really had the idea
that hers

24:38.949 --> 24:40.229
was something odd and different.

24:40.630 --> 24:44.900
Until we were older and, and, uh, curious enough on our
own to ask about it.

24:45.829 --> 24:48.060
So I had these kind of mixed messages growing up.

24:50.099 --> 24:54.930
All along,
very few people I have met in my life are half

24:54.939 --> 25:01.910
half, and it's a strange sensation because you
don't identify 100% with either half.

25:02.920 --> 25:05.250
And sometimes you feel alienated from being
American.

25:07.469 --> 25:13.109
My daughter Anna, when she was 3, said, I'm 50%
Japanese, 50% Colombian,

25:13.180 --> 25:15.000
and 100% American.

25:15.430 --> 25:18.430
Maybe we don't always add up to the sum of our
parts.

25:18.780 --> 25:24.060
Coming from two different strains, neither Anna
nor my son Pablo seem to give too much thought

25:24.060 --> 25:25.349
to their roots.

25:25.550 --> 25:28.859
They've always chosen their friends without any
regard to color.

25:29.310 --> 25:32.760
For them, race is not an overriding
consideration.

25:33.469 --> 25:36.989
Speaking just for myself, I can't say I feel
100% American.

25:37.469 --> 25:41.250
But a writer often functions best as an
observer, an outsider.

25:41.660 --> 25:44.369
In many fields, it helps to have a floating
identity.

25:45.550 --> 25:50.619
I think in America, everybody, um, is engaging in
this project of trying to understand who they

25:50.619 --> 25:56.329
are.
Um, but for Asian Americans, there's an

25:56.329 --> 25:59.609
extra layer that they have to deal with.
It's like you have something on your plate

25:59.609 --> 26:05.209
already that you have to eat before you can go
on and, um, worry about the things that everybody

26:05.209 --> 26:08.530
else is worrying about.
If we'd been in a community where there were

26:08.530 --> 26:13.290
other Japanese Americans, we would probably
have been able to identify those things that

26:13.290 --> 26:17.810
were part of the community and part of being
Asian, and those things that weren't,

26:17.859 --> 26:20.640
but because we didn't have anybody else to
identify with,

26:21.180 --> 26:25.030
um,
we just figured it was unique to us.

26:25.880 --> 26:31.319
You really don't understand that you are part
of a culture if you don't have anybody else to

26:31.319 --> 26:37.469
compare it to.
Most of us straddle both worlds and hope to

26:37.469 --> 26:41.500
lose neither.
For us, it's a subtle, complicated business,

26:41.709 --> 26:44.790
but the world takes one look and draws its
conclusion.

26:45.229 --> 26:48.369
In Mykonos, a Greek sailor asked me, Where are
you from?

26:48.510 --> 26:49.979
I said, the States.

26:50.219 --> 26:52.619
He said, Where are you really from?