kristin – JA community

being hapa and growing up in a town/schools predominantly latin@ and white, i’ve always felt a disconnect with the ja community. granted, i did some of the traditional stuff when i was super little (you know, chibi k, going to nisei week, etc), and i also attend an old historically ja church, and played in the seyo jball league. not having that community surroundings growing up really led me to not be able to completely and automatically identify with the ja community. it also didn’t help that like, everyone in my town thinks i’m latina, and even some people in college assume that. however, that isn’t to say i was entirely without my ties to the ja community. i had obviously my family, who were and has remained a strong link to my heritage and community. although my dads parents died when i was pretty young, like pre/during middle school, as they were both one of 7 children, my dads family is super huge. while as a family we don’t really do any super traditional things, just being together and being secure in our ties as both family and as ja’s is something that has always connected my family to the broader community.

obviously, my friends growing up have never really been a connection to the ja community. if anything, i’m the reason my blonde blue eyed best friend is obsessed with japanese rice, and another best friend who is mexican-american loves spam musubi. i thought that when i got to college, things would be different, and finally i would be surrounded by people who share my identity. unfortunately, turns out both pomona and the claremont schools idea of ‘diversity’ is sort of a joke. pomona is only 13% api, and i was placed in a hall with mostly white kids, although my roommate was ja and there were a two hapas  (a girl who is a quarter korean and a guy who is half chinese) on my hall. it wasn’t until the second semester of my freshmen year that i took an asian american studies course and i began grappling with my identity again and would that would entail for me.

slowly getting involved with the api community on pomona’s campus and the rest of the 5-cs (going from academia to student groups to activism) has been a hard process for me, but also really important to me and my ideas of community. i felt/feel the same isolation i do with the ja community, but worked hard to alleviate these insecurities. however, as a japanese american, i felt that it was important i addressed that community specifically, and worked last summer at the pacific citizen, and decided to do the nci program this year.

the ja community is obviously really important, and i hope that one day i can fully identify with it and feel a part of it, without my insecurities regarding authenticity and legitimacy. however, my focus is not just on the ja community but the larger api community (and actually if we’re going to be honest, on all matrices of domination). i think that yes, while the ja community clearly has its own struggles both internally and externally, as a community with more privilege than most, we also need to focus outwards on the marginalization within our own broader api community.

ok wait so basically i’m not sure how much i answered the prompt. and i dont want it to sound like i’m some angsty teen. but basically, the ja community means a lot to me, but until i’ve figured out where i want to be and what my identity is, its not something i can fully resound with.  and even in college, we don’t have an NSU, the most we have is AAMP (asian american mentor progrm), which i totally ran away from 1st year (although now i’m head mentor). most ja students at my school don’t really have much of an interest in the ja community either. and most of us are hapa. so, doing things like nci are not just from my desire to get involved in the community and ‘giving back’, but also from a selfish point of view where this sort of thing is pretty affirming for me as someone whose id includes nikkei

Janet – The JA community throughout my life

The JA community has been an important factor and influence throughout my life.  I didn’t really grasp the idea of a community and just believed I grew up in the JA Basketball and Buddhist church crowds, as they served as sources of networking, friendships, and a wide-range of activities and opportunities for service.  My JA friends were strong influences in my life as far as keeping me active in the ongoing activities at the Buddhist church (ie: Girl Scouts, Venture Crew, Judo, Jr. YBA).  Jr. YBA served as an important way to stay connected with the community through volunteer services and programs.  My parents also played an important role in exposing me to the idea that “there’s more to life than basketball”.  Despite my lack of interest, at the time, I tried Japapnese School, Taiko, CYS baseball & volleyball, and although I participated for only a year or two, I look back now and I’m glad I had the opportunity to experience those activities.  The one thing that really tied me to Japanese culture was Suzume-no-Gakko; a 4-week  Japanese culture summer school.  As part of the yonsei generation, I’m not familiar with a lot of Japanese and Japanese American traditions and values.  Suzume was a great program for youth to learn about Japanese culture, language, and history.

The only events I recall celebrating as a family has always been New Year’s.  At the church they always had the opportunity for the Dharma school kids to make and pound mochi.  My mom would wake us up way to early on a holiday for Ozoni and then getting together with family and friends for tons and tons of food.  We also participated and volunteered at Nikkei Matsui Festival and Yu-Ai-Kai walk/run in San Jose Japantown; a festival celebrating Japanese culture and arts, supported by the local community organizations.

JA basketball plays an important role throughout my life, as it has for a majority of the JA community.  Many of my school friends knew that I played basketball, but they never understood why I played in “Asian league”.  I always found it difficult to explain to them, because I had always taken it for granted and it was just part of my life; school during the week, JA basketball Friday-Sunday, January-December.  Looking back now, a big part was the sense of community and having that network of family and friends with common interests and values.  I played for San Jose CYS, Tri-City, and the San Jose Ninjas and participated in tournaments all over the bay, Sacramento, and LA; it was an opportunity to make new friends from other areas of California.  Many of the friends I made from playing JA basketball have lasted through college as I went to Cal State Long Beach with some of them, or part of other organizations or NSU’s.  The JA basketball community is larger than the areas we grew up in or played tournaments in, for my family it provided opportunities for my parents to reconnect with the friends they grew up with in the city and for me it was a familar interest that helped me to adjust to living away from home.

When I moved down to Long Beach for school, initially, I thought that I would continue to stay connected to the JA community, but my first few years I really didn’t.  I realize that not having a car for 2 years made it difficult to keep my motivation to stay involved with the JA community.  And like most people who move away to college, I wanted to experience new things and meet new people.  The NSU at Long Beach is a small organization and growing up around Japanese Americans all my life, I wanted to experience a different network of people.  While continuing to stay active with JA basketball, I became more involved with community service in the Long Beach area and the Filipino culture.  I supported their events and learned new things about their culture and experiences.  In a way this was good for me, because it helped me to see all the things about Japanese culture that I took for granted because they were a normal part of my life.  For the first time, I had to explain to friends what Obon was, how to fold an origami crane, or why I always ran into friends from JA basketball.  My first step to finding my motivation to be involved in the JA community, other than basketball, was when I saw the filipino culture night.  I thought it was an impressive culture show and I wanted to see what more there was to Japanese American Culture.

For my last three years of college, I was involved with Long Beach’s Nikkei Studen Union, as we struggled to keep membership retention and every year attempted to put on some sort of small scale culture activity or event.  Then in my fourth year in college, I became more involved with INC and observing other NSU’s and seeing all the planning they put into their culture nights and Day of Rememberence events.  Slowly, I started to find motivation to participate in the events in Little Tokyo and have become more interested in the things going on.  As I continue to experience new opportunities I’m starting to realize the importance for me to find a balance with all the different aspects of the JA community.  Continuing to see that “there’s more to life than basketball”, and learning how all these different organizations in Little Tokyo make up our community as it continues to thrive.

I will admit, there are so many events and activities that I have taken for granted, thinking that they would always be a part of my life.  I’ve always participated in volunteering at the San Jose Obon and going to support the Mt. View & San Francisco obons; it’s been a place where I run into all those friends I haven’t seen since last year’s obon and also help out the organizations I participated in.  This is the first year, that I may not be able to make it to the San Jose Obon to volunteer and I’m super bummed.  But i’m starting to realize, that if I want to live down here in the LA area, I would like to become more involved with Little Tokyo, as San Jose Japantown is now 6 hours away.  This now means I have the opportunity to be a part of two JA communities.

LiAnn – What the Japanese American community means to me

Before entering college, I had never really associated the word “community” with being “Japanese American”. I took for granted the connections of culture, food, and experience as being something I was just naturally immersed in. Ask any yonsei or sansei and you’ll notice trends.

Yeah. My parents forced me to go to Japanese language school on the weekends.

And yup, I went to temple “Dharma School” on Sundays too.

But even after I quit Japanese school (of my own free will) and became “too busy” to go to temple, I realized my heritage of being “Japanese American” really started as it does with all things — with family.

Every summer, winter, spring break, or any days I had vacation, my mother drove me the three and a half hours down to Los Angeles to visit my grandmother. I think it’s amusing that my first and closest JA friends growing up were at least all past the age of 70. My grandmother, a Nissei, had experienced the injustices of incarceration during WWII, had moved from Chicago cleaning houses, to eventually settling in Los Angeles, as did many other JA families in her neighborhood.

I would have to say that my times spent with her and her friends at church or just next door neighbors introduced me to what I could relate to as being a “community”.  Still, none of the activities I participated with her, was in my mind, unique to a “Japanese American” context. Sure, she made ozoni for New Years Day early in the morning, and she used the term benjo for bathroom, asking me if I had gone before we would leave the house. But this all seemed so nuanced to me. I grew up in a small town and I still carried an ignorance when it came to admitting any cultural awareness.

In 2001, I realized a small glimpse of what being “Japanese American” and having this “community” really meant. I remember the opening exhibition of the Japanese American National Museum was a painter who painted emotional images from his time spent in Jerome and Rowher. Henry Sugimoto’s work and the “common ground” permanent collection was really the first time I heard my grandmother speak of “camp”. She was always soft spoken about this issue and refused to give me details when I asked her about it.

But when I visited JANM with her, she didn’t have to say anything. I understood and I think that my trip there with her really instilled in me this sense of JA history that I had previously thought I never really was connected with. It was also, probably the first time I had ever gone to Little Tokyo.

Her passing three years later, was a real difficult period for me. I felt I had not only lost my grandmother, but a tangible sense of what being Japanese American was. My mother, who is Chinese and whose entire family lives in the Philippines  didn’t experience or grow up in a JA culture or community. Even in my hometown, rarely did I know or even have JA friends. I kind of felt a void in knowing or even appreciating my JA heritage.

College helped change that. Reluctant as I was my freshman year, it wasn’t until I heard about the annual “pilgrimage” to Manzanar in the spring, that I decided to get involved in the Nikkei Student Union. The epiphany of “wow, I am Japanese American” and “yes, I do have a sense of what it means to be JA” sprouted.

Later, I became an intern for the CHIBI-K run, and just recently helped co-head the second group of interns for this annual community event.  I went to almost every culture show on campus and joined the Cultural Awareness and Community Service (CACS) staff committee. I had indirectly filled that void of what being JA had meant.

Learning, is always this evolving process. It never really just abruptly stops, even if you try your hardest to avoid it. That’s how I feel about my experience of understanding Japanese American identity and community — that even when you lose a person, forget a language, stop eating certain foods, that you can’t ever really lose your experience. It’s been the culmination of all these experiences that I can genuinely say that I do understand what it means to be JA, no matter how much I try to forget it. The experience and memory will always remain.

—

Mike Shinoda – Kenji

Wendy – JA community

My first exposure to a Japanese American community was through Daruma-no-gakko a JA cultural summer school that I attended from kindergarten to 6th grade. We made JA arts and crafts like a stuffed daruma pillow, learned how to use a soroban, and sang songs like “Ooki na sakana” at the end of the year Gakugeikai. My regular school was mostly non-Asian students and the ones who were Asian were mainly Chinese American. Even though Daruma was almost all Japanese American kids, I didn’t really make a distinction between those two different communities (those of my regular school and summer school). It wasn’t that the kids at Daruma felt so very different from the kids at my regular school- it just happened to be that most of them had Japanese last names and we all happened to be learning about Japanese cooking and how to write hiragana and count to 100 in Japanese together. However, looking back, Daruma really did become one of my JA communities even if it only existed when we all came together for those four weeks every summer. In high school, I had a number of Chinese American friends so I grew up with a strong feeling about what it meant to be Asian American. However, since I was always the odd one out, I felt that being Japanese American made me alternately either interestingly unique or awkwardly out of place. Sometimes these friends would start speaking in Mandarin much to the chagrin of me and whatever other friends we were with who didn’t speak the language. This would only make me feel even more like the odd one out.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had attended a college in California where the number of “students of color” is much higher than on the East Coast. It has been interesting to compare my experience to the experience of my brother who just graduated from UCLA and who was a very active member of the UCLA NSU. Brown doesn’t have a NSU and while it does have the Japanese Cultural Association, this club is made up of mostly students from Japan- members who can actually speak Japanese fluently and whose experiences are quite different from a yonsei.

So it seems that the JA community has affected me by its presence in some cases but by its actual absence in other cases. Yes, my family has certainly been a strong influence in teaching me the cultural and culinary traditions of JAs but I don’t really look at them as my “JA community”- they’re my family first and foremost. Most of the time I have found that my Japanese American-ness sticks out the most when I’m placed into situations where there are no other Japanese Americans around. In these situations it feels as if I am suddenly designated the sole representative of the whole JA community. And yet I don’t even know how to begin answering the question “what does it mean to be Japanese American?” This is a question that I have really started struggling with recently and still have no clear idea about its answer.

Edward – My JA community

     My definiton of being Japanese American and what it means to be part of the JA community have constantly changed over time. As a Shin-Nisei growing up in San Francisco, I lived the first five or so years of my life exactly as a kid in Japan would. I watched Doraemon, ate rice 3 times a day, and spoke only Japanese at home. I even went to Japanese school on Saturdays for 10 years. Becuase of this I identified myself most as a Japanese person living in America. However this definition changed over time as I went through grade school, became friends with people of varying ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and went through experiences that would not have been possible if I had lived in Japan. I slowly began to see myself as an Asian American.

     However, it wasn’t until college that I really began to understand what it means to be Japanese American. Until that time I had known that a JA communtiy existed, but I felt removed from it since I had never been involved in J-town activities besides stuffing myself with good food, or met anyone who was not a shin-nisei. UCLA has provided the opportunity for me to immerse myself in JA culture, which previously i never knew existed. Through my involvement I have discovered that being Japanese American not only means appreciating Japanese culture, but appreciating the dynamic society that we live in. Through community events such as Chibi-K and Manzanar pilgrimage,  and activities like taiko drumming and culture night,  I felt the the strength of the JA community’s ability to adapt to change in a way that redefines and enhances our cultural heritage. Altough the number of people in our community may not be increasing, the impact of the JA community on the greater American society continues to grow, and I feel that as young adults we have the responsibility to carry on the dream and legacy of our previous generations. 

Katie – My JA community

As with all things, my conception of the Japanese American community has shifted and changed with me over time. When I was little, the only Japanese American thing my family did was a big New Year’s celebration where my family invited all of their (mostly Caucasian) friends to our house to eat Japanese food. It was the one time a year, besides my and my sister’s birthday parties, that my parents entertained guests. I never felt very “Japanese-American” – most of my peers were Mexican, and I spoke a little Spanish, so in some ways I identified more strongly with Mexican-American culture. I knew my father was born in Japan and my grandma didn’t speak English, but she was ill so I never formed much of a relationship with her.  My father’s brothers were pretty much out of the picture, so most of the family I knew was my mom’s relatives. 

 

When I got to be about eight years old, my mom started taking us to the Salinas Buddhist Church to learn the Odori dances. That year she made me and my sister our own kimonos, but I didn’t really know what everything was about. The following year my family moved to San Luis Obispo County, where we were pretty much adopted into the local JA family. 

 

In a lot of ways it was a “typical” JA experience. We started attending the Buddhist temple and I was persuaded to play J-league basketball, which my parents thought would be good for me since I was pretty shy. I use the word “family” to describe the local community because to me that is what it was: everyone is an “auntie” or an “uncle” and all of the “cousins” were like family to me because they were the only other people I knew that celebrated 4th of July with jell-o and nigiri in addition to BBQ, pounded mochi by hand in December, or spent all day cooking for New Years. Most of the families came from a farming background and nobody really spoke Japanese, but we all knew what shoyu and gohan were. A few times a year we would all go to LA, Orange County, and San Mateo to play in JA tournaments where we met other JA kids. It exposed me to the idea that there are lots of other “families” in California that share a similar background as mine – and together, they form a community.

 

By the time I entered college, I thought I was ready to leave the small-town community and my JA family. I wanted to reinvent myself – or rather, I wanted to become the “real” me who didn’t have to worry about her mother finding out every little thing she does. I quickly found that UC Berkeley was a very big place; I wasn’t used to being a nobody all of the time. I joined the Nikkei Student Union in my first semester, where I found a JA community at school. The people in NSU have become my closest friends and even roommates, but it isn’t the same as home. NSU is a lot more diverse – but that is one of the things that I like about it. That topic has found its way into our annual Culture Show, which we hold every fall. Some NSU’ers are from Japan, and hanging out with them I noticed that they did some things a little differently than what I as a JA would do, and it showed me what habits and characteristics are particular to Japanese Americans.  

 

I didn’t really frequent the Japantown in San Francisco until the sale to 3D properties, when I came out for a youth community meeting. I was surprised that there was any, let alone multiple, organizations that served the JA community. I wanted to be a part of it, but for a long time I felt like you had to grow up in J-town, or at least San Francisco, to benefit, and that you had to be older to really make a difference in anything. The next year I was asked to attend an API leadership summit and the same time I was a part of the NSU intern program. Throughout the course of a semester, my conception of the JA and API community struggles and histories expanded greatly. I became invested in NSU and the Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) at Berkeley, where I was logistics coordinator for the Count Me In! Campaign to disaggregate UC application data for AAPI undergraduates. Coming from a decidedly American multiethnic background, I have a hard time settling for just the betterment of “my” community, partly because I come from several communities and partly because I know that my friends and the people I care about are from those communities.

 

I spent the last semester living in Italy and I some ways it reinforced the overwhelmingly American elements of my culture and identity. Hyphenated cultural identities are an American concept, and a lot of Europeans assumed based on my last name that I was either Chinese or Japanese. I had a really hard time saying that I am Japanese because I’m not Japanese: I don’t speak the language, nor have I ever been to Japan. On the other hand, there are some Japanese-influenced parts of me, such as my cravings for tofu and my preference not to wear shoes indoors, which are not a part of the typical American culture that my Italian roommates have seen in movies and TV. 

 

Living abroad I definitely missed the diversity as well as the shared experiences of my culture, and I realized just how important the Japanese American community is to me. It’s important enough for me to want to take some leadership in it, and NCI is the reason why I came back to California when I did. The JA community has always been accepting of me, and I want to give the same kind of opportunities and enrichment that it offered me to other people. At it’s core, that what the JA community is all about: looking out for each other, celebrating our successes, and helping those who need it.

Megan – what the JA community means to me

what the japanese-american community means to me

I don’t think there has ever been a time in my life where I didn’t think of myself as Japanese-American. Growing up in Torrance meant I was constantly surrounded by other Asian-American kids and going to a primarily Japanese-American church (Gardena Valley Baptist Church) gave me exposure to various generations of Japanese-Americans. I went to Mt. Hermon, a summer camp run by the Japanese Evangelical Missionary Society (J.E.M.S), and went to Nisei Week in August. Being a yonsei,  and doing everything that came with it, wasn’t weird – it was just … normal.

When I went away to college – a school where practically everyone is Caucasian – I realized that I took my Asian-American community for granted. There was nothing bad about going up to Seattle but a certain link was definitely missing. It made me reevaluate how I viewed the Japanese-American community, and the greater Asian-American community in general. What I realized meant the most to me when I went away was having a deeper sense of connection. I connected with the girls I lived with on a very general basis – we were all students, we all liked to sleep, we all liked to borrow other people’s clothes – but there was a connection that wasn’t there. Don’t get me wrong – I love all my friends up north – but when they tell me I’m too passive, or that I study too much (which I definitely don’t), or that I’m too ethnically sensitive, I really wish I was back in Southern California. “Why do you eat that?” or “Oh, it doesn’t matter because all Asians look the same anyway” get old after a while. There are just such different values and opinions between my friends and myself at school. Being completely removed from an Asian-American community made that so blatant.

Before the Japanese-American community was just my community. It was just how I lived. Going to the Tofu Festival in the summer was a given. Seeing friends come to church in their F.O.R. jerseys then leaving for their games right after was almost every week. And I never really got how important my friends and family are in playing a part in forming my cultural community until recently. The Japanese-American community was more a comfort blanket in the past, something that was always there but something that I didn’t really think too much of. After going away, I realized how important it is to actually make a personal connection – not just a cultural one – to my Asian-American community.  It’s for this reason that I’m so excited for this internship because it’ll help me get even more in touch with the greater Asian-American community. 

- megan