Nate Imai – JA community

Growing up in Massachusetts I was hardly exposed to Japanese American culture as a child. The vast majority of my friends were Caucasian and I spent my time both in and out of school without any real cultural identity. The only real connections I had to my heritage were threefold: We would go to Utah every summer to visit my grandparents and my Hapa cousins, my parents would often cook Japanese food, and I knew basic ‘Yonsei vocabulary’ such as ‘shoyu,’ ‘hashi’ and ‘o-chawan.’ Outside these elements, it did not dawn upon me that I could identify with something beyond my surrounding environment.

It wasn’t until late elementary school that I became aware of Japanese culture. My education came, ironically, when my teacher showed a copy of ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ on the last day of 6th grade, because she didn’t have anything better for us to do. I’m pretty sure she knew little of the movie. After watching that video, however, I became aware of a culture of which I was a part.

It was in middle school where I became more aware of my JA heritage. I went to a wealthy, private school named Buckingham Browne & Nichols located in Cambridge, MA. Many of the students already knew each other from elementary school, but since I entered in the 7th grade, I already felt out of sorts with my classmates. In addition, many of the students at BB&N were very wealthy, and I remember feeling embarrassed to invite friends over to our middle-income home. Put on top of that mostly everyone was white, and I began to feel isolated.

These feelings of separation deepened in high school. I continued at BB&N through high school and many of the division in middle school continued to resonate in my later education. I felt more isolated in high school, because I felt it hard to fit in amongst my peers. As a pretty strong athlete, I became a member of the varsity soccer team my junior and senior year. As with many JAs , however, I remained dedicated to my studies, and refrained from going out much. As a result of my studies, I tended to take higher-level courses. Thus I became stuck in a situation where I was splitting my time with the athletic crowd of my high school and the more academic focused students. I found it hard to identify with either group strongly, and as a result I felt more isolated than before.

Things began to change, however, starting junior year when the third JA in my high school arrived. He was Hapa who identified strongly as JA. This student, Daniel Oshima, was very much like me. He excelled in sports and in the classroom. We both were members of the soccer team and took high-level classes. With someone who finally understood my issues and heritage, I began to warm to my time in school.

When it came to apply for college, I immediately looked to the West coast for two reasons: the weather and Asian Americans. I had come to realize, at that point, that being amongst people who shared a similar culture and heritage with me was extremely important and was worth basing my education around. So far UCLA has been the perfect match for me. A university with a challenging academic program, a large Asian American population, and a great location with its proximity to places like Little Tokyo, I have thrived at this school. Being a part of the Nikkei Student Union has made my time at UCLA educating, strengthening and fulfilling. It has truly been a home away from home and has made me feel more comfortable with myself and others than at any other point in my life.

Fiona – Thoughts about my JA community

Right now, I feel like a bit of an outsider, both in the Little Tokyo community and in the larger Japanese American community. I’m not in my school’s NSU, I’ve never played basketball, I never went to Japanese school, and my family doesn’t belong to a temple or a church. I’ve never been formally involved in the Japanese American Community beyond the occasional sukiyaki supper or summertime Obon, or a glance at the front page of the Rafu. I was and continue to be bewildered whenever my parents or sister or other family members begin to talk about the JA community. It’s a complex network of friends, relatives, and old aquaintances whose faces I’ve never seen and whose names I can never keep straight.

When I think about the JA community, the first thing that comes to mind is my family. One of my great-uncles regularly volunteers with various Nikkei senior groups, organizing events and the occasional trip to the theatre or the Laughlin/State Line. I’ve been to Cirque de Soleil with the Nikkei seniors, where they passed around a bag of sembei (my favorite snack) at intermission. When the musical Wicked came to L.A., we went to see it with the seniors. Apparently they liked it quite a bit. And whenever my uncle ends up in the hospital, we hear stories about dozens of his friends coming to visit him with sympathy and good Japanese food.

My grandfather and his brother come from a large family of thirteen children, and my childhood New Year’s holidays were always over-flowing with uncles, aunts, aunties, cousins, and huge platters of kamaboko. Over the years our numbers have begun to dwindle and it’s been awhile since we’ve all gotten together for a big party like the ones from my childhood. The sashimi potluck which I partook in today at the Japanese American National Museum today reminded me of those childhood parties. The association was reinforced by the words of one of my collegeaues, who described the annual summertime sashimi potlucks as a time when the museum comes together as a family. I met a mix of people from all over the museum: Japanese immigrants, second-, third- and fourth-generation Americans, seniors and young folks, happas and hakujins. I can see the museum in my family and my family in the museum.

For me, up to this point in time, the essence of the JA community has been about awesome people making awesome food. After meeting some of the leaders from the community and the volunteers in the museum, I have a greater appreciation of and respect for the people whose passion makes every connection with Japanese culture, no matter how superficial, a reality for any one who cares to experience it. I’m excited by the opportunity to connect more with the community that I’ve been close to all along.