I do not have an ethnic identity.
It’s a strange thing to say to start an entry on what the Japanese American community means to me, I know, but I feel I should make it clear. I’ve spent many years struggling over who I am. I’ve finally settled on being someone from Los Angeles, where I’ve lived my entire life, but I know that is a weak personage compared to the people who infuse their identities with centuries of rich history, memories of empire, imagined nostalgia for some grandiose past whose dim, imagined phantom hangs over the far-removed heirs to its legacy. In short, they’ve got some epic stuff backing them up.
I don’t make a claim on a particular past. I don’t speak the language of my ancestors, don’t look like others of my race, don’t have the mannerisms either valued or expected of my supposed ethnic group. As I eased into my adolescence, the period of time when the individual is supposed to sort out who he is, I began to realize that I not only did not share the ethnic identity of my parents, I lacked any sort of ascribed identity, lacked the support structure that goes along with it. While I had cultivated an interest in music and acting throughout my school years, I resolved to abandon these in favor of more practical pursuits when I entered high school, thus eliminating the sole affinity I had for the identity of the artist. So, it was, like, hella ironic when I was literally begged before the day of my high school production of Fiddler on the Roof to play percussion in the orchestra pit.
More than half of the “dorkestra,” as the drama program’s orchestra called itself, came from the same middle school and the same small Japanese-Hawaiian neighborhood in Gardena, despite spanning all different grade levels. These folks became my new best friends, our bonds staying as strong as ever as we graduated one by one. I gradually became a part of not just their peer group, but the community as a whole. It became natural for their parents to be my aunts and uncles. Despite my deep religious skepticism, I was slowly integrated into the music ministry at Faith United Methodist, eventually choosing to attend regular service as well, not because of a religious epiphany, but because the community and support there was unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my piecemeal sampling of Catholic and Protestant mainstream churches. I remember my first obon, my friends embarassed to be the only people over 5 and under 60 wearing yukata, and me stumbling through my first bon odori. I think of gathering with the Watanabe family, less a visitor than a member, to hear my friend’s Nisei grandfather tell his obake stories from Hawaii. I recall my first experience with mochi on New Year’s, completely astounded anything could be so chewy and sticky.
It is these little things that have brought me into the Japanese American community. Individual instances that may be trivial and superficial by themselves, but together form a bigger picture and a greater web of people interacting with each other. I have always had a latent interest in Japan – from my childhood fascination with Godzilla to the days spent as a toddler in the house of my grandfather, who was born in the Japanese American fishing community of Terminal Island, lived in Japan after World War II and, rumour has it, started his first family there. But, the relatively short period of time in which I’ve actually participated in the Nikkei community means I don’t have a lifetime of experience, haven’t participated in community organizations or the ubiquitous sports leagues, and am still very much conscious of being an outsider when I step outside that small, church-centered community.
But, to me, the Japanese American community has a more personal significance. I still lack an ethnic identity. I don’t identify myself as Caucasian-, Mexican-, Jewish-, Japanese-, or any other sort of American. But I feel like I can identify with the Japanese American community. I can relate to the values, and the support structure that my Japanese American community has offered is something that had never before existed in my life. I realize that I still know far less about the culture, have far less perspective on the various goings-on than most, probably including all my fellow interns. But, I hope through this program to learn more, realize a broader picture, and most importantly, do something to give back to the wider community that has done so much for me.
