This past year I found my relationship with the Japanese American community at a crossroads. Had we grown apart? Had we never been right for each other in the first place? Was there something else? Maybe another community? Was it a lack of communication? Or was the love just gone? And the big question—could it be worked out, or was it time to go our separate ways?
However, as I struggled with these questions, I will be the first to admit that I was the main instigator of the conflict I was having with the Japanese American community. You see, for the past few years, I have been flirting with another community off and on. After six years of exploration, a few casual events, and two weeks in the motherland, I was ready to make a commitment to the Korean American community and to being Korean American.
I joined a Korean drumming group in college and I began to buy kimchi in bulk. I flirted with using my Korean name, Hyun Sook, instead of my American name, and I spent many a cold Berkeley night huddled around shared pots of kimchi ramen and Korean beef. I called older males “oppa” and older females “unni” and tried to capitalize on the fact that I’m ethnically full Korean, born in Seoul, South Korea. I watched Korean dramas night and day, attempting to copy the girls’ looks and mannerisms.
However, despite my best efforts, my Korean American fling was short-lived, at least for this year. I found that no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t feel part of the Korean American community. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t understand the culture. I didn’t know the history, and I hadn’t even met the people, the organizations, or the programs. At best, I learned to cook a mean kimchi soup and at worst, I began to understand that my Korean American identity is perhaps lacking.
It was then that I realized how much my relationship with the Japanese American community meant to me, and I ran back into its arms. Not to say that a future in the Korean American community isn’t a potential reality, but for the time being, I have admitted temporary defeat.
And in doing so, I have come to truly appreciate my relationship with the Japanese American community. I grew up going to church, playing basketball, learning minyo, and attending JACL board meetings. As a child I watched my uncles pound mochi, and as a teenager I traveled to Manzanar each year. My comfort food is chazuke, and I still tell my Vietnamese roommate that I am going “ne ne” now, to which she always looks at me in confusion. Often I find myself being too polite for my own good, or unquestioningly respecting authority, or saving Ziploc bags and Styrofoam meat trays, and I wonder if this is all due to being Japanese American.
In the end, though, I’ve come to understand that growing up in a community with a strong cultural identity has given me the foundation to attempt to make inroads into another community which is not always especially welcome of outsiders. As a Korean American literally adopted into the Japanese American community, I do claim the Japanese American community as my own and I am grateful for the place it has given me to grow up in, but I am also able to contrast my inclusion in the Japanese American community and my exclusion in the Korean American community and wonder how I will come to rectify that.
And I guess you can say that my relationship with the Japanese American community is that of an open relationship, based on the familiarity and validation I often find within it. The love is definitely still there—nineteen years and still going strong!
