Legacies of Postwar Japan’s “War Bride” Era

Posted in Asian Diaspora, History, Live Events, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2018-06-30 03:04Z by Steven

Legacies of Postwar Japan’s “War Bride” Era

Japanese American National Museum
100 North Central Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90012
Telephone: (213) 625-0414
2018-06-30, 09:00-17:30 PDT (Local Time)

Presented in partnership with the Hapa Japan Project at USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture.

During and shortly after the US-Allied Occupation of Japan, the Japanese women who fraternized with soldiers often met opposition from their families and were shunned by other Japanese. Many mixed-raced children faced severe prejudice for being “impure” and born from the former enemy.

This symposium brings together various stakeholders to tell the stories of the war brides and their children. By focusing on the memories, realities, and legacies of this community, this groundbreaking gathering will create opportunities for listening, discussing, healing, and empowering attendees.

Symposium Schedule

9:00am – 9:30am Welcome and Opening Remarks

  • Duncan Williams (USC Shinso Ito Center and Hapa Japan Project)
  • Fredrick Cloyd (author of Dream of the Water Children)

9:30am – 10:40am Session 1 – Occupation/Migration: Women, Children and the U.S. Military Presence

  • Etsuko Crissey (author of Okinawa’s GI Brides: Their Lives in America)
  • Mire Koikari (University of Hawai‘i; author of Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa: Women, Militarized Domesticity, and Transnationalism in East Asia)
  • Elena Tajima Creef (Wellesley College; author of Imaging Japanese America: The Visual Construction of Citizenship, Nation, and the Body and Following Her Own Road: The Life and Art of Mine Okubo)

10:40am – 11:50am Session 2 – Difference and Other: War-Bride and Mixed-race Children’s Representations

  • Margo Okazawa-Rey (Fielding Graduate University; Professor Emeritus, San Francisco State University)
  • Sonia Gomez (University of Chicago; Visiting Scholar, MIT; author of From Picture Brides to War Brides: Race, Gender, and Belonging in the Making of Japanese America)

11:50am – 1:15pm LUNCH BREAK

1:15pm – 2:45pm Session 3 — Book Launch of “Dream of the Water Children: Memory & Mourning in the Black Pacific”

  • Fredrick D. Kakinami Cloyd (author of Dream of the Water Children)
  • Curtiss Takada Rooks (Loyola Marymount University)
  • Angela Tudico (Archives Specialist, National Archives at New York City)

2 :45pm – 3 :00pm COFFEE/TEA BREAK

3 :00pm – 5 :30pm Session 4 – Film and Discussion of “Giving Voice, The Japanese War Brides”

  • Miki Crawford (Producer/author of Giving Voice, The Japanese War Brides)
  • Kathryn Tolbert (Washington Post; Producer/Director of Seven Times Down, Eight Times Up: The Japanese War Brides)

5:30pm Closing Remarks: Fredrick Cloyd

For more information and to RSVP, click here.

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Rising Sun, “Rising Soul”: Mixed Race Japanese of African Descent

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Biography, History, Media Archive, United States, Videos on 2016-02-16 20:30Z by Steven

Rising Sun, “Rising Soul”: Mixed Race Japanese of African Descent

University of Southern California, University Park Campus
Los Angeles, California
Montgomery Ross Fisher Building (MRF)
Montgomery Ross Fisher Auditorium (340)
Friday, 2016-02-26, 14:00-17:00 PST (Local Time)

Rising Soul is a documentary film that explores the question, “What is the impact of Afro-Japanese offspring and their origins as children of Japanese war brides?” At the end of World War II, many Japanese women married American men of African descent and immigrated to the United States. While several stories examine the lives of Japanese war brides who married white Americans, none delve deeply into the history of Japanese war brides who married African Americans, and the journeys of their mixed-race children. Rising Soul explores the transnational juncture of Japanese and African American cultures embodied in the African-descent offspring of Japanese war brides, women that not only faced the challenges of life in the U.S., but who also confronted the adversities of interracial marriages to African Americans – hardships that emanated not only from white society, but also from Japanese including other Japanese war brides married to whites, from African Americans, and from Asian Americans. The documentary seeks to de-mystify Asian and Black identity from a perspective that does not see it as an anomaly or a subset of Hapa or Haafu identity but as something very real, primary, and organic to mixed race. Through interviews, glimpses into cultural phenomena, and historical artifacts, the film illuminates the complexity of that identity, and the betwixt and between and fusion that multiple heritages of color can foster. A panel will feature Rising Soul producer Monique Yamaguchi, screenwriter Velina Hasu Houston; and subjects from the film including Linda Gant, Sumire Gant, Kiyoshi Houston, Curtiss Takada Rooks, and Rika Houston. Excerpts from the film also will be screened.

For more information and to RSVP, click here. View the flyer here.

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Exploring the Realities of Hapa-ness – Curtiss Rooks

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Live Events, Media Archive, Social Science, Videos on 2010-01-27 19:28Z by Steven

Exploring the Realities of Hapa-ness – Curtiss Rooks

Revelations & Resilience: Exploring the Realities of Hapa-ness
Japanese American National Museum
Presented by Discover Nikkei
2008-04-12

Curtiss Takada Rooks
Loyola Marymount University

Introduction: Revelations and Resilience

Part 1

Part 2

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The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed-Heritage Asian Americans

Posted in Anthologies, Asian Diaspora, Books, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2009-10-15 20:55Z by Steven

The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed-Heritage Asian Americans

Temple University Press
June 2001
296 pages
7×10
2 tables 4 figures 3 halftones
paper: EAN: 978-1-56639-847-3 (ISBN: 1-56639-847-9)

edited by Teresa Williams-León and Cynthia L. Nakashima, foreword by Michael Omi

Largely as a result of multiracial activism, the US Census for 2000 offers people the unprecedented opportunity to officially identify themselves with more than one racial group. Among Asian-heritage people in this country and elsewhere, racial and ethnic mixing has a long but unacknowledged history. According to the last US Census, nearly one-third of all interracial marriages included an Asian-descent spouse, and intermarriage rates are accelerating. This unique collection of essays focuses on the construction of identity among people of Asian descent who claim multiple heritages.

In the U.S., discussions of race generally center on matters of black and white; mixed heritage Asian Americans usually figure in conversations about race as an undifferentiated ethnic group or as exotic Eurasians. The contributors to this book disrupt the standard discussions by considering people of mixed Asian ethnicities. They also pay particular attention to non-white multiracial identities to decenter whiteness and reflect the experience of individuals or communities who are considered a minority within a minority. With an entire section devoted to the Asian diaspora, The Sum of Our Parts suggests that questions of multiracial and multiethnic identity are surfacing around the globe. This timely and provocative collection articulates them for social scientists and students.

Table of Contents

  • ForewordMichael Omi
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Reconfiguring Race, Rearticulating Ethnicity – Teresa Williams-León and Cynthia L. Nakashima
  • Part I: Multiraciality and Asian America: Bridging the Hybrid Past to the Multiracial Present
    • 1. Who Is an Asian? Who Is a Pacific Islander? Monoracialism, Multiracial People, and Asian American Communities – Paul Spickard
    • 2. Possibilities of a Multiracial Asian America – Yen Le Espiritu
    • 3. Servants of Culture: The Symbolic Role of Mixed-Race Asians in American Discourse – Cynthia L. Nakashima
    • 4. “The Coming of the Neo-Hawaiian American Race”: Nationalism and Metaphors of the Melting Pot in Popular Accounts of Mixed-Race Individuals – John Chock Rosa
  • Part II: Navigating Sociocultural Terrains of Family and Identity
    • 5. Factors Influencing the Variation in Racial and Ethnic Identity of Mixed-Heritage Persons of Asian Ancestry – Maria P. P. Root
    • 6. Alaska’s Multiracial Asian American Families: Not Just at the Margins – Curtiss Takada Rooks
    • 7. The Diversity of Biracial Individuals: Asian-White and Asian-Minority Biracial Identity – Christine C. Iikima Hall and Trude I. Cooke Turner
    • 8. Black, Japanese, and American: An Asian American Identity Yesterday and Today – Michael C. Thornton and Harold Gates
  • Part III: Remapping Political Landscapes and Communities
    • 9. A Rose by Any Other Name: Names, Multiracial/Multiethnic People, and the Politics of Identity – Daniel A. Nakashima
    • 10. Multiracial Comedy as a Commodity in Hawaii – Darby Li Po Price
    • 11. Doing the Mixed-Race Dance: Negotiating Social Spaces Within the Multiracial Vietnamese American Class Typology – Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde
    • 12. The Convergence of Passing Zones: Multiracial Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals of Asian Descent – Teresa Williams-León
    • 13. Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall: Mapping Discussions of Feminism, Race, and Beauty in Japanese American Beauty Pageants – Rebecca Chiyoko King
    • 14. Mixed but Not Matched: Multiracial People and the Organization of Health Knowledge – Cathy J. Tashiro
  • Part IV: Asian-Descent Multiraciality in Global Perspective
    • 15. “We Paved the Way”: Exemplary Spaces and Mixed Race in Britain – David Parker
    • 16. A Dutch Eurasian Revival? – Mark Taylor Brinsfield
    • 17. Multiethnic Lives and Monoethnic Myths: American-Japanese Amerasians in Japan – Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
    • 18. The Racial Politics of Being Dogla and of “Asian” Descent in Suriname – Loraine Y. Van Tuyl
    • 19. The Tiger and His Stripes: Thai and American Reactions to Tiger Woods’s (Multi-) “Racial Self” – Loraine Y. Van Tuyl
  • Bibliography
  • About the Contributors
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