Japanese-American

[Terri]

Hey I'm Terri..Born and raised in the south..well technically North Carolina..now in the Pacific Northwest..I'm 6th generation Japanese-American in my family. I do not speak the language at all..we speak "hayseed" around these parts lol I think I'll never lose my accent lol but that's okay..I guess you could say I never cared about my native culture at all growing up until as of late.

So chances are if you speak or talk to me about anything Japanese I'm probably going to respond to you in a clueless manner because that's all i know..is American.

My grandpa served in WWII in the USMC and of course his family and mine were all put into the internment camps as most know about that difficult time in history. I think it's interesting though about my family's history.

[Ryzorian]

The Japanses natives in Iowa were not put in internment camps if I recall, is a bunch of them that been around Newton for generations. Another piece of American history you might find interesting is the Japanese infantry division from WW2..44th I think...one of the most decorated units in American history.

Me personally, I'm prolly 8th or 9th generation Irish/British, German, Swiss...am basically a mutt..but I don't consider myself European in any way. I'm Native American, it's where I was born.

By the way, Germans weren't treated well in WW1, so it's not just Japanese that had to deal with it historically.

[steven]

Terri, that's interesting. Some people I knew back home had parents who were born in those kinds of internment camps. My grandpa also grew up with Japanese Americans before they got sent to internment camps and he got sent off to war.

Incidentally, they have a museum about this in downtown LA near little Tokyo that is quite interesting. I find it ironic (obviously not in a ha-ha way) that there were Japanese-American families that got screwed over during the war even though they were more American than a lot of white families (judging by generation of course). That Californian land that Japanese-Americans owned is worth unthinkable amounts of money now.

I also have/had some Japanese-American friends growing up. One thing that I always felt bad about was how they got strict treatment by native Japanese teachers where I (and all the other non-Japanese) students were kind of let off.

Even in Japan this concept applies in a weird way in that if you are white/non-asian you get treated particularly well even if you barely speak the language. Whereas if you are Japanese or an Asian who looks particularly Japanese you will get strange looks (not to be rude, but it's almost as though you are handicapped) if you can't speak the language (in Japan of course).

Anyways, I find Japanese-American history to be fascinating. It's one of those things that needs to be talked about more in California. I think history has and will repeat itself with this kind of thing.