Old Sores Fester : Japan Roots: Trips ‘Home’ Spur Debate

When Rose Ochi visited her relatives in Kumamoto, Japan, for the first time, the meeting was filled with the usual pleasantries of greeting distant kin. The talk was mostly about her parents, who long ago had left Japan in search of a better life in California.

But when Ochi, an executive assistant to Mayor Tom Bradley, went with her relatives to visit the ohaka, or family tombstone, she was overcome with emotion. There, alongside the names of her grandparents, great-grandparents and other ancestors, was carved the name of her late father.

Pictures of Ochi with tears in her eyes flashed across television screens in Japan as the media reported on her symbolic homecoming. Ochi’s tears were not the only emotional response triggered by the trip.

The journey--which she made last year with other Japanese-Americans, and a similar visit by others the year before--have brought to the surface a long-simmering controversy within the community of Americans whose ancestors came from Japan. The debate is over how closely Japanese-Americans should identify themselves with Japan or be perceived as doing so, and for many, the trips symbolized the dilemma.

Trips Arouse Concern

The all-expenses-paid trips made by a handful of Japanese-Americans--just 12 people in all--have became the focus of concern because they were sponsored by the Liberal Democratic Party, Japan’s governing party, with the idea of helping promising young Japanese-Americans to discover their heritage. But the Liberal Star, the party’s monthly publication, said that another goal was to persuade influential Japanese-Americans to lobby for Japanese interests in the United States.

The debate triggered by the trips has exposed divisions along generational lines, renewing the pain of emotional wounds among older Japanese-Americans and fueling a pride in ethnic heritage among their children. The issue is especially sensitive because there is mounting ill-feeling toward Japan over trade issues and the estimated $50-billion trade deficit with Japan that the United States suffered last year.

Bitter Memories

The trips, and the ties they seek to foster, are troubling to many older Japanese-Americans who want to avoid any political or economic association with Japan. They remember with bitterness the concentration camps into which they and their kin were herded after Pearl Harbor, the hardships and losses they had to endure because their fellow Americans did not believe that they could be loyal to the United States.

They fear that as U.S.-Japan relations grow increasingly touchy, Japanese-Americans will once again suffer for Japan’s actions. They don’t want to be put in the position of choosing sides merely because of their ethnic origins.

“Nothing offends me more than for someone to talk (to me) of cherry blossoms in Japan in spring,” says U.S. Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), who spent three years of his early childhood in an internment camp. “They are well-intentioned people, but I don’t go up to an Italian (-American) person and talk about Gucci shoes.”

Like other ethnic groups at varying times, Japanese-Americans are worrying more about the conflicts raised by the controversial role in the world of their ancestral country. The questions posed by this issue have echoes in the arguments Jewish-Americans have over how closely they should be affiliated with Israel.

Among younger Japanese-Americans, however, there appears to be a new curiosity about Japan, a new assertiveness and pride in their heritage. They feel it is important to sensitize the public at large about Japanese-Americans.

For his parents’ generation, Kris Ikejiri, 29, says, “One of the greatest insults was to be called Japanese. They still blame Japan for what happened because of the relocation camps.”

But Ikejiri, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington and a participant in one of the trips, explains, “Wounds of that generation should not scar the next.”

Liaison Group Withdraws

One result of the controversy is that the Japanese-American Citizen League, a national civil rights group, last year placed a moratorium on its informal role in helping to coordinate the trips and identifying potential trip candidates. Some league members objected to the selection process because the final participants were ultimately decided upon by the Japanese.

Its national board of directors last month rejected a bid to lift that moratorium. (The Liberal Democratic Party, meanwhile, has not indicated whether it will continue the program.)

Critics of the league’s involvement also had maintained that organizing the trips was diverting efforts from the group’s No. 1 priority: the drive on Capitol Hill for federal legislation authorizing compensation to Japanese-Americans who were interned in the concentration camps during the war.

The bitterness of that experience caused many Japanese-Americans to keep as much distance as possible from Japan, concentrating instead on rebuilding their shattered lives.

‘We Did Our Thing’

“The feeling was quite strong that we did our thing in the United States and the Japanese did their thing in Japan. There was feeling (that) there ought not to be strong connections except with relatives,” says Floyd Shimomura, a law professor at UC Davis and former president of the civil rights group.

Today, there is less emphasis on keeping that distance.

Americans of Japanese ancestry have made great strides in legal, political, academic and other professional and corporate ranks. They have reached, some observers believe, a new political maturity and confidence, reflected in their move to seek U.S. compensation for the wartime internment.

Three years ago, the JACL reversed a longstanding position of having nothing to do with Japan and established a U.S.-Japan relations committee. One goal of the committee is to make Japan aware of how its trade policies often have negative political and social repercussions on Japanese- and other Asian-Americans.

Japan Reassessing Role

Meanwhile, Japan has solidified its role as a world economic power and is now reassessing its own international role. The move to develop friendship and good will among Japanese-Americans is itself a change in policy. Ochi of Mayor Bradley’s office believes that many Japanese leaders have a new respect and interest in Japanese-Americans because of the redress efforts.

Wataru Hiraizumi, minister of state in charge of economic planning and the man who started the travel program, concedes that “Japanese-Americans have had to share a very difficult chain of events. Those were horrible days.” But he adds, “Now we’re equal, friendly and interested in each other.”

The travel program was born three years ago when Hiraizumi, then director-general of the Liberal Democratic Party’s international bureau, conceived of the idea of helping Japanese-Americans to get better acquainted with their heritage. He worked through the JACL to identify young Japanese-Americans with leadership qualities, people like attorneys Ochi and Ikejiri, a judge, a California legislative aide, a community affairs representative from KCBS-TV, and a manager of the strategic weapons systems at the Washington office of General Dynamics.

Thinking Explained

Hiraizumi, who speaks fluent English, believes that Japanese-Americans can benefit from learning about their Japanese roots. He likes to recount how President Franklin D. Roosevelt, asked whether he considered Winston Churchill, whose mother was American, 100% British, replied that Churchill was 100% British and 50% American.

“That was a wonderful reply,” says Hiraizumi, suggesting that Japanese-Americans should be interested in becoming similar “150% personalities”--what he calls “value-added” Americans.

The two trips took place in April of 1984 and 1985. Participants were given red-carpet treatment, meeting various Japanese government officials, including Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe.

Besides exposing Japanese-Americans to their ancestral roots, the Liberal Star listed other goals for the trips: to request assistance and cooperation of Japanese-Americans for the elimination of Japan-U.S. economic friction. And for the second: “To encourage Japanese-Americans to serve as a channel for maintaining friendship between Japan and the United States . . . .”

Previous Efforts Recalled

To many Nisei, second-generation Japanese-Americans who were interned along with their Issei or immigrant parents, the goals are disturbingly reminiscent of trips that occurred in the 1930s. Those trips were designed to familiarize the Nisei about Japanese culture and language so that they could become a “bridge of understanding” between the United States and Japan, says Yuji Ichioka, a research associate at UCLA’s Asian-American Studies Center.

That concept, however, took on political overtones when Japan invaded China in 1936, a move that was opposed by the United States. The predicament of Japanese-Americans was magnified many times over in the post-Pearl Harbor hysteria on the West Coast that led to the relocation camps.

Now, the concern among some older Japanese-Americans is that the American public might mistakenly interpret any new-found interest in Japan as advocacy for that country’s trade differences with the United States.

May Become Pawns

Critics of the two trips are particularly troubled that the Sansei, or third-generation Japanese-Americans, may become pawns of the Japanese government.

“We should not become apologists for Japan or their spokespersons in the United States,” says Raymond Okamura, a Berkeley chemist who works for the California Department of Health.

Ichioka, the researcher at UCLA, says the World War II scenario is unlikely to be played out again. He points out that Japanese immigrants account for only a very small segment of the Japanese-American population today, and the issue of dual citizenship for the Nisei is no longer a factor, as it was in the 1930s.

More importantly, Japanese-Americans then were powerless, with little access to local or national government and the media. “Now we have people in positions of influence and some relative power,” Ichioka says.

William Marutani, a judge for the Court of Common Pleas of Pennsylvania, is one of the more outspoken critics of the program.

‘It Is Inappropriate’

“I think it is inappropriate for an American group--and we are an American group--to be courted by a foreign political party . . . . Why is this foreign political party so interested in Japanese-Americans? Does anyone have the answer to that?

“When you get something for nothing, you have got to stop and look, if you have any sophistication, and ask how come? There are no free lunches.”

Adds Okamura: “The difficulty with this (bridge) concept is that a bridge cannot exist when it is anchored on one side. Japanese-Americans, because we are Americans, can only influence one side--the U.S. government. We have no influence in Japan . . . . We cannot in any shape or form influence the prime minister or Diet (parliament) of Japan.”

Of the 12 participants in the trips, only one has made public statements outside of JACL meetings about the program. Ikejiri alone has written articles for the JACL’s weekly publication about his experiences and has voiced disappointment over the group’s decision to suspend its participation.

Deeper Insight

All participants have refrained from discussing Japanese trade or political issues, saying that a single trip to Japan does not give them the expertise to discuss such matters. In interviews, though, some of them say the trips gave them a much deeper insight about themselves as Americans of Japanese ancestry.

Priscilla Ouchida, a legislative aide to California Assemblyman Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) and a Sansei, says her visit with her Japanese relatives was “just like opening up a closed door. Here in the United States, we go back three generations. There I saw great-great-seven times over. It just gave me a greater impact of what my life is about.”

Before the visit, she says, she had no real interest in Japan.

“I guess I had always been afraid to go,” she explains, recalling that as girl she had been told that the Japanese look down on Japanese-Americans because they had abandoned Japan as well as the language. “Since my trip, I’ve made a real point to associate with things Japanese.”

Sensitive to Inheritance

Patrick Ogawa, acting chief of planning and program development at the Los Angeles County Drug Abuse Program Office, says that in meeting the Japanese, he realized that his grandparents and parents have passed onto him some Japanese ways of doing things that occasionally run counter to his American side.

For example, both he and Ouchida say that they were taught as children to avoid eye contact, as they found the Japanese still commonly do. But they have had to unlearn that habit, they say, because it is hampers them in their jobs in America.

They also perceived the Japanese as reserved and unobtrusive, traits that both see in themselves. On the job, they have had to learn to be more openly aggressively, to adapt to the more confrontational ways of the U.S. workplace, they say.

Like other ethnic Americans, Japanese-Americans still encounter discrimination and prejudice. In some recent cases, they and other Asian-Americans have become targets of violence motivated by anti-Japan sentiments. Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American in Detroit, was beaten to death in 1982 after he got into an argument with two white auto workers who mistook him for a Japanese and taunted him about Japanese car imports.

Interests May Not Coincide

Nonetheless, some Japanese-Americans feel their interests may not coincide with those of Japan.

“The only area of mutual concern is perception and how we’re each seen,” says Ron Wakabayashi, executive director of JACL in San Francisco. Otherwise, he says, Japan is looking for a more hospitable and understanding environment for its trade and political policies. Not all Japanese-Americans support those policies, which may run counter to American interests.

Similarly, the Japanese government steers clear of issues that are of no benefit to Japan. It has remained silent on the reparations issue because it sees that as a strictly domestic concern in the United States.

“If a Japanese-American did not talk to a Japanese for the next 10 years, we would still be affected by what they do here,” says Prof. Shimomura at UC Davis. “My feeling is we’re caught in the middle whether we get along with Japan or not. It’s better to have a dialogue with Japan so maybe we can help protect our own interests.”