What Pearl Harbor Means To Me as a Quarter Japanese Woman

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You may be seeing this, or something similar floating around the Internet today:

Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration with just one dissenting vote. Three days later, Japanese allies Germany and Italy also declared war on the United States, and again Congress reciprocated. More than two years into the conflict, America had finally joined World War II.

Many people will see this and take a moment to remember.  Many may have had family who was serving at the time and was attacked at Pearl Harbor and survived…or worse…perished.  But this truly lives in infamy. For many, it meant that the boys would become men and drafted into the military to serve their country.

But what about those who looked like the enemy?  What of those who were of the same ethnicity as the ones who attacked Pearl Harbor?

You probably can’t tell from looking at me, but I’m a quarter Japanese on my mother’s side.  Which means my mother is half Japanese from her father’s side…my Grandpa.

Growing Up on Empty

Me with my Grandpa

Growing up, I adored my Grandpa.  My memories of him are still very potent. He played with me, took care of me while my Mom was at work, take me to baseball games, go on walks with me every day, even when he was tired.  He would also take on the role of a father figure when my Dad was unable to be more involved in my life.  When I was younger, I did look a bit more Japanese, but I didn’t even notice the eyes or ethnicity.  He was my Grandpa.

I was a little over a month shy of turning 7 when he died on December 3rd, 1992 (almost exactly 51 years after Pearl Harbor).  It’s a day that still rocks my memory as I remembered how sad everyone was, and my Grandma telling my cousin, “We’re going to lose him.”

We did lose him. Considering he died when I was so young, I really didn’t get a chance to get to know him.

Learning from the Past

My Grandpa in his Army uniform circa 1940's
My Grandpa in his Army uniform circa 1940’s

It wasn’t until I was much older when I began to dig deep into his past.  Even more so when I was working on my play, Japanese Eyes/American Heart, loosely based on my Grandpa’s experiences during World War II after Pearl Harbor.  I knew of the internment of Japanese-Americans very blandly because my Grandpa had siblings either interred or they served in the military.

My Grandpa was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Isokichi and Suga Matsuo.  Isokichi was born in Japan and got on the boat to Hawaii in 1900 not too long after Japan opened their borders.  Suga was born in Hawaii.  My Grandpa was born in 1920, and in 1940, he enlisted in the United States Army.

I have no doubt that December 7th, 1941 affected him.  Given the location and WHO attacked Pearl Harbor, I imagine there was much worry and concern of how it would affect his family.

His older brother Roy, was sent to Jerome War Relocation Center in Southeastern Arkansas.

Roy's entry in the National Archive's in the Japanese Relocation/Internment Records,
Roy’s entry in the National Archive’s in the Japanese Relocation/Internment Records,

His brother Ted, served as a medic in the famed 442nd to Company F, and was wounded on the second day of combat near Sasseta.

There are also several Matsuo’s who went to relocation centers such as Manzanar and Heart Mountain.  I’m still researching and confirming whether they were a part of my family.

And then there was Keijiro (or as I knew him, “Uncle Kei”).  I’m going to let Ted’s wife, Dorothy Matsuo explain what happened to him, and she recounts in her book, Boyhood To War: History and Anecdotes of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team:

Boyhood to War Bookcover

“Ted Matsuo described the incredible experience of his brother, Keijiro, who had earned an electrical engineering degree from Indiana Tristate College and had gone to Japan to work because no one in the United States or Hawaii would hire  a nisei electrical engineer.  Keijiro had lived for a time with his brother in California, where he enjoyed diving for abalone and lobster off the coast of Monterey.  The FBI was aware of his dives and accused him of mapping the sea floor for the Japanese.  He was arrested, but because of lack of evidence, he was given the option of volunteering for the military in lieu of being incarcerated.  Because they denied him officer status, Keijiro refused military service and was incarcerated at Sand Island.  He was later released and drafted for the engineer battalion in Hawaii” (Matsuo 22).

Dorothy Matsuo, Boyhood to War (22)

Struggling with Identity

I’ve joined several communities full of Japanese Americans. I find these groups to be my sanctury to explore my identity, race, and talk history about our family. Ironically, the folks who have commented on “how Japanese” I look have been white men. But then that goes without saying, what is exactly Japanese? How is it that I’m accepted as Japanese American by others in the Asian community but not to white men? It really messes with your mind.

I’ve had people who have known me for years eventually asking me if I’m part Asian. It’s there, it’s always been there. And it shows that people either “look for the whiteness” or just make very basic assumptions on my appearance. Since I have red hair = Irish = white. I’m more Japanese than Irish if we want to get technical.

Filling in the Gaps

The internment of Japanese Americans has been swept under the rug for years….until recently.

Thanks to many films, and a new musical called Allegiance starring George Takei, Lea Salonga, and Telly Leung, which I had the pleasure of seeing at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2012  I’ll admit that I was incredibly touched by the show and I found myself crying on several occasions.  I hope that this marks more awareness of Japanese American internment.  If you’re in Los Angeles, check out the Japanese American National Museum.  While living in San Diego, I often visited the museum and it was an emotional experience every time.  There are several museums dedicated to Japanese American history, and many of the relocation centers are being restored and preserved being turned into museums themselves.

So as we reflect on this day, let us remember how much it impacted the present of the time, and the future.  For me, while Pearl Harbor and the internment of Japanese Americans didn’t directly affect me, it meant the lack of knowledge on the that part of my family’s history, and not getting a chance to connect with the Japanese culture.

My Grandpa's retirement packet with a letter from Harry Truman thanking him for his service in WWII.
My Grandpa’s retirement packet with a letter from Harry Truman thanking him for his service in WWII.

Staged Reading of “Japanese Eyes/American Heart” in San Diego

You are invited to a staged reading of my play…

Japanese Eyes/American Heart by Alex Matsuo

An original play that centers around memory. It tells the story of a granddaughter’s journey to solve the mystery of unexplained war medals of her deceased grandfather who was a Japanese-American soldier in World War II. As she tries to find out what her grandfather faced between the time Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, she realizes that the journey hits close to home emotionally when discovers the broken lives and the lost identities that resulted from those tragic events.

10th Avenue Theatre

930 10th Avenue

San Diego, CA 92101

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

7:30pm

Admission: Free

Donations will be accepted

 *Run Time: 90 minutes with no intermission.

Comment cards and discussion will follow.

Trailer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZUHKjl87hw]

Ghosts of My Past

It’s a cheesy title.  But the best I can come up with.  This might be a tad embarrassing to talk about on my blog but this topic has been weighing heavily on my mind and it will affect the development of Japanese Eyes/American Heart.
In the play, Amaya is plagued by ghosts of her grandfather’s unknown past.  These “ghosts” are not seen in the world of the play, but can be seen in the audience’s world.  When the Shakespeare text was intertwined, the characters from The Tempest represented theses “ghosts”.  I originally kept the Shakespeare in because I’m stubborn.  It’s an ambitious decision to intertwine Shakespeare into contemporary text of my own words.  Plus, I was writing this play as my thesis for my graduate degree.  I hadn’t thought that this play would have a life outside of school.  However, I was mistaken.  It has begun to generate interest from others, hence to why I created this blog.  I realized after looking at my last few entries, I hadn’t been writing about the play development lately and for that I apologize.  When I get into my “zone” I don’t think about, “Oh, I need to go blog about this.”  I spend so much time in my books and researching, that I forget about the reporting aspect.  If you know me personally, I love being a dramaturg in theatre about as much as I love performing on stage.  It’s a way to stay involved and also learn as much as you can.  I’ve been doing so much research on Japan and World War II and how it affected Japanese-Americans that I find myself going on tangents when I talk to friends when they ask how my research is going.  Even though Little Women closed in May, I’m still sorting through research on Louisa May Alcott and her work.  I love historical research.  Period.
But now that I’ve taken the Shakespeare out, I feel like there is something missing.  I want Amaya’s interest in learning about John’s past to be more than curiosity, because my intention was more than curiosity.  It has been shaped from the void that is in me because I only had my grandpa for seven years before he passed away.  Seeing the characters I created come to life on stage brought the memories back and made the memories more real than ever.  I still get positive feedback from audience members and there is a strong consensus that the play stands well on its own without the help of good ol’ Will.
I had a few of my actors from the staged reading look at some old family photos of me with my grandparent’s in which the seven year old version of Amaya is based upon.  One took a look at the photos and said, “I can totally see the personality you wrote about in your face.”  I didn’t think it translated as well as I had thought.
Anyway, back to ghosts.  I wrote about the ghosts of my past echoing into my present.  But that’s not all of it.  My family seems to attract paranormal activity.  I’m not going to talk specifics here because I rarely talk about it at all.  But lately, I’ve been trying to educate myself in the paranormal not only for my play, but also to help answer questions that have plagued me almost my whole life.  Education aside, it’s also made me more interested in becoming an investigator and try to help people who are going through something unexplained.   Right now, I have this unexplainable drive to become more involved in my education of this realm that terrified me as a child and continued well into my teens and he offered an online class, and I took the opportunity.
I always felt like that something is motivating me to keep going with the Japanese Eyes/American Heart project.  Something supernatural and something I cannot explain.  I feel like there needs to be a story told; about identity, making peace with your past and accepting that you may never be able to know all the answers or explain everything.  How will the ghosts of Amaya’s past manifest on stage?  Will there be an actor physically leading Amaya to the medals?  Or will it be a fog machine?  Will they be actual actors on stage or will they be the result of lighting and sound designers?  I won’t put the answer here.  All I’ll say is, right now I’m focusing on memory.  If I could draw a diagram of the memories between Amaya and John…Amaya would be God-like, in it that John only exists in her memory, and therefore, his memories exist in her memory as well, but she just doesn’t know it.  Maybe next time I’ll draw something out and scan it so you can see.  It’ll probably help my actors too.
Well, that’s it for now.

Return to Manzanar

Since so many people asked…the drama from my previous post is somewhat resolved.  I was asked to mediate a meeting between the two parties on Tuesday night.  It was interesting.
Back to topic!

I have a writer’s block when it comes to my play right now.  I’m revamping it and doing some major rewrites and making changes (hopefully) for the better.  I’m adding characters and taking away characters.  I’ll most likely be having private readings with some of the original cast members just so I can hear what I wrote.  I feel like I need to also work on the transitions, and fill some holes.  So that’s that.
I’m planning a pilgrimage if you might call it.  To Manzanar.  It’s a bit of a drive from San Diego.  But I would like to see the camp and maybe get some inspiration.  I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll always have an emotional connection and I’ve worked too hard in keeping the emotions separate from this project.
Here’s a little documentary about Manzanar and connecting it to Muslims and 9/11.  I like it because it shows the contrast between what the government told the public and what really happened to those who were forced to go into internment.  If you saw my staged reading of Japanese Eyes/American Heart, John and Takeo have a confrontation about the internment camps.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVxf7J0dwCQ]