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18 Lost and Found in Asian America Jessica Kawamura I can still remember that day . . . It must have been during the ‹rst week of my freshman year in high school. I was sitting in the auditorium, when this kid behind me taps me on the shoulder and slowly says in a surprised voice, “You’re Japanese?” I respond, “Yeah.” But he continues, “Japanese and what?” And I say, “Japanese and Japanese.” Apparently this is not a satisfactory answer, as he repeats his inquiry and I respond, trying to ‹nd the right answer. “Japanese and Japanese? Japanese and American? Japanese and what?” Finally he seems to ‹gure it out. I explain to him that both of my parents are of Japanese heritage. This seems plain and simple to me, but it seems to leave him in some state of shock. It turns out that his mom is from Japan, and his dad is from Thailand but is of Chinese descent. Apparently, he had never met any peers who were quite like me. Later on, not surprisingly, he was astonished to ‹nd out that I did not speak Japanese. I was amazed that he connected so much of his identity to speaking his native tongue. Soon I ‹gured out that I was really the exception at my school. My American history teacher, an African American man, and another student, who was born in Vietnam, were surprised to ‹nd out that I was a fourth-generation American and that my great-grandparents had immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. In Asia Club, I found myself somewhat disoriented, as I was one of two Japanese American students, and discussions focused on Asian culture and not on Asian American issues. I was immersed in a group of students who loved Asian pop culture and truly identi‹ed as Asian. Yet, being a yonsei, or fourth-generation Japanese American, I do not identify as much with Japan as I do with America, and honestly, despite the friendliness of the members and their desire to include me, I just didn’t ‹t in. Yet at the same time, I enjoyed being around other Asian American students and soon found myself eating Chinese food, buying boba tea drinks, and writing on Korean stationery. Participating in Asia Club activities helped me learn about my own heritage through others’ views of the world. I learned that ‹rst- and second-generation Asian American youth often identify with their parents’ country, and that I do not identify with being Japanese but with being Japanese American. Being around ‹rst- and second-generation Asian American youth gave me a sense of what my great-grandparents’ and grandparents’ worldview must have been like. In a discussion in American history class, my Vietnamese classmate stayed away from argumentative discussion and preferred just to go with the ›ow and to not cause con›ict. Even when another student made a racist joke, he just brushed it off. At ‹rst, I couldn’t understand how he could not react, because in the same situation, my ‹rst reaction would have been to ‹ght. But then I realized that what he had done was similar to what my greatgrandparents ’ generation did at the time of internment. Rather than ‹ght their government, they just packed their bags and went along peacefully. Having grown up in a tightly knit community, I identify strongly with being Japanese American. Throughout my childhood, I participated in activities with other yonsei youth. I played basketball in the local community league, attended a Japanese Christian church, and went to Japanese American cultural enrichment summer school. After seven years of “Japanese school,” I still cannot put together a sentence in Japanese. Instead, I have learned about immigration, about backbreaking work in the ‹elds of California , and about internment. It was these stories that touched my heart more than any project in ›ower arrangement or calligraphy. Perhaps this is because I am yonsei, because I am so displaced from my Japanese ancestors, because I hardly know their names. Instead, I seek the stories of my grandparents’ generation , those of internment in the deserts of Utah, of ‹ghting World War II in the forests of France, and of liberating prisoners at Dachau. I have realized that “Asian American” can mean many things to many people and that each person is molded by his or her own experiences. This is why there is such a gap between ‹rst- and second-generation Asian AmeriLost and Found in Asian America...

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