Character, not color,
By James I. Kuroiwa
makes the manThe U.S. Senate committee was right to object to the appointment of Bill Lann Lee as the assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights. The debate on his confirmation has brought to the surface my feelings and beliefs about being American, and that we must never have race-based preferential quotas. I believe that the content of our character makes us excel as Americans. And race-based preference lowers our value standards and separates Americans into racial groups.
During the past 12 years I have experienced an ideological awakening as I struggled to understand why it would irritate me whenever I read or heard the words "Japanese American."
I have been identified as being a Japanese American, a racial group, in the media (newspaper, television and radio) instead of being just American. I started to ask myself why doesn't the media call my friends Cliff Slater a British American or Fred Hemmings a Portuguese American?
I began to question the media's use of "Japanese American" or "Asian American," instead of just "American." I began to ask myself, are we ashamed of being American? I hope not.
I am very concerned that we are doing an injustice to our children and our children's children by calling ourselves "Japanese Americans" and becoming hyphenated Americans.
My great grandparents on my dad's side came to Hawaii from Kumamoto, Japan in 1891. My grandmother was born on Kauai in 1894, making me a fourth-generation American of Japanese ancestry from Hawaii.
My grandmother on my mom's side was a picture bride from Yamaguchi, Japan. She raised eight children, with the family assisting each other from 1935, when my grandfather passed away.
I am proud to be an "American," and also proud to be a fourth-generation American of Japanese ancestry born in Hawaii.
My mom and dad raised all six of us to love and respect our country, state and the family name. My wife and I carry on the tradition with our four children. I'm an American.
I was raised in Hawaii with AJA (American of Japanese Ancestry) as part of my everyday vocabulary.
My dad, born in 1917, played AJA baseball in the 1930s at Kipu, Kauai and I, at age 8, became a bat boy for the Puhi, Kauai AJA baseball team. In the 1960s, I played on a junior and senior AJA baseball team on Oahu and the Big Island. I'm an American.
I believe that, in combat, your survival depends on support from each other. Your love of country and the men you serve with becomes focused and intensified.
I enlisted in April 1964, prior to graduation from UH-Manoa, in the Army Reserve 100th/442nd unit that was activated in May 1968. I volunteered and served in Vietnam with E Co., 1/502nd, of the 101st Airborne Division from February to November 1969.
My 81 mortar section was made up of Americans of black, Mexican, Guamanian, Filipino, Japanese, and European ethnicity. We were one, a team, placing our lives in God's hands, then supporting each other to perform a job to the best of our abilities.
I was there as an American from Hawaii doing the best with my abilities to maintain the "Go for Broke" legacy.
Also, I am privileged to have grown up and attended school with an American of Japanese ancestry who today is a four-star general. We are Americans.
It was only a generation ago that American parents of Japanese ancestry disowned a child because of marrying outside the Japanese ethnic group.
When we use ethnicity first, we begin to categorize ourselves into ethnic groups and begin to alienate other ethnic groups from us. Youth gangs today are always organized by ethnic groups.
This tells me that we are sending the wrong message to young people by becoming hyphenated Americans. The content of our character makes us excel as Americans, and race-based quotas lowers that standard.
I'm an American.
James I. Kuroiwa Jr. is a businessman and
Honolulu County's Republican Party chairman.