Don’t deny need for
Japanese-American studiesUH must fill ethnic studies
By Gary Y. Okihiro
specialist's chair nowITHACA, N.Y. -- It never occurred to me, growing up in Hawaii, that I was a Japanese American. I never thought about it. Before pimples and drag-racing at Kahuku, I styled myself a pilgrim father at Plymouth Rock, learning from Squanto how to plant corn and hunt wild turkey. I imagined myself riding on horse-drawn sleighs in winter and tapping maple syrup in the spring.
My everyday reality of tropical heat and the cane fields that grew across the street from my Aiea plantation home couldn't dissuade me from my New England identity, my American self.
I was convinced: I was John Smith.
Oh, OK. I must confess that we ate rice at home without fail, and grew green onions, Chinese mustard and daikon in our garden. I took karate and went to bon dances in the summer. And I had a grandmother who made the swellest Okinawan doughnuts, and a grandfather who yelled at me in Japanese whenever I disturbed his chickens.
Somehow, those realities didn't square with my educated persona, but I didn't have time for troubling contradictions.
I suppose what brought me to my senses was my encounters with others and the lessons thus learned of what I was not.
I was not my Chinese friend who lived across the street, because he ate strange things. I was not my Portuguese friend down the street, who amazed me with his penchant for oat porridge. I was not the haole girl who moved in the house behind us, who limped with polio-inflicted legs and whom we teased mercilessly. She wanted to be Japanese, like us, she cried.
My prejudices, mind you, were not a wit better than my misguided yearnings for pilgrimhood. Both delusions derive from what African-American historian Carter G. Woodson has called "miseducation," or a learning that elevates certain individuals and groups and disparages others.
Ethnic studies, from its inception in 1969, sought to situate marginalized peoples within the core, within the historical narratives of the nation. Ethnic studies maintained that all of America's peoples helped to build this republic. That's what multiculturalism means.
Now, as we approach the 30th anniversary of the founding of ethnic studies, some University of Hawaii administrators have determined that its ethnic studies department doesn't need a specialist in Japanese-American studies.
I will avoid the temptation of citing numbers -- monies saved by not replacing the former professor in that field of study, numbers of Japanese-American students at the university, numbers of Japanese Americans in the state, and so forth -- because numbers alone don't reveal the educational value of a specialization.
Instead, I'd like to argue the intellectual necessity of having someone in Japanese-American studies at UH.
I remember, and it wasn't so very long ago, that ethnic studies at the university was dreadfully underfunded and understaffed. In a state that prided itself on its multicultural past and present, the program paled in comparison to programs in California, where I then worked.
Even the ethnic studies program that I directed at a small Jesuit institution in California had more faculty and courses than its counterpart at UH. I couldn't understand the logic of that.
Ethnic studies, it seemed to me, reflected perfectly the histories and cultures of the peoples of Hawaii and, in truth, the nation. That is the big picture: Ethnic studies helps to democratize America.
More distinctly, it is divided into Asian-American, African-American, Latino and Native-American studies. Of those fields at present, Asian-American studies is growing fastest, largely because of the rising numbers of Asian-American students but also because of the effusion of books on the Asian-American experience.
Over the last several years, new Asian-American study programs have begun on campuses as diverse as the University of Pennsylvania, Loyola University in Chicago, University of Illinois and Arizona State University. Small liberal arts colleges like Bates in Maine, Union in New York and Macalester in Minnesota offer courses in Asian-American studies.
Membership in the Association for Asian American Studies has more than doubled over the last five years. The new "Journal of Asian American Studies" is published by the illustrious Johns Hopkins University Press.
Japanese-American studies, of course falls under the rubric of Asian-American studies that encompass a range of ethnic groups -- from Asian Indians to Cambodians to Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Japanese, Koreans, Pakistanis, Thais, Vietnamese and many more.
So Japanese Americans are but one among many. And yet, more books and articles have been written about Japanese Americans than just about any other group within Asian-American studies.
Its literature is wide, deep and complex, and thus requires a mastery that demands years of sustained study. It has a national and several regional museums and archives that hold its historical documents and cultural artifacts. Its practitioners are among the most senior members in the field of Asian-American studies.
It also has aspects that are both unique to the group and of national significance, such as the World War II detention of Japanese Americans.
For these reasons, the UH ethnic studies department will be incomplete without a specialist in Japanese-American studies. This position must be filled and funded immediately, for Hawaii has long been a leader in Japanese-American studies.
Here on the mainland, I have been called "chink" (Chinese), "gook" (Vietnamese) and "Professor Hirohito" (Japan's wartime emperor), because it didn't matter to them who I was. "You all look alike," was their message.
But within the university, where truths matter, the distinctions among individuals and groups -- subject matters of the humanities and social sciences -- are of pivotal importance. They are not all the same and cannot be disguised under the undifferentiated cover of Asians or Africans or Latinos or native peoples or whites.
An ichthyologist is not a botanist even though they are both biologists. UH administrators should know better, and should restore the vacant position in Japanese-American studies to its ethnic studies department.
Gary Y. Okihiro is a professor of history and director
of the Asian American Studies Program at Cornell University.
He is author of "Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement
in Hawaii, 1865-1945," and is a past president of the
Association for Asian American Studies.