Mixed Race Studies

INTO THE NEXT STAGE: Hapa Documentaries — Twin Takes on Similar Subject

The Rafu Shimpo: Los Angeles Japanese Daily News
2017-03-16

George Toshio Johnston

As part of last month’s Hapa Japan Festival 2017 was a screening of a pair of documentaries I was very interested in viewing: “Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides” and “Rising Sun, Rising Soul.”

Both screened Thursday, Feb. 23, in Little Tokyo at the Japanese American National Museum’s Tateuchi Democracy Forum, with filmmakers from each in attendance to speak about the respective documentaries afterwards and to take audience questions.

While different in emphasis, both “Fall Seven Times” and “Rising Sun” had at their respective cores a shared source, namely the so-called Japanese war bride phenomenon that occurred following Japan’s defeat after World War II.

It was during that post-war occupation period when thousands upon thousands of U.S. military personnel from all branches of the Armed Forces, as well as civil service employees, went to Japan and Okinawa, the latter of which was a quasi-U.S. military colony that didn’t regain Japanese prefectural status until 1972…

…In today’s environment, when no one in California, the West Coast or big cities pauses when seeing a mixed-race couple in which one of the two is an Asian, these two documentaries do underscore what a big deal the Japanese war bride phenomenon really was…

Read the entire article here.

‘War Brides of Japan’ To Take Focus in New Documentary

NBC News
2016-08-10

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Journalist and filmmaker Yayoi Lena Winfrey is looking for more Japanese “war brides” to interview as she completes the filming for her feature-length documentary film, “War Brides of Japan.” With many of these women in their mid-80s, Winfrey said that time is critical to document their stories. With interviews already scheduled for 11 and their adult children in eight cities and three states this month, Winfrey hopes to find more women and families to interview along the way…

According to Winfrey, approximately 50,000 “war brides” came to the United States from Japan starting in 1947. Many were disowned by their families for marrying those who had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then occupied Japan, Winfrey said. Others were rejected by their American in-laws for being foreigners. Some were abandoned by the American servicemen who married them while some were also ostracized by the Japanese-American community, only just released from the incarceration camps of World War II. Some were falsely stereotyped as prostitutes, while others were blamed for causing World War II, she said…

Read the entire article here.

The stories of the ‘War Brides’ of Japan need to be told

International Examiner
Seattle, Washington
2016-07-21

Yayoi Lena Winfrey

One day in the early 1980s, my Japanese mother took my sister and me to an International District gift shop. A middle-aged Japanese American man working there glanced briefly towards us, before turning away apathetically. His body language seemed to indicate a reluctance to wait on us. I looked at my mother and, without the necessity of my uttering a single word, she said, “He not like me.”

Then, pointing at us, her two half-black daughters, she declared in her broken English, “He see I have you two. He know I am war bride.”

Even though I’d heard her use that phrase before, I knew it was not something she was proud to be called. As I stood there reflecting, I realized my mother meant that the Japanese American man didn’t like the fact that she had obviously married someone outside of her race, likely an American G.I. But the irony was he wasn’t living in Japan. Might not the Japanese in that country have considered him as much a traitor for living in America as he thought my mother was for marrying a non-Japanese? Or maybe it wasn’t the same if you left your home country, but married someone of the same ethnicity. I’ve often wrestled with those thoughts in the decades following that 1980s incident.

In the case of Japanese “war brides” like my mother, women who wedded American military men, they were guilty of both marrying an outsider and leaving their country. Considered disloyal by some Japanese nationals for wedding their former enemies, they were also considered disloyal by some Japanese Americans for marrying Americans that were not Japanese. It’s a complicated issue that my documentary War Brides of Japan will address. I also want to eradicate the stigma attached to the term “war bride,” often fallaciously interchangeable with “prostitute.”…

Read the entire article here.

In the Mix: Issue of Mixed Race Stirs Controversy for Census [Interview with Ralina L. Joseph]

International Examiner
Volume 32, Number 2
2010-01-21

Yayoi Lena Winfrey

A highly anticipated event for mixed-race people takes place this year. Although it may seem officious and routine for most, the upcoming U.S. Census is actually an exciting undertaking for those considering themselves multiethnic. That’s because for only the second time in history, there will be an opportunity to select more than one race on Census forms. Those who don’t claim a multiracial identity may not get why that’s so important. But for anyone who’s ever been forced to pick only one parent’s ethnic heritage as her own, it’s a major feat.

Ralina L. Joseph’s interest in multiethnic identity began with her undergraduate studies at Brown University. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Departments of American Ethnic Studies and Women Studies at the University of Washington. Discovering that her own personal mixed race experience was what others were discussing as a collective experience, she began exploring the subject.

“I think that the first generation of scholarship, of literary and cultural production of activism on mixed race and trying to articulate a mixed race identity, is very much about a coming out moment; the naming and claiming of being mixed,” says Joseph.

But by the time she was ready to graduate, Joseph was “suspicious” of the way multiracial activism was pushing multiracial categories in the Census, and longed to produce work that looked at the multiracial experience in regard to other groups of color…

…Further, what constitutes a mixed race heritage is debatable. Recently, a group called Multi Generation Multiracials (MGM’s) challenged First Generation Multiracials (FGM’s). Although both groups have mixed ancestry, FGM’s have one white and one black parent while MGM’s may have two parents, or even grandparents, that are mixed. MGM’s, who aren’t able to ‘officially’ claim a biracial heritage, argue that they are often more mixed looking than FGM’s who, because of their parents’ visibility, can automatically declare a dual ethnicity….

Read the entire article here.

Also, see Dr. Joseph’s lecture series, Mixed Race in the United States running through 2010-03-03.