{"id":48374,"date":"2016-07-22T15:32:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48374"},"modified":"2016-07-22T15:32:03","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:32:03","slug":"the-stories-of-the-war-brides-of-japan-need-to-be-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48374","title":{"rendered":"The stories of the \u2018War Brides\u2019 of Japan need to be told"},"content":{"rendered":"

The stories of the \u2018War Brides\u2019 of Japan need to be told<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

International Examiner<\/a>
\nSeattle, Washington
\n2016-07-21<\/p>\n

Yayoi Lena Winfrey<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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, \u201cHe not like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, pointing at us, her two half-black daughters, she declared in her broken English, \u201cHe see I have you two. He know I am war bride<\/a><\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though I\u2019d 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\u2019t like the fact that she had obviously married someone outside of her race, likely an American G.I.<\/a> But the irony was he wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t the same if you left your home country, but married someone of the same ethnicity. I\u2019ve often wrestled with those thoughts in the decades following that 1980s incident.<\/p>\n

In the case of Japanese \u201cwar brides\u201d like my mother, women who wedded American military men, they were guilty of both marrying an outsider and<\/em> 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\u2019s a complicated issue that my documentary War Brides of Japan<\/em><\/a> will address. I also want to eradicate the stigma attached to the term \u201cwar bride,\u201d often fallaciously interchangeable with \u201cprostitute.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stories of the \u2018War Brides\u2019 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,459,8,20,25],"tags":[1962,1793,1961],"class_list":["post-48374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-international-examiner","tag-japan","tag-yayoi-lena-winfrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48375,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48374\/revisions\/48375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}