War Brides Of Japan: Helping Change U.S. Immigration Laws

Aloha, Hip Hapa Homeez.

Since the U.S. immigration ban fiasco of a few weeks ago, it’s notable how timely our War Brides of Japan documentary is. 

me with my father at right

Remember, the Immigration Act of 1924 prevented Asians from entering the U.S. However, during the American occupation of Japan following WWII, many GI’s—including my father—wanted to bring home the Japanese wives they’d married while being stationed there.

But, in order to make that happen, legislation had to be enacted to allow those marriages and subsequent arrivals of Japanese war brides in America. Thus, the War Brides Act of 1945 was passed. Even though history has rarely acknowledged this monumental effort, some suggest it might have taken longer for other Asians to immigrate to America had it not been for the brave war brides of Japan. Ladies, we salute you!

One of two historians in our film, Regina F. Lark, discusses in detail the impact of that law on screen. 

camera operator Sean Hardin sets up for Regina F. Lark interview

Meanwhile, our editors are moving forward with the project. Please welcome Lynn Hammonds, author of Becoming Misako Kikuchi, who’s assisting with music licensing for the film.

associate producer Lynn Hammonds holds her book, Becoming Misako Kikuchi

However, we still need help through your 100% tax deductible donations. Please visit our Network for Good account and contribute what you can:

https://fromtheheartproductions.networkforgood.com/projects/15778-documentaries-war-brides-of-japan

We of the War Brides of Japan documentary HEART you and your generosity!

Japanese war brides: Yuriko with BFF Emiko

Also, for more info, please check out our links below. If you haven’t for awhile, we have some new ones:

War Brides of Japan videos:

youtube 88.1 FM interview 

youtube behind the scenes production trailer 

vimeo behind the scenes production trailer 

youtube pre-production trailer 

vimeo pre-production trailer 

youtube v.2 

youtube v.1

War Brides of Japan websites:

warbridesofjapan.com

weebly

jimdo

War Brides of Japan in the news:

DIFT 

NBC 

international examiner

international examiner 2

discover nikkei

War Brides of Japan on Facebook:

fan page

War Brides of Japan on LinkedIn:

how they learned to forgive and love the enemy

making love, not war

those bad ass brides!

War Brides of Japan on Twitter:

watermelonsushi 

War Brides of Japan on G+:

google plus

War Brides of Japan blogs:

on the road

tumblR

A War Bride's artwork:

iAmArtistYuriko

heARTworkByYuri

Arrigatou gozaimasu to all our loyal supporters. And, Happy Hanami! (flower viewing in springtime Japan)

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Bad Ass Brides: Keep On Keepin’ On!

Konnichi-wa, Hip Hapa Homeez!

beautiful brides: Mrs.Wright, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Winfrey

Until our War Brides of Japan feature documentary is on the screen, we’re going to be blogging about it a lot.

If you’re interested in discussing being biracial or a transracial adoptee, or being in an interracial relationship or just crossing cultures, please go to our Hip Hapa Homeez group page on Facebook where we do just that.

Otherwise, we’re all about War Brides of Japan right now.

First off, a BIG UP! to all our donors. You know who you are, and we’ll mention you by name in another post. That is, if you haven’t chosen to remain anonymous. We’ll have to get your permission first, so let us know.

For the rest of you who haven’t yet made a 100% tax-deductible donation to the War Brides of Japan documentary, you can do so by clicking here: PLEASE DONATE!

best friends: Yuriko-san and Emiko-san,
who loved wearing Chinese dresses

Next, here’s a correction about our last blog post that indicated all Japanese war brides entered into interracial marriages with either black or white American military men. We have since learned that there were some Japanese American Intelligence Officers stationed in Japan during the Occupation. Some of them also married Japanese war brides. However, since those men did work that was highly classified, few people know of their stories. If you have such a story, please let us know.

Further, we recently located a Japanese war bride married to a Mexican American GI, another rare exception. If you know of a Japanese war bride who married someone other than a black or white American, please drop us a line. In fact, if you know any Japanese war brides at all, tell us about them, too.

in the kitchen with Yuriko-san
mover over, Julia Child!

Even though we have scheduled interviews with about a dozen war brides and or their adult children, it’s good to be aware of any others out there—especially on the West Coast where we’re going to begin our filming. We will keep you posted, Hip Hapa Homeez!

To know more about the War Brides of Japan documentary film project, please check out the links below:

Vimeo Pre-Production Trailer

YouTube Pre-Production Trailer

YouTube Version 2 Trailer

YouTube Original 30-Second Trailer

War Brides of Japan website

War Brides of Japan website on Weebly

War Brides of Japan website on Jimdo

War Brides of Japan fan page on Facebook

International Examiner article

Discover Nikkei reprint

LinkedIn Essay

We have also created a closed group page on Facebook called Japanese War Brides and Their Children. Please request membership if you’re interested in joining us.

Yuriko-san, back in the day with her ocha and ciggies

And, of course, we still have our Watermelon Sushi narrative film project although it’s understandably on hold right now:

Watermelon Sushi film 

Watermelon Sushi on Facebook 

Watermelon Sushi World Networked Blogs on Facebook 

Hapa*Teez on YouTube 

Hapa*Teez on Facebook 

Hapa*Teez on Café Press 

Yayoi Lena Winfrey fan page on Facebook (sorry, but Your Hip Hapa can’t add any more friends to her regular profile page) 

Twitter

There, that should hold you for awhile! See you in a bi-month, Hip Hapa Homeez. And, don't forget: PLEASE DONATE!

ja, mata ne!

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Beautiful, Brave, Bodacious And Bad-Ass: War Brides of Japan

Chi’z, hip hapa homeez!

A good friend from Japan who’s been teaching me the language told me the hip greeting for konnichi-wa is simply “chi’zzz” (cheese) as in chi-wa as in nichi-wa as in konnichi-wa. Clever, huh?

Another Japanese national I recently met told me the hip word to describe what was trending in Japan is “now-ee”. Japan has sure changed a lot since my Mom left it.

Asako Sakaguchi and Phillip Miller  

Speaking of, there’s lots of news to share about our ongoing War Brides of Japan documentary project. For one, we've released a preproduction trailer that shares a little history about Japanese war brides. Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKOvPPv2nBo

Even though we haven’t officially launched our crowdfunding campaign yet, we’ve already received our very first donation. Thank you, Global Music Awards!

http://www.globalmusicawards.com/

Further, our donor also donated a video camera complete with accessories! So, now we’re in the process of scheduling interviews with both war brides and/or their adult children. Stay tuned here for updates, or else at our Facebook Fan page:

https://www.facebook.com/WarBridesOfJapan

Our website should be up and running by next week.

Teruko Nishina and Roland Franklin Stead, Jr.

Here’s our tag line:

…beautifully brave Japanese women who married American military men after WWII were called “war brides”—although contrary to that label, they didn’t marry a war but instead expressed their unconditional love by marrying “the enemy”…

Every single Japanese war bride entered into an interracial marriage. Following Japan’s surrender in WWII, it became occupied by American armed forces made up of either black or white men. Since interracial marriage was still banned in 16 states, some war brides took a big risk being with their own mates.

Besides struggling with cultural and language barriers, brave war brides also had to endure the hostility of some Americans once they moved to the U.S. with their husbands. Both black and white Americans blamed them for starting WWII because Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. No matter that these women were innocent civilians and helpless to challenge their own government about its war agenda.

Harue Abiru and Charles William Lahn

Not only did war brides leave behind their families (some who disowned them for "marrying the enemy"), but they also moved to a country they’d never seen before with men that had only years earlier might have helped destroy theirs.

Each war bride from Japan has her own unique story, and we hope to tell as many as we can in this documentary.

Here are links to slideshows we've created in the past, including one that placed among the top three entries in the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2012 (although it was later disqualified for using the One True Media app):

War Brides of Japan v.2 on YouTube

War Brides of Japan on YouTube

Come along with us, Hip Hapa Homeez, on this amazing journey to honor these beautiful, brave, bodacious, bad-ass War Brides of Japan!

Yasue Hayakawa and Rev. Williams
with daughters

And, remember, we still have our feature narrative, Watermelon Sushi, to complete so please support our pages.

Watermelon Sushi film

Watermelon Sushi on Facebook

Watermelon Sushi World Networked Blogs on Facebook

Hapa*Teez on YouTube

Hapa*Teez on Facebook

Hapa*Teez on Café Press

Yayoi Lena Winfrey fan page on Facebook (sorry, but Your Hip Hapa can’t add any more friends to her regular profile page)

Twitter

We also have our Hip Hapa Homeez group on Facebook where members post articles about being bicultural, biracial, transracially adopted, from a blended family or part of an interracial couple.

See you next bi-month for more about the War Brides of Japan.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi 

Yuriko Naito and A.W. Winfrey
with daughters

War Brides of Japan Marches Forward And, A Sister Search

Aloha, Hip Hapa Homeez!

Arrigatou gozaimasu for your continued support in both reading this blog and in ‘liking’ our various Facebook fan pages. A list of the links appears at the end of this post.

The good news is that we’re in the midst of pre-production for our documentary, War Brides of Japan.

The bad news is that Your Hip Hapa will have little time to devote to the intense interviews posted here in the past.

However, our featured Hip Hapa Homee this bi-month is E. Dawn Samuel who has a special request for you. Please read her plea below, and respond to her directly if you have any information you feel might be helpful.

Meanwhile, we’ll keep you updated about our War Brides of Japan documentary at our Facebook fan page as well as at our new website—once it’s built, that is.

Greetings, friends.

PLEASE HELP! I’m writing in pursuit of lost love. I'm searching for a woman and her child on behalf of my father, an 86 year-old African American veteran living in upstate New York. He recently came to me to ask a favor and proceeded to tell me the most amazing story. Here are the Cliff Notes:

Toward the end of WWII, at the young age of 18 or so, my dad and his twin brother went off to war and were stationed in Japan. There my dad met and fell in love with a mixed-race Japanese/German girl named Natasha. One day in 1948 or '49, she came to him, sat in his lap and said, “You are a handsome man and I am a pretty woman. So, I’m sure this is going to be a beautiful baby.” And with that romantic remark, he was thrilled at the prospect of parenthood and the three of them becoming a family. But as fate would have it, shortly thereafter, his unit was shipped off to Korea and the young lovers where separated.  

The military, which was segregated at the time, heartlessly sent the black troops to fight with only their summer gear and, cruelly, their cold weather gear never arrived. With a lengthy winter that reached temperatures as low as 40 degrees below zero, horrifically, the majority of his unit froze to death. Thankfully, my dad and a lucky few survived.  

But when he returned to the apartment in Nagasaki where Natasha lived, her roommate--shocked and completely taken aback to see him alive--told him that thinking he was dead, Natasha had married a tech sergeant from another unit and they had immigrated to the U.S.  The roommate also told my dad he was the father of a baby girl. So, with very little information to help him pursue finding Natasha, he was shipped off again and again. 

Once, he was finally discharged from the service years later, my dad had no idea of how to find them and no idea of Natasha’s circumstances. And, he didn’t want to blow up her life. So, he harbored two major secrets: first; he kept the secret that he was alive from Natasha and; second, he kept the secret of fathering a child during the war from his family. For more than 65 years, my Uncle Richard was the only other person who knew, until my father asked me to find them for him over the Christmas holiday. 

“Babe, will ya help me out and find your sister for me?” he asked me. “I wanna meet her and see Natasha again before I die. She and your momma are the only women I’ve ever loved, and I need to see my firstborn. So please babe, find them for me.”

My dad is 86, has early Alzheimer’s/COPD and is on full oxygen. So, that’s why I’m trying to find this particular war bride. I’m searching for my sister! With a heart full of joyous emotions (I’m crying as I’m writing this now), I’m searching for my sister! Somewhere out there, my dad has a daughter that he’s never seen, but desperately wants to. So, I’m searching for my big sister! Honored and humbled that my dad chose me to share his deepest secrets, I’m searching for my sister!  Hopeful that she will be accepting of our dad and as thrilled as I am to learn of a new sibling, I’m desperately searching for my sister!  And compelled by a sense of privileged duty and with nothing but love in my heart and hope in my soul, I am searching for my sister!

E. Dawn Samuel

Production@edawnsamuel.com

Watermelon Sushi film

Watermelon Sushi on Facebook

Watermelon Sushi World Networked Blogs on Facebook

Hapa*Teez on YouTube

Hapa*Teez on Facebook

Hapa*Teez on Café Press

War Brides of Japan v.2 on YouTube

War Brides of Japan on YouTube

War Brides of Japan on Facebook

Yayoi Lena Winfrey fan page on Facebook (sorry, but Your Hip Hapa can’t add any more friends to her regular profile page)

Twitter

Don’t forget you can become a member of our Hip Hapa Homeez group on Facebook and post articles about being ethnically mixed, or an interracial couple, or a blended family, or a transracial adoptee, and more.

And, please join our cyber voyage as we travel to film the War Brides of Japan!

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Perfect Peace

Although I consider myself an armchair anti-war activist, I have to admit that growing up on military bases was one of the best things that happened to me and my sister. Ironically, we spent our teen years as peaceniks protesting the Vietnam War and the "military industrial complex". But looking back now, I see that had it not been for the U.S. Army I wouldn't have been born me. The only reason my father was in Japan was because of war. Had he not met and married my mother, I might've ended up with a Japanese otosan. What a strange concept to consider!

But back to childhood. Even though we were unaware of it at the time, those military bases were havens of perfect peace for us kids of mixed marriages. Shortly after WWII, American military men took warbrides from Europe, Asia and Australia. Many GI's ended up with German and Japanese wives. During our years at Ft. Lewis, I remember having lots of friends with Japanese or German mothers. Their fathers were sometimes white, sometimes black.

In any case, I never heard a single racist comment during that period. Instead, I learned snippets of various languages and cultural traditions from all of my classmates. My best friend, Sondra, whose family was Puerto Rican once invited me to her Catholic Church. Although I consider myself agnostic, it was richly rewarding to be exposed to someone else's religion. My sister's best friend, Tessie, was Filipina and I remember that meals served in her home were markedly different from what Sondra's family dined on. The mother of the Mexican family next door taught my mother to make a popular noodle dish. In fact, there was so much ethnic diversity in our neighborhood that it was like living at the United Nations. Only no one seemed to notice that everyone was different because being different was normal.

Several years later, when my father moved us to an all-white, middle-class neighborhood in nearby Tacoma, our neighbors there rolled up the welcome mat and tossed it out. Today, I realize that the only reason no one burned crosses in our yard was because they thought they had too much class although they probably thought about doing it. A fireman who lived across the street called my sister and me the "n-word" one day as we walked past his house. Huh? How'd you like to have him come put out the fire at your house? Let's see, "Ya'll are nothin' but a buncha "n-words" so I'ma jest let yo home burn down." Most of the kids in our 'hood just told us point blank that they weren't "allowed" to play in our yard like we had a disease or something. Only one girl, whose parents both worked in factories, ever actually came inside our house. I guess, in the eyes of the rest of the neighbors, her having laborer folks put her in the same class with us coloreds.

When I was in high school, my two best friends were also the offspring of warbrides. Silvia's mother was Austrian while Helen's mother was French. I was also friends with two girls who both had German mothers although one had a black father, and the other a white. I don't think any of us were particularly conscious of it then, but one of the reasons, I figure, that drew us together was our having mothers with accents. Having a foreign-born mother is what separated us from other classmates more so, I believe, than being mixed-race, or even black. I mean, it was a pretty big deal to attend some mother-daughter school function and present your mom to "real Americans" who would gawk at her before rudely demanding of you, "What did she say? I can't understand her." Of course, there was probably some remaining hostility towards Germans and Japanese who had been America's enemies during the war. Still, common sense would dictate that warbrides had been screened and approved for immigration by the U.S. How harmful could they've been? Was my mother toting a machine gun during the war? Was she the one who ordered the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Between dodging bombs dropped by Americans and running to bomb shelters, she barely survived on the few rations doled out by her government.

While we've come a long way since the days of outright animosity towards foreigners, we still have a ways to go. That's evident by some of the events that took place post-9/11. A friend of mine who is half black and half white, but looks of Arab descent, caught hell the first year following 9/11. When he once visited me in Los Angeles, he was stopped from taking photos of the LaBrea Tar Pits! No kidding.

These days, I'm grateful for my military upbringing although I remain vehemently anti-war. Still, I believe the only answer to peace is education. Until people learn the truth by studying accurately recorded history, we are doomed as a species to continue battling one another based on some physical trait.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

War Brides Revisited

About that phrase, "war bride"--well; it is redundant, isn't it? I mean, how does one marry a war? It's a lot like that word housewife. Are you the wife of your house? When did the two of you take your vows?

In fact, "war bride" was often derogatorily spat out towards obviously foreign women married to American GI's following WWII. And, sometimes it was used by people who were merely ignorant--like the Caucasian shopkeeper in Texas who greeted my mother with, "Are you a Jap?" He was simply using language acceptable at the time and printed in mainstream newspapers everywhere. Further, he'd never even seen an Asian before. Not that it excuses his idiocy, but my Moms is cool. She tells us that she just laughed at him like she always does when people act stupidly towards her.

There's a lot to acknowledge the brides of war for--like their courage in marrying and mating with men once considered to be an enemy of their country. Not to mention the symbolism of their union looking as if the winner is collecting his spoils. And, for those women who married American military men, moving to a strange land and leaving behind their families has to be tops on the list of brave things to do.

For my mother, coming to Richmond Texas in the 1950's was a shift in consciousness. Evidently, she'd heard the rumors about the streets of America being paved in gold, and may have even wanted to believe it after living through the devastation of her country. So, not surprisingly, she was ill-prepared for the segregated all-black housing where we ended up--she and I, before my sister was born. My father, still an active soldier then, was stationed 200 miles away and made a trip home only once every two weeks. With a limited ability to speak and understand English (especially the Southern variety), Moms somehow managed to keep my sister and me clean, well-fed, safe and entertained in that small Texas town. That clever girl even had friends sending her Japanese food--from New Jersey!

Even today, Moms still tells the tales of how she once fended off a snake that crawled over her feet after my sister, then a baby, awakened screaming one night. And, there's the story of how my paternal grandmother attempted to teach her how to wring a chicken's neck. Finding it a repugnant chore, Moms nervously attempted to cover the chicken's head in newspaper--like a blindfold--as if preventing the poor creature from seeing its executioner. But no matter how much Moms twisted, turned and swung that poor chicken around by the neck, it still walked when it landed--its head securely fastened. So, my mother changed her tactics and stepped on the chicken's head instead. By the time, she got the head removed, the muscles had become so stiff with fear that the chicken made a tough fryer. Moms laughs when she tells us how my dad tried to take a bite of drumstick, but had to settle for gnawing at it. (Personally, as a vegan, this story is hard for me to hear. Sob!)

Just like that unfortunate chicken's flesh, those were some tough times in my mother's life. She recalls being with my father's relatives one day when they were all catching a bus. As our kin climbed aboard single file, the Caucasian driver stopped my mother and waved towards our black relatives already in their seats at the rear. Smiling conspiratorially, he told Moms, "Oh, you don't have to go to the back with them." I guess he reckoned that with Mom's skin only a shade darker than his, she was qualified to ride up front with the likes of his hillbilly self.

Oh, there's more--the tarantulas covering the screen door every morning, the red bugs that ate us up so badly we looked like ashy ghosts in calamine lotion suits, and the rednecks that we didn't dare speak to first nor look directly in the eye. Backwoods Texas was the hell my mother thought she'd descended to on her very first trip to the U.S. as the bride of a war.

There's her photo, above, taken while she was pregnant with my sister.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

P.S. Don't forget to go here for some hip hapa Hapawood stars: http://www.cafepress.com/hapateez

Life Is Worth Waiting For

For a Southern black man like my father, watching Barack Obama inch closer to the Democratic nomination is a big deal. In fact, it's monumental.

Born in 1927, my dad joined the military in order to leave behind a life divided by black and white. In the backwoods Texas town where he grew up, both blacks and Mexicans were lynched without any intervention by local law enforcement. His escape was the U.S. Army, but what he found there was just more more segregation.

Forced into the "colored" unit, he thought it ironic to be stationed in countries like the Philippines, Japan and Korea where the locals didn't even know that they should be prejudiced against blacks since they'd never seen any before. But the military bigwigs took care of that by imposing their own racism on the natives. By designating which local eateries should feed only whites, and which ones only blacks, they guaranteed that Americans wouldn't be the only folks imposing segregation by race.

In the 81 years since my father's birth, major changes have taken place in this country. As a kid, my dad (along with all of his schoolmates) was forced to pick cotton without pay by local Caucasian plantation owners. Today, my father can look at a television set and see someone near his skin shade running in the primary for the presidency of the U.S.

Sometimes life is worth waiting for.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

P.S. That's my father in the photo above in his Army days.