Interviews

1. Little contact with Asians growing up on the east coast

2. Spending summers in Los Angeles

3. Japanese Americans brought up to deny their roots

4. Being multicultural before it was “in”

5. Moving to and living in Japan

6. The reason to stay in Japan after his third year

7. Being a Japanese American in Japan

8. Never being Japanese

9. Japan as my home

10. Different tension between East Coast and Los Angeles

11. A stereotype of Japanese Americans

12. Main differences between Japanese and Japanese Americans

Ota,Vince

Japanese American Creative designer living in Japan

Being multicultural before it was “in”

In that way, I think we were very Japanese. We were brought up with no religion. My parents, my mom was actually pretty adamant about it and said, “Take a look around…” And I learned from her that religion, it’s a learned thing. It’s not something that’s born inside of you. She instilled a sense of morality in me, but she didn’t push any one religion on me. I guess growing up back east, especially since the area was fairly conservative, I had some of that influence from my friends. But at the same time, it’s pretty varied. When I was in junior high school, I was in a band, and there was myself, a Jewish guy who played the keyboard, there was a Roman Catholic guy who played the guitar, a Black Baptist drummer and there’s a Hawaiian bassist. So we were the multicultural crew before multicultural was in. One weekend, we would play in a synagogue and the next we’d play at a church, and the next week, a Baptist church.

Finding Home (film) multiculturalism racially mixed people religion

Date: September 12, 2003

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Interviewer: Art Nomura

Contributed by: Art Nomura, Finding Home.

Interviewee Bio

Vince Ota, (Sansei on his mother’s side, Yonsei on his father’s), was born in New Hampshire. From there, he and his family lived in several cities throughout the United States and also lived in London before finally settling in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Growing up in a small town in Maryland, Vince did not have much contact with other Asian Americans, except during the summers he spent in Los Angeles with relatives. He describes his upbringing as “pretty White American.” Vince eventually moved to southern California where he attended community college and the California Institute of the Arts. He worked as a creative designer and lived in Los Angeles for seven years until moving to Japan. Vince has lived in Japan since 1996 and plans to stay. At the time of the interview, he was working as a creative designer. (September 12, 2003)