Proud to be Japanese Peruvian

I was always proud to be a Japanese Peruvian, citizenship or not. And now that the stories are coming out, I get together, Hiro Shimizu and I, we all grew up together, so our group gets together once every two months or so. And they hear the story and say, "Oh, I forgot, you're from Peru," things like that are coming up. And so it's fine, but as far as the impressions or anything, like I said, my racquetball club group, they're having fun calling me Julio. And I had fun with that, too, because they see me differently. It's more they know that I'm from a different country. And some people say, "Where are you from? You look Japanese," or, "You look Asian." [Laughs] But it's all in good spirit, I think, I like that a lot. It hasn't changed anything as far as my inner feelings. I think I've always been good about who I am and I go back to, I know it's from my parents. And my older siblings, they have a big influence in me, a lot more than I had imagined until I became older and I realized all the things that they've done that's influenced me being the youngest.

Date: September 20, 2019
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda and Yoko Nishimura
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum and Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.