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His parents' experience with Japanese resistance toward intermarriage with Okinawans

My father was Okinawan and my mother Japanese, what they call Naichi. And those days, the Okinawans and the Japanese, they're not too keen about marrying like that. It's just like me, now, when I met my wife. My name is Yonamine, that's an Okinawan name, and my wife's name was Iwashita. And lot of times, my wife's parents wasn't too keen about me going with their daughter. My wife's parents used to get calls from the Okinawans says that Leave the Okinawan boy alone. Let your daughter marry the Japanese, the Okinawans marry the Okinawans.


discrimination families identity interpersonal relations racially mixed people racism

Date: December 16, 2003

Location: Hawai'i, US

Interviewer: Art Hansen, John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum.

Interviewee Bio

Wally Kaname Yonamine was born on Maui in Hawaii in 1925. He first gained public acclaim as an athlete in 1944 after moving to Oahu and leading Farrington High School to its first Honolulu city football championship. After World War II, he was signed to a professional football contract as a running back for the San Francisco 49ers, the first player of Asian ancestry to attain this milestone. An injury prompted a switch from football to baseball.

While with the Pacific Coast League’s San Francisco Seals, its manager urged him to consider a professional baseball career in Japan. After joining the Yomiuri Giants in 1951 as the first American to play in postwar Japan, he hit over .300. Considered the greatest leadoff batter in Japanese baseball history, he won three batting championships and, in 1957, was named the Central League’s Most Valuable Player.

Upon retiring as a player, he finished his thirty-eight-year career in Japan as a successful coach, scout, and manager. Credited with introducing to Japanese baseball such American practices as hard sliding, running out bunts and infield grounders, and diving for fly balls, Yonamine was initially the target of fan abuse. He later achieved great popularity, however, and in 1990 was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. (December 16, 2003)

Michelle Yamashiro
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Michelle Yamashiro

American values she aligns with

Okinawan American whose parents are from Peru.

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Michelle Yamashiro
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Michelle Yamashiro

Working together in Okinawa using three languages

Okinawan American whose parents are from Peru.

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Mitsuye Yamada
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Mitsuye Yamada

Expressing herself through poetry

(b. 1923) Japanese American poet, activist

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Takayo Fischer
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Takayo Fischer

Being Confused about Racial Identity in Postwar United States

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Juan Alberto Matsumoto
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Juan Alberto Matsumoto

About Escobar (Spanish)

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Monica Teisher
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Monica Teisher

Her definition of Nikkei

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Kazumu Naganuma
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Kazumu Naganuma

His sister Kiyo was like a second mother to him

(b. 1942) Japanese Peruvian incarcerated in Crystal City

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Mia Yamamoto
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Mia Yamamoto

Understanding anti black racism in high school

(b. 1943) Japanese American transgender attorney

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Mia Yamamoto
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Mia Yamamoto

Racial discrimination prepared her in becoming the first transgender trial lawyer

(b. 1943) Japanese American transgender attorney

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Masato Ninomiya
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Masato Ninomiya

How he met his wife

Professor of Law, University of Sao Paulo, Lawyer, Translator (b. 1948)

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Sabrina Shizue McKenna
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Sabrina Shizue McKenna

Impact of Coming Out on Her Family

(b. 1957) Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

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Reiko T. Sakata
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Reiko T. Sakata

Parent’s Marriage

(b. 1939) a businesswoman whose family volunterily moved to Salt Lake City in Utah during the war.

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