Heightened awareness of identity as a Japanese American

The importance of Japanese American role models in childhood community Avoiding the pigeonhole of stereotypes during school years First learning about the incarceration experience in college Recognizing issues of dual identity in the nisei generation Heightened awareness of identity as a Japanese American Feeling angry upon reading of Supreme Court case, 'Korematsu v. United States' Is 'Korematsu v. United States' still a threat to American civil liberties? Working on the 'case of a lifetime'

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I think that the experience of number one, getting involved in Asian American Studies, taking Asian American Studies classes, and number (two), through those classes, getting more involved with other Japanese Americans and Asian Americans on campus certainly really gave me a much more heightened sense of my own identity as a Japanese American. We talked about identity issues, read the literature going on in the community around issues of identity in class, and so we were all able individually to look at ourselves and say, “Well, who am I, and how do I fit into all of this?” And all of that certainly made me much more aware of myself as a Japanese American woman because growing up in Gardena, I wasn't so aware of being a Japanese American woman as much as I was aware of being in this community that just had a bunch of Japanese Americans, but not in the context, not being Japanese Americans in the context of a larger society.

Date: March 23 & 24, 2000
Location: Washington, US
Interviewer: Margaret Chon, Alice Ito
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

community identity