Interviews

1. Defining the term "Nikkei" (Portuguese)

2. Brazilian of Japanese descents (Portuguese)

3. Japan's impact on the image of Nikkei in Brazil (Portuguese)

4. Change in sense of Nikkei Brazilian identity over time (Portuguese)

5. Nikkei community concentrated in São Paulo (Portuguese)

6. Changing life styles of successive generations (Portuguese)

Oi,Celia

Former Director, Museu Histórico da Imigração Japonesa no Brasil

Changing life styles of successive generations (Portuguese)

(Portuguese) Well, my life, my personal life, it’s, you know, I’d say that it’s pretty typical of a large part of the Japanese community in Brazil. So, my family, from the beginning, it’s interesting because I come from a family of fishermen in Japan. My grandfather came to Brazil and started growing cotton. Then later he switched to potatoes and grew potatoes. And then my father followed, my father has passed away, but my brothers continue in farming. We’re six, of six children, the three men are still in farming.

As for me, the oldest daughter, I left the interior, which has a community of more or less, the Japanese community there these days is somewhere around two hundred families, those that live in Itapetininga. But I came to São Paulo, I left for São Paulo in 1972. I never went back, I still live in São Paulo, right. Meaning, you could say that there was a whole phase, up until I was eighteen, when I lived in an agrarian community, in an interior community that was by and large rural. Afterwards, I came to São Paulo, I went to São Paulo, to study, I went to college. And there, I continued in the Japanese community.

Brazil identity

Date: October 7, 2005

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Ann Kaneko

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

Interviewee Bio

Célia Abe Oi was born in Itapetininga in 1950. Her grandparents had arrived in Brazil in 1929. Originally from a family of fishermen on the island of Atatajima, near the city of Hiroshima, upon their arrival they began working in the Brazilian countryside, initially in the cotton fields and later growing potatoes. Her parents and siblings also worked in agriculture. In 1968, she began studying History in college, and in 1979 completed her course in Journalism at the Cásper Líbero College. In the mid-1970s, she began working in the editorial room of the Portuguese section of the Diário Nippak newspaper. Célia contributed to various journals and publications tied to the Japanese-Brazilian community, until she became the director of the Museum of the History of Japanese Immigration in 1998. (July 26, 2006)