Okinawa’s GI Brides

Okinawa’s GI Brides PDF Author: Etsuko Takushi Crissey
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856503
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
The American military started building its massive base complex in Okinawa at the end of World War II. During the decade that followed, US forces seized vast areas of privately owned land, evicting and impoverishing thousands of farmers. US military occupation rule, imposed during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, lasted until 1972, twenty years longer than the Allied occupation of mainland Japan. Besides land seizures, Okinawans were subjected to numerous human rights violations, including oxymoronic “occupation law” that consistently favored the US military in cases of serious crimes against civilians, denial of the freedom to choose candidates for elected office, and strict limits on travel outside Okinawa, even to mainland Japan. The commanding military presence has persistently stymied economic development in Okinawa, which remains Japan’s poorest prefecture. Yet, even as the disproportionate burden of bases continues to impose dangers and disruptions, hundreds of Okinawan women every year have married American servicemen and returned with them to live in the United States. Former Okinawa Times reporter Etsuko Takushi Crissey traveled throughout their adopted country, conducting wide-ranging interviews and a questionnaire survey of women who married and immigrated between the early 1950s and the mid-1990s. She concentrates especially on their experiences as immigrants, wives, mothers, working women, and members of a racial minority. Many describe severe hardships they encountered. In Okinawa's GI Brides, Crissey presents their diverse personal accounts, her survey results, and comparative data on divorces—challenging the widespread notion that such marriages almost always fail, with the women ending up abandoned and helpless in a strange land. Her book, the first on Okinawan wives of US servicemen, also compares the circumstances of their marriages with those of so-called “war brides” and postwar spouses of American servicemen stationed in mainland Japan and Europe. Written in brisk and lively prose, this book is stimulating and informative reading for a general audience, and a timely resource for specialists in the fields of history, political science, sociology, international relations, and anthropology, as well as ethnic, immigrant, and gender studies.

Okinawa’s GI Brides

Okinawa’s GI Brides PDF Author: Etsuko Takushi Crissey
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856503
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Get Book

Book Description
The American military started building its massive base complex in Okinawa at the end of World War II. During the decade that followed, US forces seized vast areas of privately owned land, evicting and impoverishing thousands of farmers. US military occupation rule, imposed during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, lasted until 1972, twenty years longer than the Allied occupation of mainland Japan. Besides land seizures, Okinawans were subjected to numerous human rights violations, including oxymoronic “occupation law” that consistently favored the US military in cases of serious crimes against civilians, denial of the freedom to choose candidates for elected office, and strict limits on travel outside Okinawa, even to mainland Japan. The commanding military presence has persistently stymied economic development in Okinawa, which remains Japan’s poorest prefecture. Yet, even as the disproportionate burden of bases continues to impose dangers and disruptions, hundreds of Okinawan women every year have married American servicemen and returned with them to live in the United States. Former Okinawa Times reporter Etsuko Takushi Crissey traveled throughout their adopted country, conducting wide-ranging interviews and a questionnaire survey of women who married and immigrated between the early 1950s and the mid-1990s. She concentrates especially on their experiences as immigrants, wives, mothers, working women, and members of a racial minority. Many describe severe hardships they encountered. In Okinawa's GI Brides, Crissey presents their diverse personal accounts, her survey results, and comparative data on divorces—challenging the widespread notion that such marriages almost always fail, with the women ending up abandoned and helpless in a strange land. Her book, the first on Okinawan wives of US servicemen, also compares the circumstances of their marriages with those of so-called “war brides” and postwar spouses of American servicemen stationed in mainland Japan and Europe. Written in brisk and lively prose, this book is stimulating and informative reading for a general audience, and a timely resource for specialists in the fields of history, political science, sociology, international relations, and anthropology, as well as ethnic, immigrant, and gender studies.

Okinawa's GI Brides

Okinawa's GI Brides PDF Author: Etsuko Takushi Crissey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780824875619
Category : Intercountry marriage
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Approximately 400 Okinawan women every year have married American servicemen and returned with them to live in the United States. Etsuko Takushi Crissey has travelled throughout the US, conducting wide-ranging interviews and a questionnaire survey of women who married and immigrated between the early 1950s and the mid-1990s.

Okinawan Women's Stories of Migration

Okinawan Women's Stories of Migration PDF Author: Johanna O. Zulueta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000553051
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
The phenomenon of “war brides” from Japan moving to the West has been quite widely discussed, but this book tells the stories of women whose lives followed a rather different path after they married foreign occupiers. During Okinawa’s Occupation by the Allies from 1945 to 1972, many Okinawan women met and had relationships with non-Western men who were stationed in Okinawa as soldiers and base employees. Most of these men were from the Philippines. Zulueta explores the journeys of these women to their husbands’ homeland, their acculturation to their adopted land, and their return to their native Okinawa in their late adult years. Utilizing a life-course approach, she examines how these women crafted their own identities as first-generation migrants or “Issei” in both the country of migration and their natal homeland, their re-integration to Okinawan society, and the role of religion in this regard, as well as their thoughts on end-of-life as returnees. This book will be of interest to scholars looking at gender and migration, cross-cultural marriages, ageing and migration, as well as those interested in East Asia, particularly Japan/Okinawa.

Speak, Okinawa

Speak, Okinawa PDF Author: Elizabeth Miki Brina
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525657355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A “hauntingly beautiful memoir about family and identity” (NPR) and a young woman's journey to understanding her complicated parents—her mother an Okinawan war bride, her father a Vietnam veteran—and her own, fraught cultural heritage. Elizabeth's mother was working as a nightclub hostess on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother's distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers. Decades later, Elizabeth comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and attempts a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people. Clear-eyed and profoundly humane, Speak, Okinawa is a startling accomplishment—a heartfelt exploration of identity, inheritance, forgiveness, and what it means to be an American.

Dream of the Water Children

Dream of the Water Children PDF Author: Frederick D. Kakinami Cloyd
Publisher: 2leaf Press
ISBN: 9781940939285
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Born to an African American father and Japanese mother, Frederick D. Kakinami Cloyd, the narrator of Dream of the Water Children, finds himself not only to be a marginalized person by virtue of his heritage, but often a cultural drifter, as well. Indeed, both his family and his society treat him as if he doesn't entirely belong to any world. Tautly written in spare, clear poetic prose, this memoir explores the specific contours of Japanese and African American cultures, as well as the broader experience of biracial and multicultural identity. To tell his story, Cloyd incorporates photographs and Japanese writing, history, and memory to convey both rich personal experience and significant historical detail. Bringing together vivid memories with a perceptive cultural eye, Dream of the Water Children brings readers closer to a biracial experience, opening up our understanding of the cultural richness and social challenges people from diverse backgrounds face.

Rethinking Postwar Okinawa

Rethinking Postwar Okinawa PDF Author: Pedro Iacobelli
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498533124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This collection provides a multidisciplinary study of postwar and contemporary Okinawa. The contributors analyze the unique social and cultural transformations that have occurred outside the context of American military control or US–Japan relations.

The Qing Empire and the Opium War

The Qing Empire and the Opium War PDF Author: Haijian Mao
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107069874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
A comprehensive study of the Opium War that presents a revisionist reading of the conflict and its main Chinese protagonists.

Okinawan Diaspora

Okinawan Diaspora PDF Author: Ronald Y. Nakasone
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824825300
Category : Social Science
Languages : id
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The first Okinawan immigrants arrived in Honolulu in January 1900 to work as contract laborers on Hawai'i's sugar plantations. Over time Okinawans would continue migrating east to the continental U.S., Canada, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Cuba, Paraguay, New Caledonia, and the islands of Micronesia. The essays in this volume commemorate these diasporic experiences within the geopolitical context of East Asia. Using primary sources and oral history, individual contributors examine how Okinawan identity was constructed in the various countries to which Okinawans migrated, and how their experiences were shaped by the Japanese nation-building project and by globalization. Essays explore the return to Okinawan sovereignty, or what Nobel Laureate Oe Kenzaburo called an "impossible possibility," and the role of the Okinawan labor diaspora in Japan's imperial expansion into the Philippines and Micronesia. Contributors: Arakaki Makoto, Robert K. Arakaki, Hokama Shuzen, Edith M. Kaneshiro, Ronald Y. Nakasone, Nomura Koya, Shirota Chika, Tomiyama Ichiro, Wesley Ueunten.

Okinawa and the U.S. Military

Okinawa and the U.S. Military PDF Author: Masamichi S. Inoue
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231138901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Inoue traces these developments as well, revealing the ways in which Tokyo has assisted the United States in implementing a system of governance that continues to expand through the full participation and cooperation of residents.".

Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies

Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies PDF Author: Yasuko Takezawa
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824867629
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies is a unique collection of essays derived from a series of dialogues held in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Los Angeles on the issues of racializations, gender, communities, and the positionalities of scholars involved in Japanese American studies. The book brings together some of the most renowned scholars of the discipline in Japan and North America. It seeks to overcome past constraints of dialogues between Japan- and U.S.-based scholars by providing opportunities for candid, extended conversations among its contributors. While each contribution focuses on the field of “Japanese American” studies, approaches to the subject vary—ranging from national and village archives, community newspapers, personal letters, visual art, and personal interviews. Research papers are divided into six sections: Racializations, Communities, Intersections, Borderlands, Reorientations, and Teaching. Papers by one or two Japan-based scholar(s) are paired with a U.S.-based scholar, reflecting the book’s intention to promote dialogue and mutuality across national formations. The collection is also notable for featuring underrepresented communities in Japanese American studies, such as Okinawan “war brides,” Koreans, women, and multiracials. Essays on subject positions raise fundamental questions: Is it possible to engage in a truly equal dialogue when English is the language used in the conversation and in a field where English-language texts predominate? How can scholars foster a mutual respect when U.S.-centrism prevails in the subject matter and in the field’s scholarly hierarchy? Understanding foundational questions that are now frequently unstated assumptions will help to disrupt hierarchies in scholarship and work toward more equal engagements across national divides. Although the study of Japanese Americans has reached a stage of maturity, contributors to this volume recognize important historical and contemporary neglects in that historiography and literature. Japanese America and its scholarly representations, they declare, are much too deep, rich, and varied to contain in a singular narrative or subject position.