Who I am

I was born 16 years after the end of WWII at Japanese Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights. The doctor who delivered me was Dr. S Takata. I ate with ohashi before I used a fork and Tazukuri (田作り) is still my favorite New Year treat. I am a Japanese American.

On November 19, 1906, my 22 year old grandfather Tadashi Kinoshita arrived by ship in Victoria, British Columbia. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1906 through Canada. He was part of a wave of immigration that educated Japanese undertook. His status: student. When he reached the U.S he was among 5,178 who arrived in the continental United States. He remained in the U.S. from 1906 through 1918. My grandmother arrived in Seattle, Washington on April 11, 1918 on the Kashima Maru. She was newly married and 22 years old.

The story goes that Tadashi Kinoshita worked as a journalist in Seattle. Three of my uncles were born in there. In 192X the Kinoshita’s moved to Los Angeles where my uncle X and my mother Kazuko Kinoshita was born in 1925. My grandfather sold insurance and helped grow the Centenary Methodist church in Los Angeles.

In 1942 the family of six was among 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans interned by the War Relocation Authority. The Kinoshita’s started out at the Santa Anita Assembly Center and ended up in the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming.

This was never news to me, meaning the relocation and incarceration of my family was something I always knew. There was never a day where it was revealed to me.

Being the daughter of a Japanese American internee is who I am. It’s fostered a mean sense of the injustice in the world and well-developed empathy. It also made me feel less than and like an outsider.

As a little girl in Los Angeles, I was anti-war and for women’s rights. I bucked the system, challenging elementary school dress codes, speaking up when people called me Jap or half-breed, and told everyone who would listen that girls could do anything boys could do. When I was 12 I knew I’d grow up to be a journalist. I did, becoming a broadcast journalist for local stations in Idaho and Oregon.

I raised my children as Japanese Americans –  even the tow-headed one named Tadashi.

As I’ve lived around the world and throughout the United States, it’s clear that most people do not know about the incarceration of U.S. citizens and the impact that still has on the lives of subsequent generations.

Please share your stories and keep the legacy alive.