PANA Institute for Leadership Development

Henry W. Rietz
Grinnell College, Iowa

Presented at the 2001 APARRI Conference: "Religion and Public Life in
Pacific and Asian North America"

University of California at Berkeley
August 9-11, 2001

Abstract

I do not have the privilege of speaking from a generally recognized social
location. My mixed, or "hapa," heritage precludes me from claiming
any one identity with integrity. I am both Asian-American and Euro-American,
and yet I am neither. I am an other to the Other.

The first part of the essay consists of an autobiographical narrative that
tells some of the particularities of my story. For most of my life, I had been
a secret to my father's Japanese-American family. My "hapa" identity,
my very existence, threatened the honor of my father's family. So, for them,
my father had no children.

The second part of the essay reflects upon my "hapa" identity and
how it might contribute to discussions of identity construction and hermeneutics.
I will suggest that my "hapa" identity reveals some of the limitations
of identity constructions which use categories such as Americans of Japanese
Ancestry or even Asian-American. Such categories are based on the commonalities
of its members and their difference from a larger group. While recognizing the
political expediency of such categories, constructing identity in this manner
tends to homogenize members of the group while also exoticizing and ostracizing
them from others. Instead, drawing on my own experience, I will propose a mode
of identity construction that emphasizes particularity as the basis for community
and communication.

Full Text

[NOTE: All rights to the work below are the property of the author. Please
do not cite or reproduce for distribution without express permission.]

I do not have the privilege of speaking from a generally recognized social
location. My mixed, or what we call in Hawai'i "hapa," heritage precludes
me from claiming any one identity with integrity. I am both Asian-American and
Euro-American, and yet I am neither. I am an other to the Other.
My family situation has always seemed normal to me. My mother was born in Germany
and immigrated to the United States, settling eventually in Hawai'i. My father
was born in Hawai'i to parents and grandparents who had emigrated from Japan.
I was like many hapa-haole² - that is, half-white - boys growing
up in Hawai'i in the 1970s and early 1980s. What is different about my story
is that while my father is Japanese,³ I have my mother's haole last
name.

Among Asian families, a family name is a highly prized possession. The family
name is the vessel that conveys honor or shame across generations. Honor is
ascribed to people on the basis of their ancestors' actions through the family
name. One's actions, however, can also bring shame to one's ancestors, thus
dishonoring the family name. Protection and preservation of the family name
is important to an honorable Japanese family.

This was the case of my father's family. My father's mother had an honorable
family name. There were, however, no sons to carry it on. Therefore, as the
oldest of three sisters, it was my grandmother's obligation to marry a man who
was willing to accept her family name, what is called in Japanese, a yoshi.
Her marriage to my grandfather was shimpai, "arranged." After they
were married, it was expected that the couple would take her family name, but
my grandfather's father would not permit it; he wanted his own family's honorable
name preserved. When my father was twenty-one years old, both of his parents
passed away. As the eldest son, he assumed the duties and responsibilities of
running his family's soap factory and of raising his younger brother and sister.
Soon after his parents died, his maternal grandmother approached him urging
him to abandon his father's family name and to assume his mother's. My father
refused.
The problem of preserving my grandmother's family name was seemingly resolved
when my great-grandmother arranged a marriage for her youngest daughter; finally
a yoshi was found. But as fate would have it, they had no children. So my great-grandmother
arranged to have one of the yoshi's nephews adopted by the couple. A male progeny
with the family name was ensured, despite the fact that he did not have the
family's "blood." When the adopted son reached adulthood, my father's
nieces were pressured to marry the man who bears the family name in order to
restore the family's blood to the name. All refused. Such is the extent to which
an honorable Japanese family will go to preserve a family name.

In 1966, my mother became pregnant with me. This situation posed a dilemma
for my parents. For my father to marry a haole woman - a white woman - would
bring shame and dishonor to his Japanese family. But my father, being an honorable
man, proposed to my mother, offering to sell his property in Hawai'i and move
with her to the U.S. Mainland. My mother, however, refused. She would not allow
him to abandon his family. My mother, who grew up in Germany during World War
II, was orphaned as child, and later lost her only brother. Most of her extended
family perished either at the hands of the Nazis (they were Hungarian gypsies
or French Jews) or in the senseless Allied bombing of Dresden. She, who had
no family, understood the importance of family. She, a haole, knew to sacrifice
her own feelings for her family.

For most of my life, my father's family did not know about my birth. My father's
family did not know anything about me; they did not even know that I existed.
To them, my father had no children.

I grew up in a four-unit apartment building on the island of O'ahu, about a
fifteen minute walk from Waikiki Beach. Our street was only one block in length;
on it, lived people from various ethnic and cultural heritages - Japanese, Chinese,
Filipino, Portuguese, Haole, Korean, Samoan. It was a typical neighborhood in
Hawai'i. Our landlord and her family, which spanned three generations, lived
in two of the apartments. They were Portuguese and Haole. My mother and I lived
in the third apartment.

Growing up I received many culturally mixed?messages. Some of these messages
originated on the Mainland and were imported into Hawai'i through such media
as television, movies, and magazines. These images of the dominant white culture
of the United States were reinforced by our landlord and her family. They were
members of the American Legion. The American flag flew in front of our apartment
building during every holiday. Their ideal was John Wayne: the tough, brave,
strong, white American man. In comparison to John Wayne, I, as a Japanese boy,
seemed small, weak, and timid.

Elsewhere the messages were different. Whenever I went to the beach or other
places where other local kids congregated I often felt a sense of fear. "Eh,
haole boy. Wat cha' you lookin' at? … Eh bra', you get one problem or wat?
... Heh, haole boy, I talkin' to you. You like beef or what?" Because I
was white, I was often harassed, and I feared being hurt.

At school many of my friends were of Asian ancestry, especially Japanese. Most
of the girls that I was attracted to were Japanese. I often wished my brown
hair was black and straight. I felt odd when roll was taken in class and I was
one of only a few students with a haole last name. I wished I had a Japanese
middle name like so many of my friends. After school, many of them went to Japanese
Language School. I always wanted to join them. Every year, Japanese families
celebrate Boy's Day by flying over their house a flag of a carp for each son
in the family. I always wanted to do that as well.

My parents did not marry. A few years after I was born they had a falling out
and their relationship became strained. They, however, maintained a friendship
for my sake. Throughout my entire childhood I saw my father virtually every
day. He came by every afternoon. He ate dinner with us and spent the evening
with us. Each night, before we went to sleep he would drive home. Growing up,
I never felt insecure because of my birth. My friends eventually heard my story.
I never kept it as a secret from them. I was never ashamed of my situation.

Although I was never ashamed, I did find it difficult growing up "without"
relatives. I had no family heritage that I could claim. Or maybe, more accurately,
there was no heritage that would claim me. The community of Hawai'i is small.
Somehow, some way, everyone's paths cross. When people meet for the first time,
the conversation often turns to their extended families, and they discover how
they are connected by their extended families. One's identity derives from one's
family name.

The most difficult thing about my family situation was not knowing what to
do in the event of an emergency. For example, I often wondered what I should
do if my father would become sick and hospitalized. Should I visit him in the
hospital and risk exposing the secret of my existence, risk bringing shame upon
my father? What would happen if he should pass away? Should I attend his funeral?
I eventually resolved that I would not visit the hospital and I would not attend
his funeral. I would honor my father's life by not attending the services for
his death.

Growing up I longed to meet my relatives. I wished I could get to know them.
I wished they could get to know me. Since the island is so small, my father
would occasionally run into one of his relatives when we were out together.
Although my father never told me to, I knew even as a young child to quietly
walk away. I had met some of my relatives. None had ever met me. For all they
knew, my father had no children.

When I was a junior in high school, I began to date a girl of Chinese ancestry.
She was the second of three daughters. She came from a family with a very honorable
Chinese name. Since the family had only daughters, there was no male heir, no
one to carry on the family name. Her parents were from an aristocratic family
in Northeast China and they had witnessed the brutality of the Japanese invasion
of China during World War II. They had fled during the communist takeover in
1949, and had immigrated to the United States in the 1960s. Although they were
"strong" Christians, they were very Chinese in their thinking. They
believed that their Christianity reinforced their Confucian heritage. Her parents
opposed our relationship, citing a variety of reasons for their opposition.
I did not come from a "Christian" home. My grades were poor. I wasn't
"doctoral material" (her father was a professor and they wanted all
of their daughters to go to medical school, or at least earn a Ph.D.). The actual
source of their opposition, however, was racial. They did not like the fact
that I was not Chinese. And, to make matters worse, I was not only haole but
Japanese.

Throughout most of our relationship, which lasted through college, I was a secret.
We had to be discreet when we went out, "lest one of her parents' friends
sees us." I never attended any of her family's parties, though they would
often fix me a plate of food to eat in my car. At these parties, her parents
would introduce her to "desirable" young Chinese men. Over time, they
slowly began to make concessions to our relationship. They allowed me to work
for them, doing the yard work, painting their house, and repairing a second
house they rented out. All the while they kept my relationship with their daughter
a secret from their relatives and friends.

The rejection of my girlfriend's family was painful to me. I longed to be accepted
into an extended family. I longed to be connected with a heritage. I resolved
to meet all of their criticisms. My grades improved and I started going to church.
My girlfriend even made known to her parents that if we were to get married,
I would be willing to take their family name. I was willing to become a yoshi.

In the end our relationship did not last. We broke up soon after graduating
from college. Eventually, I married a haole woman from the Mainland. For most
of my life I had experienced alienation from my Japanese heritage. In an Asian-American
context, I was always conscious of how haole I was. I had struggled to be accepted
by and connected to an Asian heritage, a struggle I had always lost. Now, living
on the Mainland and being in a relationship with a haole woman, I began to discover
different aspects of my identity. In order to succeed in a haole context, I
found myself adopting haole strategies of relating and haole expressions of
identity. While I was able to function in a haole context, I did not feel comfortable.
I did not "feel at home." Living in a haole context, I began to see
how Japanese I actually was. I began to face the challenge of forming a hapa
identity, to integrate both heritages rather than assimilate one into the other
or accept one at the expense of the other.

The challenges of constructing a hapa identity became even more complicated
as I moved from forming my own identity to participating in the formation of
my children's identity. In the spring of 1995, my then wife was expecting our
first child. It was then that I became convinced that the secrecy pervading
my family must end. I could not bring a child into a world in which she did
not exist. Kodomo no tame ni is a Japanese phrase which epitomized the
ethics I had learned from my father and which he, in his own way, modeled honorably
for me his entire life. Kodomo no tame ni. "For the sake of the
children." I was now becoming a father. It was now my responsibility to
give my daughter a heritage, an identity. So I asked my father on behalf of
my daughter for something that I could never ask for myself. I asked my father
that he make our existence known to his family. Over the years I had known that
my father wanted to introduce me to his family. Though we had never spoken about
it before, I had sensed the pain he felt because he could not acknowledge me
publicly. He was as much a victim of the situation as I. Over the years, we
each silently had endured. And now my father bravely did what I am sure he had
always longed to do, but could not do, not for himself. He told his family about
us, about me. Kodomo no tame ni.

A month after Maile, my daughter, was born, my father brought us to the family
columbarium at the Soto mission, to the ashes of my grandparents. We brought
flowers and offered incense. There, my father introduced us to his parents.
The next month my parents were married. The wedding service was performed in
the same Shinto shrine that my grandparents' was. A friend of my mother's and
I were the only witnesses.

My father's family was surprised by the news that my father had a son, and
now a grandchild. Despite how small the island is, they never knew that I existed.
My cousins and other extended family members received me warmly and welcomed
me into the family. Even my father's matriarchal aunts seemed to accept me.
Now, to everyone we meet, my father proudly introduces me as his son and Maile
as his "haole granddaughter."

The only person who could not recognize my existence, who could not accept
me, was my aunt, my father's sister. The news that my father has a son devastated
her, and their relationship. The image of her brother, the one who had taken
care of her and honorably looked out for her all these years, was shattered.
The man who had accepted all the responsibilities as the oldest son of a Japanese
family, who tended the family altar, who represented the family at the funerals
of the relatives of all the people who came to his parents' funerals, who provided
wise counsel and leadership, the man who modeled what it really means to be
Japanese to the family, the man who brought honor to the family, that man now,
in her eyes, had dishonored the family. To her, my existence brings shame on
the family name. She cannot see that my father is indeed an honorable Japanese
man.

I am saddened by my aunt's reaction, but the hurt I feel cannot approach the
pain my father experiences from the rejection of his sister. While my aunt's
rejection hurts me and while the pain it causes my father angers me, I cannot
self-righteously condemn her reaction. As a hapa-haole, my existence is a greater
danger than merely bringing shame on her family name. I embody a loss of the
Japanese culture, a threat to Japanese heritage. The process of forming my own
hapa identity involves integrating seemingly contradictory elements from both
of my heritages. As a hapa-haole living on the Mainland for over a decade, I
too feel the threat to my Asian identity. Being part haole living in a predominantly
white context, I struggle with the temptation to assimilate rather than integrate.
It is too easy for me to "pass" as another haole, if not in appearance,
at least in demeanor. So I combat that temptation, at times with the instinct
to preserve my Asian identity at all costs.

My desire to protect my Japanese identity affects who I am as a father. A part
of me feels a sense of loss that my daughter Maile, who is only one quarter
Japanese, has blue eyes and blond hair, and does not have many Asian features.
I am saddened that she doesn't have a strong hapa appearance, that she doesn't
look like me. Despite all that I have experienced, I cannot help but admit that
the prospect that she might someday marry a haole man from the Mainland is a
fear that haunts me. Although I am sure that I will fully accept him into our
family and love him, part of me probably will mourn the increasing loss of our
Japanese heritage and culture, a loss that becomes greater with each successive
generation. Will my children know what it means to be part Japanese? Will they
preserve some of our Japanese customs and take pride in their Japanese heritage?
Will they remember their ancestors? Will they bring honor to the family name?

Reflections on a hapa identity and a hermeneutic of particularity

I wonder about my presence here at this conference.⁴ What is my
place? Where do we hapa fit? Do we have a contribution to make, or are we merely
a threat, a diluting of Asian American identity? And what about our children,
and eventually their children? What will be their place?

How might the story of a "hapa" identity contribute to this conference?
I would suggest that my "hapa" identity reveals some of the limitations
of categories such as Americans of Japanese Ancestry and especially Asian-Pacific
American. Simplistically speaking, such categories tend to construct identity
by emphasizing not only differences vis-à-vis a majority group but also
commonalities among its members. Such a strategy is politically expedient; it
speaks against the threat of assimilation. But it also comes with some dangers.
By emphasizing differences from others, such constructions at best may result
in "exotification" and at worst alienation and self-marginalization.
By emphasizing commonalities among members, identity construction in this manner
tends to homogenize its members, eliding the tremendous differences that do
exist among us. Whose identity is being privileged by the category of Asian
American?

However, hapa complicates the situation even further, since there are no clear
distinctions between categories, between Asian Americans and others, or even
among those of us who are hapa. What specific cultures and heritages have those
of us who are hapa integrated into our individual identities? Have we been accepted
and integrated into our Asian cultures or perhaps were we adopted into a white
family, raised without even knowing another person with Asian ancestry? How
do others see and treat us, as Asian Americans, as white or black or
even Hispanic? As hapa, our stories are so different. Perhaps in that respect
we are the same.

My experience leads me to propose a mode of identity construction that emphasizes
particularity as the basis for community and communication. In my search to
find someone in a similar situation, I have yet to find another hapa person
with the same story as mine. But despite the differences, and even because of
the differences, I have learned from listening to the stories of others. There
is power in hearing and in sharing our particular stories, by maintaining both
the similarities as well as the differences. When we maintain the particularities,
we communicate, we are in relationship, not as stereotyped caricatures or abstractions,
but as two distinct individuals, each with a rich nexus of relationships and
experiences.

Will you join me in the project? Will you share your particular story?

__________

¹Portions of this paper have been adapted from "My
father is Japanese, but I have my mother's last name," in Asian-Americans
and Christian Ministry, edited by Inn Sook Lee and Timothy D. Son, (Seoul:
Voice, 1999), pp. 49-56.

²Haole is the Hawaiian word for "foreigner,"
and is popularly used in Hawai'i for people of European descent. Hapa is Hawaiian
for "half." A person who is hapa-haole is "half-haole."

³People of Japanese ancestry in Hawai"i usually
identify themselves as simply "Japanese," rather than use a term such
as Americans of Japanese Ancestry as is more common on the mainland United States.
Japanese is not being used here to identify people born and raised in Japan.

⁴The Pacific and Asian North American Religion and
Public Life conference, University of California-Berkeley, Aug. 9-11, 2001.
The annual conference is an ongoing project of the Asian and Pacific American
Religion Research Initiative.