TO OKINAWA AND BACK AGAIN : Life Stories of Okinawan Kibei Nisei in Hawai'i

This paper focuses on the life stories of Okinawan Kibei Nisei in Hawai'i and examines the ways in which they reconstruct the meaning of their life experiences as a process of selfdefining. Most references to the Kibei Nisei have focused on their marginalized status in larger society by emphasizing the difficulties that they had in adjusting to American society because of their experiences of being raised and educated in Japan during their childhoods. Particularly, their World War II era experiences of polarizing pressures of identity choice between Japan and the United States have received substantial attention in previous studies. In this paper, the author emphasizes how aspects of their positive marginality developed over the course of their lives. This study relies on life stories of fourteen Okinawan Kibei Nisei elders in Hawai'i who were sent to Okinawa at an early age and retuned to Hawai'i in their mid to late teens. The author collected their life stories through conducting intensive interviews and participating in Okinawan community events and gatherings in Hawai'i over the time period of a year and half from February 2004 to May 2005.Their life stories reveal the following points. First, Okinawan Kibei Nisei generated their stories by selecting unique experiences that they had in their lives because of their selfidentification as Kibei Nisei and Uchinanchu and reconstructed the meaning of these experiences from their present point of view. They gave meaning to their sorrows of their past experiencing Okinawa's poverty, the forced imposition of a standardized Japanese education in Okinawa, and the sense of dual dissonance as both Kibei Nisei and Okinawan immigrants upon returning to Hawai'i. Second, their life stories reveal that over time they came to define themselves in relation to the larger Okinawan community in Hawai'i. As described in their life stories, from the time of their return, the Kibei Nisei bore a sense of responsibility to foster an appreciation of Okinawan culture and pride as Okinawans in Hawai'i, and to challenge discrimination by mainland Japanese immigrants. In addition, the life stories also reveal that their social status within the Okinawan community in Hawai'i rose as an interactive process in thesocio-historical development of the Okinawan community in Hawai'i.In this paper, the author treats Okinawan Kibei Nisei as active agents by demonstrating how they reframed their status from being politically, economically and historically marginalized according to the social structure of the society in which they were situated, and were able to establish a positive foundation for their lives, from their unique position to bridge the cultural, social, linguistic and geographical divide