おむつルートやもつれた物語：余波 (Nappy Routes and Tangled Tales: The Aftermath
The second Nappy Routes and Tangled Tales event took place over the weekend at Artspace and Cafe Cotonoha. Put together by my homey, Mitzi, and moderated by photographer Makoto Arakaki, it focused on mixed heritage in Okinawa and the issue surrounding those circumstances.
Things started off with a couple of videos, including a well edited short piece featuring foreigners and Okinawans, and a message from a mixed race person (Annamaria Shimabukuro) living and teaching in California. The first video was especially intriguing as it raised a number of really interesting questions that unfortunately went unanswered. Still, it set the scene and got people thinking about things that they probably wouldn't dare say in public otherwise.
A couple of mixed raced people were asked to speak at the event, like my White/Okinawan friend Melissa. She might look kind of sad and pensive here, but she was actually extremely hilarious and engaging. It was interesting hearing her tales of growing up in Okinawa and working on base. Whenever I think about base, my mind often conjures up images of young Americans getting wasted off their ass, or dudes dressed in fatigues carrying guns bigger than their bodies. What I don't often think about are the Okinawans who work on base. She brought up an incident that happened one time where the base workers union was forcing workers to protest some military action, even against their will. And if they didn't they'd be ostracized or thrown out of the union. But can you really hate the military and work for them at the same time? I wonder...
Dennis and Byron also shared their vastly different experiences as mixed race people. There stories were different because they come from a different, older time. Dennis is a hero to Byron because of his pioneering work as a mixed race person in Okinawa.
Even Eiji and Wakana were on hand to ask and answer some questions from the audience. I swear...Mitzi knows everybody.
Erika came out with us to the event, and we ran into one of the new JETs, Emma. Emma is herself a mixed race person with familial roots in Okinawa. Is it just me, or do they kind of look like they could be related to each other...?
All in all it was a great event, unfortunately constricted by the limitation of time. I wish I had asked some questions that I now have floating around in my head. How do mixed race people, especially those whose parents were/are in the military, feel when shit goes down like the recent rape of an Okinawan woman by two servicemen? How's it feel when people assume you're not Japanese, don't speak Japanese, and talk shit about you in Japanese thinking you can't understand them? Would you have rather grown up in a country other than Japan? Has it been hard being accepted into Japanese society? Which part of you do you identify with the most (if any)? And do you call corny jokes "American jokes"?
Clearly there needs to be a third Nappy Routes to answer these burning questions once and for all.