I’m looking forward to reading Speak, Okinawa (my mother is also from Okinawa — my father is a 3rd generation Japanese-American) as I’m sure I’ll find some similarities with my own childhood. Fortunately, I’m from Hawaii where there are many like me but there were still instances where I learned that I had a different childhood from other Japanese-Americans. An example that easily comes to mind is having a friend visit our home and remarking that there’s a lot of Japanese (it was actually a mix of items from both Okinawa and Japan) things. This was the first time I thought that we were somehow different from other Japanese-American families.
Elizabeth Miki Brina’s “Speak, Okinawa”
