According to the 2010 U.S. Census, thirty-eight percent of people living in Hawai’i are Asian, twenty-four percent are white, twenty-three percent of them are two or more races, and ten percent are native Hawaiians. It is the only U.S. state in which Asians, mixed-race Asians, and Polynesians dominate. I’m not sure whether I like watching Hawaii Five-O because I like to watch people who look like me speaking articulately instead of in broken English, gaze at the breath-taking scenery and remember my brief childhood in Oahu, or drool over Alex O’Loughlin, the guy who plays Steve McGarrett. It’s probably a little of all these things. Watching that show pulls deep into my DNA strands with a sense of belonging, even though I wasn’t born there and don’t have any Hawaiian ancestry. I did, however, get to first, second, and half of third grade in that wonderland. My father, who worked as civil engineer for the U.S. military, was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base from the summer of 1964 through the winter of 1966.
Discounting the first two months of my life in Pennsylvania, Hawai’i was my first experience living in the United States surrounded by Americans. In between those two months in the Land of Quakers, my first five years were spent in Tokyo, my mother’s hometown, where I fit in like a sandy-haired mongrel in a litter of sleek, black purebred Labrador retrievers. In 1964, Hawai’i was a mish-mash of Hawaiians, U.S. military, and Asians, both pure and mixed-bloods. Sugar cane and pineapple plantations were the dominant enterprises, and American military men under the guise of conquering heroes from WWII swaggered everywhere. There were six U.S. military bases on the island of Oahu alone. Mixing in with the natives and Americans, there were thousands of Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese who’d come to work on the plantations during the first half of the twentieth century.
Thus, by 1964 the streets were filled with American men in military blues, whites, or khaki walking past Chinese restaurants, Japanese kimono stores, and Hawaiian wood shops with carvings of their gods, plants, or women made out of polished driftwood. When we moved to Hawai’i, my dad told me we were now in America. So it’s no surprise that I thought America was about military men, rice balls with nori, and the Lono god with his big scary mouth showing his pointed teeth that stood vigil in my living room. America was so sunny and warm that I never wore anything except a t-shirt and shorts even in January. I got as brown as a walnut racing around on my bike with my older brother who taught me to ride downhill standing on my pedals with my hands in the air. I learned the hard way that it’s better to keep my hands on the handlebars. I also eventually learned that Hawai’i was not the REAL America.
It is a fantasyland, a vacation spot, and place of immodesty, decadence, and impropriety. It is the Las Vegas of U.S. states. What happens there doesn’t count. The uproar over President Obama’s American-ness is rooted in this notion. He was born in fantasyland. Perhaps it’s because, unlike the rest of the continental U.S., there are natives still walking around and native culture interwoven into everyday life. Just imagine walking down your favorite street in Manhattan and seeing that one out of every ten people you see were Native Americans. What if about half the people on Fifth Avenue were wearing Native American clothing. In Hawai’i, the native culture still thrives as a dominant force.
Upon leaving Japan, I thought nobody would question my background once I was an American living in America. My dad told me so. My dad was a white American who could trace his roots back to the French Huguenots that settled in the New Jersey area when it was still owned by the Dutch in the 1600s. My mother, born and raised in Japan, spoke broken English since she lived all her life in Japan up till 1964. To this day, she still refuses to learn any more English than is necessary to get by in the grocery store. It’s her way of spitting in the face of the enemy that defeated her country in WWII. So, I was half-baked in the English colonies’ America and half proud Japanese who spits in Americans’ eyes.
With my slanted Japanese eyes and deep brown skin in 1964, I felt right at home in the streets of Honolulu speaking in a mixture of English and Japanese with a sprinkling of Hawaiian. Unlike when I was living in Japan where everybody had straight black hair and a Japanese father, I felt snug as a bug in Hawai’i with my sandy brown hair and very loud American voice that I was supposed to take outside because I was giving my mother a headache. It was not until I met David in first grade whose family had just come from Ohio that I understood what a REAL American was.
David was in my first grade class and begged me to go to his house to watch cartoons afterschool. Walking into David’s house, I couldn’t help but notice that the inside looked like those pictures in the Dick and Jane books. There was not one piece of Asian or Hawaiian art or furniture in the living room. It was not like my house with a Shinto shrine and incense burner sitting in a prominent location in the living room next to the wood carving of the scary Lono with his large mouth. No, this was an “American” house.
Shortly after we let the screen door slam behind us, in walked an “American” housewife who looked like June Cleaver’s double. No muumuu or kimono like my mother wore, this woman wore an “American” dress with pleats. I noticed that David’s mother crossed her arms tightly across her chest as if to protect herself from an onslaught of savages.
“David, who is your little friend?” I watched David’s mother look me up and down with a crease deepening between her eyebrows. I tried to cover up a ketchup smear on my dress by twisting the stain with fingers that were dirty from digging for worms in the schoolyard during recess.
“This is Jeannette. We’re going to watch Gumby.”
“Well, nice to meet you Jeannette.” David’s mother stuck out her right hand.
My mother had taught me not to touch strangers and to bow to adults. So I bowed.
“Oh, are you a Hawaiian?” The crease in David’s mother’s head got deeper while she withdrew her hand and tightened both arms across her chest. “Do you speak English?”
My face stung as if she slapped me in the face. I was confused and a little hurt.
When I was in Japan, the kids taunted me by calling me “American.” My mother constantly berated the Americans for all the troubles in the world. My dad often bragged about how the Americans “kicked some ass” in WWII. We pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America every morning in Mrs. Wurderman’s first grade class. I was six and had no idea what to think. My head spun with all the conflicting ideas that were too big for my head. One thing I did know was to feel humiliated that this woman didn’t realize that I was an American who could speak English.
I realized much later in life that Hawaii is not the REAL America. The real America in 1964 was Ozzie and Harriet, Dick Van Dyke, and Petticoat Junction. The one popular TV show that had Pacific Islanders was Gillian’s Island, but those clowns in grass skirts don’t count because they were white buffoons in blackface. Today, Asian Americans are typecast in TV and film as the hot chick, the smart chick, or the nerdy scientist as Kunal Nayyar’s astrophysicist character in The Big Band Theory and Grace Kelly’s hot chick with a gun character in Hawaii Five-O represent. Since I’m not the hot chick with the gun type, I’ve strayed more toward the smart Asian chick that drives a little slow stereotype. I’m not sure whether I am naturally smart and drive slow, or whether I am and do because it’s expected of me. As a grown adult with grown children, I still feel unattached to the real America as I don’t see myself in Desperate Housewives or Modern Family. I understand that Asians are just three percent of the population, and we should be happy that we dominate attendance in prestigious universities. I also know I shouldn’t complain because, as my mother always said as she twisted my arm, “You stay quiet and smile in their face.” At least I have my Hawaii Five-O even though I’m not a hot chick.
Discounting the first two months of my life in Pennsylvania, Hawai’i was my first experience living in the United States surrounded by Americans. In between those two months in the Land of Quakers, my first five years were spent in Tokyo, my mother’s hometown, where I fit in like a sandy-haired mongrel in a litter of sleek, black purebred Labrador retrievers. In 1964, Hawai’i was a mish-mash of Hawaiians, U.S. military, and Asians, both pure and mixed-bloods. Sugar cane and pineapple plantations were the dominant enterprises, and American military men under the guise of conquering heroes from WWII swaggered everywhere. There were six U.S. military bases on the island of Oahu alone. Mixing in with the natives and Americans, there were thousands of Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese who’d come to work on the plantations during the first half of the twentieth century.
Thus, by 1964 the streets were filled with American men in military blues, whites, or khaki walking past Chinese restaurants, Japanese kimono stores, and Hawaiian wood shops with carvings of their gods, plants, or women made out of polished driftwood. When we moved to Hawai’i, my dad told me we were now in America. So it’s no surprise that I thought America was about military men, rice balls with nori, and the Lono god with his big scary mouth showing his pointed teeth that stood vigil in my living room. America was so sunny and warm that I never wore anything except a t-shirt and shorts even in January. I got as brown as a walnut racing around on my bike with my older brother who taught me to ride downhill standing on my pedals with my hands in the air. I learned the hard way that it’s better to keep my hands on the handlebars. I also eventually learned that Hawai’i was not the REAL America.
It is a fantasyland, a vacation spot, and place of immodesty, decadence, and impropriety. It is the Las Vegas of U.S. states. What happens there doesn’t count. The uproar over President Obama’s American-ness is rooted in this notion. He was born in fantasyland. Perhaps it’s because, unlike the rest of the continental U.S., there are natives still walking around and native culture interwoven into everyday life. Just imagine walking down your favorite street in Manhattan and seeing that one out of every ten people you see were Native Americans. What if about half the people on Fifth Avenue were wearing Native American clothing. In Hawai’i, the native culture still thrives as a dominant force.
Upon leaving Japan, I thought nobody would question my background once I was an American living in America. My dad told me so. My dad was a white American who could trace his roots back to the French Huguenots that settled in the New Jersey area when it was still owned by the Dutch in the 1600s. My mother, born and raised in Japan, spoke broken English since she lived all her life in Japan up till 1964. To this day, she still refuses to learn any more English than is necessary to get by in the grocery store. It’s her way of spitting in the face of the enemy that defeated her country in WWII. So, I was half-baked in the English colonies’ America and half proud Japanese who spits in Americans’ eyes.
With my slanted Japanese eyes and deep brown skin in 1964, I felt right at home in the streets of Honolulu speaking in a mixture of English and Japanese with a sprinkling of Hawaiian. Unlike when I was living in Japan where everybody had straight black hair and a Japanese father, I felt snug as a bug in Hawai’i with my sandy brown hair and very loud American voice that I was supposed to take outside because I was giving my mother a headache. It was not until I met David in first grade whose family had just come from Ohio that I understood what a REAL American was.
David was in my first grade class and begged me to go to his house to watch cartoons afterschool. Walking into David’s house, I couldn’t help but notice that the inside looked like those pictures in the Dick and Jane books. There was not one piece of Asian or Hawaiian art or furniture in the living room. It was not like my house with a Shinto shrine and incense burner sitting in a prominent location in the living room next to the wood carving of the scary Lono with his large mouth. No, this was an “American” house.
Shortly after we let the screen door slam behind us, in walked an “American” housewife who looked like June Cleaver’s double. No muumuu or kimono like my mother wore, this woman wore an “American” dress with pleats. I noticed that David’s mother crossed her arms tightly across her chest as if to protect herself from an onslaught of savages.
“David, who is your little friend?” I watched David’s mother look me up and down with a crease deepening between her eyebrows. I tried to cover up a ketchup smear on my dress by twisting the stain with fingers that were dirty from digging for worms in the schoolyard during recess.
“This is Jeannette. We’re going to watch Gumby.”
“Well, nice to meet you Jeannette.” David’s mother stuck out her right hand.
My mother had taught me not to touch strangers and to bow to adults. So I bowed.
“Oh, are you a Hawaiian?” The crease in David’s mother’s head got deeper while she withdrew her hand and tightened both arms across her chest. “Do you speak English?”
My face stung as if she slapped me in the face. I was confused and a little hurt.
When I was in Japan, the kids taunted me by calling me “American.” My mother constantly berated the Americans for all the troubles in the world. My dad often bragged about how the Americans “kicked some ass” in WWII. We pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America every morning in Mrs. Wurderman’s first grade class. I was six and had no idea what to think. My head spun with all the conflicting ideas that were too big for my head. One thing I did know was to feel humiliated that this woman didn’t realize that I was an American who could speak English.
I realized much later in life that Hawaii is not the REAL America. The real America in 1964 was Ozzie and Harriet, Dick Van Dyke, and Petticoat Junction. The one popular TV show that had Pacific Islanders was Gillian’s Island, but those clowns in grass skirts don’t count because they were white buffoons in blackface. Today, Asian Americans are typecast in TV and film as the hot chick, the smart chick, or the nerdy scientist as Kunal Nayyar’s astrophysicist character in The Big Band Theory and Grace Kelly’s hot chick with a gun character in Hawaii Five-O represent. Since I’m not the hot chick with the gun type, I’ve strayed more toward the smart Asian chick that drives a little slow stereotype. I’m not sure whether I am naturally smart and drive slow, or whether I am and do because it’s expected of me. As a grown adult with grown children, I still feel unattached to the real America as I don’t see myself in Desperate Housewives or Modern Family. I understand that Asians are just three percent of the population, and we should be happy that we dominate attendance in prestigious universities. I also know I shouldn’t complain because, as my mother always said as she twisted my arm, “You stay quiet and smile in their face.” At least I have my Hawaii Five-O even though I’m not a hot chick.
