Cultural Sensibility of Japanese Workers in Hawaii

Milton Murayama, in Five Years On A Rock and All I Asking For Is My Body explores the cultural sensibility of Japanese in Hawaii working on sugar plantations. Two quotes from these books will be used in this report to examine this sensibility in comparison with the Japanese on the mainland and with the Chinese. The information provided by Sucheng Chan, in Asian Americans: An Interpretive History, will be used to support the positions taken in this report.

The first quote, from All I Asking For Is My Body, brings up a point which shows how the Japanese in Hawaii were similar to the Japanese on the mainland. The quote refers to the narrator's mother and her determination to maintain her family's identity and unity. An argument is taking place between the mother and her son Tosh as the son expresses his individualism and his disrespect for his thieving grandfather. The narrator says that his mother's "only worry . . . was keeping the family together."

The second quote, from Five Years On A Rock, shows how the Japanese in Hawaii were dissimilar to the Chinese in terms of family connections. This quote shows how the Japanese in Hawaii had close family unity, a fact which will be compared to the relative lack of such connections among the Chinese, at least at a particular period of Chinese immigration, in order to show the different responses of the Japanese and Chinese to life in Hawaii. In the quote, Sawa shows the reader her dedication to her family and her determination

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es---were more hospitable to the Japanese whom they saw as more like the Hawaiians culturally than the Chinese. These facts from Chan are generally supported by Murayama. It would seem unlikely, for example, considering the sociological context supplied by Chan, that a Chinese woman would have had the same independent decision-making power that Sawa displays when she declares "I've made up my mind. . . . I'm throwing off Koso-san and embracing Isao-san and Hawaii." The Japanese in cultural terms, according to Chan, put much more emphasis than other Asian groups on family and inter-generational relationships and in helping determine the future of their offspring: More self-consciously than did any other Asian immigrant group, Japanese immigrants drew a clear distinction between themselves, the Issei (first generation), and their children, the Nisei (second generation). They also left a fuller written record than did any other Asian immigrant group of how they perceived their children's place in the world. Most Issei saw themselves as sojourners, but they considered the Nisei to be Americans. These facts help explain the cultural sensibility revealed in the two quotes from Murayama. The first quote shows the determination

Category: Foreign - C