Okinawan Women's Stories of Migration

Okinawan Women's Stories of Migration

Author: Johanna O. Zulueta

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-24

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 1000553051

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The phenomenon of “war brides” from Japan moving to the West has been quite widely discussed, but this book tells the stories of women whose lives followed a rather different path after they married foreign occupiers. During Okinawa’s Occupation by the Allies from 1945 to 1972, many Okinawan women met and had relationships with non-Western men who were stationed in Okinawa as soldiers and base employees. Most of these men were from the Philippines. Zulueta explores the journeys of these women to their husbands’ homeland, their acculturation to their adopted land, and their return to their native Okinawa in their late adult years. Utilizing a life-course approach, she examines how these women crafted their own identities as first-generation migrants or “Issei” in both the country of migration and their natal homeland, their re-integration to Okinawan society, and the role of religion in this regard, as well as their thoughts on end-of-life as returnees. This book will be of interest to scholars looking at gender and migration, cross-cultural marriages, ageing and migration, as well as those interested in East Asia, particularly Japan/Okinawa.


Speak, Okinawa

Speak, Okinawa

Author: Elizabeth Miki Brina

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2021-02-23

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0525657355

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A “hauntingly beautiful memoir about family and identity” (NPR) and a young woman's journey to understanding her complicated parents—her mother an Okinawan war bride, her father a Vietnam veteran—and her own, fraught cultural heritage. Elizabeth's mother was working as a nightclub hostess on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother's distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers. Decades later, Elizabeth comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and attempts a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people. Clear-eyed and profoundly humane, Speak, Okinawa is a startling accomplishment—a heartfelt exploration of identity, inheritance, forgiveness, and what it means to be an American.


Women and COVID-19

Women and COVID-19

Author: Mariam Seedat-Khan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-29

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1000938182

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Women and COVID-19: A Clinical and Applied Sociological Focus on Family, Work and Community focuses on women’s lived experiences amid the pandemic, emphasising migrant labourers, ethnic minorities, the poor and disenfranchised, the incarcerated, and victims of gender-based violence, to explore the impact of the pandemic on women. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and exacerbated pervasive gender inequalities in homes, schools, and workplaces in the developed world and the Global South. Female workers, particularly those from poor or ethnic minority backgrounds, were often the first to lose their jobs amidst unprecedented layoffs and economic uncertainty. National lockdowns and widespread restrictions blurred the boundaries between work and home life and increased the burden of domestic work on women within patriarchal societies. This so-called ‘new normal’ in everyday life also exposed women to increased levels of gender-based violence and the likelihood of contracting COVID-19 due to overcrowding. This edited volume includes contributions from leading applied and clinical sociologists working and living in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas and gives a global overview of the impact of the pandemic on women. Each chapter adopts an applied and clinical sociological approach in analysing gendered vulnerabilities. The volume innovatively uses personal accounts, including narratives, interviews, autoethnographies, and focus group discussions, to explore women’s lived experiences during the pandemic. This edited collection will greatly interest students, academics, and researchers in the humanities and social sciences with an interest in gender and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.


Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages

Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages

Author: Patrick Heinrich

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-02-17

Total Pages: 734

ISBN-13: 1501510711

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The UNESCO atlas on endangered languages recognizes the Ryukyuan languages as constituting languages in their own right. This represents a dramatic shift in the ontology of Japan’s linguistic make-up. Ryukyuan linguistics needs to be established as an independent field of study with its own research agenda and objects. This handbook delineates that the UNESCO classification is now well established and adequate. Linguists working on the Ryukyuan languages are well advised to refute the ontological status of the Ryukyuan languages as dialects. The Ryukyuan languages constitute a branch of the Japonic language family, which consists of five unroofed Abstand (language by distance) languages.The Handbook of Ryukyuan Languages provides for the most appropriate and up-to-date answers pertaining to Ryukyuan language structures and use, and the ways in which these languages relate to Ryukyuan society and history. It comprises 33 chapters, written by the leading experts of Ryukyuan languages. Each chapter delineates the boundaries and the research history of the field it addresses, comprises the most important and representative information.


Night in the American Village

Night in the American Village

Author: Akemi Johnson

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2019-06-18

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1620973324

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"A lively encounter with identity and American military history in Okinawa. Night in the American Village is by turns intellectual, hip, and sexy. I admire it for its ferocity, style, and vigor. A wonderful book." —Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead A beautifully written examination of the complex relationship between the women living near the U.S. bases in Okinawa and the servicemen who are stationed there At the southern end of the Japanese archipelago lies Okinawa, host to a vast complex of U.S. military bases. A legacy of World War II, these bases have been a fraught issue in Japan for decades—with tensions exacerbated by the often volatile relationship between islanders and the military, especially after the brutal rape of a twelve-year-old girl by three servicemen in the 1990s. But the situation is more complex than it seems. In Night in the American Village, journalist Akemi Johnson takes readers deep into the "border towns" surrounding the bases—a world where cultural and political fault lines compel individuals, both Japanese and American, to continually renegotiate their own identities. Focusing on the women there, she follows the complex fallout of the murder of an Okinawan woman by an ex–U.S. serviceman in 2016 and speaks to protesters, to women who date and marry American men and groups that help them when problems arise, and to Okinawans whose family members survived World War II. Thought-provoking and timely, Night in the American Village is a vivid look at the enduring wounds of U.S.-Japanese history and the cultural and sexual politics of the American military empire.


Picture Bride Stories

Picture Bride Stories

Author: Barbara F. Kawakami

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2016-06-30

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0824856171

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During the 1885 to 1924 immigration period of plantation laborers from Japan to Hawaii, more than 200,000 Japanese, mostly single men, made the long journey by ship to the Hawaiian Islands. As it became apparent that they would never return to Japan, many of the men sent for brides to join them in their adopted home. More than 20,000 of these “picture brides” immigrated from Japan and Okinawa to Hawaii to marry husbands whom they knew only through photographs exchanged between them or their families. Based on Barbara F. Kawakami’s first-hand interviews with sixteen of these women, Picture Bride Stories is a poignant collection that recounts the diverse circumstances that led them to marry strangers, their voyages to Hawaii, the surprises and trials that they encountered upon arriving, and the lives they led upon settling in a strange new land. Many found hardship, yet persevered and endured the difficult conditions of the sugarcane and pineapple plantations for the sake of their children. As they acclimated to a foreign place and forged new relationships, they overcame challenges and eventually prospered in a better life. The stories of the issei women exemplify the importance of friendships and familial networks in coping with poverty and economic security. Although these remarkable women are gone, their legacy lives on in their children, grandchildren, and succeeding generations. In addition to the oral histories—the result of forty years of interviews—the author provides substantial background on marriage customs and labor practices on the plantations.


Reshaping Women's History

Reshaping Women's History

Author: Julie A. Gallagher

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2018-09-25

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0252050746

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Award-winning women scholars from nontraditional backgrounds have often negotiated an academic track that leads through figurative--and sometimes literal--minefields. Their life stories offer inspiration, but also describe heartrending struggles and daunting obstacles. Reshaping Women's History presents autobiographical essays by eighteen accomplished scholar-activists who persevered through poverty or abuse, medical malpractice or family disownment, civil war or genocide. As they illuminate their own unique circumstances, the authors also address issues all-too-familiar to women in the academy: financial instability, the need for mentors, explaining gaps in resumes caused by outside events, and coping with gendered family demands, biases, and expectations. Eye-opening and candid, Reshaping Women's History shows how adversity, and the triumph over it, enriches scholarship and spurs extraordinary efforts to affect social change. Contributors: Frances L. Buss, Nupur Chaudhuri, Lisa DiCaprio, Julie R. Enszer, Catherine Fosl, Midori Green, La Shonda Mims, Stephanie Moore, Grey Osterud, Barbara Ransby, Linda Reese, Annette Rodriguez, Linda Rupert, Kathleen Sheldon, Donna Sinclair, Rickie Solinger, Pamela Stewart, Waaseyaa'sin Christine Sy, and Ann Marie Wilson.


Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases

Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases

Author: Johanna O. Zulueta

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-09-27

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 9813297875

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This book considers the role of civilian workers on U.S. bases in Okinawa, Japan and how transnational movements within East Asia during the Occupation period brought foreign workers, mostly from the Philippines, to work on these bases. Decades later, in a seeming “reproduction of base labour”, returnees of both Okinawan and Philippine heritage began occupying jobs on base as United States of Japan (USFJ) employees. The book investigates the role that ethnicity, nationality, and capital play in the lives of these base employees, and at the same time examines how Japanese and Okinawan identity/ies are formed and challenged. It offers a valuable resource for those interested in Japan and Okinawa, U.S. military basing, migration, and mixed ethnicities.


Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa

Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa

Author: Mire Koikari

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-07-15

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1107079500

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This book examines roles of gender, race and nation in the geopolitics of Cold War East Asia on the Island of Okinawa.