Japanese American

Airborne Dreams: "Nisei" Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways

mandy — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Pan American World Airways was not simply an airline in the way that we understand airlines today. It was an icon, a gateway, and enjoyed (and still enjoys) a cult-like following. In this fascinating look into the Nisei stewardesses of Pan Am, Yano explores the postwar ideology of the airline and its relation to the experience of the Nisei stewardesses.

Some might say it was risky or odd for Pan Am to hire Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) stewardesses post-World War II. Yano reveals this purposeful decision for what it was: a calculated marketing move to promote a sense of worldliness and add a dash of exoticism on their flights. The Nisei stewardesses were held to a strict standard of appearance and behavior. On top of this, they were supposed to speak Japanese, though many did not. In fact, many were not even Japanese American! Yet they still served the general purpose of Pan Am, which was to make the foreign more approachable.

Despite the sophisticated front that Pan Am provided, many of the Nisei stewardesses were from humble backgrounds. Most had never traveled far, and many had never even worked alongside Caucasians, as they were raised in ethnic enclaves. What began as a carefully cultivated image of class and refinement became reality through the stewardesses’ experiences. They learned from their first class passengers and the luxuries afforded to them during their travels.

This is not to say that working for Pan Am was always peachy. As expected, many of the stewardesses were subjected to racist stereotypes of East Asian women and objectified as exotic eye candy. Some were treated like servants, and nearly all of the women complained of the regulation girdles and the impromptu girdle checks that accompanied them.

Through the ups and downs of their Pan Am careers, the Nikei stewardesses were exposed to experiences outside of the realm of possibility back in their hometowns. This, in turn, helped shape their identities in a way that also helped Pan Am achieve its desired image. This is to say that Pan Am hired these women with hopes of demonstrating their sophistication and worldliness. The women, in turn, became more sophisticated and worldly through the opportunities that Pan Am provided.

Yano’s exploration of Pan Am’s Nisei stewardesses reveals a story of a people, a time, a dream, and the motivation that made it all come together. Airborne Dreams is a nostalgia-filled trip through the glamorous airs flown by Pan Am, and also provides an intelligent look into the corporate and sociocultural factors at play during this time.

Written by: Shana Mattson, April 6th 2011

The Love Ceiling

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Jean Davies Okimoto

Endicott & Hugh Books

As I started to write the review for this book, I realized that this is one of two books I have recently read about artists, more specifically painters—The Danish Girl being the other book that centered on artists/painters. I found the story of The Love Ceiling intriguing because the protagonist is a sixty-four-year-old wife, mother, and daughter of a famous artist father and long suffering Japanese-American mother who has recently passed away from cancer.

Like many women of the so-called sandwich generation, Anne Kuroda Duppstadt has finally given herself permission to pursue her passion—that of becoming a painter—when she finds herself once again tending to the needs of her family: her thirty-two-year-old daughter moves home after discovering that her partner, Richard, has been cheating on her with a colleague at the hospital where he’s a resident, and Anne’s husband is not handling his impending retirement well and struggles with bouts of depression. This leads her to reach the conclusion at a certain point in the novel that “there is a glass ceiling for women... and it’s made out of the people we love.” Amidst all of this, Anne finally finds the courage to stand up to her domineering father, a man who demands center stage at all times and told her many years ago that she didn’t have what it takes to be a real artist.

I’m not sure why this is the case, but I rarely have the opportunity to read a book that features a sixty-four-year-old protagonist. Being a forty-something single woman, I wasn’t sure I would relate to this character, but I found myself immediately drawn into her feistiness, sense of humor, and honesty that is revealed as the reader progresses through the novel. I also enjoyed the author’s description of the natural beauty of the surroundings through the eyes of an artist (Anne is a gifted landscape artist). Painting with words came to my mind as I was reading this book.

I also had to admit to myself that I made the mistake of assuming that the internal life of a sixty-four-year-old wouldn’t be as interesting a read as that of a younger person, but that was definitely not the case. I found myself inspired by Anne’s character as well as that of an older female artist she meets at an artists’ workshop that she enrolls in to reclaim her dream of being an artist. In that sense, reading this book was also an educational experience for me because it challenged my assumptions about what it is to be an older woman in our society—that no matter how old you are, you can still be a vibrant, active participant in life.

My only criticism of the book is that one scene involving dialogue between Anne’s daughter and a friend in a coffee shop stood out as somewhat superfluous and unnecessary to the story line. Other than that, I found The Love Ceiling to be an excellent read. The book made me realize that sometimes it may take a lifetime to confront the demons of our past, but if life is a journey, it’s not how long it takes you to reach these epiphanies, but what you learn along with way.

Written by: Gita Tewari, June 28th 2010

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:15:00 +0000

By Jamie Ford

Ballantine Books

Some of the best American literature tells the story of the immigrant experience. Numerous writers have written about the sense of loss both material and psychological that comes with leaving your country and everything that is familiar to start a new life. Many of the characters in these novels never seem completely at home in their new land, but they soldier on for economic reasons, or because they’re committed to making a life in this new world

Equally compelling is the story of first-generation Americans who have one foot in the modern world and one foot in the past. Henry, the protagonist and narrator of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is first introduced to us as a fifty-six-year old man who has recently lost his wife to cancer after caring for her for seven years. Henry has taken early retirement from his job at Boeing Field to care for his wife, Ethel, and now his life seems empty and purposeless. His college aged son disapproved of his decision to care for his wife at home rather than placing her in a nursing home that would have provided round-the-clock professional care givers and is emotionally distant from him, and Henry seems alone and disconnected in the world.

Henry, who is Chinese American finds himself pulled back into the past when he walks past a large crowd that is gathered at the Panama Hotel in what used to be known as Nihonmachi or Japantown. In the midst of a major renovation of the hotel, the belongings of twenty-seven Japanese families presumably interned during World War II have been discovered in the basement of the hotel. Until this time, Henry has managed to keep the memories of that difficult time at bay, but the discovery of these treasures leads him to begin searching for a rare jazz record that also symbolizes a lost childhood love.

As the novel effortlessly moves between the narrative voices of the older Henry and twelve-year-old Henry who came of age during World War II, we learn what life was like for a young Chinese American boy growing up in Chinatown. Henry’s father is a nationalist who hates the Japanese for their aggressive military incursions into China and is a respected elder member of an association in Chinatown that is actively supporting the war effort in China. Because he wants his son to become fully Americanized, Henry can speak only English at home although his parents can barely understand him. Henry also has to wear a “I am Chinese” button whenever he leaves the house so he won’t be taken for being Japanese. Henry looks Chinese, but thinks like an American, which only leads to a sense of double isolation. He is literally isolated from his parents because they won’t let him converse with them in their native language and he feels isolated at the all Caucasian school where he is “scholarshipping” because the children taunt him for looking different.

Enter Keiko, a Japanese American girl who begins scholarshipping at the school. Henry and Keiko have an almost instant bond. Suddenly, working in the cafeteria and serving meals to his fellow classmates isn’t such a trial. Henry’s parents don’t approve of his friendship with Keiko—in his father’s eyes, Henry is a traitor for befriending the enemy. Henry finds a welcome ally in his friendship with Sheldon, a saxophone player and street performer who Henry gives his lunch to every day on the way to school. In the midst of all of this, all persons of Japanese origin (including American citizens) are evacuated to internment camps and Keiko’s family is eventually relocated to a camp in Idaho.

Once I started reading this book, I found myself pulled into the story and the historical details of these events that are often glossed over in historical accounts. The author writes compassionately about the experiences of Japanese families during this time. His vivid descriptions of Japantown and Chinatown transport the reader back in time to a difficult period in American history. Henry’s lifelong friendship with Sheldon and his love of jazz are a continuous thread in the novel along with Henry’s undying love for Keiko. I especially liked the characters of Sheldon and Mrs. Beatty, the woman who manages the school cafeteria and becomes an unlikely friend to Henry. Does Henry find Keiko after all the years of separation? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

Written by: Gita Tewari, February 5th 2010

Picking Bones from Ash

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:08:00 +0000

By Marie Mutsuki Mockett

Graywolf Press

Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s debut novel, Picking Bones from Ash, drew me in from the first sentence. Satomi, one of the two main characters of the book, learns from her mother at a young age that in order to be safe in this world, a woman must be talented—not well educated and certainly not beautiful, a woman must be talented. Satomi spends the rest of her life following this example, first as a pianist both in Japan and Europe and then as a successful cartoonist.

The story begins in Japan in the 1950s when Satomi is a little girl. Because Satomi has never met her father, and her mother runs an izakaya (pub) to support them, the two are outcasts in their small town, facing scorn from most of the women. Satomi’s mother eventually marries, largely for their financial security, to ensure Satomi will become a famous pianist. As Satomi goes to Tokyo, and later Paris, to study, she becomes increasingly independent and alienated from her mother.

The story abruptly switches narratives at a key moment in the plot, and suddenly the reader is introduced to a new protagonist—Rumi, Satomi’s daughter, who is living in San Francisco in the ’80s with her English father. Satomi, as far as Rumi knows, is dead. Under the tutelage of her father Francois, Rumi has become a gifted authenticator of Asian antiques. When she begins seeing a ghost, she’s convinced it is the spirit of her mother. Her quest to discover what happened to her mother leads her back to Japan, where the story takes some interesting, though not unexpected, twists.

Mockett seamlessly takes her story and characters through Japan, Europe, and San Francisco. Both Satomi and Rumi are compelling characters, although Satomi feels much more complex. Satomi’s selfish actions turn her into a somewhat frustrating protagonist, but this also makes her more realistic, and when Rumi narrates in part two, I often longed for Mockett to hurry up and return to Satomi’s story. Ultimately, Picking Bones from Ash is a story of mothers and daughters—the inexplicable bonds between them, and how the presence or absence of a mother can shape the daughter. Through each daughter, Mockett tackles a difficult reality. With the American daughter, Rumi, she addresses the struggles of growing up motherless and relating to her Japanese relatives. With the Japanese daughter Satomi, Mockett dares to address the unspeakable question: What happens when a daughter leaves her mother—or when a mother leaves her daughter?

If you’ve read Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, it’s easy to compare the two novels. Both feature complex and often painful relationships between mothers and daughters, cultural and language differences among immigrant families (for Tan, China; for Mockett, Japan), and the “ghosts” of ancestors. (In fact, Amy Tan has praised this novel, calling it “a book of intelligence and heart.”)

Although I couldn’t completely shake the comparison as I read Picking Bones from Ash, it would be unfair to Mockett to leave it at that. She’s created a unique tale with two unique women who are talented and strong in unique ways. Picking Bones from Ash challenges typical ideas of how mothers and daughters relate without ignoring one simple fact that every woman knows: our mothers are always with us.

Cross-posted with Gender Across Borders

Written by: Alison Hamm, August 10th 2009

Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:13:00 +0000

Directed by Kimberlee Bassford

Making Waves Films

As the title indicates, Patsy Mink is the story of a woman of the same name, the first Asian American woman and the first woman of color elected to the U.S. Congress. If her story began and ended there, Mink’s life would have been important enough to have made history. Fortunately for every woman who lives in the world she transformed, Patsy Mink’s story and her life were far greater than that.

Born in Maui, Hawaii in 1927, Mink faced a world where opportunities for people who shared her race and gender were all but nonexistent. During World War II, Mink, a third generation Japanese American, witnessed the internment of her fellow Japanese Americans, faced tremendous wartime discrimination, and watched in horror as her father burned his final connections to Japan and his father. While attending the University of Nebraska, Mink was assigned to the international dorm due to the university’s longstanding segregation policy, and Mink’s 1947 protest of that policy led to its abolition the next year. Denied entry to medical school due to her gender, Mink went on to law school only to be unable to find a job post-graduation, once again due to her race and gender.

Denied a job, Mink went into politics, where she would change the rules that had once prevented her and countless other women from entering medical school and finding a job in the legal profession. Amongst a long list of achievements, Mink's co-authorship of Title IX (now renamed as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act) and authorship of the Women's Educational Equity Act made it possible for generations of women to play sports, attend college and graduate school, work in traditionally male professions, and otherwise move beyond the traditional roles assigned our gender.

At a mere fifty-six minutes, the film named after Mink is filled with stories of accomplishments and obstacles, the former greatly outweighing the latter. Comprised of archival footage, interviews with both friends and foes, and the words of Mink herself, Patsy Mink is a fitting tribute to a woman who chose to be a participant in history, not merely a witness to it. It is well organized and interesting and carefully places Mink’s life within its personal and historic context. The only real problem is that it is far too short, and therefore, offers only cursory coverage of issues that surely deserved more detailed examination. But there are worse things to be said about a documentary than that it leaves you wanting more.

Written by: Melinda Barton, August 5th 2009