Issei, Nisei, Sansei

 I recently worked on a few different research projects assisting scholars and news teams who were conducting research on the Chamoru-Japanese families in Guam. 

 Some of these projects focused on the waves of Japanese migration and how Japanese people were integrated or treated by the Spanish or American colonial administrations.

Others focused on the Chamoru families that blended with the Japanese migrants and their experiences. Some of this interest was spurred by the publication last year of a book by Master of Chamoru Culture for Playwrighting Peter Onedera "A Borrowed Land." 

I remember first encountering the sometimes complicated nature of their history, especially when it came to Guam's World War II period, when I was a young graduate student, just starting to do my oral history research. I was in Micronesian Studies at the University of Guam, traveling around, usually with my grandmother, visiting her friends and relatives, practicing my Chamoru, but also asking them questions about their lives and writing things down.

We visited one woman in the MTM area in Central Guam, who was about the same age as my grandmother, who was half Japanese. Prior to the war, their family had used their Japanese last name. But after the war, some family had left island to move away and those who had stayed changed their name, switching out their Chamoru mother's family name, which was their middle name, to become their new last name. Their Japanese surname was shortened to a single letter and became their middle initial. 

Here's a few articles related to the history of this community which has become very important and influential in Guam in civic, cultural and economic terms. 

****************

Issei Memorial honors Guam's first community of Japanese-Chamorro families

KUAM 2015

Monica Okada Guzman told KUAM News, "I think what's most important is Guam is a melting pot of cultures, and the fact that these 53 and none of them are living , but for them to make Guam their home and entrench themselves into the culture and the community just adds to that cultural diversity of Guam and we're very proud that they did it."

The 53 men Guzman is referring to are Guam's Issei patriarchs - the men who started Guam's first community of Japanese-Chamorro families in the early 1900's. Guzman's grandfather is one of the 53 men that will be listed on a special monument at the South Pacific Memorial Peace Park in Yigo. "At that time, it was a very daring thing to do for them. In the early 1900s to leave their homeland and go to a small little island in the Pacific," she added.

Guzman is the president of the Guam Nikkei Association - a group whose primary mission is perpetuating the history and lineage of those born from Japanese ancestry who are presently residents of Guam. The Issei is the Japanese term used in the Americas to specify the Japanese people who were first to migrate.

Many of the men who came to Guam were copra plantation workers, merchants, farmers, fishermen and laborers. They married Chamorro women, learned the Chamorro language and adopted the Catholic religion. While some returned to Japan, the ones listed on the monument stayed and their legacy continues with generations of families today including immediate past president Monte Mesa.

He said, "That's what our other families is trying to do is reconnect and at least pay that tribute to our Japanese heritage and continue to build that peace with Guam and Japan and continue that US-Guam relation."

Chairman Frank Shimizu is another third generation and says the granite monument is modeled after a traditional Japanese gate called a torii. "Without the monument itself it would just be a gate," he shared, "and the torii gate essentially signifies the passing from the now to the hereafter. From the physical, you pass through the gate into the spiritual - in between the now and the hereafter is the monument itself."

The monument is made possible by architects Laguana, LMS Group, Sumito Construction, Peter Onedera and Tony Ramirez and support from the Consul General of Japan. Descendants of the Issei patriarchs are all invited to attend the unveiling on November 28 at 10am.

 *******************

A Borrowed Land: Review

Guam Business Journal

November 8, 2024

 

Peter Onedera’s name is associated with all things CHamoru. He has served as an educator, director of the Kumision i Fino' CHamoru or CHamoru Language Commission and written extensively.

In “A Borrowed Land” Onedera tackles the history of Japanese immigrants and their descendants – known variously as Nikkei, Issei, Sansei and Yonsei.

The subject of internment camps around the world is one that is still coming to light, and this book adds the perspective of local survivors of the experience.

And for those who have heard stories of their own family’s immigrant experience to a foreign land, there is much to relate to.

Onedera is an accomplished storyteller and takes the reader from his mother’s conversations with him as a child to the stories of others he spoke to for the book, and his own experiences.

Along the way, readers are given a picture of Guam and the cultural and practical experiences of life prior to World War II, to include the civic life of the island.

But the heart of the book are the chapters and the stories that Onedera tells that are not his, though those of his family too. Using pseudonyms and benefiting from the recall of earlier life experiences that older people have, Onedera taped their stories and recounts them skillfully here.

The stories need no embellishment and Onedera does not give them any.

In one description of the arrival of a young man from Japan who is recruited from Oyama City to work in the Copra plantation, the description of a first meal in Guam resonates today.

“On a long table that was made from roughhewn slabs of coconut trees, or so we were told, and benches made of the same, we were instructed to sit and help ourselves to the noonday meal. The meal consisted of cooked rice, fried fish, fresh daikon, fried eggplant, and local onions, along with a sauce that I took an immediate liking to. They told us the sauce was fina'denne', consisting of hot chili peppers, vinegar, and sea salt, along with green onions.

“Instead of green tea, we were given pitchers of fresh local rainwater that came from a catchment alongside the roofing of this outdoor eating place.”

From there, the stories of integration into the life and languages of life in Guam is a tapestry of the times, with descriptions of the copra industry, and marriage by those young men who found an affinity with the island into local families, learning CHamoru, raising their families – often bilingually.

The stories of the invasion of Guam by Japanese military are familiar but nonetheless interesting to read due to the ingenuity of the families in surviving.

Post-war memories by the articulate and frequently featured Jiro show that period began with not unpleasant living in stockades in Guam, but lacked full freedom and recovery proceeded slowly for his family and the Nikkei generation.

“Early in the morning, often at the crack of dawn, many Nikkei, men and women, left the stockade and made their way downtown to seek work.

“Many, like Tun Luis Takimia, Tun Manet Kaneshiro, Tun Isidro Komatsu, Tun Bonifacio Suchida, and Tan Ana Watanabe went together to apply for jobs as bus drivers, cooks, janitors, ticket takers, trinket sellers, lawn maintenance crew, cashiers, truck drivers, gardeners, and even for bank teller positions.

Many would-be employers would glance at the application forms and see the Japanese surnames, then refuse to consider them for hiring. Many weren’t even given an interview of any sort.”

Discrimination continued and those of Japanese descent were often shunned or vilified. It is understandable that many migrated to the U.S. mainland when they could afford to do so.

While many people today in Guam know there is a Guam Nikkei Association, through its support of community events such as the Japan Festival and its annual Lantern Floating Ceremony, its community history is likely not so well known.

While the chapters do not all make easy reading, the book is absorbing. Guam is a community of many communities, and this book offers insight into one of them.

***************

The Japanese Chamorros

Paleric

October 10, 2012

 Tanaka, Shimizu, Shinohara, Yamashita and many more.  These are names we all recognize on Guam and we consider members of these families our fellow Chamorros.  But we also acknowledge their Japanese background.

In the last few weeks, it has been announced in the media that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Japanese settlers who moved to Guam over 100 years ago are forming a society.  There had been a Guam Japanese Association in the 1930s before the war, made up of these Japanese settlers.  But after the war, there was actually a bit of a stigma associated with being part Japanese on Guam.  Some Japanese-Chamorros dropped their Japanese names, as a matter of fact, and went by their mother's Chamorro maiden names.

Yet most Japanese-Chamorro families proved their loyalty to the U.S., or at least to their fellow Chamorro countrymen, during the war; and, after the war, Chamorro voters routinely elected people with names like Tanaka and Ooka.  Even some full-blooded Japanese, like Mrs. Dejima, were seen as having kept a clean record during the war.

Samuel T. Shinohara was an early Japanese settler, marrying a Chamorro from the Torres family, and opening a restaurant.  He was one of the leaders of the Guam Japanese Association before the war.

Mr. Suzuki (top) was a tailor.  But J. K. Shimizu (below) had an even more prominent business.  Shimizu was early in the game, probably right at the turn of the century (1900) if not a few years earlier.  He had boats that would go up and down the Marianas, as well as onto Japan.  His descendants continue the family's strong commercial activities.  Shimizu also had married a Torres.

The Japanese had a strong commercial presence here in the Marianas certainly by the 1890s.  Even in the early American administration of Guam, there were comments by Americans that too many shops were owned by Japanese.  But the large part of these Japanese settlers married local women and planted deep roots.

So from the 1930s we come to the year 2012 where we see candidates with Japanese names, but Chamorro in identity. 

Did you know.....?

That there were Japanese settlers on Guam as early as the 1860s?

During the term of Spanish Governor Francisco Moscoso y Lara (1866-1871), a private company, the Sociedad Agrícola, was founded to bring over Japanese farmers to hopefully exploit the agricultural potential of the Marianas.  The venture failed.  Some of the Japanese brought over died, and the rest all returned to Japan.