Japanese War Brides: Teaching History Through Multimedia Resources

Hello everyone. My name is Naomi Funahashi and  I'm with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education at SPICE at  Stanford University. It's my pleasure to serve as the moderator for our webinar today, and  before I introduce our speakers for today, Ms. Kathryn Tolbert and Ms. Waka Takahashi Brown, I'd  like to just share a little bit about SPICE and what we do. So SPICE is a K-12 focused with  also Community College focused education program that's based at the Freeman-Spo

gli Institute  on International Studies at Stanford University. And there are sort of three components within the  field of Education that we focus on primarily. The first is curriculum development, and so you'll  see a little bit of that here today in our curriculum demonstration that you'll be seeing  a little bit bit later on. And then we also do teacher professional development, which is where  we try to introduce our curriculum materials and guide teachers through different ideas  and pedag

ogical sort of ideas and how to integrate the curriculum into their own classrooms  and their own teaching. And then we also do online teaching to students in the U.S. and Japan and in  China at the moment. So if you'd like to learn any more about our existing programs, please  take a look at our website. But today we are here to hear about the teaching of a particular  history through different multimedia resources. And so we are thrilled today to be joined by Ms.  Kathryn Tolbert whom has deve

loped has just these incredible resources the documentary film  that you'll be hearing a little bit more about in a little bit and you'll see a little bit of today  and also this incredible oral history archive. And so we hope that you'll be able to take some of  the stories and the resources that are shared here today and integrate them into your teaching  within the different contexts and audiences within which you teach in your communities. Okay, so I'll  go ahead and introduce our first spea

ker today, Ms. Kathryn Tolbert. She is a former editor and  reporter on the metro, national, and foreign desks at the Washington Post and was a correspondent  in Tokyo and director of recruiting and hiring as well. She has also worked for the  Boston Globe and the Associated Press, and she has also written about Japanese women who  married American servicemen after World War II, which is what we'll be hearing about today. And  she co-directed the film "Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanes

e War Brides." She is graduate  of Vasser College with a degree in political science and a Master's in international relations  from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This particular story I think will resonate with  a lot of people because it's not just about these individual lives that we hear about, but there  are so many universal themes I think that all of us can really be inspired by. And this is  a story that is really personal to me. My own grandmother was also one of these Japan

ese  women who had the courage to move to a new country, a new culture with a new language.  She was a war bride as well, and so this is a topic that's really near and dear to my heart  and my family's heart, and I'm thrilled that Kathryn has taken the time to research and  develop all of these incredible resources so that more students through teachers like you  can learn about them and think a little bit about how you know the power power of learning  history through personal narrative. So tha

t's what we're going to be focusing on today. So I'll  go ahead and turn my camera off so that you can hear and see Kathryn, and I'll begin sharing  my screen. Thank you for joining us. Oh, and I'll also mention that we will have time for Q&A at the  end today. So if you have questions that come up um during Kathryn's presentation or during  Waka's presentation a little bit later, please go ahead and type them into the Q&A and  we will have a chance to address them at the end of our session. Oka

y, thank you so much. Kathryn,  I'll go ahead and pass the microphone over to you. Oh I think that you may be muted. Great. Hi, thanks so much right and I  do have a slideshow so if we could get that first image up for the War Bride  Project, that would be that would be great. Thank you uh so um I'm I'm really uh I thank you all  for joining us today for this webinar. I'm so grateful that Stanford's Program on International  and Cross-Cultural Education decided to produce a curriculum unit and t

eachers guide for the  Japanese War Bride project. Having educators use the stories in this oral history archive as such  an important way to give them broader reach and impact. I'd like to start by noting that foreign  women married U.S. servicemen during and after all the major wars of the last century—World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. My focus is World War II and the Japanese because  those were the first large numbers of interracial marriages at a time when the

y were illegal  in most of the United States and when Asian immigrants were banned from entry. It's remarkable  when you think about it. Asian immigration stopped with the 1924 Immigration Act, and when the door  was opened in 1952, the first large group to enter were Japanese women. My mother came to the United  States that year. For the past eight years—and uh I think we move to slide two—thank you. For  the past eight years I have been interviewing Japanese war brides and their families to cr

eate  an oral history archive of their stories. Today there are 44 stories on the website ranging in  length from a little under 4 minutes to just over 15 minutes. Each one tells a different slice  of the war bride experience, from chance meetings in postwar Japan to their struggles and successes  in the many scattered communities where they made their homes. This work started out as a personal  story, because my mother is a Japanese war bride who met my father when she worked as a sales girl  a

t a PX store in Tokyo. They married in 1951 and went to his family home the following year, an  upstate New York poultry farm. As the first born, I was the child who was to fulfill my mother's  dreams. She placed all her hope on my success as a student, as a journalist. I think it's true in many  immigrant families. And while ours wasn't a typical immigrant family and that my father was a local  farm boy, my mother had the immigrant's ambition and striving to get ahead, and it was her strength 

that defined our family. It wasn't until very late in my journalism career that I turned my focus  inward toward my own family. I was very interested in Japan, an interest my mother encouraged, so  I began to study Japanese in college and did my junior year abroad in Tokyo at Waseda University. After graduating I began my journalism career in Tokyo with the Associated Press. Decades later I  thought of writing about my mother and recorded about 6 hours of interviews with her. She was  happy to o

blig and willingly recalled all that she could about her childhood teenage years and  early life in the United States. But when I tried to make sense of her story, I was stumped. Was her  story unique? What was her place in the history of the United States and Japan? The answer I found  was in the stories of other families. In 2015 with a grant from Vasser College I took a leave of  absence from my job at the Washington Post and began to travel around the country interviewing  Japanese war bride

s, their husbands, and their families. I found them through social media and one  family often led to another. Sometimes the Japanese mother was reluctant to be interviewed and had to  be talked into it by her children who wanted to know her story. It was a remarkable experience for  me as a journalist to record long interviews with people who reach back into their past to remember  what they saw, how they felt. I recorded their stories and scanned their old family photos. What  I discovered was

that understanding family history is a way of understanding a nation's history. The  way these marriages took place—at first despite strenuous objections and administrative barriers, and later with a blessing of U.S. officials—mirrors the changing relationship between Japan and the  United States. Japan was quickly transformed from enemy to ally, and the war brides were seen as the  soft face of Japan. But in addition to playing a role in the changing relationship between Japan  and the U.S., t

he war brides and their families occupied a particular place in the U.S. racial mix. Except for the marriages between nisei, or second generation Japanese American men, and Japanese  women the war bride marriages were considered mixed race. In 1945 more than half the states had anti-  miscegenation laws, making interracial marriage illegal. In the post-war period more than a dozen states  repealed those laws and the rest were invalidated in 1967 by the Supreme Court ruling in Loving  v. Virginia

. Japanese women were confused over where they fit in Black and White America. My colleague Lucy Craft's parents recounted that when confronted with white or colored bathrooms,  her mother asked her father which one she should use. He replied, "I don't know. Try the white one,  and see if anyone objects." The women were often the first Japanese in their communities and their  children sometimes struggled to find their place. I thought Sidney Jordan said it very well in the  story called "Kino in

Reno." Japanese war brides were trailblazers basically in the er that they came  to this country because it was so many of them and they were so dispersed throughout the United  States and they had to deal with the different different states they were in and each state is  different in their uh social outlook on on things. America wasn't ready for that. He and Kazuko who  were married in 1951 navigated segregated America. Driving in the South, she would slink down in her  seat during the day so

that no one could see her and mistake her for a white woman. In working with  SPICE on how to present this material which tells history through personal stories we came up with  5 lessons. The first one gives background on the war brides and distinguishes them from from  picture brides who came to the U.S. at the turn of the century through around 1920 as brides  of Japanese laborers. The context for the war brides story is how World War II and its aftermath set  the stage for personal relation

ships. When you hear the stories from the women who were in their  teens at the end of the war in 1945 who saw their mothers die in the firebombing of cities or who  barely escaped the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast you wonder what they thought of Americans. These  are women whose schools were turned into factories toward the end of the war who made war material. My mother's high school gymnasium is where she learned how to rivet part of the zero fighter  planes wings. They were taught to believe i

n the war and the inevitability of Japan's victory. And yet after the shock of defeat for many it was in just a few years a kind of liberation. Under  General Douglas MacArthur the Allied occupation set up a vast infrastructure of bases depots and  camps in every prefecture in the country. They employed Japanese women as clerks, typists, waitresses,  babysitters, and in the surrounding neighborhoods women also found work in the bars and dance halls  that catered to the young soldiers, airmen, an

d sailors. Women worked. They had to to help support  their families. Many families had been left without fathers or sons. The Americans provided a way  out for these young women not only with jobs but with the idea of a different kind of life. Yuriko  Ishigaki survived Hiroshima because she overslept that day and wasn't at work in her office in  what is today the atomic bomb dome, but despite that horrific experience she eventually married an  American. She had marriage offers from Japanese men

, but she said she didn't want the kind of marriage  her parents had. Her mother deferred to her father and never stood up for herself. I heard this a  number of times that American men represented a kind of freedom to these women. Here's what  Akiko Hewitt said. It's a part of my something new something more than what I have now I was  born in very strict family, more like samurai family, and it was very limited for the thinking and  doing. As a teenager I wanted to do more things and more I le

arned from him, there was something  that I out there something I have never seen or did and that attracted me. In the second lesson  we introduce Japanese immigration to the United States. Marriages between European and Australian  women and U.S. servicemen began during the war. The 1945 War Brides Act made it possible for them  to enter the U.S., and in 1946 some 70,000 British Brides arrived in the U.S. with much publicity. The legislation did not apply to Japanese or other Asians, who were b

anned from entry by the  1924 Immigration Act, but within the first two years of occupation, U.S. military men were already  petitioning to marry their Japanese girlfriends. Permission was denied in all but a few cases. During the occupation years Japanese women were admitted to the U.S. on a case by case basis.  Kimiko Amato for example entered as the fiance of Angelo Amato of East Boston by a special act  of Congress, a bill introduced by Congressman John F. Kennedy. And here among the papers

that  the family keeps his letter one of the letters that uh that John F. Kennedy wrote saying that uh he  said I'm pleased to advise you that the bill on her behalf was passed in the Senate yesterday  without amendment. It will now be sent to the president for signature and I am hopeful that it  will be enacted into law in the near future. With kind regards I am sincerely yours John Kennedy  Under Pressure uh by servicemen though President Truman did grant a 30-day period in 1947 for  marriages

to be be approved and visas issued if cuffel could complete the extensive paperwork.  Finally in 1952 U.S. immigration law changed. The McCarran-Walter Act allowed Asians to become  naturalized U.S. citizens and therefore eligible to enter the U.S. That year 4,220 Japanese brides  entered. You can see from this immigration chart how the numbers change starting in that year.  Japan is the first column showing that in 1947 there were 14 wives admitted to the U.S. And going  up to 1952 there's tha

t 4,220 number uh the the year when uh the most brides began to come.  Lesson three covers the transmission of culture with food being one of the key themes. Through  food we see both the longing for home and the sharing of culture. The import and sale of Kikkoman  soy sauce for example grew dramatically in the early 1950s as Japanese women began to cook and  share the food they grew up with. Kikkoman soy sauce and rice were the staples in these homes Admiral  Harry Harris said of his mother whe

n they lived in rural Tennessee for the first decade of her  life in the U.S. um and my mother would take the vegetables that she grew and try to do something  Japanese with them uh you know she would make uh sushi with cucumbers and rice uh and that kind  of stuff so she would she would turn the stuff that we could grow in Tennessee I say we I was  I was a little kid then but that they could grow and pickle it and and all that and try to try to  turn it uh into something that reminded my mother

of home. I grew up eating that. I loved it uh and  I still have a taste and affinity uh for Japanese food today because of that. And especially Kikkoman soy sauce. He said his friends came over for rice balls with sesame seeds and liked them. Kazuko and  Leo Kingsbury settled on a dairy farm in upstate New York. Their daughter Esther remembers buying  soy sauce and seaweed at a small Asian food store in Binghamton where they sold Kikkoman soy sauce. And so she'd get this big gallon of Kikkoman

shoyu and then sometimes we'd get a real treat and we'd get  some nori too. Little bit of nori, you know. Cause it was very expensive and so it was a treat. And I mean  maybe once a month. But Mom would stretch the shoyu, cut it with vinegar. And  we didn't have rice vinegar you only had you know vinegar, so you would cut it...  And it's funny because we grew up that way, so we still do. It's interesting that in 1973 when Kikkoman  published a book on how to cook with soy sauce the cover photogr

aph showed a mixed race family. It  looks like a Japanese mother and a white father. There are many examples of the ways Japanese war  bride spread culture through demonstrations in schools and featured in newspaper articles. It was  part of the new friendly Japan, the U.S. ally. You can see here Hiroi Shibata Hasna at a show and tell  in her daughter's school. I love this scene in this photograph from 1962 in far northwest  Montana. I interviewed the daughters of these two women who passed away

before I began the project. The story there is called on the uh oral history website it's called "Finding Home in  Big Sky Country." In the story called "Blood from a Turnip," which is uh... let's see, could we have  the next slide? In the story called "Blood from a Turnip," Russ Skains said that growing up  in Louisiana he was taunted for being half Japanese. This is what he said. I didn't want to  be Japanese. People are mean to me because I'm Japanese. I don't want to be Japanese. That  chan

ged Russ said after he was sent by his local church on a missionary trip to Japan. It  was his first encounter with other Japanese people. And I went and worked with different  families and I gave my testimony at these different churches and stuff and I um oh that was  a great discovery for me. Because I had always been told that it's not a good thing to be Japanese. And then I go there and I think these people are wonderful. I love them. I love this place. In the  Townsend family Daniel talks a

bout wanting to explore more of his more of his Japanese heritage,  which confused his wife. I know more of my Black side than I do my Asian side, so now I got to  play catch-up. There was a period of time really interesting about maybe eight nine years ago  when I was trying to figure out you know get a little more information on my Asian culture  or my Okinawan culture. And I was telling the girls about it and bringing the girls up with it, maybe  be may been 10 years ago. And my wife said wel

l I wish you would put as much effort into your  African American culture to your kids as you do your Asian American Asian culture. And you know we  had a conversation about it. And I said well we're immersed in our African-American culture every  day. This is where we live. This is how people look at us and determine who we are and they you know  they judge us on it. They don't judge us on the Asian side. And the eight children of Akiko and  Clark Hewitt of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania express diffe

rent identities. Here's Patrick and Clark Jr., known as Rock. Having an identity as a Japanese American I I think you're we do I think we're  always aware of that um especially growing up during that time um for me um late 60s early 70s  where you start forming your memories of what's Happening actually um the first thing anybody  said to me here at Wellsboro when we moved here um the first day of school was a even though it  was incorrect it was actually hoi Min how's your Trail was the first w

ord said to me by a student  a kid you you gain a sense that people don't understand Race So you you're always aware I think  that things are different for you you have to you have to try harder how about you collect for me  I I think I look more Japanese than anything so um I was always identified as Japanese friends  who say I have enough Japanese Pride to float the whole Japanese Navy and I I agree with  that I I am Japanese I'm not sure as I take it to that because I consider myself American

you  know so um while we're all within the same family you do have different perspectives finally the  last lesson addresses conflict the women faced many problems in their marriages raising their  children their lives in the United States were not easy and not at all like the Hollywood images  they had back in Japan Nuku barcas uh is described by her daughter as being unhappy with the role  of the wife in the 1950s America because she had been raised in a very Progressive Japanese family  here

's Julie her daughter well I think um part of the part of the difference is that she was a  woman and a woman in the 50s um had a certain role to play and she had not been raised to to be  like that in in Japan the limitations on her as a wife and mother in smalltown MidWest America  at that time plus the um I don't know the the expectations that my father had he was a very  young young husband and his his expectations of what she should be doing and her role of course  also played heavily into

it and she was raised to honor the the man of the house of course  so she was trying trying to please everybody in this country and trying to fit in she told  me that her mother had had written her letters and said to her you know just do what they ask  do do what's expected of you follow the foot in their footsteps obey your your mother-in-law she  she tried really really hard to be an American Wife good a good American Wife in in the early  years and what I mostly remember is how unhappy she w

as Julie said that the women's movement that  started in the 1960s which Julie came home from school and talked about gave her mother hope with  Julie's encouragement and despite her husband's objection Nuku went back to school to get a degree  in business management ran a Japanese restaurant on Newbury Street in Boston for several years and  finally became dean of student life at the newly established Boston branch of Japan's shaah Women's  University the children of Yuki Hawkins struggled to u

nderstand their mother and talked her into  agreeing to my interview she came to the us at the age of 19 and had four children by the time  she was 24 her husband 16 years older was gone for long stretches of time including two tours  in Vietnam they don't know why she married him here's be one of her daughters so she says that  it was was the time that people did these kinds of things cuz I mean I look at that picture of  her standing there on their wedding day and I I said you look like you ar

e frozen and petrified  what made you do this she she just said oh that's what we did that's what we did not scared of  nothing you know you know because you're 18 years old you're wild kind of I thought he was  truthful that's what I thought okay I want to go to United States and anyway daughter Liz says  they were fine parents even if they were not right for each other I think my dad was a good guy and  was a a nice man and he was a nice Dad he just wasn't there a lot and my mom was a nice mom

and  a good mom and stuff like that I just don't think they were good together my mom always said you  know when you graduate from high school I'm out of here I'm out of here and I kept going what  are you waiting for and it's like why are you wasting this time I'm like just go live your life  what happened eventually was that Yuki moved out of the house and into a small apartment in y ke  Ki where she worked in Japanese restaurants and enjoyed a life surrounded by Japanese friends her  husband

helped her with the move and even bought her a TV be asked her father if he missed her he  goes hm I missed the aggravation these stories together create a picture of a group of immigrants  the largest women only immigration to the United States States and the varied way they made homes  and raised their children they contain broader lessons for US history and culture I hope that you  will draw your own conclusions and lessons as you use these units the spice material and some of the  stories w

ill be included in a traveling exhibition being developed this year by the Smithsonian  traveling exhibition service in conjunction with the national museum of American History its title  is Japanese War Brides across a wide divide and it will start to travel to cities this this December  with likely venues in Dallas Texas Delray Beach Florida Memphis St Paul Minnesota Baton Rouge Los  Angeles Honolulu St Charles Louisiana and Hartford Connecticut and hopefully other places definite  dates will

appear on the traveling exhibition website my own Mother's experience is captured in  the short documentary film fall seven times get up eight the Japanese War Brides this film came  into being through the efforts of two journalist friends who also had Japanese mothers Lucy Craft  and Karen kasowski they were supportive when I talked of trying to tell my mother's story and  they propo proposed that we produce a documentary film the company blue chalk media helped us launch  a Kickstarter campaig

n to raise money for the film which tells the war bride story through a mother  daughter lens now I'd like to turn the webinar over to curriculum specialist Waka Takahashi  Brown who put together the excellent teachers guide for the documentary film and uh we'll  we'll view its first two minutes first thank you [Music] to put it crudely Americans did  look more attractive they are wellfed happy good lucky they had  tremendous appeal to young girls I wasn't in love with him I don't even knew him

I didn't know anything I just took  a chance I want to get [Music] out enemy who who's the enemy  you know I don't know you know my mom said I trust him because  he is like father to you hope the [Music] best [Music] all right thank you Katherine for that  excellent excellent introduction to um the Japanese War Brides project and at  this time I'd like to talk to you about the teachers guide that accompanies the  documentary film um I want to make sure there's um a distinction between the Five 

Lessons that accompany the oral history archives which Katherine talked about and what  I'll talk about next which is the teachers guide that accompanies the documentary  film so let me go ahead and share my screen all right so in 2021 um I was approached um by  well first my boss who said that um there was a film called fall seven times get up eight the  Japanese War Brides and that we were being asked to develop a teacher guide for it and I was  very excited to do so um part of my job is to U

manage and instruct um a semester long course  called Stanford e Japan and that's to Japanese high school students but um the other half of  the year I write curriculum and I enjoy this tremendously because um I get to learn about a  lot of different topics many of which I never encountered before and many of which I never uh  learned when I was growing up and so um it's a chance for continuing education so um like all  uh spice teachers guide the teachers guide for The War Brides um documentary

contains a list of  Standards essential questions and objectives a list of materials as well as the materials  themselves stepbystep teacher preparation notes and procedures on how to proceed through  the lesson suggestions for assessment all the handouts you'll need and of course answer keys  because um as teachers I know it's difficult to find the time to create the answer keys so at  spice we like to do that for you now for the standards we know that you're often asked to teach  toward the s

tandards um this is just a snapshot of some of the ones which are covered through the  documentary film and the accompanying lessons but for instance for the National History  standards we have US History standards such as assess the challenges opportunities  and contributions of different immigrant groups describe military experiences  and explain how they fostered American identity and interactions among people of diverse backgrounds identify the major issues that  affected immigrants and expl

ain the conflicts these issues engendered and also for world  history um describe major patterns of longdistance migration of Europeans Africans and Asians  and analyze causes and consequences of these movements also um we have essential questions  and objectives with the essential questions um these are the ones that you should consider as  you approach this topic and again this is just a snapshot there are more listed in the di itself  such as who are the Japanese War Brides and why are their

stories an important chapter in The  History of the United States what are some factors that shape the identities of Japanese War  Brides what factors influence identity formation in what ways can a deeper understanding of our own  identities help us to understand other people's perspectives and so you can see how like the  questions start out as somewhat specific but then broaden so that students can draw their  own connections to their own lives also with the objectives this is what your stude

nt should  be able to do after going through the activities outlined in this guide for example they'll learn  a general history of Japanese immigration to the United States in addition they'll appreciate the  challenges that Japanese immigrants including Japanese War Brides faced in terms of assimilation  into US society and recognize how issues of immigration discrimination and assimilation are  significant issues in US society today consider identity related issues of Japanese War Brides  who

immigrated to the United States and of course appreciate multiple perspectives so this is just a  list of the materials that accompany the teacher's guide and um I can go through the guide by  going through the handouts and this particular activity with the teachers guide begins before  the students view the film um there's a preest and um students are just given this handout in  which they're asked to answer these questions and of course they won't know the answers but  just tell them to do so

um to the best of their ability and then without grading just pick  them up and then you'll hold on to these until um you're done with the lesson and this this type  of activity helps prepare the students for what's to come and kind of focus um their learning as  to uh what else they're going to learn in this lesson and of course I think it's always helpful  to have background information before viewing um a documentary and so we have an informational  handout in this um teachers guide that you

can distribute to students um in the procedures um  students are asked to go over this handout in groups of three and answer questions at the  end and can you can go over the answers to the questions as a class or collect and assess  um and use as assessment so after the students are um equipped with the background knowledge  and have kind of been primed for what they're about to learn this is when we suggest that uh you  show the documentary film and the film itself is about 25 minutes which I

think is perfect for a  50 minute 1H hour um class that is pretty typical and instead of just telling students take notes  while you watch the film we provide note taking sheets in which um specific questions are asked  so they'll know what they need to take notes on so at this time if you only have time for one  day to teach about uh Japanese War Brides you can revisit the preest and look at students answer ERS  initial answers to their questions and um there's a answer key that's also included

in the guide in  which um there are also discussion questions so students can look at their previous answers and  also answer them correctly and then also launch into a discussion um pertaining to the questions  on the preest however if you have time there are additional activities um such as this one which  is the examination of quotes for this particular one you would uh ask the students to divide into  five small groups um about of about five to six students and each group is handed um a han

dout  with quotes pulled from the documentary film and after reading and examining these quotes each  group has some s sort of activity to engage in and uh also present to the class or just turn  in for assessment so we have an art project a poetry project um a letter to an editor project um  a collage project and also a roleplay project so a variety of options to choose from another activity  that's included in the guide is um an examination of the letters from the filmmakers um the  filmmakers

were all very kind and they included a letter to Educators and students and so after the  these letters we include questions and students can read uh answer the questions and of course  then the next activity they get to write a letter back and so um the template for writing the letter  is included here so you don't have to create it and then um you can collect them and the address  uh through which you can mail them is included in the guide and I'm sure um Katherine and the other  filmmakers w

ould be delighted to receive them and as I mentioned before uh answer keys are provided  and if at this point um you're able to revisit the pretest this would be a great way to debrief  what the students have learned and launch into a discussion about how maybe they can apply some of  these lessons to contemporary Society themselves and their own Notions of identity all right so  that is a quick overview of the guide itself um and this is uh just I would like to take  this opportunity to encoura

ge everyone here um to teach Asian-American History um two about 20  States um include some form of ethnic studies that include Asian-American native Hawaiian and Pacific  Islander studies but some um five the last time I checked have specifically mandated the teaching  of Asian-American History and of course May is a great month to uh approach some of these topics  um and another resource I'd like to point uh towards is the uh asian-americans documentary film  series it's available through PBS

on also Amazon Prime if you have it and um you can incorporate  Asian-American History throughout your teachings of his history for example I just thought of  these examples today if you're going to teach about about postor War II issues and immigration  please consider uh the Japanese war bride stories with the resources that we presented today um if  you're teaching about Ellis Island I think it's equally important to teach about Angel Island and  how that can be or that has been quite a bit o

f a different experience um if you're teaching about  civil rights of course Japanese internment is a great topic to study if you're looking at Brown  versus the Topeka Board of Education please also look at tape versus Hurley which OCC occurred  about seven decades prior and when looking at the Transcontinental Railroad I think it's extremely  important to look at the stories of the Chinese railroad workers who helped create it and when  looking at the 14th Amendment and Birthright citizenship

um please also look at Uni the United  States versus Wong Kim Arc spice has all of these topics covered in lessons and units and teachers  guides that you can access for free on our website if you go to the teaching resources tab there's  full free multimedia resources where you can also see um Japanese War Brides featured there but this  is just a small snapshot of it there's many many pages of free resources and we also have a new  um Visual Arts and documentary film page and we highlight uh a

teacher guide and documentary film  at different times of the year currently it's a film on the Far West along with its Associated  teachers guide but at the bottom of this page we have this place where teachers can sign up  if you want to be paired with a documentary filmmaker or review something um for them and  say how it could be used in the classroom and also if you're a documentary filmmaker if you'd  like to be paired with an educator to review your film we have um forms there where you

can  sign up. So that is uh that that is the end of my presentation so I'll turn it back over to  Naomi if you would like to facilitate uh the Q&A. Okay, thank you so much uh Kathryn and Waka  for your fabulous presentation. So much content, so many perspectives to consider and to think about different ways that we can integrate them into our teaching. I want to go ahead  and open it up to Q&A, so those of you who are attending, if you'd like to type your questions  into the Q&A box, we can addr

ess them from there. But before we get to that, actually Kathryn,  I wanted to ask if you might be able to tell us a little bit more about the oral history archive. We do have some lessons on there that SPICE developed for teachers as well, and I know that  those are linked under the "For Teachers" tab, but if you could tell us a little bit more about  that and how it was developed and then we can encourage teachers to go to the site itself and to look under the teachers guides for more sort of

guided practice for classroom  use. But I think as just you know a community resource too, it's just really interesting. Right. It isn't a traditional um oral history website in the sense that it's very curated. It's in these... I conduct the interviews which are you know multiple hours and then I  take pieces of the interview that tell a story that tell part of the story, and then I combine that with photos that I've scanned from the family. So I try to make it  more accessible in that way. the

typical oral history archives are long interviews,  and it's it's amazing primary source material. Obviously Densho is sort of one of the  gold standards for that for the Japanese American experience, and they you know they have  the transcripts and everything. Being a journalist I took a different approach and wanted to  combine sort of the presenting of oral history and and storytelling at the same time. And for  the Japanese war brides I think it was a useful way to do it because they're isn

't a story around  the Japanese war brides that's well known. And so I I try to I try to tell that story. And it's  it's a complicated one, with um you know that... it's not easy to say what what sort of the outcomes  were for the marriages because there's been sort of no um you know it's  it's all anecdotal in that sense. But I think that it's extremely useful  and it does start to create a story line about that period of immigration, and that you can see  that they came from different kinds of

families, they entered different kinds of marriages, landed  in all sorts of communities, and you know you begin to understand why things worked out  the way they did for different people. And you know who helped them, or what were the factors that  contributed to to to their lives. So so that's what the oral history tries to do in the  way that I've that I've produced it. To create a story to create a narrative uh that  where one doesn't exist really right now I think. You know it takes it tak

es a long time to do  it this way uh to you know to take these stories and figure out what what the what the story is  what the kernel is in this interview that that adds to the overall picture, but I feel like it's been fairly effective in that sense. I was wondering also if you could speak  to um some of the challenges that you faced in drawing some of the stories out of these women. I know that for my for my own grandmother you know it's not something that that part of  her past isn't somethi

ng that she was um you very forthcoming about. I know that's not uncommon. And so I was just wondering what some of the the challenges were that you experienced in developing and capturing all of these these stories. Right. So the children were my  allies, because their children wanted to know the stories. The children and then sometimes  the grandchildren. The women didn't think that they had a story. They you know they  didn't understand why there would be interest in in their lives. So that w

as part of it. Some  of them had very specific requests, like one woman agreed to an interview as long as her  husband wasn't in the room. I mean she you know she wanted to she wanted to be totally private. Others were you know agreed and then changed their mind and then were talked into it again  by their kids. Not everybody can tell their story well and you sometimes you know  somebody's got a good story but they don't tell it well. In every family there there is  a storyteller, though, and if

you could find the person who can tell the family's story or tell  the mother's story then that that's that's where you know that that's what makes it work. I look for those people in the families and that's why some stories are told  by a daughter or a son. The women themselves they're they're well they were unfortunately many  of them had passed even but when I had started the project and those now who are still  around or in their 90s late 80s early 90s. So yeah. But once you get somebody  y

ou sit down with somebody with a microphone and you just you just start chronologically and you  ask about their family in Japan and what they you know what what it was like growing up and  what their parents did and you know it's it's it's it's not hard to to sort of build a story  out of that and then you know what they knew of their husbands and and his family. So you  start sort of chronologically but then there's always sort of that moment of emotion that you  realize that you've you've tou

ched something in their lives that that made a difference  that mattered to them. The moment when they realized something or you know they um because  they they made these decisions without a lot of information. They they they kind of went with  their gut when they decided to come. Did you find through hearing these stories did a lot of  these women and their children stay close with their relatives in Japan or did it vary quite a  bit or you know what what was the the connection um between that

next generation and Japan? Yeah,  it's interesting because at the time of course you know communication was letters and phone calls  were very expensive. And where it varied was on the resources the family resources. Whether  they could afford a phone call or whether they could afford a return trip. Some men stayed  in the military and were able to managed to have another tour in Japan or Okinawa and so then  they were able to go back and and see relatives. Others who who feel very close to Jap

an and who  say you know my soul is Japanese never went back not even once, and part of that is you know  the feeling that you know it's it's when you go to Japan there are so many obligations you take  so many gifts and it's too complicated. So a number of women never went back. In those cases  I think the children do not have that much of a connection to their Japanese relatives, but I  find that they want that connection and I've seen you know recently in several cases where  you know with Go

ogle translate and everything I mean they are there are families where the kids  are really building a relationship with their cousins and it matters to them a  great deal to know to know the Japanese family. I think that that's... you know because you  know in their case the Japanese side is very close it's it's it's their it's their grandmother  they have a grandmother and a grandfather who are Japanese whether they knew them or not. Now  of course the women didn't teach their children Japanes

e for the most part because there was so  much pressure on them to become American and they tried so hard to learn English and their husbands  mostly didn't speak Japanese and didn't want them to use Japanese at home so the kids have that  obstacle in communicating with their Japanese relatives but but I have to say today with Google  translate so much seems to be possible. I mean there's you know texts and phone calls and you  know and visits and this uh the Montana story I showed that picture

of the two women in kimono  in 1962 in northwest Montana uh one of the women her daughter this past fall welcomed a group  of her Japanese relatives decided to come and visit her mother's grave in Montana. And you know  this Wakako's daughter Cat doesn't speak Japanese but she managed to take them all to Calispel  Montana and they went to the grave and um yeah so that connection is sort of it it was a huge sort  of moment I think in the family that uh that the Japanese family would come to you k

now to pay  their respects to the sister who married the American and left so so many years ago. You  know in this uh just last fall I was I was in Japan with a with a family from from Wisconsin who  had gone to to visit their mother's sister so there there's a lot of that that that's happening. So that's interesting to see. The other the other thing is names. I mean I see that the  women didn't give their their kids Japanese names, but the grandkids have Japanese names. And  that is sometimes t

he children themselves pick those names or in some cases the you know the  the Japanese woman maybe regretted not giving any Japanese names to her kids so when the grandkids  came along she's said they're going to have a Japanese name and so there was one name in there  that would be Japanese. Um yeah so the the the connections between you know relatives and sort of  the you know what happens in the next generations is is is fascinating. Thank you for sharing those. A lot of that resonates with

me and my own family too um. My mother is the only one of her  siblings who married someone from Japan and so her connection with Japan and then of course my  connection and my sister's connection with Japan is much closer I would say because of that. You know we're three quarters Japanese whereas most of my cousins are a quarter Japanese. And  so you know those types of connections and then where that's sort of filtered down through  language and um different cultural practices that we practice

at home. You know my own children are Japanese and American and Chinese but I gave them Japanese first names because they have  a Chinese last name and so these different ways in which we try to you know instill sort of their  backgrounds and cultures as generations pass I think is really fascinating and will continue  to be increasingly so you know as different cultures continue to mix. Yeah are fascinating. The names are fascinating because the Japanese women themselves took American names I

mean they  were given American names as nicknames sometimes or just because it was easier. So they were called  Barbara and Nancy and you know these names that had nothing to do with their Japanese names, and  that's how they were viewed and lived their lives here. You know Kay is a common one. But um yeah  Barbara and Nancy and you know Peggy and that's so you know. To give up a name like that is  really remarkable but the woman in Montana who who was called Katie always put her Japanese  name

on her license plate on her car so her car says Wakako. So she was gonna claim it there.  I'm sorry so do we have some other questions? We have a couple questions in the box. So  the first one is uh I don't you can probably see this but I'll read it aloud. Thank you for your  wonderful presentations, Kathryn and Waka. Can you share more about the Smithsonian exhibition— whether there be a display of artifacts, how are the sites determined, and would you consider  taking the exhibition to Japan?

So the exhibit the exhibit is is being developed now uh so this  year is the development year and it will be you know relatively small. It will have  some physical objects that will be more like reproductions than original artifacts, because in order to keep the exhibit uh uh as a low security exhibit to ship it around uh they did not  want to have to sort of take valuable things and insure them. And the the Japanese war brides story  is one that I think is told more through voice and photograph

than object. But we're thinking  about that now. I mean there are things that are that are great to to look at. I mean the the the  bride school textbooks and certificates and um and all of that. And things that you know what  mattered to them what did they bring. But it it strikes me that the story is not as object  driven uh as as other exhibits could be. So it'll be multimedia for sure. And my uh uh use  of of the audio today in the slideshow uh is is the kind of thing that I hope that we ca

n do with  the exhibit where you have you know photographs and you could hear people's voices. So yeah so  that's so that's being developed right now. The plans for travel... I mean they so it it would  travel for several years for 10 weeks at a time and so a venue would then contact you know the the  sites the traveling exhibition service and express interest and you know see how  much it cost and... So there has been several people have asked us as about the possibility of  taking it to Japan,

and I certainly hope that that would would happen at some point. Yeah so it's  pretty you know it's pretty you know exciting to think about the exhibition, and uh the Stanford  educational material SPICE's educational material is something that we um are promoting as part of the exhibition package, because we do want it to be you know educational. So that was big to have that curriculum and teachers guide developed. Great, thank you. The next question uh and comment is thank you for your insigh

tful presentations. Through  this webinar I was reminded of how significant family history is an identity formation. How might  you suggest a grandchild to start exploring their grandparents history? Wow. So the you know I think  that they're teaching a lot how to do these kinds of interviews in schools uh that the grand it's  and it's so easy today to record. I would start by looking at photographs and seeing you know...  sit down with a grandparent and and ask to see the photographs and talk a

bout the photos. And  have the grandparent explain you know what they are where they were taken, what was happening  that day. And then you start to get a picture of life at another time. And you know I think also  family trees are interesting. That's that's uh uh you know a fascinating kind of way to to map  out you know where where you are and and and you know the grandparents parents and you know take  it back that way. I think that um exploring the grandparent's histories and  lives is super

important and and I think um you know I don't think it's that hard to do you just  have to you have to make the time to do it and take advantage of of all the kinds of tools there  are today. I mean you know phones can do very good recordings. Great, thank you. And our next question is from a high school student. Thank you for presentation. Ms. Tolbert, is there a particular  story and or interview that stood out to you. You know the first story that I did was called  "Courting the Typist" and

that was the Hewitt story in Wellsboro uh and it it it remains one of  my favorites. It's very short but I just felt the kind of the youthful kind of innocence of these  two people at that time in Japan um and she you know this kind of interest and perhaps longing  for a different kind of life and his infatuation and trying to convince her to go on a date with  him. So I still that was the first one I completed and I and I still like it a lot. The  one I the most recent one I completed is also t

he longest one and that's about the mother  of the fencer Peter Westbrook who runs a foundation in New York City to teach fencing  and is a six-time Olympian. But his mother was a Japanese war bride who raised her two  kids in Newark, New Jersey. So that's the most recent one. Uh you know they I've been  doing since since 2015 so sometimes I forget the details and when I prepare a presentation  like this to go back and listen to some of the audio again or to look at the transcripts... I  I there

are a lot of them that I like. You know so um you know I don't have a favorite. Each  one is... each one could be longer and and I really struggled to keep them keep them short. There's this voice one of the voices I like a lot is the one "Finding my Father"  is by Kyoko Katayama in St Paul uh because she talks she was somebody whose uh mother was  abandoned and so she didn't know who her father was until she was an adult and found  him. But she looks at that kind of war bride experience and sh

e's the one who speaks  about the term "war bride" and it the war bride term is a little controversial uh applied to Japanese because it wasn't during the war that they married it was after the war uh and they married  men who were there for the occupation or who were fighting in Korea. But we use  the term because it describes the experience to me of being married to an American serviceman and  coming to this country from a country that the U.S. was at war with at one point. So that's why I  th

ink that it still works and is and is a useful term. Before we go on to the last question actually  Waka I wanted to ask you... I know that you have written a lot of different curriculum materials  on a lot of different topics but you know as someone who teaches and as someone who writes  and as someone who is the daughter of immigrants I was wondering if there was anything particular about working on this project that you found particularly you know memorable or notable  you know as you were ki

nd of going through the process of writing the guide for the film. Yeah,  this was actually one of my favorite projects to work on. My parent my mom wasn't a Japanese  war bride but my parents immigrated I believe it was like 1970 and it was pretty much a direct  result of the 1965 Immigration Act. And so my mom had friends who were war brides and I remember  being curious because there weren't many Japanese people around but then there were these half  Japanese families um here and there and so

I was always kind of curious about their story. And  um yeah one of my best friends in middle school I believe her mom she met her husband  when he was stationed in Japan, I want to say right after he was just stationed there  but it wasn't due to a war but like... yeah so it was finding these pieces that I'd always  wondered about. Um and some of the experiences were similar in my family but at least with  my mom and dad like they had a common cultural background, and so there weren't any cult

ural I  guess misunderstandings between them, but those became like parental to child like those  cultural misunderstandings were happening there. But yeah it was a very interesting project and  one that um you know I saw parallels with some of the things my parents went through. But it was  interesting that um the assimilation like the the pressure to assimilate my mom I think my  dad was just he didn't really care but my mom was very adamant that we not assimilate all the  way. So I mean that'

s why my siblings and I have Japanese names that's why we grew up speaking  Japanese and you know there was no like I want to learn English so let's speak English more. No. Like my mom's English probably only became quite good when uh she decided take a job teaching  Japanese at a local high school. Then her English improved a lot. But yeah she she definitely want  us wanted us to keep our Japanese um identities strong. Thank you for sharing that. Okay um there's  one final question here in the

Q&A. Is the difficulty in communication between Japanese  and English still a major obstacle or are there organizations that can help facilitate overseas  visits and genealogical research translation and interpretation services for families. I know you talked about um sort of the the blossoming of technology as an aid in this but  um I I wasn't sure about organizations that um that might be supportive in these efforts. Yeah I  I don't know of organizations and I people have asked because there a

re uh there are people  who who want to know or there are people who don't know who their a Japanese parent is I mean  who maybe was given up for adoption or uh so but the but it it's difficult in Japan to to trace to  trace that I mean unless you're a proven relative I don't think you can easily get uh family  histories or or and uh you know here we could find out so much through you know 23 and Me and these other kind of ancestry searches and so so many people you know use them that you  can f

ind relatives that way but as far as I know you you that doesn't happen in Japan. I don't  know. Do you know Waka anything different about that? I don't know of any sources um resources  specifically for genealogical research but I do know there are international associations like  a lot of JET um JET Program participants like I was worked in international associations  in various cities, and those associations are there for non-Japanese residents if  they have any issues, if they need translati

on services, if they need some help um just kind  of generally making their way in a Japanese speaking society. So if you're in Japan I  think that's a good place to kind of look into. I think all the prefectural offices do have  an international division and so um they could probably point you towards other international  associations that might be government affiliated. That might be a good place to start. I did hear that Okinawa was more helpful, that there was some kind of prefectural offic

e in Okinawa  that helped non-Japanese or you know try to find relatives. And um I might have done  an Instagram post on that; I can't I can't remember but it was striking to me that that  that was that was a possible way to um to find relatives. Well thank you so much. I'm really  inspired by the women that you spoke about that we heard from today. And you know the thinking  back on those times um and the decisions that had to be made and the bravery you know that  they had to to have within th

emselves to embark on these adventures um and the families that that  came from them you know there's just so much so much richness in these stories and I hope  that teachers will be able to take these and bring them to their students to help bring some  of this history to life. I always think and I you know working with teachers over the years  we've always heard that that's really the best way to teach about history is through the power  of personal narrative. So you know thank you Kathryn for

developing um these incredible  resources—the archive and the documentary film— that make it possible for teachers to  bring these stories to students and to to spread them um among the younger generations. So thank you so much. And thank you Waka for all of your efforts on the curriculum  um and the guide and I hope that a lot of the teachers who are here today will be able to use  them. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you Naomi. Thank you. I just wanted to I neglected to  uh to mention at

the beginning of our session today that this webinar is also sponsored by  the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia and also the USC U.S.-China Institute. So we  thank our colleagues at those organizations as well. This webinar is being recorded and  the recording link will be made available I believe through the SPICE website. So if  you'd like to watch it again, I encourage you to do so and all of the links to the documentary  film and to the teachers guides and to the oral history arc

hive are available on the SPICE  website as well. All right? Well thank you so much everyone for joining. We greatly appreciate  it, and have a great evening wherever you are.