gotohealth's Blog

 A few years ago, I asked my 18-yr-old granddaughter, “How do you feel about your Japanese Heritage?”

 

She answered, “It gives me energy and I feel more power?”

 

“Give me an example of when you feel like this,” I implored at that time. 

 

“Well, a couple times when I was with some friends and the subject came up, I said ‘I’m Gosei (5th generation Japanese American)’ and I felt good.”

 

Today, three years later, she is considering a journaling career and says, “All heritages are important, but I think being Japanese makes me emphasize accountability and honesty with ‘wabi-sabi’ (not needing perfection) uniqueness.”

 

This response is thrilling to me. Perhaps our parenting, my husband’s comic strips for the North American Post and our books are resonating? I have a vision for a better Pacific Northwest community because we are sharing our OMOIDE (Memories) program at the JCCCW (Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington). Our stories, for 5th graders are currently working on publishing OMOIDE VII. 

 

I am surprised daily with leading scientists around the world citing Japanese cultural examples. Ethnologist Frans de Waal talks about conflict resolution. His example is about how in Japan adults and teacher do not intervene in children’s fights. They consider it natural learning to let them work things out for themselves at their level, without adult or community rules. De Waal did a lot of studies with chimps and monkeys, citing, “Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?”

 

Psychiatrist and philosopher, Iain McGilchrist, who researches the difference between the left and right hemispheres of the brain says, “The Western Culture has been mostly created by left brain activity which deals with numbers and goals.” He suggests we incorporate more Asian and particularly parts of the Japanese Culture into our lives for more balance with right brain emotions and look at our work and world as a whole instead of just parts.

 

Although it’s not empirical studies sanctioned by modern universities, the Japanese had 200 years of the Edo Period which brought the practices of the arts and cultural expectations to a PhD level.

 

As a member of the board of the JCCCW, I am picturing a tour guide, 100 years from now, bringing attention to the strong Japanese heritage values of GAMAN - enduring hardship with patience and dignity and GAMBATTE - do your best with resilience. Trust our stories shared today, will help shape our Northwest community tomorrow.

 

 

The artwork is the creation of my youngest granddaughter. I’m using this to illustrate how I’m feeling this morning as I post on my blog. I’m listening to a podcast by Simon Sinek in conversation with Mo Gawdat. 

 

As I planned my weekend, I started to text a friend about having lunch and was feeling more of a social obligation than an activity that I really wanted in my heart. Listening to the podcast I heard the words, “A real friend is someone who agrees with you to grow together.” 

 

I’m thinking, “This person has made up her mind to listen to the news and the political chaos. That is not the growth that I want.” 

 

Then, I heard Gawdat talk about how he learned from his son, “The ‘gravity of the battle’ means nothing to those at peace!” Also, PEACE and clarifying THE INNER REAL ME are the podcasts I’m enjoying.

 

I had such a friend/spouse for 56 years, where we grew together. But, he passed seven years ago and I lost five lunch 50-year friends last year.  I'm being guided to write down what I want!  I wrote on my note pad: “WHAT I WANT: ‘some new friends with whom I can exchange videos I like and talk about the ideas,  with the agreement that we continue to grow together!’” The key is that I want to keep growing and I'm avoiding those that have nothing on their mind but their latest health crisis. 

 

Forty plus years ago, Sam and I set a goal to work at keeping our health because he was diagnosed with eminent Diabetes, which was inherited. He made it to age 85 doing yard work to the end and was never diagnosed as Diabetic but did secumb to related issues. I am benefiting from our attention to health, but it's clear, I need to find a new set of friends. "Hmmmmmmm? thinking!"

 

I'm excited about asking my granddaughters and their boyfriends to help me. I am inviting them to lunch or dinner tonight and next week. It’s a new thought that I get them to help me on “my new path”. I had been stuck in looking to find retired individuals who would have more time. 

 

Wow, writing things down is working!

 

Dad was never on my list of mentors until this past few years. Now,  I realized it is important to live the person that we really are and not what society describes as "living successfully".

 

A few years ago, 2010, I was having lunch with my cousin, Don Tsukamaki, on a trip to Portland from where I live in the Seattle area. He said, “Do you know how poor you were growing up?!” His father was my Mom’s younger brother and their family had done a lot to help my parents with gifts and finances.

 

Part of the reason we were so poor was because Dad was not entrepreneurial. He played his harmonica, violin and musical saw. He built all the beautiful furniture we had - dining table, chest of drawers, desk - in his high school carpentry class. He built our one-room farm house. He was not a good farmer, at a time when that was the only occupation available to those with Japanese heritage during WWII. Dad was a born-again Christian and went to church and didn’t work 7 days a week to get ahead. Visiting Joe Saito, he said, “Your dad was known for telling us to stop smoking!”

 

My father, Sago (likely anglicized from Seigo a famous samurai warrior) Miyamoto, was born 1908. He was born to Grandpa, Kanekichi, and Grandma, Yoshi Miyamoto; immigrants from Hiroshima, Japan. Kanekichi was head of “Jap Camp” for Eatonville Lumber Company and Yoshi did laundry for the workers. Dad was sent back to Japan for a few years during his grade school years and hated it. American Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) were treated as foreigners in Japan and not treated well by neighbors and fellow students. Dad graduated from Eatonville, WA, high school around 1927 and went to the U of Minnesota in St Paul. 

 

By the year 1936, there was talk of war, and his parents decided they had made enough money in America to go back to Japan. Left penniless, in hopes that Dad would follow, my dad remained very resentful and I knew nothing about his family until years later, because he would not talk about them. 

 

That same year, 1936, my Mom, who had been sent to Hiroshima with her three younger brothers to live with their Grandpa J Tsukamaki, because their mother had died, were coming back to America because of national political unrest. Mom’s dad, K Tsukamaki, owed K Miyamoto money - likely because of the discrimination and hard times when Japanese Dairy Farmers were run out of the business due to the 1921 Alien Land Law passed by the Washington legislators. K Miyamoto said if my Mom, Mary, would marry my Dad, Sago, the debt would be forgiven. 

 

By 1947, Mom’s Dad and two brothers, Ben and Frank, had established the ONTARIO FISH MARKET in Ontario, Oregon, where the Mayor, Elmo Smith, had welcomed over 800 Japanese leaving Minidoka incarceration - unlike other towns in that Idaho/Oregon community along the Snake River, not far from Boise, Idaho.

 

Dad sold his 30 acre Caldwell, Idaho, farm and became the FISH MAN; delivering groceries with his panel truck to the farmers starting over with row crop farming when they didn’t have a car, money or time. Dad loved to talk and help; distributing a lot of the unsold food items to the poor - along with the community news to the housewives as he carried the groceries to their kitchen and got paid.

Today, the national news is about the Texas floods. I’m not a big fan of Gale King, but I want to commend her for interviewing this family with two boys around 5 & 7 years of age who were successfully rescued. The kindergartener said, “No, I wasn’t scared.” And the mother talked about prayer and gratitude. 

 

I may be too much of a Pollyanna, but I want to find the bravery in the situations we face daily. Therefore, there is no doubt that bad things and problems have to occur as part of life so “bravery” can be chosen!!

 

Yesterday was the first Sunday of the month of July 2025 and we had another session of STORIES AT THE PANAMA. Fourteen of us gathered and shared stories of our heritage and how various immigrants found refuge here in Seattle after escaping political difficulties in their heritage. Particularly impactful was the story from Justin and how his family escaping across the Mekong River in Laos. Another story was from Stephen whose family had to flee across Siberia. Raku told us about how at age 3-1/2 her house was bombed in Japan and she survived from underneath the rubble. Years later, here at the U of Washington, at a reception, she met the person who as an American pilot had potentially dropped that bomb in Kyushu at the end of WWII.

 

I am connecting with individuals like Hana Maruyama and her FUDEKO project in Connecticut. Today, I answered an email from Sandra Buscher, in Connecticut, who has developed a OUR DEBT OF GRATITUDE project with Margaret Mukai in New Jersey. They are  seeking stories about individuals of non-Japanese Americans who helped us during the mass forced removal and incarceration of World War II and the nationwide denial of. Civil rights.

 

Locally, here in Seattle, I have blogged a few of our stories of COMPASSION AND KINDNESS and continue to seek more. It is important to me that as our stories are read by school children when our OMOIDE books are distributed to Washington State School libraries. I am counting on finding stories that inspire individual students to overcome their own difficulties and serve their communities - wherever they live out their lives with BRAVERY!

 

PS. A day later, now sending condolences to all involved in the horrific Texas flood! What a traqedy!

The Fudeko two-day conference was headed by Professor Hana Maruyama. My purpose in attending is because I have gathered stories of our Japanese in the Pacific Northwest experiences since 1970 when I was hired by the U of Washington library archives to help start the Japanese Collection of documenting the Japanese experience . I did over 20 taped interviews of the Issei - first generation stories until the funding for the grant ran out. 

 

Twenty years later in 1991, I decided it would be a good idea to create some documents with a writing group. Four of us, Chuck, Margaret Del and me, met in my kitchen once a week to get started; just talking around the table and sharing memories. 

 

Hana has a grant for a national effort to collect stories and the technological staff to record, digitize and store the stories with a national archive. I am agreeing to be an ambassador. I believe there is a short window of time left for recording first person stories of those of us who have lived through WWII and the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese heritage individuals living in the West Coast States.

 

My goal is to see the story as part of the middle school history curriculum in all the USA schools. There are many books with the facts about this history, but personal story telling/sharing/writing is important and I am committed to that purpose for the rest of my life.

 OMOIDE is a program where I love being one of the leaders, since 1991, when Margaret Yasuda, Dell Uchida, Chuck Kato and I started meeting in my kitchen weekly to start.  Janine Brodine is our coach. 

Janine and I met at the Kirkland Book Festival in 2012 when Sheryn Hara was the organizer of the festival in Kirkland. We shared a booth with our published material while Ats Kiuchi, like a Carnival Barker, invited patrons to come and look at our material.

 

Last Saturday was a specially enthusiastic session as 15 of us met and shared our stories. One of the highlights was the sharing of the newly published LP recording by Mako Kikuchi’s music composition in collaboration with our OMOIDE writers about the WWII Japanese In America Incarceration; 2/3rds of us were American citizens. Mako’s music was presented live at the Benaroya in 2023 as well as with our OMOIDE STORY READINGS at the Seattle Rep Theater that year. Our OMOIDE presentations were a sellout at the theater in both 2023 & 2024!

 

Now in 2025, there are still members of OMOIDE who lived through WWII and the 1942 -1943 incarceration of those of us who were as little as 1/16th Japanese Heritage. 120,000 thousand were housed in hastily built barracks when removed from the West Coast states’ restricted zone.  7000 of us were outside the approximately 400 mile zone from the Pacific Ocean.

 

Currently, we are gathering stories for OMOIDE VII, stories of COMPASSION & KINDNESS, of those helping each other during hard times, especially from outside the Japanese American community. This is including memories before, during and after WWII. Our writing participants and stories are now of several Shin-Issei, first generation immigrants from Japan after WWII, and stories of growing up in Japan. In 1924 the immigration law was passed where no more Asians could immigrate to the USA. The "shin" meaning "new" refers to those of us who were born in Japan and now are a new set of immigrants from Japan after WWII.

 

Last Saturday’s, specially researched piece, was written by Nancy Hatfield. It was about her Auburn, WA, neighbor growing up, who served on a US submarine. He helped rescue a raft of Japanese enemy soldiers in the Sea of Japan; so soon after the USA/Japan peace agreement that enemy wariness was still an issue. 

As OMOIDE writers continue meeting, we are 4th and fifth generation Americans of Japanese heritage and seek collaboration with our neighbors of all heritages! We have impactful historical stories that needs to be spread with the goal of WINNING WITH STORIES for general human fulfillment!

If my body is like a computer, is it time to buy a new computer? Or, if I am “stuck with me”, what kind of program am I running? Biologically, we are a totally new set of cells every seven to ten years. Now my question is:  “What kind of program am I passing on and can it be changed??? Or do I want to change it?”

 

According to Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor, we are currently; 50% heredity, 25% our first seven to nine years of growing up tape-recordings and 25% the choices we make from memory and social/educational influences. Dr. Jim Doty says our body generates six to ten million energy impulses every second to run all the body functions. We are only conscious of 50 - 100 of these. I am deciding what I can change in my personal world, with being more deliberate with my few manageable thoughts.

 

 

Podcasters suggest the importance of good health, meditation of sorts, gratitude and connection practices. Steven Pinker, at Harvard, and Tyler Cowen, at George Mason U, teach writing as a vital practice for change and the influences we can personally contribute to our world. Starting with conversations about my heritage, verbal sharing and then writing; is highly recommended. 

 

The mantra/prayer I'm sharing for myself and with those whom I’m connecting is: DO IT BADLY!

 It’s not easy, and I fail a lot. I’m listening to trial attorney, Jeffrey Fisher’s podcast: HOW TO STAY CALM WHEN YOU’RE DISRESPECTED. 

 

With my Japanese heritage, it’s given me kind of a head start on learning to not say too much. I like being in the USA. My ancestors chose to immigrate here and stay here because we are more free to make choices and express our feelings. 

 

With 4th and 5th generations now living with me I am getting a lot of practice. Fisher suggests: “The first rule is to understand that with most of the disrespect, I am not the target”. 

 

The second rule Fisher advises, especially for court, is to be silent for a few seconds before talking/answering and use your breath, with a sigh, for one’s first word. When speaking to say it with confidence and control. Two words can change the conversation.”  Luckily, I’m a slow talker and use few words. My girls have always said, “Spit it out Mom!”

 

When I heard “Make taking a breath your first words…”, I was excited to go out to the kitchen and compliment my 15-yr-old granddaughter because she is good at this.

 

She was impressed! When she was as little as two-years-old, I remember how she would get upset and start to cry. Then she ran to her room and shut the door. We could hear her crying. After about 5 minutes she came out as if nothing happened. She did this regularly until a couple years ago. She is a quiet leader in her teen world!!

 

Fisher’s third rule is to not try to win an argument and work to make one’s “next conversation” to “CONNECT”. Connecting starts with getting curious about the other person, conveying honestly about how I’m feeling. It can even be said with just body language.

 

This has nothing to do with crisis communication but is related to connecting. Yesterday, after lunch with this friend for planning an event; on the way home, my daughter said, “She never asked me one question about what or how I’m thinking.” 

 

I’m with Thumper in our world of tinderbox happenings. It works for me to learn and practice keeping my mouth shut.  I THINK ABOUT IT and breath a deep sigh!!