gotohealth's Blog

Last Saturday, June 8, 2024, my OMOIDE VII - Kip Tokuda Memorial Grant Project assistant, Erika, accompanied me as I drove from Seattle to Spokane. Crossing from evergreens to sage brush, Erika had a lot of comments. I couldn’t help but share, “In the 1960s, my Grandpa Kay was always so excited to bring his friends and relatives from Japan over Snoqualmie Pass to show them the vastness of America and the farms that went for miles.”

 

Sunday, when I presented at Highland Japanese Methodist Church in Spokane, I explained, “Incarceration of Japanese with as little as 1/16th Japanese Heritage during WWII was wrong and must not be forgotten. OMOIDE writers have produced several books in the past 30 years with our personal stories of dealing with discrimination, incarceration and hardships with resilience. For OMOIDE VII, we want to find stories of those who helped each other during hard times and SPREAD RIPPLES OF COMPASSION AND KINDNESS.”

 

As I had conversations with a couple dozen people, not just Japanese, this past week in Spokane, Moses Lake, Quincy and Ellensburg; “Doing what’s right”, “Hard Work”, “Not showing off”, “Doing what’s good for the community without public recognition”, “TAKING CARE OF FAMILY”; are the words I kept hearing about the Issei (immigrants born in Japan) and Nisei (children of Issei) from their Japanese Heritage descendants I am chatting with around Washington State communities. I also heard those same words from the Caucasians, Latinos, Pacific Islanders at the hotel in Spokane and Carmen with native Indian heritage in Ellensburg.

 

Japanese immigrants felt it normal and necessary to be poor and do “dirty work” jobs as part of fitting in to a community. In Japan, cultural and arts education, as well as all the working skills, included a period of being an “indentured servant” to the head of the family or master of the arts.

 

Arts and Culture were brought to a PhD level during the 200 year Edo period, of 1600 to 1868AD with the creation of a closed society nation. That society had Samurai Class at the top, farmers next and merchants third. Famers were valued because they provided the necessary rice and food.

 

Three Japanese sailors shipwrecked at Near Bay on the Olympic Peninsula - Northwest tip of Washington State in 1832. Immigration to Washington State began in the 1880s and increased in the 1890s, after the 1882 exclusion of Chinese. The cost of the voyage and passport - requiring a return ticket to Japan - was close to a year’s salary in Japan. Most of the immigrants came from well established family situations to make money in America and bring it home to their family in Japan.

 

Visiting smaller Washington farming communities, it is clear the Immigrants, who chose to stay in America, were entrepreneurial and mostly from the Samurai/farming educated class. Being indentured servants and getting along while learning the best ways to get ahead in America, was their way. A legacy for future generations was also key - this included a college education and creating “their American family” as they integrated and established themselves in communities. 

 

“GAMAN” - A Japanese word meaning patience, endurance, perseverance, tolerance, self-control, self-denial. Gaman is family practiced, expected as a strong community value wherever  we are. Japanese immigrants are trained with these skills, taught today by Success Training Leaders. Gaman was also true for European Immigrants to start. Like football rivalry, name calling and discriminatory tactics is also used to psychologically put the competition down. 

 

The 1980 US census was analyzed by the Washington State Department of Education. The report gave statistics for several ethnic groups. Those with Japanese Heritage were at the top in per-capita income and white collar jobs, but were next to American Indians in out-marrying, speaking their native language the least and had the least children. With indication of ethnic suicide, I chose to help create the Japanese Culture and Community Center of Washington and document the Japanese Experience in the Pacific Northwest with OMOIDE.

 

 

Last night my granddaughter got herself with some teenage no nos. This morning she is being reprimanded so she is responding, "I hate myself! This world sucks!"

 

I’ve been listening to a Price Pritchett podcast. He is one of the foremost experts on fast-growth and personal development strategies the last forty years that is still relevant. I mentioned in our family discussion, Pritchett says, “There are two scales of the voice inside us. One is the ‘Victim Scale (negative thinking)’ and the other is the ‘Hero Scale (positive thinking)’. Research shows that we get farther ahead in life and faster by cutting down on the negative voice rather than just working to being more positive.”  I've chosen to use the words suggested by Psychologist, Corey Keyes, who suggests a similar two-scale analysis for the title of this blog. 

 

The thing that get’s us tangled up is that 70% of our thinking is habitual and shows up in five ways: Complaining, Criticizing, Concern, Commiserating, Catastrophizing. When we actually want to change and make that quantum leap, the first thing the body faces is to worry about the “dangers”.  The second voice is a drop in “self trust”. This is all wired into mankind from the cave-man days when we had to worry about being attacked by wild animals.

 

So, the take-away advice is not necessarily the value of being optimistic or positive thinking. That activity is on a whole different scale. People see me as seeing the bright side of life, which comes easily to me; but separately, I am better off working on reducing the Victim Scale.

 

Personally, I have avoided daily national and local news programs. Secondly, I am learning to forgive people who have hurt me and habitually speak “victim rhetoric”, by loving them from afar. 

 

On the Hero side of life, Keyes suggests "five Flourishing Vitamins":

      1. Constant Learning

      2. Making and Keeping In-Person Connections

      3. Spiritual Endeavors

      4. Trancendence Work

      5. Play

 

 

I’m helping administrate a KIP TOKUDA MEMORIAL grant for our JCCCW writing group OMOIDE VII. The grant was created to not forget the tragedy of Executive Order 9066 where with only 1/16th Japanese Heritage 120,000 individuals were incarcerated during WWII. Our stories have shown resilience, but with this new grant we are collecting stories of “Compassion”, including the larger non-Japanese community, where neighbor to neighbor-friend to friend, they helped overcome the hard times of imprisonment and discrimination.

 

I’m setting a personal goal with these Washington State funds to:  “LOWER THE VICTIMIZATION SCALE, one conversation at a time, with story sharing around the state to ELEVATE THE FLOURISHING SCALE  - by SPREADING RIPPLES OF COMPASSION AND GRATITUDE.