i went down to the okinawan association of america to help out with the third film screening as part of the "stories from the past" series presented by the young okinawans of southern california. the film screened was "a tradition of honor" made by the go for broke educational foundation. the film is a documentary about the japanese-american units that fought in world war 2, (the 442nd regimental combat team and the 100th infantry battalion). being that it is about world war 2 japanese-americans, the film mentions the american internment camps and the german concentration camps. as japanese-americans have a strong history in hawaii, there is a hawaiian-japanese-americans versus non-hawaiian-japanese-americans slant to the film as well. interesting is the interview with a korean-american who served in the japanese-american unit. as he put it, we are all americans, and so he stayed with his unit and was not transferred. some weaknesses in the film could have either been the screening itself (volume issues) or just an editing thing. sometimes it was hard to hear or understand and i wished for subtitles.

after the screening was a q&a session with 2 veterans. one rambled on and on when he told his story and you could tell everyone was tuning out. but we all perked up and laughed at one point when he had trouble recalling the names of his grandchildren (only 2). yeah, they were supposed to talk about world war 2 stuff but he gave like his whole autobiography. then this guy went up and spoke about his own experience. i had great difficulty hearing him and started tuning out. i tuned back in enough to catch a very moving part of his tale. his family had been living in america, not sure for how long, but they went back to japan, specifically okinawa. i have heard of other asian-americans who go back and forth between countries like that so that it is difficult to count generations of nationality because the lines are so blurred. so his parents are american or at least one is i take it, he was born and reared in okinawa, moved to hawaii at 17 not knowing english. somewhere down the line the war breaks out and he is enlisted. he is back in okinawa as one of the guys that would shout out to the caves, hoping people would come out. he shouted in japanese that he was born there and to please come out. no one came out. then there was smoke. he did not know why. his superior would not let him go in the cave to investigate. the troops had to leave the area. he does not know if those inside killed themselves or not. he is haunted to this day. similarly, there is another touching tale in the documentary of a man who grew up in okinawa but his family moved back to hawaii at some point. he too then was enlisted and serving in okinawa and ended up interrogating one of his old classmates.

on a side note, i am a little ticked off that i got there exactly when they asked me to be there and others showed up 30 minutes later. i hate being idle. and i hate people who use their culture as an excuse for tardiness. (island time, _insert your ethnic group/country/region/religion/affiliation here_ time, etc) such an excuse was not used today but it was at the last yosc event i went to. that was a bbq type gathering and they advertised it earlier than they expected to start, knowing people don't show up on time. fine, that's ok. but they advertised it HOURS earlier. i was thinking it was a late lunch thing and it was more like a dinner thing. so i was really hungry and bored and pissed off at first and just wanted to get the hell out of there in some respects that day but stuck around as an act of good faith as it was my first involvement with the group. now it looks like i might be helping out further as they want to do a web site and i happen to know a little something about that.