Yamaguchi
And Ito: They`re Worlds Apart-except
 |
| Kristi Yamaguchi |
On The Ice
February 07, 1992
By Phil Hersh, Chicago Tribune.
ALBERTVILLE, FRANCE — It is
potentially the most interesting confrontation of the Olympic Games, certainly
the most glamorous and ironically the most incongruous, given the state of past
and present relations between the United States and Japan.
One one side is Kristi Tsuya
Yamaguchi, whose grandparents were subjected to indignities by the United
States simply because they were of Japanese descent. On the other is Midori Ito, who,
because she is Japanese, becomes an easy target for the same sort of mindset
that put some of Yamaguchi`s ancestors into internment camps even though they
were U.S. citizens.
Yamaguchi is the reigning world champion, Ito the 1989 world
champion. Yamaguchi, 20, has blended elegance and athleticism better than
anyone in the sport, Ito, 22, has done jumps of unmatched height and execution.
Yamaguchi has beaten Ito in two of their last three meetings, Ito has beaten
Yamaguchi in six of eight overall. Yamaguchi is 5 feet tall and champagne-
flute
thin, Ito is 4-9 and barrel stocky.
Even in what links them, the Japanese heritage, there is a
gap as wide as the Pacific Ocean.
Ito, from Nagoya, Japan, speaks virtually no English.
Yamaguchi, from Fremont, Calif., speaks virtually no Japanese.
"A lot of times Japanese reporters say to me, 'Your
English is pretty good,'" Yamaguchi said. "It should be. I`m 4th
generation in the United States."
"`I'm so assimilated, I've lost the language
(Japanese)," said Carole Doi Yamaguchi, Kristi`s mother. Carole Yamaguchi
was born in a Colorado internment camp in 1945. That made her one of an
estimated 120,000 U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry who would be similarly
relocated after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, for fear they would actively
sympathize with Japan.
At that time, Carole's father, George Doi, was a U.S. Army
officer fighting in Europe. He was not allowed to serve in the Pacific Theater
because of fears he would side with the Japanese.
Carole`s future husband, Jim Yamaguchi
(Poston 17-2-AB) , was a 7-year-old who had already spent more than
three years living in the Poston, Ariz., camp. Kathleen Doi, Carole`s mother,
could have stayed out of the camps because of her husband`s military status.
She went out of fear of reprisals against her family in Gardena, Calif.
Jim Yamaguchi`s parents, Tatsuichi and Tsuya (Poston
17-2-AB), had no such choice. They were simply relocated from a farm in
California`s Central Valley and forced to sell what they could not carry to
Arizona.
Of this sad history, Kristi Yamaguchi knows little. Even her
mother`s family did not talk about it much.
"I think it`s something they`ve worked through and then
looked to the future," Kristi said at a recent press conference in Orlando,
where she won her first U.S. women`s title.
Kristi Yamaguchi`s fame in figure skating has, however, made
her more aware of her heritage. She has been celebrated for bringing it honor.
Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-02-07/sports/9201120465_1_yamaguchi-and-ito-jim-yamaguchi-midori-ito
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Faces of
America: The
Yamaguchi Story -- How an Immigrant Farmer Paved the Way for Success
Posted: 10/22/10
Excerpted from Faces of AmericaKristi's paternal grandfather was a man named Tatsuichi Yamaguchi (Poston 17-2-AB) , born April 24, 1879, in Ureshino, Japan. He died in California in 1958 when Kristi's father Jim (Poston 17-2-AB) was just 18. Kristi never met him, and her father knew surprisingly little about his origins when we talked to him. But we were able to reconstruct his story -- and it is as inspiring as any story I encountered during the course of this project.
We found a passenger list from the Japanese Diplomatic Records Office showing that Tatsuichi Yamaguchi, a 21 year-old farmer, left his hometown in Japan for Hawaii on November 16, 1899, under a labor permit. Tatsuichi had signed a 3-year contract with the Onomea Sugar Company on the big island of Hawaii, near Hilo. At that time, Hawaii was about to become a territory of the United States, and it was dominated by vast sugar plantations owned by American companies. These plantations required huge numbers of workers and the indigenous population of Hawaii had been decimated by the diseases introduced by foreigners. Labor had to come from abroad. Japanese workers were welcome and desired.
This was a new phenomenon in Japan. "Hawaii Fever," as it was called, exerted a powerful attraction, especially for younger sons of large families, because they could never expect to inherit their family's farm. In 1899, 130 people from the Saga prefecture applied to emigrate to Hawaii, and 57 were granted permission to go. They set sail in November of that year. Kristi's grandfather was among these pioneers. Tatsuichi was the 4th son in his family. He had no hope of inheriting any land in Japan. It was a calculated risk.
In the 1900 Hawaiian Island census, Tatsuichi is listed as living near Hilo with two other laborers in a ramshackle lodging. He was earning $15 a month for working 12-hour days, 6 days a week, in the blazing sun, cutting and processing sugar cane. Conditions were extremely harsh. The plantations employed thousands of contract laborers, who were stratified and regulated by ethnicity and treated much like slaves. A "luna," or boss, usually a white man, rode through the cane fields on horseback, wielding a whip to keep order.
We found the lyrics to work songs that the Japanese laborers used to sing. One of them pretty much says it all: "Wonderful Hawaii, or so I heard. One look and it seems like Hell. The manager's the Devil, and his luna are demons."
Not surprisingly, many Japanese workers returned home when their contracts ended. But the more adventurous, like Kristi's grandfather, set out for California, where other opportunities beckoned. In the 1910 U.S. census for Sacramento, Tatsuichi is listed as living in a rooming house on a street known as "Japanese Alley," working as a farm laborer.
Conditions were better in California than they had been in Hawaii, but they were by no means ideal. Men like Tatsuichi who came from farming families in southern Japan had experience and skills that were well suited to the labor-intensive farming of Sacramento and Santa Clara counties. They quickly discovered a paradox, however. While their labor was welcome, they themselves were not.
Asians as a whole were deemed to be aliens ineligible for citizenship. They were confined to the class of perpetual foreigners and were themselves the target of all forms of racism. Japanese immigrants were new to this scene in the 20th century, but as they became more numerous, anti-Japanese sentiment spread, and the Unites States and Japan negotiated the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907, which effectively ended the immigration of Japanese men to the United States. The agreement did allow for the unification of families, however. So from 1908 on, many women came from Japan as the wives of workers who were already here.
In 1917, Kristi's grandfather was doing well enough and felt that his opportunities were sufficiently good that he could travel home and bring back a wife, Tsusa Shimomura. Records show that the following year, the couple was living in Cupertino, California, and had had their 1st child, a daughter. A 2nd daughter was born in 1920. Because they were born in the United States, these girls were American citizens. The family, it seemed, was following a classic immigrant trajectory. Then, in 1922, tragedy struck. In June, both daughters died within a few days of each other. In October, Tsusa gave birth to another child, a son, who died within days. Tsusa herself passed away in November. They all died from illness--although the records do not indicate what kind of illness. Tatsuichi was now alone, having lost his entire family in just a few months.
But Tatsuichi moved on. Despite the tragedies, he didn't give up. As a Japanese immigrant, he had very few rights. Although he had been living and working in the United States now for a quarter of a century, he was still classified as an alien ineligible for citizenship. He could have returned to Japan, but he did not. He chose to remain in America and rebuild his life. In 1927, Tatsuichi married again, this time to a beautiful widow with 3 young children: Kristi's grandmother and namesake, Tsuya Ito Tanabe. She had come to California from Kumamoto prefecture with her 1st husband.
Tatsuichi and Tsuya went on to have 6 more children together, including Kristi's father, Jim. By 1941, the family was farming on 175 acres, earning enough to support themselves. The war changed everything, of course. Tatsuichi and Tsuya were sent to an internment camp in Poston, California (Poston 17-2-AB). All that they brought with them was what they could carry on their backs. They lost the farm and all their other possessions. And on August 7, 1945, the day after America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the authorities at Poston interviewed Tatsuichi about his plans for relocation after the war. We found the notes taken by his interviewer, and they are chilling. They read, in part, "Mr. Y is 67 years old and questions his own employability. There are 8 children, all at home, of whom 3 are employable. He states they have absolutely no resources and will need resettlement assistance."
Soon after the interview, Tatsuichi was given employment and assigned to what was called "family housing" at the Santa Maria Berry Farms. According to his son, the housing amounted to tents set up in a parking lot. Worse yet, after decades of running his own farm, Tatsuichi had to return to back-breaking manual labor--picking strawberries for a large, white-owned farm.
Kristi remembers that when she was growing up her father would sometimes talk about farming as a young boy with his father and siblings in Santa Maria. "I remember stories of how before and after school they'd be in the fields picking strawberries. My father never really complained too much about it. But I know that he decided, 'Hey, this isn't what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.' I think it inspired him to go to dental school."
Tatsuichi did not have the option to do anything else with his life -- all he knew was farming. But he refused to be broken by his experience. He worked as hard after the war as he had before it and he endured, paving the way for his children's and his grandchildren's success. Remarkably, on December 17, 1954, at the age of 75, he became a citizen of the United States. By that date, Tatsuichi Yamaguchi had been in America for 55 years. For 53 of those years, he had been classified as an alien ineligible for citizenship. But in December 1952, the U.S. Congress passed the McCarran-Walter Act, which allowed Japanese immigrants finally to become naturalized citizens. And despite everything Tatsuichi had lived through, as soon as the law was passed, he immediately applied for citizenship. He died 4 years later on May 10, 1958, a 79 year-old American. "He really laid the foundation for our family," said Kristi. "He went through it all. Either he was running from something in Japan, or he just saw a future here for his family. Doesn't matter -- he did it."
Tatsuichi's wife, Tsuya Yamaguchi, never applied for citizenship. She outlived her husband by 7 years, dying peacefully in 1965, but she never saw the need to become an American citizen. "I didn't know that," said Kristi. "But I think it's great that he wanted it and got it. I'm sure he felt he earned it, that he had put his time in and paid his debt, so he deserves to have that stamp of approval. I think I wouldn't be here probably if he hadn't done that."
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard. He has written twelve books and produced and narrated ten documentaries. His new series, Black in Latin America, airs on PBS in April.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-louis-gates-jr/post_1112_b_772370.html
