Guam playwright and author Peter Onedera sits down with KPRG News to discuss his latest book tackling Guam's Japanese-CHamoru identity, history, and culture, during and after World War II.
TRANSCRIPT
JEFFERSON CRONIN: Guam playwright and author Peter Onedera has weaved historical and personal accounts of Guam’s Japanese community, in his latest book titled A Borrowed Land. He spoke to K-P-R-G’s Naina Rao on the challenge of getting people to share their stories, and why it was a hard decision to publish this book.
NAINA RAO: Through a series of in-depth interviews spanning decades. The book, A Borrowed Land chronicles the journey of Guam's Nikkei, or people of Japanese descent, from their arrival and assimilation into Chamorro culture to their hardships during and after the war. Author Peter Onedera documents how heritage and history have shaped the community's identity, but it first started as a class project.
PETER ONEDERA: In the beginning, as I was attempting to do this, I was originally intending on being able to interview maybe about 30 people. I guess I was just enthused and eager to get on the ball and so forth. Was the University of Guam class that gave me this assignment, and I attempted to seek out people that I knew and so forth, and many were just hesitant. They didn't want to talk about it. And then there were about five individuals who I thought were from the first generation or the Issei, the survivors of the war, and so forth. Three of them scolded me because they told me I had no business talking about something when I did not experience the war itself. I was called names. I was considered disattentu or disrespectful, and they refused to cooperate. This is in the late 80s. They were still alive then, although many were elderly and so forth, so I ended up with just 14 individuals, and that was a very sad moment for me. But I kept trying, and I kept pleading, and I thought the fact that I'm a descendant of a Japanese Issei that they knew of during the pre-war days and so forth, I had to just swallow it and just go along with it and do the best that I can. It took me a full year to finally do the project because the semester was four or five months long. And then the summer months came, and I pleaded with my professor to give me an incomplete so that I can devote the following full semester and then into the spring. So it took me about a year later to finally put together what I thought was good enough to resubmit and earn a grade and so forth. Otherwise, the incomplete would have turned into an F and so that was a learning process because I got to know more of who I was as a sansei or a third-generation Japanese.
RAO: All the interviews and all the recordings, it's been sitting in your home for years.
ONEDERA: Mainly because of the hesitation and the doubts that go along with it, too. And I, as time flew by and went on and life continued and so forth. And then they started dying off. You know, the members of my the 14 original people that I ventured to start with and to interview and got to know and talk to them. Started leaving us, so to speak, I finally said somebody's got to tell the story. And so that's what finally prompted me, that it's got to be done, or else in my lifetime, too, it may never happen. And so time has just gone by so fast that finally just needed to be told. And of course, there is still the healing process, despite 80 years have passed since that dark period of Guam's history.
RAO: Why was it important for you to tell these stories and have it publish into a book?
ONEDERA: Growing up, I was reading accounts of the war years and so forth, and totally absent was the Japanese Chamorro families who experienced the war, and little did I know that they, too went through their own experiences, separate from the Chamorros. Every year there's a celebration of Liberation Day. It was always the accounts of the local Chamorro people that were always played out and appeared in documentaries, news clips, news articles, interviews, and I wondered how come no one ever said anything about us. You know what happened to the Japanese Chamorro family, including my own, and all the stories that was told to me by my elders, many - and many of those generation of people that survived the war, that are of Chamorro Japanese descent, kept quiet and didn't want to be disrespectful, because it was a, I guess it was felt overall, that it was the moment for the Chamorros to bear forth their own horrific experiences, and that's why I said, Okay, I may be treading on something very sensitive, but nevertheless, time has passed, so it's time to say that it did occur.
RAO: In the very first chapter, you wrote at length about what your mother shared with you when you were growing up. I'd love for you to read the last paragraph of that chapter.
ONEDERA: Okay. In my childhood, I often gasped in shock as my mother related stories that I felt were perhaps cruel. She made me understand that war was war, and the true colors of people are often brought to the forefront because of ignorance and fear, often spurred by petty gossip drawn from suspicion and other evil thoughts. It would leave me wondering for days why cruelty seemed to abound during times of civil strife and war, this was still a foreign experience or ordeal that I didn't understand, I could not imagine it.
RAO: You say this was still a foreign experience or ordeal that you didn't understand, you could not imagine it. Do you understand it now? Do you still not understand it?
ONEDERA: Part of me says I do, and part of me is still doubtful, because I have I again until I experience war. Unfortunately, I'm not a veteran, and I didn't join the military, and I did not - I lacked the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq and all these foreign places where there has been strife of that nature and so forth. Maybe if I had that kind of experience, I would say, I do believe it, and so forth. But like I said, I took it from the way I was told by these people and so forth. And I don't know if there were, there was peace in their hearts too when they died. I don't know that, but I like to say that they probably did have it in them and so forth. But for me, personally, I'm still healing, I guess. Although I, like I said, I did not experience the war, but I'm feeling for those who have the Japanese lineage in them and so forth, and I can't speak for them too, but I'm gathering that those who did not experience the war may agree with what I'm saying and so forth. I could be wrong, but I'll leave it at that.
RAO: Did you ever feel ashamed to have Japanese heritage?
ONEDERA: Until I learned that I was part Japanese, I did. Until I learned that, before then, I didn't. I carried that kind of misgivings towards Japanese and so because I didn't know any better as a youngster, until I was educated, and so forth. But later on, I said, there's nothing much I can do. I will always be, you know, I can't help that. You know, and I guess I could echo some friends of mine who are African Americans or Asian Americans, who say that, I can't do anything if I'm Black, I'll be, I'll always be black. I mean, you know, so the same thing, I came to accept that of myself and said, the best thing I can do is be proud of who I am and I'm better for that.
RAO: What do you hope people will get away from your book?
ONEDERA: Understanding and just learning another side to the coin, so to speak, being educated, knowing how war can be and the fact that we are now in a global arena of attitudes and things and the healing should continue, but to me, it's lessening to a degree already, because people are dying off, and that kind of experience is fading away and so forth. Life continues, life must, life must and does go on.
RAO: Mr. Onedera, thank you so much for speaking with me.
ONEDERA: Thank you.
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