Great Grandfather's Drum transcript
Great Grandfather’s Drum – Transcript
There's a connection between our history and who we are.
We all are Americans.
But we are also Japanese-Americans.
We are all like ordinary people.
We're not famous.
My dad, he was a contract laborer in one of the plantations, working in a cane field.
Getting paid 15 dollars a month.
My grandfather risked everything and started a business.
And I see this black smoke all popping up by Pearl Harbor.
Because we were Japanese, people had some hatred against us.
My grandfather was suddenly taken away.
My brother was interned.
We were frightened.
I went over and tried to get into the army.
They were very brave.
The experience that we had on the battlefield, it gave us the courage to pursue whatever we thought was right.
It was like from a very bad thing, many good things came. And it's just life.
Between 1868 and 1924, over 100,000 men and women came from Japan to labor on Hawaii's sugar plantations. Kay Fukumoto and the families of the Maui Taiko ensemble are helping keep alive traditions brought to America by their ancestors.
It always-- it brings up feelings when I watch my dad, my husband, and my son playing. Taiko was handed down to us from great grandfather, Tomijiro Watanabe. He was a contract laborer with the plantations, and you know, life back then was hard.
My grandfather came first, and he worked for the sugar plantation, and chopped cane and hauled it.
He came to Hawaii by himself at the age of 12.
My grandmother was only 14 or 15 when she came here. Her job was sewing up the sugar bags.
My grandparents, they came in 1884. I'm third generation.
I feel that our music, you know, it's a gift from past generations, for us to still remain connected and to remember the sacrifices of our ancestors.
My dad came over, he was a contract laborer in one of the plantations, working at a cane field.
My parents were laborers, digging a water tunnel. That was pick and shovel and dynamite, you know.
I was born right here in Lahaina, May 20, 1908. My father, he worked for the plantation so long many years, even though after he's long gone, I still love him.
When recruiters went over there, they made Hawaii sound like paradise. And so, people were I think in desperate straits and willing to come. And so, boatload after boatload came. Japanese immigrants would eventually comprise, you know, 60, 70 percent of the plantation workforce.
Very nice. Very nice.
Every summer, Kay Fukumoto and the members of Maui Taiko perform at about a dozen traditional Japanese Obon festivals on Maui honoring their ancestors, like this one in Lahaina.
When my great grandfather came over from Japan, he and his friends from Fukushima brought over this Obon song called Fukushima Ondo. The song itself describes friendships and the Obon season, and the circle of life. Obon here is so alive and so festive, and Obon has really evolved. You have children from, you know, preschool age all the way up to the seniors and all ages in between being part of Obon, and people from many ethnic groups.
I would always get dressed up. I'd always wear kimono, and I would go with my grand auntie, my auntie Janet, and she would take me and dress me, and then we'd put on lipstick and you know, just really enjoy ourselves. It's really fun.
When I'm dancing, I feel like-- especially watching the older ladies, I imagine myself being older and doing that as long as I can walk-- and my grandchildren dancing behind me, my daughter, my nieces, dancing behind me, like how I did when my mom was alive.
Generally, back, you know, in the plantation days, they only had Obon for one night. So they would take these drums out and play, and they would play from sun down to the wee hours of the morning. They would just have a really good time, you know. Although it was a Japanese tradition event, the entire community would come out and be part of it.
The Keahua group was formed by several of the plantation workers, and there were several of them that pooled their money together in order to buy the drums that they had to perform.
This shime is probably the one that my grandfather and great grandfather played on.
This drum was brought to Maui from Japan, about the same time my great grandfather came. So he may have played it himself.
Thank you very much, Maui Taiko.
The early laborers came to Hawaii under a system of contract labor. Contracts like this one bound them to work on a plantation for a period of years.
People grabbed bundles of cane and loaded them, and I think that was probably the worst job in the plantation, because the cane is sooty, there were centipedes, and there were sharp cane leaves, and on top of it all, you ended up with a cauliflower ear because you'd kept hitting that ear with a bundle of cane. Even women were doing what they call hapai ko, loading the cane.
Those bundles were quite heavy, and you know. They talk about the luna, you know, the infamous supervisor being quite cruel. In the worst case scenario, you know, workers felt pretty much enslaved.
It wasn't what they were told to expect. He thought he was going to be able to leave, you know, a bad economy in Japan, come to Hawaii, make a lot of money, and be able to go back to Japan as kind of a success. And that isn't, of course, the way it turned out. He never went back to Japan.
Unable to return, some arranged to bring over brides from Japan they had never met.
They made matchmaking, you know, only through the pictures. I think this is the picture that he sent to her.
These women became known as “picture brides.” Men and women often labored alongside each other in the cane fields.
They were assigned a number, it almost looks like a prison number.
This is a bongo, and this was their identity in the plantations. To say this person, 232, had come over from Japan and had worked on the plantation. My great grandfather and grandfather and grandmother had numbers too, but their identity is not a number. It's-- their commitment to a better future. I mean, they sacrificed a lot, and--
My grandmother and my grandfather had a very difficult life, which is where all the Hole Hole Bushi comes from, because while the women were doing this hard manual labor out in the hot sun, they would make up these songs, they would write these songs, they would sing these songs.
In 1900, Hawaii became a US territory. And in 1903, the practice of contract labor was ended. But poor wages, poor living conditions, and mistreatment continued for the workers.
You had only one place to work for, that's the plantation.
No other jobs in those days.
Bitter labor strikes helped gain higher wages for the workers. And with mechanization, conditions gradually improved. Better housing was built, the camps grew into towns with a company store, Buddhist temples, and Japanese language schools. A thriving community lifestyle was born.
We were very poor, very, very poor. Those were really hard times. All the children worked to help plant vegetables, our own vegetables and what not. We used to catch goldfish. We used to eat them, the goldfish.
My grandfather was a carpenter. And when people had broken arms, they would come to him, and he would set the bones for them.
My grandfather was a cowboy. Growing up, we were told he was the only Okinawan cowboy that they knew of.
I was a rather kolohe boy, if you know what kolohe means, rascal. Anytime we needed any money, we went fishing. We made our own goggles, and we speared the fish, take it to the market, make a few cents.
If you ask people who grew up on the plantation, whether or not they felt deprived, they'll answer no, because that's what they knew. I think they made the best of it.
I always think about being in Keahua. Yeah, I like Keahua. Even today, I miss a lot, I miss Keahua.
Plantation workers also came from China, Portugal, and the Philippines, as well as Japan. The plantation separated each nationality to live in different camps.
Although we were all separated into our different ethnic camps, it didn't really keep people from mixing, you know, from befriending one another. The kids just kind of grew up altogether. And of course, the parents all worked together.
You know, the camps were part of a bigger whole, and I think we're a lot like that. I think we're just still all immersed in the wisdom probably, of the plantation days growing up and being able to share and be part of everybody, and yet come home and have your basic foundation, and your traditions be part of your everyday life.
We, who were brought up by the first generation Japanese, they had the old Japanese customs.
When I was young, our family would get together during New Years to pound Mochi, and it was an annual tradition, and part of the celebration of bringing luck and unity to the family.
Every December, we have all the family come together. With adults and children, we have 80 to 85 of them here, one Saturday.
I grew up on mochi, and I love it. I mean, I just love-- it's rice. Mochi is a glutinous rice that is steamed, and you pound the rice in order to get a real smooth and creamy consistency. And mochi is often prepared for special occasions, often prepared for the New Years, it's offered to your ancestors, some people will offer it at shrines and temples.
We'd sort of watch that person who had to flip the mocha and hope that no one would hit his hand.
Mochi is often used as a dessert, and the way they prepare that is there is a bean paste which is very sweet, and it's inserted in the middle of the mochi.
Our parents made sure we didn't forget our customs and Japanese heritage.
There's something about it that provides you with identity, and I think it keeps people grounded.
It's just an everyday thing in how we live our lives, things like the things we eat, the dishes that we use everyday. It's been a big part of my son's life. I mean, he has done kendo, and now iaijutsu.
From as young as when I was 7, they introduced me to the art of Japanese dancing.
Especially people that are uprooted from their homeland, to bring their values, to bring their culture, to bring their traditions to this new home is comforting. 3 and 4 generations later, I still find it comforting.
A connection to the past is at the core of the Obon festival, where past and present seem to come together.
When you do an Obon, you bring all your ancestors to you, you dance with them, you know, and you honor them.
Obon is a time to remember, and having a feeling of gratitude, not only for your parents and ancestors, but all of nature, which makes you what you are right now. I always say that we are at the tip of a pyramid of many lives.
At the Lahaina Jodo Mission, they honor their ancestors with this celebration called toro nagashi, and this toro nagashi is taking a little lantern and sending it out to sea, and this is your way of sending them back home to where they are. And here in Lahaina, it's so beautiful because it's done at sunset, and the lanterns go out to sea, and you see many people who have never experienced this before have the ability to get a lantern, and they write a special message to their departed loved ones, and they send it out to sea. And so many people feel that it's something that, from their heart, they're able to do every year.
As the years passed, another group of Japanese immigrants began to arrive to start businesses or se
rve the growing community.
My uncle and my dad, they had professional skills in photography.
Although difficult, some of the workers found ways to leave the plantations.
Those who could manage to get off the plantation and start their own businesses, did that.
My grandfather was aged 10 when his father passed away, and he dropped out of elementary school and started to work. He's worked so hard over the years, and he risked everything to start a business. And to this day, after like 55 years, the business is still ongoing.
Kay Fukumoto's father, Albert Watanabe, became a carpenter. He grew up in a plantation camp like this one, called Keahua. Most of these camps no longer exist today.
This is the area where the Keahua camp used to be. And now, they're all gone.
All gone.
Didn't you used to swim in ditches like this one in Keahua?
Yes.
One of my favorite things that we do is to perform with the elders at the camp reunion. I remember doing this when I was really young. It's always a very special thing to do it, I feel-- you know, our tradition came from Keahua, my grandparents having lived there, my dad having been-- you now, coming from Keahua. There are people from the various plantations that would come up and play on the drum and they come up and dance.
When these elders were young, plantation life seemed like it might continue along forever. But events were already in motion that would change their lives and challenge each of them even more deeply.
In the 1940s, the relationship between Japan and Japanese-Americans was torn apart by World War II. On the morning of December 7th, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked and bombed Pearl Harbor.
I got up, I was going to make breakfast, and I see this black smoke all popping up by Pearl Harbor. All this smoke coming up, boom, boom. And then I said, "Oh, my goodness, look at Pearl Harbor." My husband says, "No, they're only maneuvering over there."
We just finished our breakfast. The radio was full blast, you know, announcing that this is no joke. This is the real thing.
I saw this Japanese plane came right over our house, and you could see that, you know, red sun on the plane. We were so scared, you know.
It was a horrible feeling when we heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and I think most of us lived in fear.
Because we were Japanese, people had some hatred against us. You know, they called us traitors and all that, but we are all just as much American as they are.
Kids would call us Japs, and you know, you guys bombed Pearl Harbor. Many of us, we were so young, we didn't understand what this wss all about. To us, we're Americans. We're not Japanese. We're Americans.
We were frightened, you know. So we had baseball bats at our bedside.
There's barbed wire up and down the streets, the beaches are cordoned off, there are blackouts at night, food, gas, all of these things are rationed, Hawaii was under martial law.
Maui county’s population was 50,000, okay? 60,000 marines came up in the country. They come down here and drink. When they're drunk, you know, they "Hey, you Jap. What the hell are you doing in that uniform?" So I had to fight practically everyday. Boy, I went to-- everyday, I-- there wasn't a day when the war was going on that I didn't fight.
You wanted to display the American flag, you wanted to speak English, the Japanese language schools were closed down.
There were no Bon dances or any of those functions. People were afraid to congregate.
We couldn't get jobs in-- you know, that other people could get, because we were Japanese.
I've heard of families with the name Oda becoming O’Day.
A Japanese naval sub popped up in Kahului Harbor and shot several rounds at the water tank.
My husband and his friend, they could see the shells coming over. So they went on the rooftop to watch and people started saying they were spies that were signaling the ships.
The older Japanese people were so afraid, especially the ones that immigrated, they burned all of their old pictures, which was really a shame. My grandfather burned his old pictures. They burned all the Japanese books.
We had a lot of Japanese artifacts and furniture that we destroyed because we were afraid.
I think they were so afraid that they would be sent to concentration camp or something.
Almost overnight, you had people being interned, especially those with ties to Japan.
My grandfather was interned and sent off to New Mexico.
My father was born in an internment camp in Jerome, Arkansas.
My grandfather, he was rounded up with a group of men here in Wailuku and taken to Manzanar. He served 3 years.
My father, being a physician, he was one of the first ones to be interned.
The people arrested were almost entirely immigrant leaders of the community. They weren't necessarily guilty of anything except for being leaders of the community, basically.
The night they were interned, the military police had come, and they had to leave just they way they were. In their pajamas, they had to go.
One of them was my Japanese school teacher. I felt bad, you know, that they took him.
The military came asking for the bishop. He was just reading something on his desk. They just came in and took him away just like that.
They were brought to the camp on Sand Island. Conditions were very harsh. There was a conscious attempt to humiliate these leaders of the community. For instance, early on, a fork or a knife or something ends up going missing, and all the men are stripped and made to stand out in the cold while they're searched, their possessions are searched, you know, and these are the leaders of the immigrant community. I mean, there's no reason to do that, but they were made to be humiliated in that situation.
It was a heartbreaking sacrifice, because women and children were left behind to fend for themselves. Many families were without their breadwinners at that time.
On several occasions while I was in the army, my sister would write to me to-- you know, the Alien Property Custodian just-- I received word from them that they are going to confiscate the property. I would pick up the phone, and call the justice department in Washington DC and tell them, "Look, I know that my father is an alien, but I am an American citizen, and I am a U.S. Army soldier. I am fighting for U.S. And you are going to take the property away? My mother, my sisters, my younger brothers, they have no place to go. You can't do that." And so, they did not confiscate. When the war was over and I came home, they confiscated the property.
In the continental US, a program was set up to forcibly remove all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. And so you had 110,000 people, you know, men, women, and children, arrested, and taken away. In Hawaii, there were calls by some people for mass internment. But for a lot of reasons, having to do with the number of Japanese in Hawaii-- I mean, they made up about 37 percent of the population of Hawaii-- all told, there were 2,000 to 2,500 people from Hawaii who ended up in an internment camp during the war.
Some of the internees were deported to Japan against their will in exchange for American prisoners of war held in Japan.
My father, he was picked to go back to Japan as an exchange prisoner of war.
My brother was interned. He was one of those that was exchanged, you know.
Some families were split up because sons or daughters were in Japan when the war started.
My older brother was in the Japanese Army, my father was a prisoner of war, and I was in the American Army.
There were a lot of Japanese-Americans here in Hawaii who wanted to fight for their country.
I went over and tried to get into the army. It was not only an obligation, but we had to prove our loyalty to dispel the suspicion that we were under, you know.
My father, he was like 25 years old when war broke out, and they asked for volunteers.
I think there was something like 10,000 volunteers in Hawaii initially, and they couldn't take nearly that many. They had many more people than they could accept. I think they eventually inducted about 2,500.
My uncle and my dad both went to visit my grandfather in the relocation camps, and my father was in a military uniform, and my uncle was in a military uniform.
For those Japanese-Americans who did volunteer, you know, that history is a story unto itself because of the heroism that was eventually recorded by the 100th Battalion, the 442nd and military intelligence service personnel overseas. These are mostly young Nisei men, second generation Japanese-Americans, who fight valiantly to the point of being recognized as one of the most highly decorated military units in American history.
People hear of the Battle of the Lost Battalion as a major battle. There was a battalion of Texas soldiers that was caught behind enemy lines and they were on a hill.
There were 200 men in the regiment that was cut off. They didn't have food nor water.
Several units, army units were sent to rescue this battalion but they were unsuccessful and eventually they called upon the 442nd.
That was a tough battle, the lost battalion. It was rainy. Vehicles couldn't get up because it was so muddy.
Coming up the hill you always at a disadvantage because whoever is looking down always has a better view.
The Germans had dug in already and we're not dug in. We were just running out in the open, yeah. And the best cover we can get is going behind a tree.
So they had to inch their way up the hill to get to the lost battalion.
Our lieutenant, well, he went and he got hit.
With a lot of casualties-- Suffering many casualties, they accomplished their goal and they rescued this battalion of Texas soldiers.
To rescue 200 people, we lost over 800 people. No, it didn't-- not all 800 died but they were out of commission. They had to go to the hospital. Some companies had only one man left. In fact they made us honorary Texans. We are honorary Texans and all that.
Returning from 3 years of war service in Italy and France, the 442nd combat team receives a rousing welcome at New York, a team with a battle history unsurpassed by any outfit of comparable size. Many of the unit earned 3,600 purple hearts and 2,000 other decorations, among them the Congressional Medal of Honor. And what a welcome. This was the hard hitting outfit that rescued the famous lost battalion when it was cut off by the enemy in Southern France. They accomplished the rescue with bare bayonets and suffered many casualties. During front line fighting, 650 lost their lives and over 4,000 were wounded.
The Nisei march smartly on to the ellipse near the White House where President Truman, Secretary Patterson and Admiral Leahy are gathered. Regimental colors are brought forward to receive the 8th presidential unit citation held by the 442nd. The Nisei hear President Truman's tribute.
You fought not only the enemy but you fought prejudice, and you've won.
These soldiers, true Americans.
The Nisei returned home heroes. The war had changed these men.
The experience that we had on the battlefield, it gave us the necessary courage to pursue whatever we thought was right.
They've become worldly. They've seen it all. All of a sudden the inequities that were built into the society were clear to them.
Now they weren't going to come back and take a second class-- return to second class status when they returned to Hawaii.
Why do I have to only think in terms of being a laborer, why can't I be a white collar professional?
Everybody had a little more guts to go into anything.
They had this opportunity to further their education.
Fortunately, we had the GI Bill. We received $50 a month, you know, going to school, having our tuition paid.
My dad went to med school on the GI Bill. You know, it was like from a very bad thing many good things came and it's just-- it’s just life. It's just how you proceed in life and you do your best with whatever presents itself.
Growing up, I always heard stories about the Nisei, about the valor of patriotism, the honor they fought with. Basically, they've inspired me to achieve in everything I've done, to bring honor to my family, to my culture, to my community, so.
A lot of these people with their college degrees led a movement to organize people, to sign them up to vote, register them to vote. And if they had anything on their side, it was numbers. One man, one vote. You know, it didn't matter if one was a millionaire and the other was a pauper.
They became a voting block with the friendship of the other groups. You couldn't achieve anything without the Filipino-Americans and the Chinese-Americans. They voted as a kind of a block.
They attacked that with a vengeance. They saw it as the opportunity, the means of leveraging change. You had people like Senator Daniel K. Inouye and Senator Spark Matsunaga, Patsy Mink, George Ariyoshi.
One after another started entering into politics. One of them was my stepfather, Tom Ogata, who became Supreme Court Justice.
It changed politics in Hawaii and along with that came numerous legislative changes, equal rights, like Patsy Mink for example, so well known for her efforts to bring equal rights for women.
Around this same time, many Americans of Japanese ancestry were active in the push for statehood for Hawaii.
We had petition drives, we had marches and grassroots people here had a petition drive on Market Street where they got rolls of pink butcher paper from the meat market and asked all the people in the neighborhood to sign the petitions for statehood. It was a very multicultural effort I think on that part but clearly Dan Inouye had a big role to play.
It's made official at the White House, President Eisenhower congratulates the new congressional representatives of Hawaii before the simple ceremonies that remake the geography of the United States.
With statehood, the pride of being the melting pot of the Pacific, that we would show the rest of the 49 that people can live together.
Throughout this postwar period of change as Americans of Japanese Ancestry began to achieve success in the mainstream of Hawaiian life, some also began to bring back Japanese traditions that had been suppressed during the war.
There was still this fear that, you know, do we do a Bon dance out in the streets where all the neighbors can see, with the lights and the lanterns and the drumming and the singing. Now, that's as Japanese a symbol as we're gonna have, as public a demonstration of it, how do you think people would react. And it took a lot of courage, I think, for these individuals to slowly come back online.
A cultural revival began. Kay Fukomoto's father Albert Watanabe and his friends brought out their taiko drums again. Albert's family arranged for him to exchange photos with the family of a young woman in Japan named Ayako. After spending some time together in Japan, Ayako and Albert agreed to marry. Back in Maui, they had two daughters. As a child in the 1960s, Kay and her sister Lin were often brought along to taiko rehearsals.
My mom would take me to my dad's Obon practices and I guess because I was always going to these I just got up and hit the drum, you know, and they realized that I had the beat and I knew the patterns.
My sister and I would go to my dad's practices and we would pick up the sticks, play the drums and the men would go, "Wow! That's great!"
Kay began performing with her dad at the Obon festivals making her one of the earliest female taiko performers in the US.
I think she was 9 years old or 10 years.
At the time, you know, girls were usually not allowed. It was generally older men that were part of the group.
She earned a degree in accounting and married Ronald Fukumoto, a civil engineer. They worked together in their family business and made a home near their parents in Kahului, a town nicknamed “dream city.”
In 1996 when I was a young mom, I wanted to pass on these traditions to my son and the younger generation. Together with my dad and family and friends, we founded Maui Taiko.
Over the years Maui Taiko has grown and they now have over 50 members from age 7 to 84.
The feeling, the emotion, it's invigorating, you know just banging that drum.
To have an activity that the entire family can do together I think is really special. We practice together, we help each other. That creates a bond.
Sometimes when my mom needs help with the taiko beats I have to help her. I get it faster than my mom.
It's just fun banging the drum.
My great great grandfather did taiko for his son, and my great grandfather did it for his son. My grandpa did it for my mom and I know my mom is doing it for me. So it makes me feel like I'm connected all the way back, and for me that's something that takes a lot of responsibility when I have to pass it on to my children.
As the group grew, they needed more taiko drum but the drums are very expensive. So Kay's husband Ronald decided they would have to make their own.
Well we start with an oak wine barrel and we sand the edges of the staves and we have about 7 or 8 people holding the staves in place. We glue it up and once everything is dried and it takes at least about a week, we dowel it together and glue everything together. We soak the hide for about at least 2 days in our bathtub. And that's to get it all soft and pliable. And then we stretch it using our contraption that we created here. It consists of a platform with some car jacks under them, so there's a lot of pressure being applied to that drum head. You know with the kids being involved with drum making I think they have much more of a respect for the instrument that they're playing.
If you've really put the sweat and hard work into making that instrument, you're gonna appreciate it a lot more.
When you like carry the drums and take them places you try to be as careful as possible.
It feels really good to make a taiko because you know that you're making an instrument that will last-- it will outlast you I think eventually.
Kay began thinking about taking Maui Taiko on a concert tour.
We decided we were ready for a concert tour to Japan.
Many of the players had never been to Japan especially the young people. It would be a chance to connect with their roots. The trip would include a concert in Fukushima where Kay's ancestors lived and where their song Fukushima Ondo originated.
I always had a longing for many, many years to bring Fukushima Ondo back to Japan and specifically back to Fukushima because I felt that it would complete the circle.
They would also visit Hiroshima where the atomic bomb was dropped at the end of World War II. High school students on Maui folded over a thousand paper cranes to be placed at the Hiroshima Peace Park Sadako Memorial.
Our first concert was in Fukuyama 400 miles southeast of Tokyo.
This is the Hikari Rail Star Super Express.
Little us from Hawaii, that was really overwhelming. It was-- I can't even explain it. It was just enormous.
Oh, you marked it already? You're so ahead of me.
Oh, I was like oh, is that a drum? That thing is huge!
Aloha, yeah, everyone.
It was scary, it was really scary 'cause, you know, actually being a foreigner playing their music, that was quite intimidating.
I knew that the children were really affected by what they experienced. They really, they became different taiko performers. They have a real sense of their culture and their heritage. They actually do it from their heart.
A special part of the trip was a visit to Kay's ancestor's hometown of Fukushima.
Hi, this is my uncle, my mother's brother.
Kay took the troop to visit her grandmother's old farmhouse. The home has been preserved as part of an outdoor museum.
The first generation of Japanese who came to Hawaii, this was what they came from. The roof is made up of these straw, and they had to build their own fire everyday to cook, you know, and get the water from the well and like the restroom is all-- an out house situation and there's a big kind of a living room area. If you sit Japanese style there's a little hole in the ground underneath the table. And in the hole they would build a fire and they would put this really big futon over the table and the fire underneath would keep your feet and legs warm and you'd be like huddled around this table, you know, during the winter. And my mother and her family were rice farmers. So if you can imagine during the winter that water-- rice is grown in water almost like taro, and so the water is freezing. And they would be up at 4 in the morning out, all the way 'til sun down in the rice fields, you know. So, and the first generation of people coming to Hawaii, the reason why they came was because the areas that they were coming from were in poverty. They lived in impoverished conditions and so that's why they left. If you think about it back then there were not telephones and cellphones. So, when you left your family you didn't know when you would ever see them again, if you were gonna see them again, you know. If you were gonna go over to work in Hawaii you were trying to send money home to your family, you don't know if people were alive or dead back home, you know, if your family was okay. So, we are very fortunate now for all that they suffered. So that's why I wanted to bring you guys here so that you guys can learn about your great, great grandparents and knowing how much they suffered that you guys can have a good life. So please as you see these structures here at the museum, just remember and hopefully you will share with your children the stories about what you learned on this trip. Today was the most important day for me because I wanted to share this part of the trip with you.
To remember how your family was when they grew up like auntie Kay was saying earlier about how the-- this house, how her parents struggled to make our lives better. It's very important to always remember that and just to stick with it and to keep thinking about that.
This is what gives me like drive to play taiko and get better and do what I do and teach. This is just everything for me, yeah in my taiko life.
After reuniting with more relatives, Kay and the players visited a temple school in Fukushima to perform Fukushima Ondo, the old local song which the plantation workers brought to Maui a century ago from this region of Japan. Once before, 7 years earlier, Kay and a few members of Maui Taiko had visited this same school to play Fukushima Ondo.
We had wondered whether the song Fukushima Ondo had been lost or forgotten in Japan because after the war the country became modernized and-- and maybe these people didn't know about this centuries old tradition. I was hoping that people would recognize it. We started to play and in the corner of my eye I saw this old gentleman, I recognized that he knew the song.
This was-- this was the man that was here 7 years ago and he just heard us playing when we were at the temple, so he heard us playing and he came out. And he said "Let me show you Fukushima Ondo."
And at that moment I realized that our song was authentic. It was Fukushima Ondo. And he came out with short stubby sticks and we were so just so excited because we have been playing with short stubby sticks for so long but no one else in the taiko community played with that sort of stick.
These gnarly old sticks that are like, literally cut off from a tree. And he starts playing and the style is so different. Back in the day, you know, there was just a bunch of old guys having a good time at the top of the Yagura.
Over the years, we started to pick up the pace and so our Fukushima Ondo was very lively and very upbeat.
It's-- it's totally adapted to become more, I guess American, where it's more performance oriented.
It was even more powerful and emotional for me because surrounding us were grave stones with the Watanabe mon, the family crest. And they were everywhere. And I almost sensed that my ancestors were there when we performed. And it was a-- just a powerful thing to feel so connected. Here we brought Fukushima Ondo back to Japan. There was much meaning in that day.
This is Hiroshima. During World War II the United States dropped an atomic bomb here. 140,000 people died.
As a Japanese American, you know, having gone to Hiroshima Peace Park and also having gone to Pearl Harbor, you know our countries our friends now and get along so well. I needed to embrace that there was a terrible loss and that we can learn from it.
It doesn't make sense to me that we have to go through all of that. I mean the outcome is that the United States and Japan are friends now.
When you continue taiko, when you perform, please remember today. You share your Japanese culture but you also share the perpetuation of peace now through your taiko.
Once we all learn about each others cultures then that's when we'll all know about each other. We're all just people, we're all just human beings.
I know that some people think that focusing on heritage and ethnic identity is divisive. I don't, I think the more that you know about your heritage and about the culture and heritage of other people, the more understanding there can be between people. The more that I learn about myself and about others, I find more in common than different.
Mahalo Nui Loa!
In continuing Maui Taiko, we give something to the future. You know, it's a gift to the next generation. And it enables my grandchildren and great grandchildren to connect, to know their history even after I'm gone.
There is a saying in Japanese, "Okage sama de". It means: I am what I am because of you.
We're all different and that makes us unique.
A lot of the intolerance that develops in the world are from not understanding other people.
As Japanese Americans after 9/11, we have to be the ones to be the examples of accepting people and reaching out to the other nationalities.
There's some fundamental rights that need to be protected no matter how much pressure is bearing upon us. And I think that's at the core of being American.
Our lives have been very rich because we are Americans.
Hawaii is very, very rich in all of various cultures and it makes it really unique and really beautiful.
Look ahead but also remember the past and where our ancestors came from, to not forget.
I helped found Maui Taiko to pass on who we are and to preserve this music. And we're doing it.
Good job everybody! See you at practice on Thursday.
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