WhatAreYou?

a Mixed Roots Nikkei Sansei

readingof the poem byNobuko JoAnne

Miyamoto

Gerry Yokota

What Are You?

when I was youngkids used to ask mewhat are you?I’d tell them what my mom told meI’m an Americanchin chin Chinamanyou’re a Jap!flashing hot insideI’d go homemy mom would saydon’t worryhe who walks alonewalks faster

Age 4, 1959

people kept asking mewhat are you?and I would always

answerI’m an Americanthey’d sayno, what nationality?I'm an Americanthat's where I was bornflashing hot insideand when I'd tell them what they wanted to knowJapanese...oh, I've been to Japan

Age 6, 1961

I'd get it over withso they could catalogue and file mepigeonhole meso they'd know just howto think of mepriding themselvesthey could guess the differencebetween Japanese and Chinese

they had me wishing I was what I’d been

seeing in movies and on TVon billboards and in magazines

Age 18, 1973

Age 15, 1970

while they were making laws

in Californiaagainst us owning landwe were trying to be American

and laws against us intermarrying with white peoplewe were trying to be American

My parents, 1947

when they put us in concentration campswe were trying to be American

our people volunteered to fight against their own countrytrying to be American

when they dropped

the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

we were still trying

finally we made itmost of our parentsfiercely dedicated to give us a good

educationto give us everything they never had

we made it

now they use us as an exampleto the blacks and brownshow we made ithow we overcame

but there was always

someone asking mewhat are you?

now I answerI’m an Asian

and they saywhy do you want to separate yourselves?

now I sayI’m Japanese

and they saydon’t you know this is the greatest country in the world?

now I say in AmericaI’m part of the third world people

and they say

if you don’t like it herewhy don’t you go back?

-Nobuko JoAnne Miyamoto from

Roots: An Asian American Reader, edited by Amy Tachiki, Eddie Wong & Franklin Odo (1971), pp. 98-99.