{"id":1060,"date":"2025-03-04T09:48:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T14:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/living.okinawa.halekulani.com\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2025-03-04T10:34:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T15:34:19","slug":"%e3%81%82%e3%82%8b%e5%a4%9c%e3%81%ae%e3%83%87%e3%82%a3%e3%82%a2%e3%82%b9%e3%83%9d%e3%83%a9%e7%9a%84%e5%af%be%e8%a9%b1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/living.okinawa.halekulani.com\/en\/%e3%81%82%e3%82%8b%e5%a4%9c%e3%81%ae%e3%83%87%e3%82%a3%e3%82%a2%e3%82%b9%e3%83%9d%e3%83%a9%e7%9a%84%e5%af%be%e8%a9%b1\/","title":{"rendered":"A Diasporic Dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In Uchin\u0101guchi, one of the Indigenous languages of Okinawa, there is a saying: Ichariba ch\u014dd\u0113. Once we meet, we are ch\u014dd\u0113\u2014brothers and sisters. For many in the diaspora, including myself, the saying reassures us that when we return to our homeland, we are welcomed as family. Yet, on a rainy winter night in Kalihi Valley on the Hawaiian island of O\u2018ahu, my understanding of the saying is challenged by Eric Wada and Norman Kaneshiro, Hawai\u2018i-born Uchin\u0101nchu and co-founders of Ukwanshin Kabudan, a performing arts troupe dedicated to perpetuating Okinawan arts and culture in Hawai\u2018i.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a powerful phrase, right?\u201d Kaneshiro says. \u201cBut if you\u2019re coming from a take-take-take perspective\u2014a colonizer perspective\u2014what it means is that you\u2019re entitled to everybody\u2019s friendship and love without doing anything in return.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 1900, 26 Okinawan contract laborers arrived in Hawai\u2018i to work on the plantations, launching a wave of emigration that sent thousands of Okinawans into the diaspora. In the years since, Okinawans in the homeland have endured a brutal battle between two empires, fractured to this day by ongoing Japanese colonization and American military occupation. Meanwhile, those in diaspora have faced discrimination and assimilation while making a home in a foreign land. Today, roughly 100,000 \u2028Okinawans live in Hawai\u2018i.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, what does it mean to meet as ch\u014dd\u0113 who, though connected by family genealogies and ancestral villages, are also separated by five generations of emigration, an ocean, a language barrier, and vastly different experiences of war \u2028and colonization?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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