Interviews

1. Grandmother's influence on decision to go to Japan

2. Band-Aid realization

3. Japanese influence growing up

4. Looking at your country from the outside

5. Buddhism in America and Japan

6. Wife's family in Japan

Okasaki,Robert (Bob) Kiyoshi

(b.1942) Japanese American ceramist, who has lived in Japan for over 30 years.

Band-Aid realization

I have a friend who didn’t realize he was Japanese background until he put on a Band-Aid. The commercial at the time was “It’s skin, flesh tone.” You put on the Band-Aid, you don’t notice it. He put on the Band-Aid, and he realized the color was different. That was the first time he realized he was Japanese American. And since our home was in the middle of a grape field, and it was basically our family and relatives that I came in contact as a child, I really didn’t know until I went to school and became part of the American culture that I understood, more or less, what everything was about.

Finding Home (film) identity

Date: November 28, 2003

Location: Saga, Japan

Interviewer: Art Nomura

Contributed by: Art Nomura, Finding Home.

Interviewee Bio

Robert Kiyoshi Okasaki, 61-year-old Yonsei (on his mother’s side) was born in French Camp, California, in 1942, just before his family was incarcerated during World War II at the Rowher concentration camp in Arkansas. After the war, Bob’s family lived in Stockton and later in Lodi, California, where his family had a vineyard.

Bob attended San Jose State College, eventually concentrating on pottery. Through the Study Abroad program, Bob became an apprentice to a potter, a Living National Treasure, in Japan where tableware is considered an art.

When Bob journeyed to Japan, he felt American, but now when comes home to the U.S., he does not feel American. He’s been married since 1975 to a Japanese woman and their first child was born in 1985. When he first arrived in Japan, recalls Bob, Japanese nationals treated him sometimes like “he was not all there” because of his lack of Japanese language. His relationship with his wife’s family has changed from an original relationship of caution to one of comfort, to the point where he now feels that her family is his family.(November 28, 2003)