Interviews

1. Little contact with Asians growing up on the east coast

2. Spending summers in Los Angeles

3. Japanese Americans brought up to deny their roots

4. Being multicultural before it was “in”

5. Moving to and living in Japan

6. The reason to stay in Japan after his third year

7. Being a Japanese American in Japan

8. Never being Japanese

9. Japan as my home

10. Different tension between East Coast and Los Angeles

11. A stereotype of Japanese Americans

12. Main differences between Japanese and Japanese Americans

Ota,Vince

Japanese American Creative designer living in Japan

Different tension between East Coast and Los Angeles

Am I resentful for the way I was treated when I was a kid? I was bullied by one guy when I was in 5th and 6th grade. But, you know, several years later, when we were graduating high school, it was just obvious that he was a dick. And everyone knew he was a dick. So am I resentful? No.

Actually, most of the race conflict that I encountered was when I moved to Los Angeles. There’s like this kind of underlying hatred on the east coast between white and black, but in LA it’s everybody. Everybody hates everybody. So at that time… I don’t know because on the other hand, when I was in LA, it’s the gangs and stuff and the associations of the groups that you’re in, they’re not necessarily race-based out there. On the east coast, it’s all ghetto-ized, and there’s white areas and there’s black areas, and it’s very, very clear. Now, there’s Asian and Mexican areas. It’s all very clear. In LA, everyone’s so mixed up.

When I was in high school and I was hanging out with all these gangsters and stuff, the set is defined not by race but by the area that you live in. So I’m Gardena-Hawthorne. So they’re mostly Samoans and Filipinos and some Mexicans and a few Blacks and a few Asians. I guess my resentment was more towards the Japanese Americans than anyone else. I’ve always resented them more than anyone else growing up. I don’t understand it.

discrimination Finding Home (film) identity interpersonal relations racism

Date: September 12, 2003

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Interviewer: Art Nomura

Contributed by: Art Nomura, Finding Home.

Interviewee Bio

Vince Ota, (Sansei on his mother’s side, Yonsei on his father’s), was born in New Hampshire. From there, he and his family lived in several cities throughout the United States and also lived in London before finally settling in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Growing up in a small town in Maryland, Vince did not have much contact with other Asian Americans, except during the summers he spent in Los Angeles with relatives. He describes his upbringing as “pretty White American.” Vince eventually moved to southern California where he attended community college and the California Institute of the Arts. He worked as a creative designer and lived in Los Angeles for seven years until moving to Japan. Vince has lived in Japan since 1996 and plans to stay. At the time of the interview, he was working as a creative designer. (September 12, 2003)