Interviews

1. Decided to leave Japan to Argentina (Spanish)

2. Tango makes him to stay in Argentina (Spanish)

3. Leaving to Argentina (Spanish)

4. His first jobs in Argentina (Spanish)

5. Learning Spanish (Spanish)

6. Journalism as Vocation (Spanish)

7. Marriage to a non-Japanese (Spanish)

8. No more close family in Japan (Spanish)

9. Conflicting relations between Argentina and Japan (Spanish)

10. To feel uncomfortable in Japan (Spanish)

11. Argentina is my home (Spanish)

12. Generational Gap (Spanish)

13. Need generational change in Japanese community (Spanish)

14. No discrimination in Argentina (Spanish)

15. Nikkei identity (Spanish)

Takagi,Kazuomi

(1925-2014) La Plata Hochi, Journalist

Conflicting relations between Argentina and Japan (Spanish)

(Spanish) When I left Japan, Tokyo was a desert because of the bombing. Today I don’t know what [Japan] is like; for me it is a foreign country, all automated, I don’t know how to drive…therefore, I want to return soon to finish work, and I want to return to Argentina. There my second country became my first. Besides, Japanese often tell me: “You are Japanese, but what a strange one you are…very different.” Thus that, look, when I arrived in Argentina, the Argentines all charged me: “You are Japanese, ass backwards, they would say, now I go to Japan and the Japanese tell me: “You are Japanese, ass backwards.” It was almost all distinct.

Argentina Hawaii identity Japanese Americans Nikkei United States

Date: February 23, 2007

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Interviewer: Takeshi Nishimura, Ricardo Hokama

Contributed by: Centro Nikkei Argentino

Interviewee Bio

Takagi Kazuomi was born in Japan on March 27, 1925, in the Mie province. He arrived in Argentina as a tourist and never returned to Japan. By chance he started out in journalism, a profession that provided employment for more than fifty years on radio and in the graphic arts. Today, at eighty-one years old, he continues to fervently work as a journalist for the newspaper of the Japanese collectivity, La Plata Hochi (Japanese Section), including acting stints in various forms of publicity. He passed away on November 10, 2014 at age 89. (January 2021)