Okinawan and Beyond: Okinawan Women and The Re/Creation Of Diasporic Identities

Studies on Okinawan women migrating to the Philippines during the postwar years are scant and not accorded much attention by scholars looking at Japanese/Okinawan migration.  Furthermore, the role of women in the maintenance and re/creation of diasporic identities have been significantly overlooked.  These Okinawan women married Filipino men who worked on U.S. bases in Okinawa during the early years of the Occupation Period (1945-1972).  Many of these women went with their husbands to the Philippines and settled there, raising families and living new lives.  Upon migration, many of these women consciously assimilated into Philippine society.  Despite this, they still acknowledge their Okinawan selves by passing on aspects of Okinawan culture to their offspring, creating in the process, a diasporic Okinawan identity that contains both Philippine and Okinawan characteristics. 

I argue that these migrant women are active agents in the transmission of Okinawan culture, at the same time promoting the culture of their husbands and their adopted land, thus creating a distinct “Philippine Uchinānchu” identity.  This particular identity is continuously being maintained and re/created not only within familial and contiguous boundaries, but also across space and time, through various activities these women engage in.  I also argue that these women engage in this process of re/creating as they fashion out their sense of a “home” away from home.  The creation and re/creation of an Okinawan diasporic identity also relates to a re-definition of Japanese identity, which tends to conflate nationality, ethnicity, and race, and continues to leave Okinawans in an ambivalent position vis-à-vis a Japanese identity.

This study analyzes data gathered from interviews with these women, as well as from participation in meetings/gatherings of the Philippine-Okinawan Society in Manila.  Interview data from their children are also pertinent sources of information about their mothers and thus will be utilized in the analyses.