Novel : Japanese expat children in 1970s- 1980s (3) Chicago : Welcome Home

 

I was an American.

 

I was seven years old when we went back to Chicago.

I had been born in Japan, but America was home.

I thought of myself as an American.

 

My parents were Japanese, but they'd both spent time in America back in the 1950s.

In our family, it was just understood that someday we'd go back to America.

 

Dad was Japanese, but in his heart—and in the way he spoke—he was an American.

 

Even when we were still living in Japan, I spoke English with Dad.

Inside our house, we spoke nothing but English.

Whenever I said something to him, he'd stop me.

 

"Ken, that's not how an American says it."

I'd try again.

"Still not good enough."

Sometimes I felt like crying.

 

I'd say it exactly the way Dad had said it.

I'd roll my tongue.

I'd try to get the sound just right.

And then Dad's face would break into a huge grin.

"Now that's American. Don't you forget it."

 

My little brother, two years younger than me, spoke English naturally.

Little by little, the two of us started speaking English to each other at home.

 

Mom worried about it.

"Toshiyuki, don't push them too hard."

"But we're going back to Chicago someday, aren't we? The sooner they start, the better."

"I know, but...they can barely speak Japanese as it is."

"That's exactly why. We've got to train their ears and their mouths while they're still little. My mother did the same thing. We spoke nothing but English at home."

"But you told me you struggled with Japanese when you came back to Japan. And why didn't your mother, Yoko, speak Japanese with you?"

"That's ancient history. Besides, we're going back to Chicago. They need to be able to speak English properly. That's more important than Japanese."

 

English was simply part of everyday life for us.

Actually, it was more than that.

It was my brother's and my native language.

Dad was always telling us the same thing.

"Our family is going back to Chicago someday."

And I couldn't wait for the day we finally went home.

When we came to Chicago because of Dad's transfer, honestly, all I could think was,

Finally. I'm home.

 

Dad was having the time of his life being back in Chicago, too. It was his hometown, after all.

 

I transferred into a local elementary school.

At first, the slang threw me for a loop, but little by little, I got used to it.

 

If there was one thing that mattered at school, it was pronunciation and intonation.

The English Dad had taught me wasn't wrong. It just didn't sound like the way kids my age talked.

 

Slowly, I started picking up the slang my friends used. Before long, it had become part of the way I talked.

 

I was fascinated by the English I heard all around me. I wanted to make every word I heard my own.

 

Before long, I had friends I could really call my best friends.

 

Mark and Aaron.

 

Those guys dragged me all over Chicago, teaching me what the city was really about.

 

"You still sound weird," Mark cracked up one day.

 

That got under my skin. That night, I watched TV for hours, paying close attention to the way people talked.

 

The next day, I used one of the expressions I'd picked up.

 

"Now you're talking."

Mark gave me a satisfied grin.

"That's more like it."

 

After school and on weekends, the three of us were always together.

 

Chicago Cubs games. Mark always managed to get tickets, and the three of us would go together. I can still remember that day when we were all yelling our heads off from the stands.

Before I knew it, Major League Baseball had become just another part of everyday life.

 

My first hot dog came when I was twelve, in junior high.

"Dude, you gotta be kidding me. You've never had a hot dog?" Aaron said, staring at me like I'd just landed from Mars.

He grabbed my arm and dragged me over to a hot dog stand on the corner.

"Look, they're all good, but seriously, man—you've been living in Chicago how long? You gotta eat a Chicago dog at least once."

"Well... my parents were pretty hardcore about junk food."

"Oh, c'mon! You never snuck out and grabbed one behind their backs?"

We looked at each other... and busted out laughing.

 

There was a disco where you could dance to all the latest hits.

We weren't old enough to get in, but the three of us dressed up as grown-up as we could and somehow talked our way past the security at the door.

Inside, the place was hot and packed, filled with the mixed smell of cigarettes and alcohol. Mark and Aaron both spotted girls and headed out onto the dance floor.

Then I noticed a girl off to one side who looked Asian. I walked over and asked her to dance.

It was my first time in a disco.

My first dance. For a little while, I felt like I'd grown up.

 

My life was in Chicago.

My teenage years were Chicago itself.

Ten years went by in what seemed like no time at all.

I was now a senior in high school.

 

Around that time, Dad got transferred again, and our family was going to have to move back to Japan.

One evening, he sat down with me.

"If you want to get back to the States as quickly as you can, start thinking beyond high school. Figure out what kind of work you want to get into. Once you've got that figured out, it'll be a lot easier to come back."

"I'm gonna work for an American company after I graduate. Honestly... I'd stay here if I could."

"Yeah... college in the States is going to be a tough one."

"You really think so?"

"Yes. Visas, tuition... it's not that simple. I know this move's going to be rough on you and your brother."

He paused for a moment.

"College takes four years, and that's a long time. If you start missing home, don't tough it out just because you think you have to. Come back for the summer. Well, we can all come back together if it works out."

He smiled.

"The States is home. It'll always be home."

Dad had grown up in America during the 1950s. Back then, just like today, going to America was something a lot of people dreamed about.

"When we moved back to Japan, that's when things got rough. I'd forgotten most of my Japanese, and there wasn't anybody around who'd ever been to the States." If you're going to shoot for college, pick one where there are plenty of returnees. Don't make the same mistake I did."

"Your mistake?"

"Yeah." He chuckled. "Once everybody found out I spoke English, they pretty much froze me out."

Before leaving for Japan, I said goodbye to Mark and Aaron.

"Don't forget us," Mark said.

"You'll be back," Aaron added.

I answered with confidence. "I'll come home."

The only universities I could apply to in Japan were those with special admissions for returnee students.

I set my sights on Zophia University's Department of English. Even at my new school, ICU High School, the teachers had no problem with me applying to Zophia. I'd be able to study the history and economics I'd originally planned to study at a college in America.

They also suggested the Faculty of Comparative Culture, but I turned it down without hesitation.

"I want to study America."

"But you have the grades to get into Comparative Culture. Wouldn't it be a shame not to?"

"I don't think comparing cultures is really meaningful."

"But you're such a bright student. Well, then, what do you want to do in the Faculty of Foreign Studies?"

"I want to continue the education I started in America. My education in America was cut short."

The teachers understood.

Of course cultures were different. That seemed obvious to me. I couldn't see why they needed to be compared as though one had to be understood through the other.

My American education had been interrupted halfway through. It made perfect sense that I wanted to pick up where I'd left off.

The teachers at ICU recommended an akahon, the red-covered university entrance exam guidebook. It seemed to contain nothing but the basics. Buying it felt almost pointless, but I bought one anyway and went to the interview.

When I started speaking, my voice filled the room. For the first time in a long while, I could speak English outside my home. The interviewers smiled from the moment I said my first words.

 

I got in.

 

Now I could study the American history and economics I'd been supposed to study in Chicago. I was also placed in the top-level English conversation class, Class 1. Everything seemed to be going perfectly.

Almost everyone in the class was a returnee. None of them had lived in Chicago, but it felt good to be in an environment where I could speak normally, in the language I'd grown up with. After all, English was our language. I couldn't stand the idea of people thinking Japanese was our native language.

We'd go to the U.S. military base in Atsugi or to American diners in Tokyo and talk all night.

Even the food was all the old American favorites I'd missed.

"Hey, any of you guys get your driver's license back home?"

 "Yeah, I did. First thing I did was pick up a girl and take her for a cruise..."

 "Aw, c'mon, man. Lemme guess—you just took her out for a pop or something."

 "Yeah, pretty much. New Hampshire was a pain in the ass. We didn't mess with booze."

To be honest, sometimes I wondered why the hell we weren't living in America anymore. That's how badly we wanted America.

The classes were easy. Even the assignments from the toughest professor in the department were no big deal. I'd just drop my essay off at the professor's office, and I'd get an A.

But French, my second foreign language, was another story. I couldn't produce anything that sounded remotely French.

Actually, I didn't want to.

For three straight years, I spoke French with an American accent and American intonation.

I always got a C. My pronunciation was just too bad.

Not the pronunciation again.

Ever since I was a kid, I'd worked my ass off to sound American. I'd watched TV, copied the way people talked, and put up with my friends laughing at me. That's how I finally got my mouth to sound the way it did.

And now they wanted me to reshape it all over again just to speak French? No way.

I thought of myself as an American. What was wrong with speaking French with an American accent? To me, being told to learn French pronunciation felt almost like being told to stop being American. And that's exactly why I stuck to my American accent and pronunciation all the way through French.

One of my friends who'd spent a long time in America tried to set me straight.

"Look, if you end up at the top of an American company, you're gonna be dealing with diplomats and embassies. And what language do you think they use? French. Ever heard of a lingua franca?"

"Nope. Never heard of it."

"Man, you gotta get out and learn something about the world."

 

There was this weird girl in my major class. She'd gone to an international school overseas.

"Wait, didn't you live in Britain?"

“I did, but I didn't go to a local school, so I don't really know what it was like."

“Isn’t Britain your country?”

“No. I’m Japanese. I went to an international school. It was only for five years, but I’ve never questioned my identity.”

Her answer left me confused.

“Then what about your English?”

"It's a tool."

 

A tool? She actually called English a tool?

 

This girl was casually dismissing as a "tool" the very thing I'd spent my entire life fighting to acquire. The identity I'd worked so hard for. The identity I'd fought for so fiercely that, sometimes, it felt as though I'd bled for it.

That casualness infuriated me. And, at the same time, it frightened me.

English was proof of the thought of myself as an American. There was no way I could just dismiss it like she did.

“How can you be so damn matter-of-fact about it?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Language is for communicating, isn’t it? I’m not interested in people who worry endlessly about their pronunciation but have nothing to say. Besides, you didn’t grow up in a multi-ethnic society, did you?”

“Multi-ethnic? Chicago has all kinds of people. But everyone naturally speaks English with a local Chicago accent. Where the hell were you, anyway?"

"London."

"London?"

She shrugged.

“When people who don't share the same native language have to communicate with each other in English, English is just a tool. That's all. A way to get your meaning across."

I felt like I was going to burst.

What did this girl, fresh back from Britain, know about any of this?

Chicago had people from all kinds of backgrounds too.

 

English is a tool.

 

No.

No.

 

English was me. It was proof of who I was.

The English I'd spoken with Dad and my little brother back when we were still in Japan.

Chicago, where I'd lived as an American. The hometown where I'd grown up to be a good American citizen.

 

And yet my passport was Japanese.

Why?

Where the hell was I supposed to belong?

 

Until then, I had never once questioned myself as an American. But meeting someone who had inhabited this strange, unfamiliar world called an “international school” had begun to shake that certainty.

What really got under my skin was what she had said about “worry endlessly about their pronunciation but have nothing to say.” It hit a little too close to home. And the words “English is just a tool” left me with a faint sense of unease.

 

I had lived in Japan until I was seven. Where had that part of me gone?

 I had gone to elementary school there. I had played with friends.

 And yet, inside our house, the language had always been English.

The more I thought about it, the more unsteady my sense of who I was became.

My earliest childhood memories were Japanese. But everything I remembered most vividly from after the age of seven was American. Or at least, that was what I wanted to believe.

And then there were those words that kept getting in the way: "I’m not interested in people who worry endlessly about their pronunciation but have nothing to say"

So what was left that I could call my own?

American citizenship. And an American passport.

 

Around that time, Dad and I talked a lot about what I was gonna do after college.

" Long as you don't speak English, people'll see you as just another Japanese kid. The minute they find out you do, you're the guy who came back from America. So whatever you do... don't turn your back on America."

"I'm not gonna. I'm going back someday."

"Then don't stay in Japan any longer than you have to. The fastest way back is to get hired by an American company. If you don't want to build your life here, start looking in the States."

"Yeah. I know."

Dad nodded.

"Listen... the school's you're at is different. There are plenty of kids who've lived overseas. When I was your age, there weren't any. Nobody around me had ever been to America."

He looked off for a moment.

"The only place I could really speak English was at home. Outside the house? No way. I don't ever want you feeling like you've gotta bottle up part of who you are."

He'd just put into words exactly what I'd been thinking all along.

 

For my graduation trip, I went back to Chicago. Mark and Aaron were both away on vacation, so instead, I went to see my old high school.

The smell of the hallways. The classrooms. Nothing had changed.

I went to the main office and gave them my name. I told the secretary I wanted to see Ms. Amanda, my old homeroom teacher. The school secretary gave me a suspicious look.

 

“Hi! It’s me! Ken. Ken Watanabe! How’ve you been?”

But Ms. Amanda just looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“What year were you here?”

“1985!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.”

 

It felt like I’d been punched right in the gut. I pulled out a class picture we had taken before I left America.

“Sorry, but I still don’t remember you.”

The school was supposed to be the thing that connected me to America. And even my old homeroom teacher didn’t remember me.

My high school. The place where I had spent most of my youth. Where had all those years gone? I went back to Japan with a hollow feeling in my chest.

 

I already had a job offer from an American company. They were sending me to San Francisco. I didn't know the place very well, but it was still America. I could make more American friends once I got there.

 

Finally, I can go home.

 

The moment I stepped aboard the United Airlines flight, I was filled with the joy of going back to my homeland. I had managed to get in touch with Mark and Aaron, too. I'd use my vacation time to go back to Chicago and see them.

 

My parents had grown up in America. So had I. There was nothing but joy in finally returning to the place my family called home.

America—the country I had first returned to at the age of seven. My passport might say Japan, but in my heart, I was American. I was determined to build my life in America and become, in every way that mattered to me, a good American.

With that one thought in my mind, I sank into my seat on the United Airlines flight.

Familiar American songs echoed in my head.

 

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

 

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood,

From sea to shining sea.

 

Finally, I was free from French, too. I probably wouldn't have anything to do with France ever again. French? What good was that going to do me if I wanted to climb the corporate ladder? If I ever needed French, couldn't I just have my secretary get an interpreter? I felt like an idiot for wasting three years of my life studying French.

 

Then I happened to make eye contact with the American woman sitting beside me.

“You headed to San Francisco, too? We're heading back home.”

“Yeah. Have you lived in Japan long?”

“Five years. How about you?”

“Four.”

“That's a long time. What took you to Japan?”

“My dad's job. He got transferred to the Tokyo office.”

“I see... That must've been hard. You must've missed home.”

“Not really! I went to college there, and all my friends are American.”

“Oh, that's good! Where are you from in the States?”

“Illinois. Chicago.”

“Oh, really? Were you born there?”

“...”

 

French was the language I had refused to embrace. English was the language I had fought so hard to protect. And yet there was one question I couldn't answer.

 

“No.”

 

I hesitated for a moment.

 

Am I Japanese? Or am I American?

 

I was born in Japan. That was something I could never change. But the place I wanted to go back to— was still America.

 

“Welcome home.”

 

The announcement came over the cabin speakers.

 

Home.

My homeland.

 

My passport was Japanese. But hearing that announcement made me realize that I was finally going back to America. That much was true. The country you return to isn't always the country where you were born.

I was American. That was what I'd believed all my life. Because if I wasn't American, I didn't know who I was.

 

So, I was going back to America once again.

To find the answer.