Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

[craigwatanabe]

In today's Star Bulletin a reader tells how Mazie Hirono will represent Asian Americans because she was an immigrant herself?

From 9/1/06 Star Bulletin letters to the editor:

Hirono will represent Asian Americans well
The Asian American Action Fund is a national organization dedicated to increasing the voice of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in government.
Last week it announced its endorsement of Mazie Hirono's congressional campaign.

"As a Japanese immigrant herself, Mazie is uniquely committed to issues of concern in the Asian American community," said Irene Bueno, executive director of the AAA-Fund. "Her distinguished record of public service and deep understanding of local issues in the Hawaiian islands make her an outstanding candidate for Congress."


David Raatz
Wailuku, Maui

All this time I thought she was local

[damontucker]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

"As a Japanese immigrant herself, Mazie is uniquely committed to issues of concern in the Asian American community," said Irene Bueno, executive director of the AAA-Fund. "Her distinguished record of public service and deep understanding of local issues in the Hawaiian islands make her an outstanding candidate for Congress."

David Raatz
Wailuku, Maui

All this time I thought she was local

Gee i wonder if the writer of this editorial is none other than HT's own Raatz?

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

Here, check out Mazie's family story in this article. Mazie's mother was a local Japanese girl from Waipahu, but she moved to Japan and lived there for many years, during which time she married a Nihonjin and had kids (including Mazie). The marriage ended, and she came back to Hawaiʻi with her kids.

[oceanpacific]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

Yes, Mazie is originally from Japan. Her mother escaped an unhappy marriage and emigrated to Hawaii when Mazie was a child.

This story has been re-told many times in the press, including how she worked her way through law school. No silver spoons in her family. Mazie was kind enough to be a guest on my radio program about 14 years ago to discuss her pro-consumer views on the no-fault auto insurance crisis of the early 1990s.

[raatz]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

Gee i wonder if the writer of this editorial is none other than HT's own Raatz?

Good (correct) guess!

[kamuelakea]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

In today's Star Bulletin a reader tells how Mazie Hirono will represent Asian Americans because she was an immigrant herself?

All this time I thought she was local

I love language in Hawaii. It's Orwellian the way “locals” redefine words to make themselves feel more “local”.

Mazie’s own clear history is that she immigrated to Hawaii as a young girl from a foreign country. That means she immigrated here. That makes her an immigrant. Sim-pole.

Why is it so hard for Asians in Hawaii to accept the fact that Asians can be and usually are immigrants? Just the thought causes some to want to redefine our vocabulary.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

I love language in Hawaii. It's Orwellian the way “locals” redefine words to make themselves feel more “local”.

Mazie’s own clear history is that she immigrated to Hawaii as a young girl from a foreign country. That means she immigrated here. That makes her an immigrant. Sim-pole.

Why is it so hard for Asians in Hawaii to accept the fact that Asians can be and usually are immigrants? Just the thought causes some to want to redefine our vocabulary.

It is not a fact that Asians in general can be and usually are immigrants. I'm not an immigrant neither are the many Nisei and Sansei Japanese here. We are born and raised here in Hawaii. We are genuinely local.

But if you indicate that because my ancestors are immigrants so I must be also, then nobody here in Hawaii (including Kanaka Maoli) are local because everyone had to at some point in their ancestry had to immigrate from somewhere else.

Definition of "Local" to me? One that was born AND raised there. I'd never call myself an immigrant.

[kamuelakea]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

Definition of "Local" to me? One that was born AND raised there. I'd never call myself an immigrant.

Then either I'm not reading correctly or you just contradicted the point of this thread. Mazie Hirono was not BORN AND RAISED here. She immigrated here when she was 4 years old. That makes her an immigrant by your own definition.

As far as Hawaiians being immigrants. No way. You do not call the aboriginal peoples of any land "immigrants". That is rude at best and psychological genocide at worst. Hawaiians MAY have come to Hawaii first but they aren't Marquesans or Tahitians or Samoans. They became Hawaiians. Unique language, culture, values and physical features. The definition of an immigrant is someone whose ethnicity existed or continues to exist in another place in the world. Japanese immigrants have Japan. Chinese immigrants have China, Even "American" immigrants have the United States. Hawaiians don't have anywhere else to call home. They are home. Everyone else is an immigrant or the descendent of an immigrant. Hawaiians are Hawaiians.

Try telling the people of Japan that they are just the latest immigrants to their islands. That everyone supposedly came from Africa (Anthropology) so really they, the Japanese, have no exclusive right to be in the area that is Japan today. They just happen to live there but have no right to cliam that land for today's Japanese people. And that if we wanted to alleviate African starvation, we would just encourage 100 million Africans to immigrate to Japan, since originally, all Japanese can trace their ancestory to Africa. They could just assimilate to some extent and create a new half black/half Japanese Japanese.?? Try telling them that Craigwatanabe. Let me know what response you get from a Japanese.

[John Maple]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

Then either I'm not reading correctly or you just contradicted the point of this thread. Mazie Hirono was not BORN AND RAISED here. She immigrated here when she was 4 years old. That makes her an immigrant by your own definition.

As far as Hawaiians being immigrants. No way. You do not call the aboriginal peoples of any land "immigrants". That is rude at best and psychological genocide at worst. Hawaiians MAY have come to Hawaii first but they aren't Marquesans or Tahitians or Samoans. They became Hawaiians. Unique language, culture, values and physical features. The definition of an immigrant is someone whose ethnicity existed or continues to exist in another place in the world. Japanese immigrants have Japan. Chinese immigrants have China, Even "American" immigrants have the United States. Hawaiians don't have anywhere else to call home. They are home. Everyone else is an immigrant or the descendent of an immigrant. Hawaiians are Hawaiians.

Try telling the people of Japan that they are just the latest immigrants to their islands. That everyone supposedly came from Africa (Anthropology) so really they, the Japanese, have no exclusive right to be in the area that is Japan today. They just happen to live there but have no right to cliam that land for today's Japanese people. And that if we wanted to alleviate African starvation, we would just encourage 100 million Africans to immigrate to Japan, since originally, all Japanese can trace their ancestory to Africa. They could just assimilate to some extent and create a new half black/half Japanese Japanese.?? Try telling them that Craigwatanabe. Let me know what response you get from a Japanese.

kamuelakea's right. Another analogous situation would be the state of Israel, specifically created to return the Jewish people to their homeland. Sure, the Jews were actually immigrants to the region (where they fought the now-extinct Canaanites), but they established a unique language, culture, religion, etc. that continues to define them as a people. Why do you think Mr. Ahmadinejad's "wipe Israel off the map" statement was so offensive? It's not only an attack on some desert real estate, but an affirmation that the Jewish people have no legitimate claim to a homeland, unlike nearly every other people in the world. Your statement about Native Hawaiians, craigwatanabe, may not have been intended as such, but it is similarly offensive. You're essentially asking to "wipe Hawaiians off the map" by classifying them as "just another immigrant." When you cut an indigenous people from their homeland, you attack one of the most essential aspects of their identity.

Now, this isn't to say that we should kick out all the non-Kanaka Maoli. "Local" culture is also a part of Hawai'i, but it is on a different level from Native Hawaiian culture. Local culture is about assimilation and Americanization. Hawaiians have a culture prior to the local culture, and so it's not surprising that the dominant themes of the two are, at times, vastly different. They're not even in the same ballpark.

Anyway, to tie this all back to the original topic of the thread, considering that Mazie was an 8-year old when she became an Issei, I have no idea how this would suddenly take away her ability to become a "local." Locals include just about anyone who successfully assimilates into the culture, because local culture is itself about assimilation (and assimilation anxiety).

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

Then either I'm not reading correctly or you just contradicted the point of this thread. Mazie Hirono was not BORN AND RAISED here. She immigrated here when she was 4 years old. That makes her an immigrant by your own definition.

I didn't contradict myself at all. You read correctly that Mazie is an immigrant by my and the world's definition.

I was born and raised here however and that my definition of that is "Local"

I don't understand the contradiction.

For as long as I've known of Mazie Hirono, I didn't know she immigrated from Japan. I always thought she was local (naive assumption from myself), so when I found out through the editorial that she did immigrate from Japan, I was quite surprized.

But I do believe that Hawaiians did have to come from somewhere else. Whether you call it migrating or immigrating, they came from somewhere else. What makes Hawaiians different from Tahitians is that they developed their own culture and raised generations of offspring based on it.

If that is a more accurate description of an aboriginal or Hawaiians in general then I stand corrected. But then again my father (Nisei) was born and raised here in Hawaii while my grandfather immigrated to Hawaii. My grandfather along with countless other Isei dropped many of their ethnic cultural values and developed their own unique "Plantation" style culture that my dad was raised on. He in turn raised me in a similar style totally unique to Hawaii and foreign to my ancestor's native land of Japan or China if you want to take that far back.

If all I know is the "local" culture of Hawaii that is not of my ancestorial heritage, then does that make me aboriginal too? Maybe...maybe not because of the root word: original in Aboriginal. I was not the original aboriginal to Hawaii, only one can make that claim and they are the Kanaka Maoli.

Does that sound more correct? So as a meteor becomes a meteorite when it hits the ground, so too does the immigrant who lands and becomes an aboriginal when he develops an entirely new culture to live and die upon.

[kamuelakea]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

If all I know is the "local" culture of Hawaii that is not of my ancestorial heritage, then does that make me aboriginal too? Maybe...maybe not because of the root word: original in Aboriginal. I was not the original aboriginal to Hawaii, only one can make that claim and they are the Kanaka Maoli.

I think you get it craigwatanabe, although I hear you struggling. You are "local" as hawaii today defines "local". But you are not Hawaiian and you will never be. I think you recognize that. You are like Governor Quinn who just died, a man who loved Hawaii, named his children after Hawaiian royalty, but will never be Hawaiian.

You will die a decendant of Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. Nothing wrong with that. Probably much to be proud of. But you will NEVER be Hawaiian (or Aboriginal).

[i-hungry]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

mazie is immigrant by definition. but was she raised with any non-japanese customs from her mom? any english language? just curious.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

But you will NEVER be Hawaiian (or Aboriginal).

Although I'd have loved to be part Hawaiian (there's so many programs to assist them) I know I can't and never will. But at least I can say that I am "Local" to Hawaii, something that I hold dear to my heart and the one reason why I continue to stay here in the islands instead of heading to the US mainland or abroad. My roots are firmly planted here where I was born and raised. My first breath of life came from these islands and so will my last.

I may not fully understand the Hawaiian culture but I do understand the land for which that culture was derived from. This is my home, I know of no other.

[Jewlipino]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

Layers within layers.... I had a discussion with a couple of friends (a linguist and an anthropologist) the other day regarding the origin of menehune legends. It seems that the Hawaiian language is more Marquesan than Tahitian, which raises the significant possibility that the first wave of settlement did not come from Tahiti at all, but from the Marquesas. The point was made by the anthropologist that cultural artifacts were a poor way to distinguish or establish the existence of a pre-tahitian colony due to perishability (because of climate) and similarity. Language often contains historical artifacts of events that are otherwise obliterated from the historical record (e.g. we know that man-made glass was probably discovered by the Akkadians because they have the earliest known word, zakukhit, for it). This raises the relevant question as to whether, if menehunes do in fact represent a pre-tahitian colony, real Hawaiians are descendants of menehune and that the Tahitian descendants are immigrants.
Of course all of this is conjecture due to the utter lack of any archaeological proof, but the reason I point it out is that immigration and aboriginality are relative in the face of the tendency for the winners to write history to suit their desires (Kamuelakea no doubt can furnish many examples of post contact Hawaiian histories distorting facts for the benefit of the missionaries and their descendants). In Mazie's case I think she is wearing the immigration hat because she thinks it will garner her the most support, but if she thought she would gain more from characterizing herself as local she would do that instead..... crazy politicians.

Jewlipino

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Mazie Hirono is an immigrant to Hawaii?

Re: languages--having been in those situations of different Polys relying upon our different leo to communicate (being as I speak neither French nor Chilean Spanish and many didn't speak English), I found Hawaiian to be equi-distant/similar with all of them, it was figuring out which sounds to substitute for which language. This worked with most pronouns and speaking of our natural environment. Our languages evolve greatest when we speak of latter-day contexts, like politics. But the oldest subjects: the gods, the land, the weather, the senses, our emotions, values and family--these were among the easiest topics to communicate.

Quantifying voyages into degrees of Polynesian relativity might be mental candy, but it isn't culturally nutritious. Hawaiian is my ethnicity. Polynesian is my race. And the ancestors sailing around the triangle ain't new news. Hawai'iloa, Pa'ao, Kupe....just to name a few...

re: immigrant-- why should anyone care were Maizie was born and toilet-trained? She schooled here; her cognitive development came from here. She married here. Raised her family here. Paid her taxes here. She has the same charge on her than all of us do: if we love Hawai'i, we owe it to her to know her past, perpetuate her heritage and malama her into the future.**

**actually, I don't know enough about her to say where she was raised and achieved pivotal accomplishments in her life. Which doesn't matter anyway, as I am not going to vote for her, because she doesn't stand out as scrappy enough in my book.