Description

The Asia Program is pleased to recommend, out of the AAPI Portfolio, a special grant of $50,000 to the University of California, Santa Cruz for the Okinawa Memories Initiative Archival Project.   Housed in the Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, the Okinawa Memories Initiative (OMI) is a public history project that explores the post-war history of Okinawa, Japan, from a global perspective through collaborative storytelling. Originally launched in 2013 through the gift of a collection of photographs taken in Okinawa between 1952 and 1953 by an American military dentist, Dr. Charles Gail, OMI has expanded from an historical research project for undergraduates into a broader public history project involving transnational dialogue and partnerships.  OMI has also widened its research scope from post-war Okinawan culture and history to include the global Okinawan diaspora.  Student participation has been central to OMI’s work through its carefully designed program that combines community service, language training, coursework, team building, experiential learning, research, and mentorship.   With the experience gained to date, OMI now requests funding from the Luce Foundation to support a collaboration with the Okinawa Association of America (OAA). Established in 1908 in Gardena, CA, OAA aims to promote Okinawan culture, assist its 800 plus members in social and educational advancement, and contribute to local and international cultural exchange. Over the years, it has amassed a significant volume of documents, photographs, audio, and visual materials with rich historical value. The collection is in need of proper preservation and processing. To preserve this at-risk material and its related memories for future generations, OMI is teaming up with OAA to digitize the collection into a searchable archive that would serve OAA members and the local community as well as researchers and the Okinawan diaspora worldwide.  Using OAA’s Yamashiro Family Photograph Collection as a pilot, OMI and OAA have initiated a three-phase project on archiving (Phase One), oral history (Phase Two), and public exhibition (Phase Three).  Once completed, this pilot will not only provide a prototype for subsequent OAA projects, but also serve as a potential model for Okinawan associations in other countries, such as Brazil and Peru, to document histories and advance understanding of this understudied community.    Our grant would be primarily applied to the Phase Two oral history work, scheduled to begin this spring, both virtual and in person as pandemic protocols allow. The stories and memories collected, many from an aging generation, will help bring the photographs and other archival material to life.    The project would provide training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students in archival production, community engagement and public history and serve OAA’s goal to ensure the generational transfer of knowledge. Throughout, OMI team members plan to engage the OAA membership about the Yamashiro Collection and elicit their priorities for subsequent archival processing, to build trust and the community’s sense of ownership in the project.   If approved, our grant would support three graduate student research fellowships, eight undergraduate internships, the librarian at OAA, and associated costs for interviews, travel and archival materials.   In the field of Asian American Studies, Okinawans are often categorized with Japanese Americans, though they consider themselves to be ethnically distinct. Supporting this project would further the goals of the AAPI Portfolio to foster understanding of the complexity and diversity of AAPI communities through community-engaged research and storytelling.   Submitted by Yuting Li and Helena Kolenda