Fronteiras Film Testimonial #1 by Yosuke Kitazawa
Written by Yosuke Kitazawa
Edited by Cléo Charpantier
Yosuke Kitazawa is one of the writers of Fronteiras. This is a narration for the forthcoming documentary, written before the November 2020 Presidential Election.
MEMORY HIGHWAY – still from Fronteiras’ Proof of Concept Film
Los Angeles is my home. I wasn’t born here, nor do I have any family here. But it is where I live now, and have lived for the longest amount of time in my life. I didn’t grow up here, but I grew as a person while living here. It wasn’t until recently that I came to the realization that home isn’t necessarily where I was born or where my family is based. It’s where I feel the most comfortable, the most accepted, and where I can find a community in which I feel I belong. Los Angeles isn’t perfect. There’s diversity, but it’s still very segregated. There’s an imbalance in how minority communities are regarded and represented, in ways that aren’t congruous to the demographics. No matter how accepting or tolerating it seems towards immigrants, it’s always a struggle to be one. Still, after years of struggling to come up with the definitive answer to the question, “Where’s home to you?”, I can now proudly say this: Los Angeles is my home.
It took a long journey for me to come to that conclusion. As a six-year old barely out of kindergarten, home was simply where my family lived, in the Hamatake neighborhood in Chigasaki, Japan. That’s the earliest memory I have of something that could be, by one definition, called home: one’s place of residence.
This was the mid ‘80s, the height of Japan’s economic bubble. Japanese mega-corporations were expanding rapidly into foregin markets, and Reagan’s America was the land of opportunity. In downtown Los Angeles, high rises were being built with free-flowing Japanese money, and Little Tokyo was thriving with expat salarymen opening up their wallets at sushi bars and karaoke joints.
DTLA #1 – still from Fronteiras’ Proof of Concept Film
DTLA #2 – still from Fronteiras’ Proof of Concept Film
The city of Torrance, on the southern edge of Los Angeles County, became our new home. The area was home to a large Japanese community, with Japanese markets, Japanese schools, Japanese restaurants, and Japanese neighbors. Thanks to this support system, newly arrived Japanese immigrants and families like mine were able to smoothly transition to life in their new country. So, despite their limited English skills, my dad already had a well-paying job lined up, and my mom knew exactly where to take us kids for school and play. Still, I barely understood why I was there.
“Nothing to show, nothing to tell.” Those were the first English words I learned to say. They were taught to me by Mrs. Parton, the sweet old lady teacher who tried her darndest to explain the American concepts and activities that were so foreign to me and the half dozen or so Japanese kids in her or my class. How was I supposed to know that I was expected to bring something to Show & Tell? With those few words at my perusal, however, at least I had something to say to the class, and didn’t feel so helpless and invisible anymore. But even as a clueless kid, I knew that wasn’t something I wanted to keep saying in front of my class for long. The following week, I made sure to bring a special toy to proudly present in Show and Tell to the class.
I never felt comfortable at the Japanese school I had to attend each Saturday. It all felt pointless to me - why do I need to learn Japanese when I’m living in America? The school offered classes up to high school level, but I asked my mom to stop making me go there after I finished sixth grade.
We moved to Dana Point when I was 10. At the time, the freshly incorporated South Orange County city was nearly 90% white. Almost all the friends I made in school were white. I remember thinking how strange that the few Asians on campus tended to stick together amongst their own race. We’re in America, why should I be with other Asians when I get enough of that at home? I had never considered my Japanese-ness to be a big part of my identity, though the occasional racial comment (often of the Bruce Lee kind) would remind me of how I was seen by others. My sister had many Asian friends, and we both jokingly referred to them as the Joy Luck Club, after the popular book and film. We thought that was very funny at the time.
Highway Underpass #1 – still from Fronteiras’ Proof of Concept Film
Highway Underpass #2 – still from Fronteiras’ Proof of Concept Film
I moved away from my family for the first time to attend college in Berkeley. “Where are you from?” This was the first time I had to consider that question more seriously, and the best answer I could come up at the time was: “Born in Japan, grew up in Dana Point.” By then, my parents had moved to Chicago for work. Home for the holidays now meant braving the intense cold of the Windy City. I only visited them there for a few weeks out of the year, but it technically became my official place of residence. For that reason, I had to fight with the administration to keep my California Resident status. California residency was required for the reduced in-state tuition, for which I was deemed ineligible a few semesters into my college years. If I wasn’t a resident of California, where exactly was my place of residence? Where was home? It wasn’t Chicago, where I had barely spent any time, and it certainly wasn’t Chigasaki, where I hadn’t been for over two decades. What is home anyway? The reality was that I was a 1.5 generation immigrant, meaning I was not quite an immigrant, not quite first generation. The place I called home was not tied to a specific place. I was born in Japan, but I could never consider it home. I’ve lived most of my life in America, but my legal status as an immigrant makes me a foreigner. My cultural identity was neither here nor there.
After graduation, I decided to move to Los Angeles. At this point I wasn’t thinking much beyond finding a job and building my career. But it wasn’t long before I began to notice and appreciate the incredible diversity of my surroundings: Chinatown, Koreatown, Thai Town, Historic Filipinotown, Little Ethiopia, not to mention all the immigrant communities of Central Americans, South Americans, and Middle Easterns. I realized I was totally unaware and ignorant of certain cultures and histories simply because I was never exposed to them prior to my life in Los Angeles. From my newfound community, I learned about The Iranian Revolution, Salvadoran Civil War, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the Armenian Genocide. The refugee and immigrant diasporas resulting from such events in history are a large part of what makes Los Angeles the way it is.
In 2006, I marched along with over a million protesters in support of immigration reform. Walking along Wilshire Boulevard from Western to MacArthur Park, I realized the enormously important role immigrants and undocumented citizens play in shaping this country. I knew that my immigrant experience was very different and likely more privileged than that of my fellow marchers. But that day, we all shared one common goal of fighting for each other as immigrants, and that the opportunities afforded to us as a result of our journey will not be taken for granted.
In this election year, it’s more important than ever that immigrants understand our roles, our rights, and our dignities we have as fellow citizens, documented or not, in this country we call home. One of the most important ways to effect change is by voting. Unless key policy changes are made, some of us will never be able to vote in this country, even if it’s the only home we’ve known. For those of us lucky enough to have a path to citizenship, it’s our duty to determine whether or not we want to have a voice and be heard. Going into my 35th year in this country, I made the way overdue choice to become a U.S. citizen. I had my reasons for not starting the process sooner, much of it financial, but now it all feels like an excuse. Under normal circumstances the naturalization process would have been completed in time for me to be able to vote for the first time in my life. Due to reasons related to COVID-19, the process has been put on for hold, going on 6 months now. Studies have shown that naturalized immigrants skew towards voting Democratic. Who knows if that’s one reason why the USCIS under the current administration has been acting so slowly. Though if that’s the case, they have no incentive to increase the number of eligible immigrant voters before the deadline to register to vote. Not becoming a citizen soon enough to be able to vote this year is one of the biggest regrets I have in recent memory.
It took me over three decades to realize that Mrs. Parton had taught me a valuable lesson way back in my first grade class. As immigrants, we should always have something to show and to tell for the work we’ve put into making a new home in our new country. And right now, voting out the current administration seems like the best way to show and tell to the world that this truly is our home.