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Group Plans to Celebrate Traditional Obon Festival on Isle of Youth
by Jon Hillson

LOS ANGELES, July 11--Interest in and solidarity with Cuba brought more than a hundred people to the Union Center Courtyard in Little Tokyo, on the edge of downtown Los Angeles, where under a baking, afternoon sun they cheered and saluted the first-ever delegation of Japanese-Americans bound for Cuba.

The July 7 event, sponsored by Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress (NCRR), introduced the 18-member delegation to the crowd. The participants spoke in trios explaining their decision to travel to Cuba, between entertainment provided by Los Anjelitos, a Afro-Caribbean song and dance group, and Nobuko Miyamoto, a jazz singer and member of the delegation. The gathering raised more than $2,500 for humanitarian aid, in the form of medical supplies for Cuba.

The NCRR was formed more than 20 years ago to struggle for a measure of justice for surviving Japanese-Americans interned in U.S. concentration camps during World War Two. "About 120,000 people were imprisoned," said Kathy Masaoka, a long-time NCRR member and a leader of the delegation to Cuba.

As a result of the group's campaign, Congress passed legislation in 1988 granting compensation, or "redress" as it was called. "Payments began arriving a couple of years later," Masaoka said. "By the time a flat $20,000 settlement was agreed to, approximately 80,000 people were still alive to receive it."

After winning the limited monetary compensation, NCRR has continued to support civil rights for Asian-Americans. One of the Cuba delegation members was imprisoned 60 years ago as a teenager in the Crytstal City, Texas camp. Two other participants in the upcoming trip were raised from infancy behind barbed wire with their families in the Manzanar and Poston, California camps.

The idea for the 10-day stay in Cuba began with a California speaking tour last summer by Francisco Miyasaka, a Cuban whose parents were Japanese immigrants. Miyasaka is a lifelong defender of the Cuban revolution, served in the country's militia after its triumph in 1959 and helped staff Havana's first revolutionary embassy in Tokyo that year. He is currently involved in Cuban commercial relations with Japan and is the president of the Japanese Cuban Society.

From 1942 to 1946, Miyasaka's father was among more 300 Japanese-Cuban men (the entire adult male population of Japanese descent) imprisoned on Cuba's Isle of Pines, now called the Isle of Youth. Cuba, a U.S. ally during World War Two, interned the Japanese Cubans in the concentration camp on orders from Fulgencio Batista.

Japanese immigrants in other Latin American countries were also seized and brought to U.S. camps, or summarily deported to Japan. Their survivors continue to this day to demanding a financial compensation from Washington for this violation of their human rights.

Miyasaka's speaking tour in the U.S. was an initiative by Judy Ota, a veteran community activist, who met him in Cuba last year. During his week-long visit to California, Miyasaka addressed audiences in Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Francisco, and invited Japanese Americans to visit the island.

Curiosity among Japanese-Americans about Cuba was piqued by Francisco Miyasaka's soft-spoken but powerful presentations about the concentration camp experience, the subsequent overwhelming support in his community for the revolutionary struggle against Batista's dictatorship, and his defense of the achievements of Cuba's socialist society.

In late June, the U.S. government issued the NCRR-led group a license to travel to Cuba. The delegation's 18 participants range in age from 17 to 73, according to Kathy Masaoka. "There are whole families going," she said. Several, like Masaoka, a high school teacher, are union members; others are college and university students.

Those who came to the July 7 send-off reflected the impact of NCRR activism and solidarity with Cuba. "There are activists here from the Chinese community, the Korean community, the Thai community," Masaoka said, Also attending were veterans of the redress campaign, students, Black and Latino musicians and political activists.

The theme of their tour is the celebration of the Japanese "obon" festival. This annual summer event, Masaoka explained, "remembers family and friends who have died and celebrates their lives" with song, dance, and shared traditional food.

Many of the Japanese Cubans held in the concentration camp stayed on the small island after their release since their property, from small shops to farmlands, was looted -- "legally" and otherwise -- during their imprisonment. The Japanese Cuban Society expects 300 people from all parts of Cuba to meet on the Isle of Youth for this year's obon, "but they don't know the dances, Masaoka noted. "That's what we're bringing, along with Japanese food."

Today, there are about 1,500 Cubans of Japanese origin throughout the country. The Japanese Cuban Society, one of many ethnic heritage organizations in Cuba, seeks to preserve the history of the original immigration, the experiences of the community and its cultural legacy.

"Our main goal," Masaoka said, "is to celebrate obon, to share the history of our two communities, and build links between them. My goal is to see Cuba with my own eyes, and to learn what the Japanese Cubans are all about."

Janice Harumi Yen, another leader of the delegation, said her memory of the Poston concentration camp, in which she spent her infancy with nearly 20 family members, is of departing on a train for Cleveland. She has "always wanted to see Cuba, to better understand how the government works. I've supported socialism for a long time. I want to see how they plan to continue it after Fidel isn't on the scene." Her family owns and operates a small hardware shop in East Los Angeles.

Khi Min Jung, is a 20-year-old college student whose father, a unionized elevator mechanic; mother, a bilingual high school counselor; and 24-year-old sister are also going on the trip to Cuba. He called the delegation a "once-in-a-lifetime experience. I'm interested in seeing a communist country. I want to see first hand if the stereotypes [of Cuba] that presented in the U.S. hold up. I want to see a different kind of system," he said.

Mayumi Masaoka, also 20, is going to Cuba with her 17-year-old brother and her parents. This is her second visit. She wants to probe more deeply into Cuba, she said, "to see why it's such an inclusive society, why its people are more appreciative of everybody, more open. I want to see what Japanese people [in the U.S. and Cuba] have in common."

"We are going to Cuba to open up this border," jazz singer Nobuko Miyamoto told the crowd, to cheers, between elegant renditions of songs in Spanish and Japanese she that plans to sing in Cuba at the obon and elsewhere.

"We are going to Cuba to break the blockade," said Mark Masaoka, a staff member of the Service Employees International Union, "and to return to educate people on why it must end."

In addition to participating in obon festivities on the Isle of Youth, the group will tour historic sites in Havana, meet with members of the Havana Japanese Cuban community, visit a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution and talk to government officials and other Cubans.

The delegation also plans a modest ceremony to mark the 46th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagaski, and the 13th anniversary of winning redress from the U.S. Government, both of which coincide with their stay in Cuba.

(c) 2001 Jon Hillson, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.