My father, Paul, was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi. In our genealogy, my father is what is known as 三世 (sansei), or a third-generation Japanese American, meaning that his grandparents were immigrants from Japan.

Looking at my father, I used to think that he looked so Japanese. But after studying abroad in Japan during my undergraduate studies, and visiting Japan a few times, I cannot help but think of my father as someone who is not quite “Japanese.” The term for a Japanese person who is not a Japanese national is 日系人 (nikkeijin).

He cannot speak Japanese and he does not know much traditional practices and customs. And if he does, we just do not practice them at all. Sometimes I think people assume that when one identifies fully as a specific ethnicity, that it automatically means that they know everything about their own culture. But I think that because of our local culture in Hawaiʻi, its more evident to me that my father is more kamaʻāina than “Japanese.” Kama’āina in Hawaiian translates to “child or person of the land” but is often used as a term for Hawaiʻi residents regardless of their racial background.

With my great grandparents emigrating from Japan in the early 1900s, I can recognize that my father has deep roots in Hawaiʻi. He may not be kānaka, but there are aspects to his character, personality, and even the way he speaks that ground him in Hawaiʻi’s culture. Whether it’s due to how he speaks Hawaiian Pidgin, or how he always stops to “talk story” with random friends he comes across by in KTA (our local supermarket chain on the Big Island). I think his Hawaiʻi roots show through in many of the small things he does even though it may not be visible or easily recognizable to people that are not from Hawaiʻi.