The Continuing Process of Understanding this Place

So I have been real busy at work nowadays because of this pending court-case in Japan. I think I described it in my earlier posts but just in case I didn't, we are filing a law suit against the Japanese government to change their overly strict rule for the acquisition of Japanese nationality for those of Japanese parentage born in a foreign country. The law now is that if you do not contact the Japanese embassy within 3 months of the birth of the child it just becomes impossible. Most people don't know about this time limit so their children are denied their rights as a Japanese so anyway my co-worker and I have been traveling around Manila and different provinces to collect video statements for those who cannot be at the trial personally. It has brought me to Olongapo where there was a massive US military base. Following the eruption of Mt. Pinatunbo in 1991 amid a political dispute with the Philippine government and as the ash cloud swelled rendering any air travel impossible, the US government decided to completely withdraw their troops. It's interesting that they would leave the Philippines since the Japanese are unsuccessful at negotiating with the US to remove the troops from Japanese territory. But I believe there are underlying reasons for this which I hope Wikileaks will shed some light on.

Olongapo was the “sin city” of the Philippines before the Americans left. The place was notorious for prostitution and other naughty things. Today, it is very different. There is still prostitution but I don't think it is much more than other major cities of the Philippines. The family we met there was very nice and the mother was quite a fun lady. As has been my consistent experience here, the people were extremely sweet. I was not enamored by the city itself. It was kind of bizarre for me because the area by the base seemed almost like America. There were real stop signs (trust me it is rare to find stop signs much less crosswalks in Quezon City) which for some reason felt it was necessary to notify the driver that “The first to stop is first to go”. The other thing I was struck by was that the US military really just picked up and left without clearing out their crap. I didn't really expect them to disassemble all the old hangers and barracks but it was funny to see that the Filipinos had adapted the places to their own needs. The actual base itself has become a touristy place sporting jungle adventure parks with zip lines and monkeys. You can swim with dolphins down in the bay where US battle cruisers used to be docked.

After dinner I walked out to a beach by myself and I tried to analyze and assess the impact of the American base here. There are American bases all over the world and it would be foolish to imagine they don't affect the local area but it would also be foolish to think their impact are entirely negative. It's like with Okinawa, I talked to some Japanese that said if the US military just left than the local economy there would collapse. That's probably true to some extent but I'm confident they would be able to rebound. There are a lot of ideological reasons to dislike the American military to be everywhere and it really depends on your political point of view and your sense of national dignity. I will say I am comfortable with the American military being in foreign countries as long as they serve some beneficial purpose for those in the country they occupy but as time goes on and the American deficits grows I have a feeling the US government will soon see that all of these bases might not be feasible to maintain. I am not proud of the fact that the US military attracted tons of prostitution to this city but I saw a lot of mixed couples of American and Filipinos while I was there so to my reckoning if American guys were able to find love in a country that I love then they I can't be all against it.

Following our successful trip to Olongapo we visited another client in Manila. She's a Muslim lady living in a Muslim area of Manila. Unfortunately, like a lot of the Muslim areas here, it is quite a poor place. Her house was small but cozy. She has a mixed Japanese-Filipino daughter but her husband had already died. Her daughter is about nine or ten years old I think. She is very cute and surprisingly entrepreneurial. She runs a small business among the community by selling toys she gets from McDonalds or Jollibee. She came to the Christmas party at our office and I thought it was funny that she had saved all of the candy that my boss gave her and sold them to her classmates. She can make 80-100 pesos a day which for a nine year old is impressive. We spent several hours there to hammer out the statement for the trial and we had time to talk about this or that. Filipinas like most ladies love to chat and it was all in Tagalog so understood about a quarter of it but my co-worker would translate the important bits.

As we discussed, through my broken understanding we seemed to hit a serious topic and I see her eyes swell with tears. She was describing how she would give her daughter money for lunch at school but often she would just save the money and use it to buy food for her mother or sister or invest it in her toy business. I could sense the sadness from her that she couldn't adequately provide for her daughter. She held her little girl and tried to reassure her, and herself probably, that it would all be alright in the end. I was surprised by this sudden out burst of emotion but I was moved by the love I saw in her eye and I could not say anything in response.

Today I went with my roommate to Smokey Mountain. It didn't have anything to do with my NGO but I was invited by a Japanese friend to a Christmas party over there where we gave out food and clothes. Now it's kind of hard to describe this place but to sum it up concisely, it's a massive trash dump where over 3,000 people live. This slum is probably one of the poorest in Manila. You can see from the pictures that it is by no means hygienic. Children dig through the trash with almost no clothes on looking for scraps of food or whatever other valuable things they can find in the garbage. So we went there and we had to hand out tickets to children so they could receive some free lunch. It was a really simple meal; just a burger and some juice but the demand exceeded the supply ten-fold. We walked through the place with a Filipina lady who was a staff at that NGO; which was called Basura House. She supposedly had some criteria for who she gave the tickets to because she turned away more than half of them. My job was to mark the hand of the children so that they would not get more than one ticket. I understand the need to ration out the food since we definitely didn't have enough to feed everyone but it is not fun to have to choose those who should get some food. I thought I was lucky since I was just marking the hands but at the end the lady gave me about 5 or so and asked me to choose some people to give it to. This was one of the least enjoyable experiences of my life. Imagine being surrounded by 30 people or so, children, the elderly, and between, and you only have 5 tickets to give out. Again, as I said, the ticket only got them a burger a cup of juice but I felt like I was giving out winning lottery tickets. There were dozens of hands in my face, children climbing me, and everyone was screaming. I gave out those tickets as fast I could. There's no way to analyze who needs it more than others. I just wanted to relinquish the power as quickly as possible. Honestly by the end of it I had disappointed more people than not so I felt like I done them a disservice instead of helping them.

After the distribution of the tickets we had the party itself which was memorable. The food was supplied by Jollibee which is a local fast-food restaurant. I wasn't expecting it but out of nowhere some guy dressed up like the “Jolly Bee” surprised the kids. They were ecstatic and I almost went deaf from the screams. The kids there were adorable and very sweet. 

After distributing the food we gave out some donated clothes. I was in charge of distributing some woman's clothes and it was funny how picky those ladies were. I mean we are giving these out for free and I assume they all live below the poverty line but they kept complaining about the color or that the material was not soft. It was kind of funny but I see their point. There's no point getting clothes you're never going to wear.

By the end of the party we were cleaning up and I was amused by the fact that the major concern of the Japanese girl I went there with was that they hadn't thrown away the trash properly. She insisted on having different trash bins there for recyclables or perishables or just trash. She was complaining that the children just through the trash on the ground and to assuage her frustration some the local ladies swept up some of the trash outside the house. Honestly though that place was literally a trash dump. All of the trash of Manila gets dumped there so to expect the locals there to follow some rules about littering and recycling was kind of ridiculous in my opinion. I tried to explain to her that these people purposefully live in a trash dump so they have bigger problems than caring about littering, We stayed there until 2 or so. I didn't eat any breakfast but I didn't have any appetite by the time I left. It's not that I was somehow disgusted by the people or the surroundings but being around hungry and impoverished people just didn't inspire any inclination to think about food.

I was thinking about my experience there and if I can draw some insight from it. My stay here has been a process of self-growth and understanding of the Philippines but also the human condition itself. To sum it up in a few words would be inadequate but I should try but not now...

On Japanese-Filipino Children

So I am sitting in my room on a Friday night while the music from the baranguay Christmas party is blasting. You would think that Friday night is the best time to go to a party and I do know a few that are going on but honestly since I have become a de facto seven days a week volunteer I don't have the same notions of weekends that I had before I came here. That doesn't stop me from going out almost every night but this is one of those rare occasions where I decided to stay in. Probably it's because of how my hangover from last night made work today almost unbearable. Out of respect for my students that are coming to my Japanese class tomorrow I think I should recuperate so I can have some energy for once. Running on an average of six hours of sleep a night eventually takes it toll.

Anyway, I wanted to write about the Japanese-Filipino children (JFC) and what the exactly are the services that my NGO offers them. I have written about my NGO before and what we do but to summarize we offer free legal support for Filipino mothers to fight for legal recognition, child support, and occasionally Japanese nationality for their children. My actual role usually ends up being translating boring documents from Japanese to English and sometimes the reverse but one aspect of my volunteering that I really enjoy is going to the houses of our clients and actually seeing how they live.

So what can I say about the condition of the JFC? You can read some scholarly articles from journals of sociology describing their trials and tribulations but academia has a way of taking interesting topics and somehow finding a way to make it boring. The JFC are not fundamentally different from other mixed race people around the world but they have issues which are unique to them. Academics love to dwell in their supposed 'identity crisis'. Since their father is Japanese than they must have an inherent cultural connection to Japan which is frustrated by their inability to leave the Philippines right? Yeah I bet that some JFC feel this way but speaking in generalities as vulgar as this is good for forum discussion at leading universities but does not apply to the real world. I have to be honest, the vast majority of JFC I have met have been clients of Maligaya House and so they all come from broken families. I translate so many case profiles detailing the misdeeds and irresponsibility of these Japanese fathers that I have constructed a very negative image of mixed Japanese-Filipino couples. I have become so biased with my preconceived notions of the intentions of Japanese guys who date or marry Filipinas that when I actually met a Japanese-Filipino girl who's parents actually stayed together and they live happily in Japan I was shocked. I thought it didn't exist but it helped me come to the conclusion that my understanding of the JFC is very limited due to the specialization of my NGO. That girl looks very Filipino but since she grew up in Japan since she was ten her mannerisms, personality, etc. were spot on Japanese. If I had talked to her on the phone I would have thought she was pure Japanese. I am sure there are plenty examples of happy Japanese-Filipino couples but obviously they would never come to Maligaya House. I also know JFC here who look completely Japanese but do not speak Japanese and act just like Filipinos. For me this undermines the argument that heritage and race powerful contributing factors to the development of one's identity.

Take myself for example. My family is completely European; a combination of French, Swiss, and English. My extended family are all Europeans except for my cousins in Washington but I feel that they have retained more of their French heritage than I have. I grew up in America and although my blood is European I feel no connection to that place. Don't get me wrong, I love and respect my family living there but I can't say that I feel at home in France, Switzerland, or England. They are foreign places for me and I feel at heart like an American. Most of the JFC I meet seem to have similar notions of themselves. Some of them are interested in Japanese culture and language but regardless of their father being Japanese I believe most of them view Japan as a foreign place; completely different from the Philippines. Which it is.

The major difference between me and the JFC is that the European governments easily awarded me citizenship from their countries. For the JFC it's a completely different story. For the majority of the ones I've met, the Japanese government does not consider them to be Japanese at all. This is mainly due to an overly strict and little known law in the Japan family law that says that all people with Japanese parentage born outside of Japan must contact the closet Japanese embassy within three months of the birth to acquire Japanese citizenship. Almost all of our clients had no idea about this law and only when they are ten years too late do they realize what the rules are. Nationality and citizenship are apart of identity. Being denied rights that owed to you by the Japanese government just because your mother did not know there was a three month time limit is not an easy pill to swallow. The cruel and callous silence of the Japanese bureaucracy only adds salt to the wounds. It doesn't help that only until recently could Filipinos even enter the Japanese embassy to ask about this. I heard from a client that ten years ago or so non-Japanese were not even allowed into the embassy. So even if a Filipina marries a Japanese man and has a child she still is treated like a complete outsider to the Japanese establishment. One of my good friends who volunteered at Maligaya House worked hard to collect videos and letters from the JFC because according to her JFC are not viewed nicely in Japan. From birth the chips are stacked against them. The JFC that come to Maligaya House grow up without a father, have a cultural heritage that the Japanese government works hard to deny, and perhaps harbor feelings of alienation from local Filipinos because of their mixed race. I have met some JFC who complained that they feel different and are treated differently from other Filipinos but the Philippines is such a warm and accepting society that I would not put too much weight on this issue.

On a side note this is one accept of the Philippines which I find fascinating. The general acceptance of all kinds of people strikes me. The Philippines is a strongly Catholic country but I see gays and transsexuals walk openly in the street and I don't get any impression that they are discriminated against. Devout Muslims go to the same malls as Christians and there is even national holidays for Islam as well as Christianity. I think this is also fits well with the Filipino tendency to always be on vacation. Filipinos also seem very accepting of foreigners and almost everyday somebody stops me to say hello, ask where I'm from, and welcome me to the Philippines. This actually gets kind of annoying but I appreciate the gesture. So all of this to say I really don't think JFC have a hard time assimilating with Filipino society.

The Japanese side is more complicated. I believe there are two major forces working against the JFC. #1: The Japanese have strong sense of nationalism and cultural identity which I have a lot of respect for but occasionally cause them to lack flexibility in accepting a JFC as being really Japanese. #2 For those JFC that have been cruelly abandoned or forgotten about by their father's, in the cases of bi-racial children the Japanese family court is well-known for ruling in favor of the Japanese. This definitely provides plenty of obstacles for Maligaya House but our Tokyo Office and team of volunteer Japanese lawyers have devised a way overcome this challenge. I know up until this point I have painted a very negative image of Japan and for those that know me and my love of Japanese culture it may seem strange but this is the reality of the Japanese government. Japan is a democratic and free nation however with is slowly adapting to the modern world. Maligaya House contributed to winning one major lawsuit several years ago that made it a lot easier for illegitimate JFC to ascertain Japanese nationality. Interestingly, right now it is easier to attain Japanese citizenship if the JFC was born illegitimately but we are now working on another case next month that will hopefully adjust the law to help those JFC that were born while their parents were actually married. The government of Japan is slowly but steadily opening its doors for foreigner workers such as the JFC to come to Japan. This is actually extremely important for the Japanese economy seeing as their stringent immigration policy makes it very difficult for foreigners to find work there and in about 20 years over a third of the Japanese will be retired. They will be desperate for young workers from abroad. Some of the JFC I've met do have dreams about working in Japan. I am not sure how realistic this is since it is necessary to be fluent in speaking and reading Japanese and I know by experience that this is no easy task.

A lot of the JFC do want Japanese citizenship but not necessarily to work in Japan. It is really tragic that Filipinos are forced to find work all over different parts of the world because of how much love there is in Filipino families. A lot of people I meet gave up aspirations to get better jobs out a desire to live with their parents and maintain their bond. This concept is completely foreign to me but I can appreciate it. The one thing that has consistently surprised me is that a lot of the JFC really just want the citizenship or a visa just for a chance to meet their father. I talked to a JFC my age who told me he does not care about working in Japan or getting any money from his father. He just wants to see him. Some of the mothers are understandably bitter towards their past Japanese husbands but quite a few of them tell me that they always reinforce in their children minds that they should always respect their father even if he never came back or gave any recognition to even having a child in the first place. I believe these family values are apart of the Filipino culture. I don't know how the Japanese guys view their past affairs with Filipinas and their children and I bet there is a lot of variation on how they deal with it but I think it's tragic in a way that these kids grow up, sometimes in poverty, with their mothers working hard to prevent their children from harboring resentment towards their father that has abandoned them. At the end of day every JFC has a different story and I can't give a definitive analysis of the condition of the JFC but I think that's a good thing because those kind of categorical analysises only belong in text books and term papers.

And so I will go back to what I was doing before: reading about 'Kurdistan'.