Ambiguous and Proud

By Aozora Brockman

As the only Japanese girl in my tiny, conservative Midwestern town, I grew up fighting for Japan. In discussions about World War II in history class, the attack on Pearl Harbor would inevitably come up, and the boys would tease me mercilessly that the war was my fault. “Your people didn’t play fair,” they would say, and a blush of anger and embarrassment would flare up on my cheeks as I would explain the unfairness of the atomic bombs. They would laugh and tell me to go back to Japan – I was too unpatriotic.

But even as they mistakenly called me Chinese and stretched their eyes with their fingers to mimic the shape of my eyes, I never felt embarrassed of being Japanese. My American father and Japanese mother had instilled in me a great sense of pride in being Japanese. My siblings and I grew up in a bilingual environment. Because my father became fluent in Japanese, the rule was that we could only speak Japanese in the house and watch only Japanese television. My mother urged us to complete nine years of Japanese Saturday School, and her cooking palette included not only Japanese, but Thai, Italian, and Indian cuisine. My father made it a point to counter popular thought – he became an organic and local farmer at a time when this type of agriculture was made fun of as being “hippie” and impractical, for example – and because my father was the world to me, I made it a point to flaunt my uniqueness to my classmates. To think of it now, normalcy was to be white. Thus, I never identified as “white”; in fact, I rejected it again and again.

Yet I never identified as “Asian American” either – I identified as foreign Japanese and melting-pot American. When my friends urged me to date the only Chinese American guy in school, saying that we were both Asian and thus compatible, beneath my polite laughs I felt a tickle of anger. Culturally and linguistically, it is true that China and Japan are similar, but it irked me that they could group us together as one and say that we were the same.
During high school, I discovered that my parents had very much shaped my identity – they had always urged us to be both American and Japanese. But I felt that I needed to escape their protection to find my identity on my own. Thus, during my senior year of high school, I flew to Tokyo alone to spend an academic year abroad. There, it soon became clear that my light skin tone and curly Italian hair automatically allowed Japanese people to pin me as a foreigner, even though I spoke fluent Japanese and knew the culture extremely well. My appearance alone falsified my Japanese identity. One day, my Korean-Japanese friend told me that one of her classmates complained about wearing the same uniform as I did on the train, because I “stood out” and embarrassed her. My suspicion of being rejected by other Japanese was finally confirmed.

I came back to the States knowing that in Japan, I was American, and in America, I was Japanese. I could never be fully accepted by either group, which saddened me. In my mind, the world was conspiring against me.

But after taking a course in Asian American Studies and Hapa (Mixed Race) Studies with the incredible Prof. Nitasha Tamar Sharma, I have come to think of my non-acceptance by any group as a valuable quality. Not automatically being placed in one specific racial group on campus gives me the freedom to skip around, learn about different cultures and people without shame or doubts of being too white or too Asian. I am not white or Asian, or black or Latina, or any race at all for that matter, because in my mind identifying as a specific race cements racism.

All of my life I have searched for a clear identity and a place where I could be fully accepted. But today, my identity is vaguer than ever before. I seem to have multiple cultural identities, and no racial identity. But strangely, this vagueness does not faze me. To you, I might be Asian, white, or even Latina, but frankly it does not matter. Call me what you want, but I am ambiguous and proud.

Lies

By Aozora Brockman

I first found out about the danger of the nuclear radiation leaking from the Fukushima plants after the disastrous March 11th earthquake in Japan from a single text. A French friend who was studying abroad in Tokyo with me sent me a series of panic-stricken words full of concern about the effects of the radiation. “My friends from home are telling me it is dangerous to stay,” she had written. “Are you going home?”

This caught me completely by surprise, since in the days following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of northern Japan, I, along with everyone else, was still just trying to accept the reality of the harrowing, stark sights of the aftermath of the tsunami. The Japanese media covered the nuclear plant and its many problems, but officials calmly proclaimed on television that of course, everything was under control. My host family believed them, as did I.

So I laughed off that text, replying to her that it would blow over soon enough and that there was absolutely nothing to worry about.

Then, my parents finally got through to me on the faulty phone lines, and my father’s worried voice cut through across the Pacific and into my innocent ear. He told me that he and my mother were rooted in front of our television day and night, watching the news on the Japanese news channel. The situation with the plant could get worse, and the Japanese media may be hiding the truth from its citizens, he told me.

I could feel the panic steadily grow inside of me as a thousand what-if scenarios repeated over and over in my mind. What if the media was feeding us lies? What if the nuclear plant blew up and radiation leaked into Tokyo? Tokyo was only a three hour bullet train ride from the plant. What if I couldn’t get to safety in time? What if there was another, even more destructive earthquake and tsunami headed to Tokyo? Tokyo Bay would rush in and drown us all.

That night, I started having nightmares of being pierced by radiation. The moonlight that streamed in through the window would burn me alive in these dreams, and I would toss and turn to try to get away. I wondered if there was already radiation in the water I drank to quench my parched throat in the morning. I trembled as violently as the aftershocks.

But my host family continued on as if nothing happened. They laughed, just as I had laughed at my friend, about my fears of radiation poisoning. They focused their energy on keeping Japan together after the tragedy of the tsunami.

To this day, I wonder if it was right of me to leave Tokyo just as Japan was facing a catastrophe. I could have stayed and helped the Japanese citizens somehow. I could have suffered with them. But my family was calling anxiously over the rushing waters of the ocean that separated us, and the nightmares would not stop.

I feel terrible because I had the option to leave. My host family and friends from school did not have that luxury, and thus comforted themselves with a baseless knowledge that they would not be hurt. I left with tears of sorrow, but also of guilt.

Thus, I applaud the courage of two indie filmmakers, Junko Kajino and Ed M. Koziarski, for going back to the radiation filled lands and air of Fukushima after the disaster, and trying to capture the stories of those who could not escape – those whose lives have deep and impenetrable roots in the now contaminated soil of Fukushima. Kajino and Koziarski’s documentary, Uncanny Terrain, which they are still in the process of completing, shows the lives of organic farmers of the area who cannot sell their produce because of the level of radiation.

Kajino and Koziarski held a preview showing of the documentary on Sunday at High Concept Laboratories. They showed only raw footage of what they had taken so far at this benefit event. In order to go back to Fukushima again to capture the one year anniversary of the earthquake, they needed to raise money, they said.

In the footage, one farmer poses the question of what can be said to be grown organically – without pesticides or herbicides – when the land itself is contaminated. Another farmer explains how many Fukushima residents face discrimination from other Japanese. He said people do not want to be near them for fear of “catching the radiation” and that cars with Fukushima plates are asked to be moved from parking spaces because they think those cars will contaminate the spaces.

When I saw the footage of the beautiful green mountains and rice paddies, which now are contaminated by radiation, I was both filled with sorrow and guilt. But another emotion soon consumed me – anger. These farmers had done nothing to deserve this, and yet, they suffer severely. Farmers are being forced to kill their livestock. They do not know of the effects of the radiation on their own bodies.

Had Japan done this to its own people? A well-researched article called “The Fallout” in the New Yorker explains that the United States may have effectively introduced nuclear power to Japan. After World War II, the article said, President Eisenhower was concerned that the fear Japanese citizens had of the nuclear weaponry America used against Japan was pushing it away from the United States. The solution they came up with was to put in place nuclear plants for peaceful purposes. Japanese politicians soon got on board, since they saw it as an easier way to create energy.

Now, more than half a century after the eruption of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan is again plagued with radiation. Will it be able to escape from nuclear energy? Will Japan finally learn to turn to wind, solar or geothermal energy?

Though someday I would like to return to live in Japan a bit more, my mother is still wary of the idea. There is always the danger of earthquakes and tsunamis. But now there is the added bonus of radiation – and radiation-poisoned food.

But as I think of my father’s own organic farm in Central Illinois, I think of the fact that Illinois relies heavily on nuclear power, as well. Recently, there has been news of a nuclear power plant in Byron, Illinois shutting down because of power loss. My solution when faced with danger in Tokyo was to run away, but what will happen if our own organic farm was contaminated by radiation?

I can only sit and pretend that there is no danger, and fill myself with lies. This time, I have no other home to escape to and my heart is rooted in the dark black soil of our Bottomland.

(Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)

Why China Lacks Soft Power

By Joon Young Kwon

China’s president, Hu Jintao, greeted 2012 with a warning on the invasion of Western culture in his country. “We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration,” Hu said. “The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak.”

To Joseph S. Nye Jr., Harvard political science professor and former Chair of the National Intelligence Council, Hu’s speech once again indicates China’s lack of soft power.

“China’s economic and military might has grown impressively, but other adjacent nations are frightened and look for allies to balance rising Chinese hard power,” Nye wrote in his Jan. 17 op-ed in the New York Times.

Indeed, despite its remarkable rise as a global powerhouse, China lacks the ability to influence other nations culturally. If China wants to learn from any of the neighboring nations, South Korea would be a good example to start with.

South Korea is a small country with less than 50 million people and a GDP ranking around the 10^th in the world. China, on the other hand, has the world’s largest population—1.5 billion—and second largest economy. Yet it is South Korea that floods the Chinese cultural scene with K-pop songs and TV dramas, and even extends its influence to Europe and America.

South Korea has produced many good dramas and K-pop song celebrities, thanks to intense competition and early recruitment by big celebrity corporations. A recent poll on more than a thousand people in metropolises such as London, Paris, Milan, Frankfurt and Budapest by KOTRA (Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency) indicates that the image of Korea is second best characterized by K-pop after North Korea. If North Korea gives negative impressions of wars and division about Korea, K-pop offsets them with celebrities and cool cultural aspects about Korea.

South Korea’s most well known cultural production is perhaps the Winter Sonata, which hit the biggest success in Japan with high ranking viewership and created the “Bae Yong Joon syndrome,” a nickname for fans’ crush on the hero in the soap opera. It cultivated the image of South Koreans as soft and lovely to many Japanese viewers, and raked huge benefits from Japanese tourists visiting the scenes where the drama was filmed. Though the effect of one drama is debatable, the show undeniably renewed and attracted Japanese attention to South Korea.

Another example would be famous idol bands such as Wonder Girls, Girls Generation, TVXQ, Bigbang, Kara and many others. When I was at Northwestern University, I was surprised to meet an Afro-American student who perfectly memorized and recited Kara’s song “Pretty Girl,” in Korean. Pictures of fans of lining up at the airports and concerts to meet their Korean idols are becoming common in foreign countries.

On the other hand, there are a lot of counter examples in China. A recent report revealed that the Chinese central government censored several popular TV dating programs for participants’ open talk about the Chinese society. The programs had to modify their contents by asking the participants not to talk about social injustice and complaints.

The pen is mightier than the sword. The Chinese government is aware of its weak cultural influence and has been investing billions of dollars to improve its soft power. The elaborately staged 2008 Beijing Olympics, the thousands of Confucius Institutes around the world, and numerous forums held world-wide regarding China are but a few examples. Nonetheless, neighboring countries such as South Korea, Japan and Vietnam still seem unmoved, not to mention the U.S. and Europe. That’s because China’s image is associated with, more than anything else, the jailing of the Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiabo and the artist Ai Weiwei.

As Nye points out, “using culture and narrative to create soft power is not easy when they are inconsistent with domestic realities.” China needs to unleash the creativity and talents of its people to the fullest potential if it wants to develop its soft power. Censorship achieves just the opposite.

(Photo courtesy of Creative Commons.)

Celebrasia 2012!

Click here to view CELEBRASIA 2012 photo slideshow

The Question of Disappearance

by Aozora Brockman

Aozora (far right) and her teammates after an Undokai, a traditional Japanese school competition between a white and red team.

I should have known. But it still came to me as a shock when I looked around during Wildcat Welcome week and found that though I was surrounded by Asian American faces, not one was Japanese.

Perhaps Japanese Americans or Japanese international students at Northwestern stuck together, and I had not chanced upon them yet, I thought.

Yet a quarter and a few weeks later, I am still in search of that group. I have discovered that the Japan Club is made up almost entirely by non-Japanese students, and though I have met some Japanese Americans, or at least heard of a few people of Japanese descent that apparently exist somewhere in the realm of our undergraduate population, I have yet to meet a concrete group of Japanese students that hang out together. I am close to concluding that such a group does not exist.

I guess after growing up in a conservative, Midwestern town where I was the only half-Japanese, much less Japanese, girl for miles and miles, I expected my college experience to be different. I believed that college – especially Northwestern, a university that boasts diversity – would have Japanese or half-Japanese people who would share my experiences. Chicago, I knew, had a Japanese population, so why would Northwestern be any different?

After searching, pondering, and asking all around, I found that the answer may lie in Japan herself. Japan has become more and more isolated over the years, and has kept most of its people inside her borders. There are many reasons for this; mainly, as I learned while studying abroad in a private Tokyo girls’ school last year, because Japan has a dwindling population to start with. My teacher, an older man, told all of us girls to “have lots of babies to save Japan.” Because of economic prosperity and more work options for women, Japanese women are starting families in their 40s instead of their 20s. Thus, they cannot have many children.

They also cannot afford to have many children. Japanese families are small because supporting a child through the grueling process of education is incredibly expensive. Because succeeding in life is all based on getting into a good college, and getting into a good college is in turn based all upon a single test, parents must spend extraordinary amounts of money on their children to have private tutors, or to go to expensive cram schools.

So the population of Japanese children is dwindling, and the Japanese government cannot afford to lose more people to immigration. That explains the downward spiral of the population of Japanese Americans residing in the United States.

But why are there so few Japanese students studying abroad? South Korea is undergoing the same problem of a dwindling population, but Korean international students are numerous at Northwestern.

This is a difficult question, since Japan – like Korea – knows that the future lies in global marketing. In any job, fluency in English would be greatly valued.

My theory is that Japanese students are so comfortable in their Japanese society that they do not want to experience being a foreign exchange student in a new place and culture. When I was studying abroad in Tokyo, I noticed that most of the girls I went to school with did not have dreams of living outside Japan. They had their puri-cura booths (photo sticker booths where eyes are made bigger and faces are literally changed so that they appear prettier) and karaoke, kawaii (cute) shops, and Disneyland (which they adore to the point of obsession). They had all that they ever wanted at their fingertips – not to mention a complex society which they were lucky enough to understand and navigate.

They did not want to study abroad in college, for they suffered through all-nighters, cram schools, tests and memorization just to be accepted into a good college, which would guarantee them a job. In Japan, college is where students are finally able to escape the strangling pressure to perform and do whatever they want. Tests are a piece of cake, class attendance is almost optional, and the last year is usually spent applying for jobs.

So why would you give that up to suffer through self-consciousness and difficult classes in the States? Not to mention that you would also have to give up a school that would guarantee you a job.

A final theory of mine is that after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands in northern Japan last year, Japanese people felt obligated to stay in the country to help rebuilding their ailing homeland. Every Japanese was expected to do something for their country. So that was yet another reason for Japanese students to stay home.

In the end, it is perhaps not really surprising that hardly any Japanese student seems to exist at Northwestern. And though I miss the opportunity to speak Japanese every day, as I had done at home, I will keep up my fluency in other ways.

For now, I guess I will remain the half-Japanese American student at Northwestern. At least as an Asian American, and as a mixed race student, I do not feel so alone.

Citizen Mother

by Nina Rogers

“No, no, no, I’m not American. No.”

And she is proud when she says that, my mother is. Because she is so very not American, can’t you tell? She passed her citizenship test and shops at Walmart and works at Applebee’s and all her clothes were made in China or whatever, but no, no, she is not cut from the same flag as me or my father or Barack Obama or Jennifer Aniston, can’t you tell? She has squinty eyes and sometimes makes kimchi. Americans don’t do things like that.

“None of them think I belong.”

She is partially right there, partially, because it’s true that my mother is always my mother and not just another woman on the street. She looks too foreign and exotic to have come into existence out of pure American air; something else was involved there. No true American keeps red bean paste in the freezer or only takes phone calls when the other end is speaking in a different language, at least according to the deep cultural divide entrenched in everything my mother does. Not naturalized? Not a problem, because it doesn’t make that much of a difference anyway.

I want to not believe her but I only have 19 years of mostly casual teasing about how I’m not really white but also not really Asian; she has 35 years of experience outside of the motherland living and talking and reproducing with a white man. What do I say when people look at my father, then at me, then her? What am I allowed to say when everyone talks to my father first, or me first, but never her? It’s a tricky line to balance; I never know how much I can empathize versus sympathize with my mother.

“It’s too much, they’re all too much.”

She never elaborates more when I ask her why she doesn’t consider herself American. She only says they’re so excessive, so much. And at first I’m offended, because she’s calling me too much and my father too much and Obama too much and Jen, well, I think she’s too much too, but the point is that my mother is just so adamantly against us all and that’s just an affront to my very character, is it not?

“You are just fine, sweetheart, but don’t turn too much American.”

I still don’t know what that means.

(Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)

MAGAZINE – Challenging The Culture Comfort Zone: Study abroad students chase the extreme educational experience in Asia

Peking University, China’s oldest college, hosts an exchange program with Northwestern.

Interest in studying abroad in Asian countries is increasing among Northwestern students. According to International Program Development Study Abroad Coordinator Karey Fuhs, students who choose to study in Asian countries are not looking for a traditional study abroad experience.

Instead of the traditional study abroad experience of taking classes in Europe and visiting tourist attractions, many Northwestern students are now choosing to study abroad in emerging Asian countries. In the 2010 to 2011 school year, 12.6 percent of Northwestern students who studied abroad, or 95 students, did so in Asian countries.

Most students who choose to study in Asia are aware of the extreme cultural differences when they pick the program and are willing to deal with this challenge, according to Naomi Nason, a Medill junior who is currently studying in China for a Council on International Educational Exchange language intensive program.

“China’s not a place that you say, ‘Hey, I might as well go there and we’ll see if I like it,’” Nason said. “I’m here because I speak the language, and I want to improve my language skills.”

Danielle Littman, a School of Communications junior who participated in Northwestern’s Global Engagement Summer Institute (GESI) program in India for two months this summer, said she was aware of the cultural differences when she enrolled in the program.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the culture and the food,” Littman said. “I knew that [studying in India] was something so incredibly different from my everyday life, and I think I wanted to put myself way out of my comfort zone. And I did. It was absolutely difficult.”

These differences in daily activities such as shopping and eating, as well as in community structure, like the smallness of the community Littman worked in set Littman’s study abroad experience apart.

Nason also said her daily life as a student abroad in Asia differs significantly from her life as a student in America, and she thinks the extreme cultural differences are something a student studying in Europe would not necessarily find.

“It’s a lot harder to deal with day-to-day life here [in China],” Nason said. “There are times when I break down. Being in China is really hard on an American student. I’m getting a much more in-depth cultural experience than someone who is in a European country where there’s a lot of similarities in the culture.”

Additionally, Littman’s experience was atypical; she participated in the GESI study abroad program, which placed her in a community to live and work with an organization six days a week in order to examine the “community’s assets as a means to make progress within their community.”

GESI focuses on looking at a community’s assets as a means to make progress and assigns two or three students to become completely immersed in that community for two months in the summer.

“You’re very vulnerable,” Littman said. “I think that being in [a] place where you’re living and working there gets you the closest you can to actually experiencing the culture.” According to Fuhs, students who choose to study abroad in Asian countries like China tend to cite their future career goals as a reason for studying abroad. In her experience, students who study abroad in China are “students who are interested in business and economics and really many more fields, [who] make an effort to learn Chinese to go to China to develop relationships with Chinese businesses.”

Because businesses based in Asian countries often have a large presence in the economy, Northwestern students take this into account and use the opportunity to study abroad as a way to learn about the cultural and economic history of countries like China.

“China is this economic power that has a very unique history in terms of economic development,” said Fuhs. “It’s definitely becoming more and more of an investment partner.”

(Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)

MAGAZINE – Still Struggling: Four months after the devastating earthquake, Japan’s industries continue to fight for recovery

Months after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami hit Japan, the country remains devastated with a high number of casualties and a power plant meltdown. The recovery process has been slow and painful; more than 3,000 people are reportedly still missing and more than 40,000 people are without homes or jobs.

The earthquake has also affected many of Japan’s strongest industries with a halt in both domestic and international demand. The cesium contamination of seafood has singlehandedly uprooted the seafood market. The word, “Fukushima,” has virtually vanished from the seafood market and seafood products must now show their radioactive contamination level. Because Japan holds the highest consumption level of seafood in the world, the suffering seafood industry is sure to detriment the nation’s overall economic repair. In addition, the public’s growing mistrust of the government has been prevalent since the government’s poor management of the meltdown.

Japan’s seafood industry, however, is not the only one suffering from the aftermath. In July, the Japanese government distributed contaminated beef from the Fukushima region, and the sales rate for the world-famous, high quality Kobe beef from the nearby Wagyu region decreased immensely. In response to this situation, the Japanese government is banning all shipments of cattle from Fukushima.

Japan’s internationally respected automobile industry has not only suffered from Japan’s tsunami flooding, but Thailand’s as well. Since March, domestic car production dropped by 57 percent. The floods in Thailand have thwarted nearly all plans of recovery as many of Japan’s automobile plants located around Bangkok have been destroyed. The flood is expected to impair the already suffering industry.

The nation’s recovery is not only impaired by industrial decline, but 3o,000 children have also been exposed to radiation. With suffering industries and hurt citizens, Japan’s road to recovery will likely be long and strenuous.

MAGAZINE – Solitary Soldier: Lt. Dan Choi talks being Asian and gay in the military

Dan Choi was never a G.I. Joe fan. The child of a minister and a nurse, he decided to enlist because he wanted to serve a greater cause, and because he saw Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. He served in Iraq from 2006 to 2007, announced he was gay in 2009 and has been a full-time activist since.

How was the military different for Asian-Americans?

My brother warned me right before [I enlisted] that I would face racism. In elementary school, I was sometimes the only Asian in my entire class, and it was the same at West Point. I was the only Asian in my entire dorm, in academic classes, and especially when I did sports like rugby. There aren’t many Asians who become infantry, but my friends were very diverse in high school and they were very diverse in the military. That wasn’t the main concern.

I knew I was gay since fourth grade, but I was still hiding it. I was afraid people would find out, and I thought the military would be a great way to hide.

Somebody said during rifle marksmanship, “You imagine there’s this chinky-eyed, black-faced North Korean that pops up and wants to kill you, you better shoot him back!” I understand he was trying to dehumanize the enemy, but I don’t think he understood exactly what that meant, and I suppose he thought he could get away with it because there were so few Asians in the military. He would never say such things about black people or Jewish people, and the more overt racism was directed toward Muslims or people of Middle Eastern descent.

When you are a stigmatized minority in the military, you put yourself in a mindset that says, “I’m going to just show everybody that I’m the best at this.” This was the biggest contribution I could make towards educating people, and the comments didn’t bother me as much. I got used to joking about my race, and later my orientation to put people at ease. Everybody jokes about everything in the military, from sex to race to what you do on the weekends, and strangely, as uncomfortable [as] it is for people who start off and certainly for civilians who peer into military culture, through those differences and laughing about them, the unit becomes stronger.

Did you ever think about leaving the military?

We had the most dangerous area in the Middle East at the time, certainly the most dangerous in Iraq. Every time a soldier dies, they put up an official photograph, and pretty soon our wall was covered. And it became more and more difficult to keep going outside the base, knowing that every day, you could die, and seeing the car right next to you explode and wondering if you were next. I wondered many times, being gay in the military: All of this death is happening,why am I so afraid to come out? And many times I ignored the fact that I was gay.

I wondered, what if I had a fake marriage? It was more than just having somebody help you with the dry cleaning and the chores of the military; you want to confide in somebody, to trust somebody and know that they’ll love you and support you, and that was not available to me unless I lied. I wondered how I could go on, and many times I was suicidal because of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and it takes an enormous amount of energy to know that who you are deep down inside is not accepted by a matter of law.

What plans do you have for the future?

I’m going to continue fighting for justice. When I see the kids that get bullied, those who are alone, I feel exactly the same way. When I was in the military, I felt so helpless; in fact, at many times I thought I was the only person in the military who was gay. Now I know otherwise.

MAGAZINE – Gearing Up: Asian-American military enlistment is on the rise

Retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs, was the the highest-ranking Asian-American in U.S. military history when he served as Army chief of staff from 1999 to 2003.

The U.S. military has noticed an unusual phenomenon. In the past several years, there has been a dramatic surge in Asian-American recruits, with the Los Angeles Battalion witnessing an astounding 80 percent increase in 2009 from the previous year. In several Asian countries, such as South Korea and Singapore, military service of nearly two years is mandatory for all able males over the age of 18. Some try to find ways to evade the service, others to mitigate their terms, but most grudgingly go to fulfill their duties.

And who can blame them for their reluctance? Imagine leaving Northwestern, family and friends to train in an environment that is both physically and mentally demanding for almost two years. What then explains this dramatic increase of Asian-American recruits in the all-volunteer U.S. Army?

Asian-Americans have, in fact, been serving in the U.S. armed forces since the War of 1812, but it was only during the Korean War that separate Asian-American units were dissolved. Throughout history, Asian-Americans have consistently remained one of the ethnicities with the lowest rates of military volunteerism. Asian families tended to emphasize the pursuit of higher education or white-collar jobs over service in the military.

The trend, however, has been changing. The Los Angeles Times, for example, reported that Asian-Americans made up 22 percent of all active-duty recruits in Los Angeles County in 2009, almost twice the percentage of the Asian-American population in the county. The Southern California Recruiting Battalion also reported the biggest recruiting year in two decades with a 33 percent increase in Asian recruits. Even in New York, Voice of America reported in 2010 that Asian-Americans made up 14 percent of army recruits though they comprised only 10 percent of New York City’s population. Perhaps most astoundingly, the Los Angeles Battalion recorded an 80 percent increase in Asian-American recruits from its previous year.

What then are some possible explanations for this phenomenon?  One chief reason appears to be the military’s enhanced education benefits, particularly its college fund assistance. According to the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. Army can help pay for college up to $80,000 in tuition aid. The Army also offers training in more than 150 job programs and career disciplines and provides salary, retirement pay, health care and housing benefits. In the recent economic downturn, many Asian-Americans are choosing to serve in the Army to avoid college debt. Indeed, the U.S. military appears to be actively promoting its educational benefits to potential recruits.

Samuel Jang, a junior pre-med student at Northwestern, states that after taking the MCATs he received an email from the Air Force. It very temptingly read:

“Are you planning on going to Medical school? If so, consider an Air Force Health Professions Scholarship… It pays for tuition, books and most fees. The HPSP also gives students a monthly stipend for living expenses while you attend the school of your choice. This arrangement takes a huge financial worry off students’ minds and allows them to dedicate time for learning. Through the Air Force, these scholarships are offered for three, and four-year terms. In exchange for the scholarship, your commitment to the Air Force is to serve as an active-duty member with a year-for-year repayment, with a minimum obligation of three years.”

Ken Mochizuki, co-author of Heroes, a book about Asians in the military, suggests that another reason for the recent increase in Asian-American recruitment is that the U.S. is no longer at war with Asian countries. In previous generations, the U.S. was fighting the Japanese in World War II and then the Koreans and Vietnamese. Because the U.S. is no longer fighting Asian countries, the current generation of Asian-Americans is less apprehensive about joining the military.

The U.S. Army also offers a unique benefit that appeals to many Asians: American citizenship. A new program of the Army offers citizenship to candidates with health care specialties and language expertise. Many Asians are in America through student visas which prohibit them from working in the U.S. Those who want to remain and work need to obtain green cards or citizenship, both quite difficult to attain. The Army provides a unique solution, in which Koreans have particularly shown interest in this solution. Los Angeles Times reported that in Los Angeles, 266 Koreans applied for 48 available slots in the Korean language category, making it the second fastest category to close.

Dennis Kim (name changed for privacy), an Asian-American in the Naval Academy, provided further insight into why Asian-Americans are increasingly joining the armed forces. Kim, a senior at the academy who has decided to become a marine officer, needs five years of service in the U.S. Marine Corps after graduation.

Kim initially chose this path, starting with enrolling in a federal service academy rather than the typical college or university, because of several reasons, with one specific to his ethnicity. He explained that Asian-Americans, whether from their distinctive looks or their native culture, face a unique obstacle in American society: They are often not entirely accepted or perceived as being American, even if they were born and bred in the U.S. This gap, Kim states, can often be overcome by military service. There is prestige and honor associated with the uniform that is unique to the U.S. Those who serve are seen unequivocally as loyal and patriotic, as American. The uniform, he explains, opens the door for Asian-Americans to enter mainstream society. Powerful people in the U.S., including CEOs and politicians, often have backgrounds in the military.

More Asian-American recruitment, however, does not necessarily translate into more Asian-Americans in the front lines. Voice of America writes that most Asian-Americans are found in non-combat jobs than as front-line combatants. Many non-combat jobs exist for military recruits including technical, computer service and medical support. These jobs have the additional advantage of later carrying over to civilian life after their military term.

As explored, many reasons exist for the recent influx of Asian-American recruits in the U.S. military, but all motives are not strictly for the benefits.

For some Asian-Americans, their decision to join the armed forces stemmed from their appreciation of the U.S. Nikkei View, an Asian-American blog, describes a man who went into the army to repay the U.S. for helping his family after the Vietnam War. The sentiment, he states, is a common one among younger Asian-Americans who underwent the Vietnam War experience. Kim also explains that there are many Korean-Americans in the U.S. military because they appreciate the influential role the U.S. played in the Korean War.

Therefore, the recent surge in Asian-American recruits in the U.S. army can be attributed to many factors. For some, it is the education and financial benefits, U.S. citizenship, or the honor and prestige of the uniform. For others, it is a way to overcome the gap of being a minority and thus, gain acceptance and otherwise elusive opportunities. And still for others, it is a way to give thanks to the U.S. Although the chief reason for the surge cannot be ascertained, one thing remains certain: The U.S. military is increasingly becoming more reflective of the true demographics of the country, including the more than 17 million Americans of Asian decent.

(Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)