FIELDWORK - Honolulu & Seattle - Report by Tseen Khoo

03 November 2010

From 3-14 September, Tseen Khoo undertook fieldwork in the United States for ‘Being Asian in Australia and the United States’.

Tseen’s section of the project is focused on cultural community celebrations and commemorations, so the complex and fascinating Hawai'ian context was a fantastic way to kickstart the fieldwork. During her (all too short) time there, she met some great people from the University of Hawai'i and the Okinawan community. She had timed her visit to coincide with the annual Okinawan Festival that takes place in Kapiolani Park, adjacent to Waikiki; this year, it happened over the 4-5 Sept Labor Day weekend. The event was great to attend, and is a rich source of material for the project. Tseen was also taken on personalised tours of the Japanese Cultural Centre of Hawai'i and Honolulu’s Chinatown.

Tseen is very grateful to those who made her Honolulu stay so constructive and much fun:

• Pensri Ho
• Shari Tamashiro
• Christine Yano, and
• Jon Okamura.

Your many forms of generosity were much appreciated!

It was also a happy coincidence that fellow AASRN member, Adam Aitken, was in Honolulu at this time as the University of Hawai'i English Department’s Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Sharing their respective sociopolitical impressions of Hawai'i and the concept of ‘Pacific America’ was helpful for the project’s development.

Tseen’s next stop after Honolulu was Seattle, an almost 6-hour flight to the US mainland. Contemplating this distance forces you to realise how isolated Hawai'i is, and how many resources are invested in retaining the state’s psychic ‘proximity’ to the rest of the nation.

While in Seattle, Tseen had a very interesting and exciting meeting with Tom Ikeda (of densho.org), in-depth exploration of the International District and the award-winning and high-profile Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, and met up with Rick Bonus at the University of Washington.