Hey, so I lived in Hawai’i for  six months in 2012 and you know in a lot of ways, it was great. For the first time in my life, I was finally able to ride a bus, filled to the brim, with people who looked like me. I was able to walk down the street from my house and eat at a restaurant where everyone spoke Japanese and it was the closest food that I could get my hands on that reminded me of food straight from Japan. I was able to work somewhere where I spoke Japanese on the daily basis and it was seen as no big deal.

But you know what? I left. I moved away. I came back home to the Pacific Northwest.

When I first got home, everyone bombarded me with questions, the number one being “why would you leave a tropical paradise to come back to a place like Washington?”

I am tired of this question. I am so angry that there is the expectation that Hawai’i is this place for escape, but when people think of Hawai’i they mostly think about Honolulu or Waikiki and I didn’t live in those places, those places are not only expensive but that place specifically CATERS to tourists only. I lived in Mililani Town. Central Oahu. Right smack dab in the middle where I was far away from the glitz and glamour of a “tropical paradise”. I worked in Pearl Harbor and every morning, I had to wake up at 4 o’ clock in the morning to make my long trek to my bus stop and once at the bus stop, I would be surrounded by abandoned cats begging for food (I on occasion shared my musubi with them), when on the bus it was always at full capacity. I would get on the bus at 5:30 A.M. and my job started at 8 A.M. On days I was able to get a ride from someone, it was only a 20 minute drive. Please let this paint a picture in your mind that traffic is atrocious there. It’s exhausting. And  let that painting equal that the island is far, far too over populated.

Once, I went to the most beautiful beach I had ever seen. However, it was military access only. Locals were NOT allowed to enjoy this beautiful beach. Native Hawaiian Locals were BLOCKED OFF from their own beach. I went once and never wanted to go again. I felt disgusted by myself and friends for having the privilege to enjoy that beach.

I worked as a tour guide in Pearl Harbor. During the summer, I probably gave tours to over 80 people a day. Multiply that by having a staff of at least 10 tour guides and just picture the amount of money that my work place collected and yet every day when I left to go home, I witnessed litter ALL over the island. When I talked to my friends who were locals, they all said that it’s a miracle if someone who attends school in Hawai’i ends up finding themselves in college. My room mates friend was a middle school teacher and when we talked she constantly talked about how awful the school was with materials as well as how “retarded” her students were.

I couldn’t stand working in the tourist industry in some ways. I couldn’t stand that we had so much revenue and it all just went back into the companies so that these people from the mainland could visit this fabricated idea of what Hawai’i is really like.

I’m not saying that the state of Hawai’i is terrible, what I am saying is is that the assimilation that’s happening in Hawai’i through the tourist industry is destructive and sad. Haole Army bro’s telling me that Pidgin is terrible and to never learn it. The rich history of Hawai’i that is being shared with tourists is only seen as this spectacle, like going to the zoo and watching the animals and ‘ooh-ing and aah-ing”.

I was alone in this place that to me was being taken over by an outsider culture and the harsh reality that I am also an outsider was much too much to handle alone.

By the time you read this letter
I’ll be far away from here
I’ve left to find my fortune
outside of the weir
the world is not this island
to dig and die for gold
and how can I stay here
with Australia full of gold

Father won’t forgive me
so mother don’t you cry
for one day I’ll return
with my head held high
for now keep that book
its words pulled my bowstring
and when I read them
for me changed everything

Words on a page can weigh a ton
when the past is not undone

I stowed away on a ship
that sailed the western sea
city to the outback
was all I’d read it’d be
the war broke out in ’41
I joined like every other son
and came back from Rabaul
with my life and an empty gun

When I came back to Canada
there were voices in my head
they spoke not with words
but with the faces of the dead
the strongest river current
can change its flow by force
but words brought me to the war
and changed my path and course

Now as an old man
I think of all the things I’ve done
’cause I’ve lived my whole life
like a bullet from a gun
I look back at myself
and when I was 21
and when I’d read that book
of foreign lands and all or none
I wonder if my heirs
will think of what I’ve done
and if the sins of the father
will visit the son
~The Town Pants; Words on a Page

This is the song that played in my head and the theme that resonated in me with each of todays essays; which themselves revolved around music. Ch1 talked about the symbolism in goa trance, raves, and techno music, and the identities people found in these sub-genres. Ch2 focused more on  politics and culture within Vietnamese. For many the music transcended politics, while others embraced the governments view of “social-evils.” The connection I made was how influential words on a page– or in song– can be, and how lives are changed.

No matter how hard governments try to suppress the ideas found in books, poetry, or song, their efforts ultimately fail. In the 1980s the US government sanctioned  PMRC (parents music resource center) attempted to censor artists– and by extension ideas. It was an American version of Vietnams “anti-social evils campaign.” Ch5 involved the role of hip-hop and rap in areas subjected to colonization and imperialism in Guam. Again, it made me wonder if America’s heirs will think of what Its done and if the sins of the father will visit the son. I also wonder what impact the words of the Blue Scholars, Black Eyed Peas and Cibo Matto will have on their listeners. How far will they travel outside the weir. What will the weight of their words have on this generation?

On page on 301, where it says, “To put it another way, hip hop and electronica use various technologies to deconstruct and reconstruct sound fragments in much the same way that marginal subjects create identities for themselves in a society that refuses to acknowledge them as wholly human.” I thought about this when listening to blue scholars and the black eyed peas with some of their songs. HI-808 was a good one to me because they combined hip hop with a jazz feeling so in a fact taking to different genres and put them together and also being in that Asian American melting pot of culture that some may not be used to seeing on TV or a music video. To see that this group which just of recent was introduced to me, they are really good. Combining the two surprised me a lot. I never knew this about Asian American in general and I guess goes with the saying, “Don’t judge a book by the color of the cover.” I really appreciate the music videos that were shown today and that I learned more about music, but more about Asian American which I know a lot about music, but not about this kind of music. I know more about music out of my own genre that can last for awhile, even MC Jin, I didn’t know that he was a rapper let alone to rap in his own language and that was impressive and made it flow just as it would in English. Shout out to all the other Asian American rappers/artists of hip hop that I don’t know about, but will find out about.