Re: Who Are You?

Description: A Japanese Yankee.

Question: Who are you?

Transcript: It’s Kenji Yoshino. I was born in Los Angeles, California.  I hope that that didn’t shape me at all.  I have no asperations on L.A. at all, but my family moved very early on to Boston, Massachusetts.  And that, I think, did shape me because that’s where I grew up.  And I think I have a very strong New England streak in me. I think it’s a work ethic thing.  And I also think it’s a kind of taciturnity of you don’t make friends that easily, but once you have a friend you are that person’s friend for life.

Question: How has your Japanese heritage shaped you?

Transcript: I think very much so, and perhaps more than other Japanese Americans; in so far as every summer growing up I returned with my family to Japan and spent a summer there.  So both my parents are Japanese nationals, and it was very important to them for me and my sister to keep close contact with Japan.  And so every summer we would return to Japan and spend from June to August there.

Question: Which side do you identify with more?

Transcript: Extremely, strongly with the American side rather than the Japanese side.  And in fact I think a lot of my work in civil rights and in constitutional law has to do with that difference between Japan and America.

Recorded on: 11/11/07