After Spring, the Tamaki Family…海的彼端｜Carnegie Mellon University
Date:3/1 14:00
Location:Carnegie Mellon University, McConomy Auditorium – Jared L. Cohon University Center
During Taiwan’s period of Japanese rule in the 1930s, a group of pineapple farmers sailed to the Yaeyama Islands in Okinawa to start a new life. Over time, they became naturalized Japanese and thrived. Grandma Tamayo TAMAKI was among the first-generation of these immigrants. In 2015, the TAMAKI family reunited to celebrate her 88th birthday, taking her back to Taiwan to revisit her family, and reigniting memories of her quest for a better life.
From the basis of the TAMAKI family’s history, HUANG undertook extensive fieldwork to represent the forgotten history of these island immigrants. Having experienced and observed many historical events such as Japanese rule, WWII and Taiwan’s retrocession, their identity as a Taiwanese faded with time. But by returning to Taiwan, questions of identity resurface. Like Shinsuke OGAWA, HUANG fully immerses himself in his subjects’ lives and environment enabling him to establish an intimate rapport with his subjects, while ample archive materials give depth to the story’s historical context.
竹雯的資料再麻煩幫我補上匹茲堡與談
📍Join us afterwards for discussion with Chu-wen Hsieh.
Hsieh is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at UNC. She received her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Political Science and earned a master’s degree in Anthropology from National Taiwan University. She also received a year of training at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Japan.
Hsieh’s research interests include the military, social movements, nationalism, empire, Japan, and Okinawa. Her master’s thesis, “Resistance for Peace,” illustrates how and why Okinawans insist on using peaceful methods to protest against the U.S. military and the Japanese government. This work culminates in her current project, which focuses on understanding everyday life in communities living next to U.S. military bases on mainland Japan against the backdrop of the U.S. military’s global ubiquity and the shifting patterns of the U.S.-Japan Alliance.