Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0045/00450.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 6KB | 136 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00450}
$Pretitle{266}
$Title{Bolivia
The Japanese Settlers in the Tropical Lowlands}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Peter McFarren}
$Affiliation{Embassy of Bolivia, Washington DC}
$Subject{japanese
bolivia
japan
okinawa
now
first
miyagi
war

}
$Date{1989}
$Log{}
Country:     Bolivia
Book:        The Cultural Guide of Bolivia
Author:      Peter McFarren
Affiliation: Embassy of Bolivia, Washington DC
Date:        1989

The Japanese Settlers in the Tropical Lowlands

     Tokusho Miyagi fought the Russians and Americans in World War II and
spent two and a half years as a war prisoner in a Siberian coal mine. Today he
oversees a 430-acre farm on Bolivia's tropical frontier, half a world from his
Okinawa homeland.

     Miyagi is one of more than a million Japanese who settled in South
America after the war and contributed to the region's development.

     Three hours away by car from Santa Cruz, Miyagi, now 67, lives with his
family in a comfortable concrete bungalow. Beside it is a garden filled with
Chinese cabbage, tractor sheds and a windmill atop a water tank.

     "In Okinawa, 300 families would have what I have here," he said in broken
Spanish. His wife, who speaks only a few words of Spanish, served coffee. "I
was a prisoner of war in Siberia, and after I returned to Okinawa, there was
no work," he added.

     In 1954, Miyagi, his wife and five children joined 400 other Okinawans
and headed for Bolivia. They crossed the pacific Ocean with documents issued
by the U.S. civil administration of the Ryukyu Islands that controlled Okinawa
until 1972 when it was returned to Japan.

     The former Japanese ambassador to Bolivia, Tadatsuma Yabu, recalled in a
recent interview. "We lost a great deal of territory after the war. Japan was
in a miserable state. There was no place for over one million people who lived
in Taiwan, Manchuria and other regions, and who had grown accustomed to a
different way of life."

     One million Japanese left for South America, with relocation expenses and
loans from the Japanese and U.S. governments. Most settled in Brazil while
80,000 made their way to Peru, 30,000 to Argentina and 10,000 to Bolivia.

     "We are still very grateful to Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina for
having opened the doors to our immigrants," Ambassador Yabu said. "We have
very special ties with South America."

     Brazil's Japanese community, the largest outside Japan, centers around
the industrial hub of Sao Paulo. Many are in agriculture but there is also a
strong Japanese presence in industry, commerce, government services and
academia.

     The first few hundred Japanese arrived in Bolivia as long ago as 1899 to
escape harsh living conditions on Peruvian plantations to which they had
migrated. When the big postwar exodus began, the earlier immigrants helped the
new arrivals get settled.

     Miyagi and his family were among the pioneer settlers of the community
now called Okinawa in the inhospitable eastern tropics of Bolivia. The
Bolivian government gave each family 50 hectares (124 acres) of land. The
United States provided tractors and other farm equipment.

     Okinawa and San Juan de Yapacani, a colony 85 miles to the west, were
carved out of rain forests inhabited by pumas, wild pigs, alligators, piranha
fish and native tribes. In the first six months, 15 Japanese died in a
mysterious epidemic. Many fled to Brazil and Peru or returned to Japan.
Flooding destroyed their first three rice harvests and drought killed cotton
planted later.

     Wells had to be dug for drinking water. Santa Cruz, the nearest city, was
reachable only by a two-day horseback ride because trucks could not make it
over the swampy terrain.

     Okinawa and Santa Cruz are now linked by a dirt road maintained by the
Japanese International Cooperation Assistance Program. Two modern hospitals
built with Japanese government aid serve the area's 1,600 Japanese and 4,000
Bolivians.

     Modern tractors, bought on credit from Tokyo, plow the Okinawa colony's
45,000 acres of arable land, which this year produced 97,000 tons of rice,
wheat, soya and sugar cane, and 550,000 dozen eggs. A cooperative of Japanese
settlers is in charge of marketing.

     Okinawa and San Juan de Yapacani have introduced rice, chicken farming
and modern agriculture methods to the area and now produce half of Bolivia's
poultry and eggs. Thanks to Japanese farmers, Bolivia now exports rice.

     Okinawa's social and political life centers around the Bolivian-Japanese
Association. It organizes festivals and Spanish and Japanese language classes,
registers births and runs the colony's two hospitals.

     The association's recent president, Kori Yamashiro, also arrived in
Bolivia with his wife and three children. Recalling visits back to Japan in
1974 and 1982, he said; "I saw what life in Japan was really like. The people
are very busy and have no time for pleasure. One has to work hard to maintain
a family."

     "I'm content here. At first it was hard, but now I'm used to life in
Bolivia."

     Sitting next to him, his wife, wearing a Japanese-style housedress,
watched a Japanese musical show on a Japanese-made video recorder. Against the
whitewashed walls of their home is a shelf filled with Japanese books and
magazines.

     Yamashiro maintains his faith in Shinto, the native Japanese religion of
ancestor worship. His sons, like most Bolivians, are Roman Catholics.

     Children of the first postwar inmigrants have moved to cities in Bolivia,
returned to study in Japan or taken over their parents' farms. Most consider
themselves Bolivians but maintain ties with Japan.

     Kyomi Nakazo, 30, arrived as a toddler in 1959 during a second wave of
postwar immigration. She now works as a nurse at the Okinawa hospital and has
married a Japanese she met last year while studying in Japan.

     "Japan is another world," she said. "I liked it very much. There is more
comfort in Japan, but spiritually I prefer to be here."