hap·a
ˈhäpə,ˈhapə/
noun
US
- a person who is partially of Asian or Pacific Islander descent.
I am third generation Japanese on my mother's side and am going to be starting this project by researching this side of my family first. Besides learning more about my grandparent's time in the Japanese Internment Camps I would like to learn more about their childhood and where my family comes from in Japan.
Over the course of this project I am hoping to accomplish a wide variety of goals. I am sure over time they will evolve or change. Most importantly I want this to be more than just a simple family tree. I want it to show my family's experiences, emotions and personality so I can keep their memory alive through another medium. I am hoping that having these stories can bring my family closer together and give us all a deeper understanding of where we came from.
This week I focused on gathering family names and starting a family tree. I signed up for a free trial on Ancestry.com and got started.
Registration for the website was fairly easy but looking up family members wasn't quite as simple as I'd expected. Since many of my Japanese family members have both a Japanese and English name it made the search process a little harder. Also, I found that many of the documents with my great-grandparents names had misspellings. Luckily by talking to my family and doing some research I was able to find more information.
The best part of Ancestry.com is that you can find specific documents verifying each family member's identity. Then you can save them into each person's profile. Before you know it you have so many leads that you don't even know where to start!
So far I was able to find immigration and boat records for all four of my great-grandparents on my Japanese side. I was also able to find documentation of their time in Japanese internment camps and my grandfather's time served in the United States army. Unfortunately from there I hit a dead end. Ancestry.com does not have a program in Japan so I am not able to search history that happened before they arrived in the United States.
Below is the start of my family tree. By the end I hope to have a physical one with photos that I can hang in my house.
My family at my graduation from CSU Chico in 2008
Me and my family 1995
This week I focused on gathering family names and starting a family tree. I signed up for a free trial on Ancestry.com and got started.
Registration for the website was fairly easy but looking up family members wasn't quite as simple as I'd expected. Since many of my Japanese family members have both a Japanese and English name it made the search process a little harder. Also, I found that many of the documents with my great-grandparents names had misspellings. Luckily by talking to my family and doing some research I was able to find more information.
The best part of Ancestry.com is that you can find specific documents verifying each family member's identity. Then you can save them into each person's profile. Before you know it you have so many leads that you don't even know where to start!
So far I was able to find immigration and boat records for all four of my great-grandparents on my Japanese side. I was also able to find documentation of their time in Japanese internment camps and my grandfather's time served in the United States army. Unfortunately from there I hit a dead end. Ancestry.com does not have a program in Japan so I am not able to search history that happened before they arrived in the United States.
Below is the start of my family tree. By the end I hope to have a physical one with photos that I can hang in my house.
 |
My family tree on the Kihara side. I was not able to search any further than my great-grandparents.
|
 |
My family tree on the Irvine side. As you can see I was able to get a lot further. I was able to find the first family members that came to the United States from England.
|
