SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento restaurateur Russell Okubo reflected on his Japanese heritage as part of ABC10's Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month coverage.
Okubo grew up attending Sacramento schools. He called his early years a simple life.
"As I got older, being taught family values and consideration for others,” Okubo said.
Home before the street lights turned on and constant family dinners, but he faced challenges as did those who looked like him.
“I’m third-generation Japanese so our parents were interned in camps, the second generation, after World War II. So when they got out of camp and they started having families we all got names, the third generation, Rick, Dan, Mike, Mary. Some of us got maybe a Japanese middle name but they tried to Americanize us as best as possible — they never spoke Japanese in the house so we lost that value,” Okubo said.
Okubo said he felt at times he missed out on parts of his heritage as his parents never spoke Japanese in the home in hopes of adjusting to life in America.
So he set out to reconnect with his roots.
“What I did was I took multiple trips to Japan as I got older and then I started to realize their culture and how it works and the society there and here are very different. Here it’s almost a very relaxed society where in Japan it’s very punctual, there's a lot of consideration for others. Some Japanese almost put themselves second.” Okubo said.
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On his first trip, Okubo said he felt out of place, recalling feeling divided on his heritage and where he was born.
“A little bit of a fish out of water. I was still pretty young and I had an incident on an airplane where I'm filling out my immigration cards and then I get to immigration and on the card, it says 'nationality' and I wrote Japanese so I present it to the guy at the immigration booth and he returns my paper and he says 'You’re not Japanese you’re American, change it,'” Okubo said.
To stay connected to Japan and his culture he reopened Fuji, a restaurant that was originally one of the first Japanese restaurants in Sacramento.
Today the heirlooms of his extended family decorate the walls, language lessons in the bathroom as he continues to pay homage to the original restaurant and what it meant to his community.
“This building that we're in now was kind of a special place because I was here as a kid 15, 16, 17 years old. Fuji was here for 38 years and the Fujita family ended up retiring and they closed and this building was vacant for about seven to eight years so I thought I would bring it back,” Okubo said.
Keeping the stories of those who came before him is also important to Okubo so the next generation can know the shoulders of the ancestors that they stand on.
“A lot of people my parent's age are depleting — like my father is going to be 99 so that generation is slowly passing there’s not a lot left of them, the original Japanese,” Okubo said.
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