Community Questions

1.  Describe your community. You may be a part of many communities: church, school, neighborhood, youth groups, town, or social organizations. Describe the community to which you are closest.   

My community is made up of military and Japanese nationals. The base is composed of active duty military, retirees, contractors from the U.S and our base resides in Misawa City Japan. The city of Misawa is our home away from home and Misawa City is our adopted community.  They have welcomed us into their local community and we have gained a special relationship with the Japanese people in Misawa over the decades. The relationship between our Japanese community and military community is a strong bond. I feel that our military/Japanese community is very cohesive and works together on a lot of different events.

2.  What are the shared experiences and events in your community? 

Japan is known for a lot of events, holidays and parades.  In Misawa city, our host city will always include our base in festivities that are going on outside the gate. The Air Base will also share our American holidays and events with our Japanese counterparts.  We have an Air Show once a year that is open to the public and we put on special parades outside the gate for our host nation to be involved in.  It’s a great opportunity for the military and Japanese families to come together as one community and enjoy the celebrations together.

3.  What common goals do you and the people in the community share? 

I believe we share the common goal in helping each other through hard times.  When disaster hit last year with the tsunami, the air base put all their efforts into their adopted community to help clean, repair, and assist everyone that was displaced by the tsunami.  With monthly volunteer expeditions to serve food to the community outside the gate and clean up the mess from the water.

4.  What stories in your community need to be told? 

The stories that need to be told and shared are the ones where two nations come together during tough times, like the tsunami, to help each other out, providing food and shelter. Where we come together to celebrate holidays and events together where both American and Japanese families enjoy food and music with one another.

5.  How might individual, group, and community stories be told through art work?  (This is a key question!  Please give this question some thought, as it will be the main focus of your final project.)  

I think that it would be a wonderful project for the community (military/Japanese) to come together at local parks outside the gate and help clean them up, renovate the equipment with a new paint job and install new swing sets.  Then, on a long cement wall, have the children and adults create a mural together about things we like in our community.  Perhaps also have everyone who helped out with the park clean up, all leave a colorful painted handprint behind on the wall to signify their help in the project.

6.  Is there a sign, symbol, ritual, or story from these questions that could act as a central metaphor? 

I think the handprints on the wall would be a symbol of togetherness, helping each other out in one big diverse community, and perhaps the mural on the wall could depict the time when everyone came together during a natural disaster or times we've shared during certain holidays  parades, air shows and events.  Both American and Japanese.

7.  Are there opportunities for you to support and expand upon local craft traditions? 

Yes, there are a lot Japanese traditions that could be taught to the American side of the community.  We have a craft shop on base where local Japanese artist will teach classes on the art of origami, flower arranging, and cooking. Also the American side will host certain holidays for our Japanese community to be a part of, like bringing the local kids on base to go trick-or-treating or viewing Christmas lights during December.

8.  Discuss the idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What aspects of the community environment do some members of the group find beautiful that others do not?  Can those who find some Who could you partner with for this project?  

There are a lot of statues and art work around Misawa city and some of those pieces of art represent people in certain state of nudity.  The Japanese people are known not to be modest about their bodies, and some of the art work statues are of naked people.  There are a some conservative people who have expressed some distaste over naked statues, thinking they are not appropriate for public display, but I think if some of the conservative people should take the opportunity and learn about Japanese culture in regards to nudity, then they might have a new outlook on art and statues around Japan.

9.  Who could you partner with for this project? 

 I think it would be great for the military and local off base community to come together on a park project/mural.  Also, it would be great to bring the children from the on-base school and the children from the off-base local school together to work on a mural.

10.  Where could this event take place or be displayed? 

This event could take place outside the gate at a local park that is in need of repair and clean up.  The mural can be displayed at the park for everyone to see throughout the years.

11.  Who would you like to reach in this project?  Who would you like to see or be educated  by this project? 

I would like everyone to come out from our diverse community and work on a project that doesn’t require anyone to necessarily understand one another’s language.  Where everyone understands the same concept of working together, cleaning up, and improving something that the whole community will share.  I would love for the kids to be educated at an early age, about how coming together to support your community that you live in is a great way to interact with your community regardless of nationality.