2024/Michael-

My journey as a military child began at four years old when my parents accepted an engineering job in Iwakuni, Japan. Coming from Alaska, everything here was very different, from the tropical weather to the food, the culture, the people, to even commuting. The hardest part was going to Japanese school, dealing with the language difference, and having no friends.

It was hard, but as time went on, I managed. I wasn’t a remarkable student, but I cultivated relationships with my teachers and classmates as well as an understanding of the language, culture, and system by which the Japanese followed. I’d walk to school at eight, have class until first recess, then take extra Japanese lessons until lunch where we served our classmates in weekly shifts. This was followed by recess for forty minutes. We then cleaned our school, had our last classes of the day, and finished with mandatory club activities until 5:00 p.m.

Of course, it wasn’t all good. I still had to deal with racism from my Japanese classmates. Plus, I was quite the petty troublemaker and slacker-though I don’t like getting into the details of that. After five years of living in Iwakuni, my family moved to California as their term limits on their SOFA status had expired. The transition from a Japanese school to an American school was also rather hard. However, they were much more welcoming as it was a Title I school that was a melting pot of students. After a two year stint there, my family ended up moving back to Iwakuni as the cost of living increased and the rates of crime and poverty had risen. So, here I’ve been for the past three years.