Kinship

1. For this assignment I talked to my dad. My dad is half Japanese and half Native American and was born is Kauai, Hawaii but grew up in Venice and Santa Monica California. His brother and him grew up in a very poor family, but was actually more well off than most due to very rich friends as he also hung out in Beverly Hills or Bel Air. He was always in the ocean or the sidewalk, as surfing and skateboarding were a passion for him (he grew up where the Dogtown Zypher Skateboard team first started, and was actually good friends with Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, Jeff Ho and the rest before moving to Santa Clarita when he met my mom to start a family).

2. I was very comfortable talking to him (as he has told me these things before). The thoroughness was the maximum as much as I knew, everything I asked him he had an answer to. I would imagine this would not be the case if I was interviewing someone unrelated. It would all be sort of basic information, and would take a lot longer to get in depth answers.

3. The entire family is Asian, so anyone who isn't is going to be the oddball at family reunions (usually my brother, my mom and I - who look predominately white). A portion of the family you see in the kinship chart actually live in the United States, and some of those are close enough for us to have contact. Kevin, Staci, Kathleen (Kathy), Aunt Helen, Uncle Ronald (Ronny), my uncle Craig and of coarse Rose are the only ones we keep a monthly contact with. There are also dozens and dozens of cousins in Hawaii whom I have never met nor does my Dad really know any of the names. Family reunions happen every other year, where most of all the US relatives attend, with one or two from Hawaii occasionally. Our elders pretty much have their own group since they were from a large family when at reunions, with us young adults and kids in another, which tend to have smaller families. There is no emphasis on maternal or paternal lines - and we all live in tight knit families, so all aged people live together.

4. My mother's side of the family is a very gloom situation, I don't know any of her family and she doesn't seem to know where her sisters are. I have a couple memories of my mom's dad when I visited them when I was 3 years old in Michigan, but nothing else. I have met and gotten to known most of my dad's uncles and aunts, at least the ones who don't live in Hawaii.

I would say in my four person family that my both my mom and dad have equal say in the decisions, if it were one person over the other that not be a worth-wile relationship. In bills, my brother and I, the house, and even decorations, they always run everything by each other.

My uncle has had one divorce and for his new relationship we were all just as supportive as we were in the previous, our family holds no grudges and is very close; and there is absolutely no attitudes towards different genders, they are all respectful people with good morals.

If anything this has confirmed my previous beliefs that I love my family and always will. They are all extremely kind people who would give a helping hand to anyone if they needed it. True role models.

Chart is a little sub-par, but I got all of the closely related to my dad.