ABSTRACT
The Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands located in the Pacific have long been home to a translingual and transcultural diverse community of Japanese nationals. The community is often overlooked in discussions on the historical development of nationality and identity in Japan. This is despite the many insights this important history provides in following how legal status developed in Japanese society and how, over critical historical periods, debates and discussions fluctuated on where the boundaries of Japanese identity lay. In this chapter, I provide a glimpse into the complex history of race and ethnicity in Asia and its connection to the Pacific through the lives of some of those who lived through formative times in the emergence of notions of Japanese nation, empire and citizenship. This research fills many gaps and provides insight from a novel perspective that has remained obscure.
