Hawaiʻi resident Jon Itomura, a third-generation Okinawan, remembers his grandmother listening to the radio in an unfamiliar language when he was younger. At the time, he thought maybe the broadcasters were speaking Japanese.
"We grew up inundated with Japanese culture," he said. "It's not a negative. It's what we grew up with — contemporary Kikaida or traditional Japanese foods."
But the words being spoken on the radio weren't Japanese — they were Uchinaaguchi, traditional to Okinawa.
Itomura said he had a hard time distinguishing between the two languages at the time, and to this day, only knows some basic Uchinaaguchi words.
That's not uncommon considering Uchinaaguchi is a "severely endangered" language with only 95,000 speakers worldwide, according to the Endangered Language Project.
However, efforts are being made to preserve and revitalize its words — whether that be through festivals, performing arts, or publishing a language book.
A suppressed language
Before Japan annexed Okinawa in 1879, Okinawans had their own Ryukyu kingdom with culture and languages separate from Japan.
Six languages are spoken in the Ryukyuan islands, including Uchinaaguchi from Okinawa, Shimayumuta from Amami, Yanbaru Kutuba from Kunigami, Myaakufutsu from Miyako, Yaimammuni from Yaeyama, and Dunan Munui from Yonaguni.
Shoichi Iwasaki, a professor emeritus at the University of California Los Angeles, said the Okinawan language was suppressed for decades because the Japanese government enforced strict assimilation policies that discouraged Okinawans from speaking it.
"There was corporal punishment at school so that students will only speak standard Tokyo Japanese," he said.
Throughout the 20th century, schools in Okinawa used so-called dialect tags, a wooden plaque that read a person was caught speaking Okinawan.
Cultural practitioners and other Hawaiʻi residents said they have heard of stories involving children telling on their peers for speaking Okinawan to get the tag off themselves or by being forced to sit on cut bamboo sticks while degrading themselves.
The assimilation of Okinawans contributed to the older generation not passing on the language to the younger generations.
"People born after 1950 didn't have a chance to use the language at home, school or in the community," Iwasaki said. "The language was getting weaker and weaker after the 1950s. Even though there was some attempt to revitalize it locally, it just started to see this revitalization effort."
Rumiko Shinzato, a professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology, was born and raised in Okinawa and said there's a grassroots level of people volunteering to teach the Okinawan language at elementary schools or through performances.
However, she said there is a huge gap between native speakers and Okinawans who don't know their native tongue.
Iwasaki and Shinzato co-authored the first Okinawan language book for English speakers, which was published in May.
The book consists of conversational Okinawan and grammar. In addition, readers can learn about the culture in each chapter. It was inspired by Isawaki and Shinzato's devotion to preserving the language and the fact that no textbook was knowingly available for English speakers at the time.
Shinzato said there are many Okinawans in the diaspora, so providing them with a language book was critical.
"This is one way of giving back something meaningful to the place where I was born and the people who helped through the years and to our ancestors," Shinzato said.
Reconnecting through performing arts
The first group of Okinawan contract laborers came to Hawaiʻi in 1900, about 15 years after Japanese laborers arrived. They came to work in the sugar and pineapple plantations. However, due to cultural and linguistic differences, they faced discrimination from the local Japanese community.
According to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's Center for Okinawan Studies, roughly 45,000 to 50,000 Okinawans currently live in Hawaiʻi, making up 3% of the state's population.
Only a handful speak Uchinaaguchi fluently in Hawaiʻi, according to Eric Wada, co-founder and co-director of the Ukwanshin Kabudan, a nonprofit focused on Okinawan performing arts.
Wada teaches performing arts to help his students reconnect with their culture. He and his students performed a musical play in the Okinawan language this month, part of a broader cultural reconnection. He said the play represented the kingdom period about 300 years ago.
Through his work, he gets to pass his knowledge about the language, ceremonies and protocols to future generations.
"It's also trying to revive some of the cultural practices that have been either put to sleep or diluted because of the lack of understanding of the language," he said.
The heart speaks Okinawan
Some cultural practitioners have said there are only a few native Okinawan speakers in Hawaiʻi.
Grant Murata, a Hawaiʻi United Okinawa Association member, said he's still trying to learn the language.
Murata, of Okinawan descent, was adopted by a Japanese family but was always interested in Okinawan culture. Growing up, he learned Okinawan dance and Uta-sanshin, the art of singing, while playing the Okinawan three-stringed lute.
He said initially wanted to learn the language to understand his classmates.
Due to not having any Okinawan classes during that time, he would take notes and write most of the Okinawan vocabulary, then he would rent videos of Okinawan movies to help him use the words in sentences.
He said there's a passion for being Okinawan.
"Language is very important, but it's the heart," he said." The heart doesn't have to speak Okinawan. The heart speaks to be Uchinaaguchi (Okinawan)."
