Japan & United States: Multicultural Awareness in Okinawa
The AmerAsian School in Okinawa (AASO) is unique in that it enrolls almost exclusively biracial American-Japanese students, and has developed an original bilingual, bicultural “double” curriculum. Founded in 1998 by five Okinawan mothers, the privately run, K-9 school of 80 students contends that “Amerasian” children have the right to study in both Japanese and English, and aims to secure governmental funding.
Although no official statistics exist, academics estimate that about 250 mixed race American-Japanese children are born every year in Okinawa, the result of the numerous U.S. military bases here. These children, the AASO argues, are often unsuited for public schools, which offer little language support and allow too much discrimination toward racial minorities.
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