learning about immigration

We were assigned a report for US history that involves studying your own ancestrial background. This required interviews of my grandmas and grandpas. So far I have only interviewed two of my grandparents and it was been very interesting to hear their stories and how they travelled to Hawaii. It's acually really difficult for me to trace far into my ancestors history. My grandparents didn't know a lot about their own background.

I first interviewed my grandparents on my mom's side. I found out that both of my great-grandmothers were locals. They were both born and raised on the Big Island. However, my great-grandfathers both immigrated from Japan. According to my grandparents, they simply left Japan in search of jobs on the plantations. There weren't really any struggle with the Japanese economy. Another interesting fact was that my grandmother had five brother and four sister. She was in a family with a total of ten kids. I found that to be completely ridiculous with that many siblings. I always thought my family on my mom's side was small, but because my grandma has so many siblings, I probably have many cousins I don't even know about.

Even though this assignment will be probably the longest paper written this entire year, I'm still excited to dig deep into my history and find out exactly where my ancestors came from. It has been interesting to hear all of my grandparents stories and it has been a way for me to get to know them even further. Luckily I still have one great-grandma and I'm really excited to hear what her mother and father were like. Woah, her parents would be my great-great grandparents. I'm more excited to learn about my heritage than write an eight page paper about the Japanese immigration to America. O well... I have a month to accomplish this task, so hopefully I won't be procrastinating.