No one knows that I have a Japanese name. But I have always known that “Kay,” my middle name was my Japanese grandmother’s. Actually, when she was little, her name was Setsuko. “Kay” was the name that she was known by in her community in Hilo, Hawai‘i.
According to my mom, my grandmother used both names, sometimes together. “Setsuko Kay Hamamoto.” That’s what I wrote on the outside of all the envelopes when I sent her cards and thank you notes.
My grandmother had been born Setsuko Kawamura on a plantation in Lihue in 1916. She and her sister Fusae married two local brothers from the Hamamoto family, also in the same plantation community. My grandfather Kenzo was an accountant. Right after the war, he was offered a good job at the Moses company, which was why he and Grandma Kay moved to Hilo. My mother Jane remembers taking the inter-island ship from Lihue to Hilo, wondering what it would be like and feeling seasick the whole time.
In our family of two, the Japanese names were our middle names. My brother’s middle name was “Kenneth,” the English version of my grandfather’s name, Kenzo. My mother said that it had been important to give us Japanese middle names to honor our grandparents, her parents. I didn’t ask why.
Later, I would realize that my mother, a Sansei who had married a German American, wanted us to be able to pass, but not to forget our roots. She had found a clever way to connect us to our Japanese heritage.
I was grateful to be named after my grandmother Kay. She was my favorite grandmother. In contrast to my strict German grandma, Grandma Kay always smiled. She played games with us, sitting with us for hours on the floor. She taught us to play hanafuda, and we wagered pennies and nickels, the winner taking the losers out for ice cream. She taught us to use chopsticks, and she bought us a rice cooker so that we always had white rice.
Whenever I thought of my Grandma Kay, I thought of someone who was kind, cheerful, and elegant. I was proud to be Vivian Kay, and I tried to live up to the gentleness that she modeled for me.
When I got married, I changed my last name, taking my husband’s Germanic Clausing as my last name. Many of my professional friends opted to use their maiden names as middle names. But I kept “Kay.” I just couldn’t part with that piece of me that recalled my Japanese grandmother. She had been so proud of me when I entered law school, although she passed away the month before I graduated. Perhaps that is why I wanted to remember her as I started my professional life. I felt her smiling at me as I signed all of my letters “Vivian Kay Clausing.”
When I became a mother, I carried on our family tradition, naming my first born daughter after my mother, Jane. My daughter’s first name, Kelsey, echoes my grandmother Kay. Grandma Kay seemed happy with this as well, as Kelsey was born a day after Grandma’s birthday.
My mother sometimes joked that people would be confused when they saw her with a blond grandbaby, but she didn’t mind explaining to them that she was grandma. Like Grandma Kay before her, my mother saw us frequently, playing games, taking Kelsey on shopping trips, and introducing her to island food.
Kelsey, although blond and blue-eyed, always felt connected to her Japanese roots. To prove this to her skeptical college roommates, she first demonstrated her proficiency with chopsticks, then showed them pictures of her relatives.
Names connect us to our past, to our culture, and to future generations. Especially today, I’m happy to be Vivian Kay.
© 2024 Vivian Kay Clausing
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