Clip description
This clip begins with Chiaki Foster speaking to camera about her love of bingo and poker machines. She is filmed playing bingo and heard in voice-over speaking about the friends she has made. Her daughter reflects on her mother’s enjoyment now that she can go out and have fun. Filmmaker Solrun Hoaas asks Foster whether she brought her children up speaking Japanese. Foster answers that she would have liked to but that her husband refused because he said they were Australian. Her husband is interviewed on camera and explains that in the context of the time, when Australian attitudes towards the Japanese were quite hostile, he decided their children shouldn’t learn the language. Their daughter speaks to camera about her mother’s feelings of loneliness and guilt about leaving her mother back in Japan. The clip ends with Chiaki talking about her mother and her own feelings towards living in Australia.
Curator’s notes
The clip touches on the complexities of rearing children of mixed heritage parents. The Fosters did not teach their daughter Japanese. Hoaas provides the viewer with three perspectives on a Japanese-Australian family and the reflections of the family members about each other are revealing. Chiaki Foster’s journey is the biggest – a journey that is both physical and emotional. By the end of the clip she says that she is now more Australian than Japanese. In the bingo halls and the poker machine clubs, Chiaki has found a way to become a 'dinky-di’ Australian.