Maki Tsuchie has been a television reporter and documentary film director in Okinawa for the past 10 years. Fully versed in the intricacies of U.S. and Japanese defense policy, she knows where the U.S. military stores depleted uranium and which U.S. troops in Okinawa have been sent to the Middle East. On a recent trip to Tokyo, she sat down with several Liberal Democratic Party members to discuss their concerns about a possible war with North Korea. Her dream post would be as a Pentagon reporter in Washington D.C.

Tsuchie received this year's Woman in Broadcasting Award from the Japanese Society of Women in Radio and Television for her documentary, "Kokuhatsu (Accusation)." The film is based on a series of interviews with a former Mainichi Shimbun reporter who obtained documents about secret treaty negotiations between the U.S. and Japan before Okinawa was officially returned to the mainland in 1972.

Tsuchie's other documentaries include "Ano hi wo Wasuretakute (Trying to Forget That Day)," an analysis of the media coverage surrounding the crash of a U.S. military airplane in Yokohama that killed two Japanese children, and "As Okinawa Goes, So Goes Okinawa," released on the 25th anniversary of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan. Her more recent work also includes documentaries about World War II from the perspective of Filipinos and North Koreans. Tsuchie is currently affiliated with the Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting Corp. in Okinawa.

Born in Shimane Prefecture and raised in Osaka, Tsuchie has lived and worked in Tokyo and in the United States. She is married to an African-American man and has a college-age daughter. Tsuchie spoke with The Japan Times about her experience with race on both sides of the Pacific.

What can the people of mainland Japan learn about race from the people of Okinawa?

When you live in Okinawa, you learn that people here are not necessarily open minded. Okinawans accept American things, but they do not accept Japanese things. I am sure it is partially due to the fact that they feel betrayed by Japan historically. Also, the language and culture is different, and the American military is right next door.

But more than the difficult historical and cultural reasons, I was surprised that older men and women go to McDonald's here. You see them eating hamburgers and drinking Coca-Cola. American food and music is accepted as normal. From that standpoint, there is a certain diversity, but Japanese traditional things are not really accepted. People living here have a lot of relatives who are not Japanese. When you look at the obituaries, a lot of times the list of surviving relatives or grandchildren includes names that are written in katakana. So that makes it seem like a foreign country.

In Japan, Okinawans have a strong identity. But otherwise in Japan, identity is not constantly and deeply questioned.

I do not have a deep sense of racial consciousness. I am just in this situation and I happen to live in Okinawa. When I was in America, I was always being asked where I was from or what my racial background was. In Japan, you are either Japanese or not Japanese. That is the level of distinction. My husband is simply seen as a non-Japanese, as a foreigner.

Do you feel that non-Japanese are treated similarly?

There is a difference in how Asians and Westerners [are treated], but it's not because they are black or white. I think the biggest difference is whether they are seen as Asian or Western. Asians are treated worse than Westerners. But even if you are American, you are not treated the same way as a Japanese. You are placed in a different position. People are not evaluated justly, in both good and bad ways. For simply being a foreigner you can be thought highly of, but the opposite is also true.

Are African-Americans seen as Westerners?

I think so.

You mentioned that you had to be conscious of race in the United States.

When I turned in a job application on one occasion, I was told that "You can work here, but you are not allowed to do the same work as a white person." Being in that position all the time was really vexing. At first I thought it was because of my English level, but then I realized that it was not. That is when I realized it was prejudice.

Incidents that would never happen to a Japanese in Japan happened on a regular basis. Being abroad was the first time that I realized what it meant to be a minority. No one understood my culture or background. In Japan, you can feel like a minority because women are seen on a lower level. But in America, even if you are a man or a woman, you can still be a minority on a different level.

When you returned to Japan, did you think differently about your experience?

That was really significant. Up until I returned to Japan from the U.S., there were a lot of things I did not notice, turns of phrase and unintentional actions that were really prejudicial. When you live in a different country, you learn how deeply influenced you are by the country you were born and raised in.

There are beautiful people among all the races; you do not decide who you truly respect on skin color. I knew that intellectually, but I did not really learn that until I lived overseas. As a minority, when you are unjustly evaluated, that experience helps you realize that you can't judge people correctly on their appearances.

What about your daughter's experience?

My daughter graduated from an American high school [on a U.S. base] but is living in Japan, so she has a Japanese address. Therefore she is not considered a kikokushijyo [returnee], and she cannot take the exam for a national university as a kikokushijyo. When I asked if she can apply as an American or a foreigner, I was told that wasn't possible either because she has Japanese citizenship. She can take the normal exam, but since she was not educated in a Japanese school she cannot read that many Chinese characters.

[The university is] saying that graduating from an American high school and having a Japanese address is contradictory, but there are American high schools on the bases. If my daughter did not have Japanese citizenship, they would let her take the [foreign student] test. I was so angry I wanted to throw the phone across the room. It is the epitome of injustice.

What are you going to do?

I am asking my daughter to hold on for a year while I think of something. I need to have a better idea of what a returnee is, and find out if there are more cases like this, since it is not a problem that is necessarily restricted to Okinawa. It could happen at the University of Tokyo or Kyoto University. There are a lot of people saying that I should sue. It is an easy thing to do and I think it will get a lot of attention. But suing is not necessarily the way to solve the problem.

"Halfs" -- or what some people call "doubles" -- encounter a lot of problems with citizenship.

I do not like that word "double," why do people have to say "double"? It just creates another category.

I can tell a lot about people when I look at how my daughter is treated. Some people ask "Where are you from?" "What nationality are you?" and "Where were you raised?" People [like her] are always asked that. It is just like asking a woman her age. Who cares? It's similar to how Japanese people like to ask what university you graduated from. What does that have to do with you? I hate that kind of division into categories. It is too bad that we have to live in a society that works like that.

Living in Okinawa, there are so many things that are unjust. I have realized that cultural differences, difference itself, was not really significant. People are not really that different. There are so many injustices that I do not want to [bother with] categorizing people by where they are from.

What do you think Japan needs to do to address issues of race in the future?

The simplest way is not to think about skin color or whether someone is a man or woman. For instance, when my daughter is asked what country she is from, she answers with her name.

Since all people are different, all we can do is accept those differences for what they are. Japanese have different faces. Kansai people, Tokyo people and Okinawa people all have different accents. But if you always have that in the foreground, we cannot move forward. All you need to know is whether you can speak Japanese with that person or not and the person's first name.