100,000 Japanese-Filipino kids get no support from Jap dads

By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: June 27, 2007

MANILA, Philippines -- After the Japanese government tightened immigration controls in 2004, the number of Filipina entertainers going to Japan has dropped drastically.
But this migration pattern common to the 1980s and 1990s has produced an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Japanese-Filipino children.

Carmelita Nuqui, executive director of the Development Action for Women Network (DAWN), said most of these children do not have contact, much less support, from their Japanese fathers.

But more than child support, Nuqui said, every child has the right to a nationality and identity as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child. But these rights are usually not accorded these children.

This is why the Manila-based DAWN and the Center for Japanese-Filipino Children’s Assistance (CJFCA), and the Tokyo-based Home Lawyers, will be conducting a nationwide registration of Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines from August 1 to September 30 this year.

Home Lawyers is a private law firm.

The registration will be done in cooperation with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). The DFA’s regional consular offices nationwide and the DSWD’s Cordillera Autonomous Region and Baguio City offices will be used as registration centers for the two-month activity.

Nuqui said the registration aims to chart a socio-demographic profile of these children in the Philippines -- their whereabouts, their situation and their needs. She said it will also look into possible interventions that can be provided to them not just by non-government organizations but also by the Philippine and Japanese governments.

In Japan, she said, people register in the kosekitohon or family registry to establish their identity and nationality. She said these children are the new Nikkeijins, or Japanese people living outside Japan.

Nuqui said that in the 1990s, Philippine Nikkeijins, in particular the pre-war Japanese immigrants and their descendants, were allowed to go to Japan to claim their nationality and most allowed to work there..

She said the children of Filipina entertainers and Japanese nationals might enjoy some privileges from the Japanese government if they are recognized as the earlier Philippine Nikkeijins were.

Nuqui confirmed that television celebrity Iwa Moto is one of the children they hope to register.

“I hope she registers,” she said.

Nuqui said Japanese-Filipino writer Michiko Yamamoto, who wrote the screenplay of the award-winning film “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Olivares,” is also one of the Japanese-Filipino children and supports the registration project.

Earlier this year, in an initial survey among 100 mothers of Japanese-Filipino children and 56 children in Metro Manila, the CJFCA found out that most of the women interviewed barely survive, getting very little financial support from Japanese father of their children.

The findings also showed that a significant portion of Japanese fathers have never visited their children and some children have never met their fathers.