Language to an Immigrant

“To know who I am, I have to know who Setsutaro Hasegawa is.”

It is sentiments like this that drive home the significance of passing one’s culture on to future generations, especially in light of identity-altering events like immigration. I feel it deeply as a second-generation Asian immigrant in Australia, a daughter of Lao refugees. It is a mission that I am slowly achieving through writing: to know who I am, I have to know who my ancestors are.

The words are spoken by Australian man, Andrew Hasegawa, about his great-grandfather, a Japanese man who immigrated to Australia with simple aspirations that grew into idyllic dreams. At first, Setsutaro (henceforth, Hasegawa) merely wanted to improve his English. But this humble dream fertilised his roots to the land – helping him to find a vocation in the laundry business, to meet a wife in Australian-born Ada Cole, to participate in local communities via poultry and livestock shows, to cultivate friendships, to raise three Australian-born children.

In 1897, leading such a life as an Asian immigrant in a predominantly English-speaking country was a product of privilege and luck. The colony was just beginning to restrict the influx of immigrants, laying foundations for the White Australia policy that heralded the next century. Hasegawa took advantage of the budding trade relationship between Japan and Australia, hitching a ride on a ship called Yamashiro Maru, on the new Japan-Australia shipping line (Dusinberre, 2023).

Though, of course, Hasegawa couldn’t escape Australia’s racism entirely, his relative wealth and education level – he had an inheritance from his father’s death, plus presumably university-level education due to his profession as a schoolteacher – allowed him to forge connections, run a business, and lead a rich life for most of his time in the country.

On a visit to Victoria’s Immigration Museum, I browsed a collection of Hasegawa’s remaining possessions, donated to the museum by Andrew Hasegawa. Many are literary: a diary containing skilful calligraphy, a letter from his siblings in Japan. As a writer, this struck me first. But what hit home was realising that two of the items that Hasegawa chose to bring were for learning English: a textbook of English lessons and a miniature English dictionary, which could be carried around in a metal case.

It took me back to stories from my father, of his refugee journey from Laos to Australia post-Vietnam War. Like most Lao people in the UNHCR-sponsored refugee camp he stayed in, he had little to offer to Australia’s industry. But he had English. He had some formal education, and he had luck.

Having an education and a grasp of the English language is immigrant privilege, and evidently Hasegawa knew it. His whole family valued education, demonstrated in the letters he received from home, written in sophisticated script. Surviving family members remember him attending university. His motivation to come to Australia was to improve his English.

It was the opposite for my father. While Hasegawa moved to Australia to learn English, my father learned English for the possibility that it would improve his chance of immigrating to Australia. Taking simple phrases from an English conversation book, my father struck up conversation with an Australian immigration officer who was visiting the refugee camp.

“Good afternoon, sir,” my father said.

“Good afternoon,” the immigration officer replied.

“How are you?” my father asked.

“Very good, and you?” said the officer.

“Very good, thank you. Ratry is my name,” said my father, “I want to migrate to Australia for my refugee resettlement. But I have no sponsorship from anyone in Australia.”

After a short conversation, the immigration officer took a liking to my father, offering him the task of interpreting selection interviews between Australian officers and Lao refugees. These interviews would determine who among the camp’s residents would be selected to immigrate to Australia. My father was hellbent on getting an interview himself but had so far failed. He took this offer as a chance.

By the end of the second interview, the immigration officer took my father aside.

“Ratry, please go back to your room and return to me here with your family members, personal documents, your UNHCR refugee registration, and passport-size photographs.” he said.

“Yes sir,” my father said, “Thank you very much sir.”

The officer put my father’s name on the list of applicants for interview. While my father’s interview took longer than usual (his ties to Vietnam were interrogated due to spending 5 years studying at university there), he and my mother were approved for resettlement in Australia.

“Australia likes people like you.” the officer said, at the end of the interview.

People like you… I have often wondered what was meant by that. I think my father understood it in a similar way to Hasegawa: that it was a certain level of education, sophistication, and English language that got him to Australia.

That value of education has been passed onto me, as it has to many other children of immigrants. And, while my lazier Western sensibilities have pushed against the education system at times, I can’t deny that education and a penchant for the English language are also what brought me here – to writing stories for my father, for myself, and for you.

References

Immigration Museum (2025). Setsutaro Hasegawa. Immigration Museum – Immigrant Stories. https://museumsvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/resources/immigrant-stories/setsutaro-hasegawa/

Dusinberre, M. (2023). Archival Country, Counterclaims. In Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and its Migrant Histories (pp. 122-171). Cambridge University Press.

Stefik, A. (n.d.). Profile: Andrew Hasegawa. Past Wrongs, Future Choices. https://pastwrongsfuturechoices.com/stories/profile-andrew-hasegawa/