Old Japanese Artifacts

The Japanese American Museum has a Museum Store Catalog that not only can one learn about what you can order from this catalog booklet, but one can gather a lot of historical information just by looking through the catalog. For instance, I was just looking throught the booklet thinking that "Oh this is just a catalog book about gardening!", then when I started looking through it I noticed that there was a word that I had not heard before. "What is this word?", I said. When I began reading the article that was under the word I was shocked.
There was a picture of an attractive, what appeared to be a white male with dark hair there in the picture. I looked closer and saw that the advertisment said,"PART ASIAN . 100% HAPA".
I looked again and wondered what was the word "HAPA"? Here began my unexpected lesson. This advertisement was a book and movie made for an explanation for those who wondered what a part Asian and part HAPA person was. What were they talking about?
Hapa is an Hawaiian word for "half". "Hapa" is now being embraced by Asian or Pacific Rim mixed heritage persons to explain their ethnicity. Now "HAPA" is used as a positive word and not used as a derogatory word as it had been. Mixed race persons could answer now the question: What are you? The answer now is "HAPA". One can buy a movie or book to explain the ethnicity of a half Asian / Pacific Rim person.
Where there was once a derogatory concept, there is now an allowance of pride.[Edit by="sshorter on Jan 9, 2:02:50 AM"][/Edit]