One of the unexpected methods that Milwaukee native Janet Boettner instinctively used to reflect on her experiences around the world was to measure the journey of her life in meals.
They were the ones she ate at home with her family, practical and affordable. The ones she ate with her relatives, steeped in tradition. The ones she shared with friends, shaped by the community around her. They were the ones that reminded her where she belonged, and the ones that made her feel like an outsider at her own table.
The language of taste expressed as much about identity as it did about memory.
And it was during her early years growing up on a U.S. military base in Okinawa that Boettner discovered those tastes in the traditions of Japanese home cooking.
Her father from Milwaukee was a Master Sergeant, her mother was Japanese from Osaka, and together they exposed Boettner to foods and memories she now shares with Milwaukee diners, fusing her Okinawan roots with a Midwestern culinary sensibility.
“I was very young when we first moved to Okinawa,” said Boettner in an interview with “Milwaukee Independent.” “That was probably around 1971, so Okinawa was kind of my birth home. I remember the sandy beaches and the sounds of nature in those early years, and especially the things we ate. All that really resonated with me when I was growing up.”
Boettner said that Okinawa was also part of her family history, with smells connecting to some of her earliest memories.
“Okinawa was always a part of where my grandparents lived when we came to visit them. When I was small, it felt like a million miles away, traveling from the base into the countryside,” said Boettner. “Then we’d come upon this very small, old-fashioned Japanese house with sliding doors and tatami. And everywhere there’d be smells of the sea, the bamboo trees, and cooking. Okinawa brings back all those memories.”
Boettner’s grandfather was originally from Okinawa, but his family sold him to another family on the island as a child. He was then made to do crab diving to survive, and he bore the brunt of a lot of hardships.
When he was old enough, he moved from Okinawa to the main islands of Japan to start over. Her grandfather eventually settled in Osaka, located on the largest island of Honshu. It was there that he met Boettner’s grandmother.
“They got married, had my mother, and then a son shortly afterward. My real grandmother was so excited to have a boy, and she was looking forward to feeding him a takuan,” said Boettner.
Takuan is a traditional Japanese pickled daikon radish. It is typically bright yellow, with a crisp, slightly sweet, and tangy flavor. Pickled foods like takuan are seen as nourishing and fortifying in Japan. They symbolize health, endurance, and longevity, especially for boys who are expected to grow strong. But Boettner’s baby uncle accidentally choked to death on a bit of takuan.
“After that, she just … She died of a broken heart. That’s what my mom called it, a broken heart,” said Boettner. “So for the longest time, it was just my grandpa and my mom. He kind of raised her as a boy, to be tough and strong like a boy. Then, he was matchmade with another woman, who became my step-grandmother.”
Boettner was told many such family stories growing up as a reminder of her heritage, since her parents and siblings were always required to move every few years and could not establish deep roots in one place. Her father, who had served in multiple branches of the U.S. military, would be resigned to different bases usually far from either Okinawa or Milwaukee.
After spending time in Utah, her father was eventually reassigned back to Okinawa by the time Boettner hit her teen years. But as she returned being older, it was not long before she noticed how different her experiences were on base, surrounded mostly by Americans, versus off base in Okinawa.
“For me, I guess it was a little bit difficult. When we’d go off base, everybody would look at me kind of weird and whisper. Living on base and going to school, everybody was American. So I would get made fun of, and people would say things thinking I was Chinese,” said Boettner. “They just couldn’t grasp the concept of having somebody who looked Asian in an American school on the base.”
Those contrasts of identity were part of her family story long before she was old enough to realize it. Her father had first visited Okinawa when he was in the U.S. Army. On one of his trips, he met her mother on a bus.
“He was traveling and wearing his uniform, obviously an American. When I knew him, my father was in the Air Force. But when he met my mother, he was still in the Army,” said Boettner. “At the time, Japan still had stewardesses who helped passengers on the buses and she was one of them. That’s how they met.”
The U.S. Air Force became an independent branch of the military after World War II, breaking away from its origins in the U.S. Army. With rapid expansion during the Cold War era, it created new career opportunities for servicemen.
However, American military culture and local Okinawan society did not always mix well. Boettner’s mother faced skepticism from friends who had seen too many U.S. servicemen abandon their Japanese “wives” when a tour ended. Such men were commonly referred to as “Gaijin,” but the term itself meant any foreigner.
“A lot of her friends were against their relationship,” said Boettner. “They warned her about Gaijin and G.I. And so everybody was certain it was going to happen to her. But she was like, ‘I don’t care, whatever is going to happen is going to happen,’ and kept seeing my father.”
Boettner’s father, for his part, was determined to prove that a marriage would last, and he experienced the other side of interracial dynamics. Once, he was deeply offended when a Japanese car salesman congratulated him on having a “lady” who could tend to his “needs,” implying she was merely a convenience.
“He was adamant about their relationship. He would say, ‘This is my wife. And nobody is going to stop us from getting married and being together,” said Boettner.
They did marry in Okinawa, then were eventually transferred back to the United States, where they stayed in Milwaukee for a time. In those days, average Americans still harbored hard feelings about Japan, and the shadow of the Vietnam War lumped all people of Asian descent together. But Boettner recalled stories about how her father’s parents were welcoming to her mother.
“They were very kind to her. She learned English by watching soap operas during the day with my grandma,” said Boettner. “There was no animosity towards her, and she never had any fears about going out. That was kind of surprising here considering the times, in the 1960s.”
Milwaukee was experiencing the pains of segregation, with riots and marches for housing rights. Boettner’s mother was in the middle of it all.
“They were living in a neighborhood where the rights marches would go on, so she’d have to stay inside. And then my dad got shipped off to Vietnam while she was pregnant,” said Boettner. “But she said that everybody always treated her really well, and she never had any problems.”
Boettner said there were times in her youth when she felt life in America seemed very distant and far removed from her life growing up in Japan. Talking to her mother helped her make sense of her feelings by offering a perspective. Boettner’s mother would tell about how her family experienced many hardships during the Second World War, sharing stories from her own childhood.
“What she talked about a lot was how, whenever the air raid sirens went off, all the women, children, and elderly had to hike up the mountain,” said Boettner. “It took almost all day, and they would wait up there until the all-clear signal came before hiking back down.”
Boettner’s mother said that the American bombs kept dropping so much that they got used to the conditions. She and her half-brother were just kids, so after a while they stopped paying a lot of attention.
“Then one night, she and her brother were sleeping when the bombs started dropping again. They were like … ‘whatever, we’re used to it by now,’ and went back to sleep,” said Boettner. “But family had to wake them up because the house was actually on fire. They barely escaped with their lives.”
At different times in her youth, Boettner grappled with questions about her identity. English was her first language, and she was very Americanized. But she had also immersed herself in the Japanese culture in alignment with her mother, while her brothers took on more of an attachment to their father. So while she would feel more comfortable in Japan, her brothers had an advantage in America.
“In my school years, I felt like a mutant. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t connect with these other people. I don’t look like them, so in my mind, I was ashamed, quite frankly,” said Boettner.
Boettner said that she had a hard time dealing with it, because she spoke English very well and knew how to communicate. Also, her kind of mentality was not really a Japanese culture mentality. It was more American.
“It took a really long time for me to accept even just how I looked. I was probably in my early teens that I finally just said I don’t even care anymore,” said Boettner.
Part of that acceptance came from returning to Okinawa in her teens, where she realized other girls shared her mixed heritage. Another part stemmed from something more universal. Food. In her household, her mother’s cooking included rice with steak. Or peppers stuffed with ingredients that combined both American and Japanese pantries.
“In America, everything was canned. Everything was overcooked. Everything was just kind of bland,” said Boettner, describing how her mother initially learned to make American meals from her Depression-era in-laws, “But over the years, she got a little bit better and better at it.”
Her family learned to scour Asian groceries or made treks to Chicago to stock up on supplies. Boettner’s true culinary comfort came from the Japanese-style dishes her mother prepared. Those included rice dishes, ramen, breaded and deep-fried cutlets known as katsu, and other staples that were difficult to find in American supermarkets.
One example of a food that crossed over Japanese and American cultures was the hamburger, but it also highlighted the cultural differences. In Japan, a “hambāgu” is also made from ground beef and shaped into a patty, but it is served with sauce instead of in a bun.
“In my childhood, it took me a really long time to get used to an American hamburger. My poor father, I felt so bad for him. He would be so excited to share American food with me. We stood in line for two hours when McDonald’s opened up in Okinawa for the first time,” said Boettner. “When I finally got my McDonald’s hamburgers and fries, I hated it. To this day, I can’t eat a hamburger that’s got mustard, pickles, onions, and ketchup. I can’t do it.”
Over time, Boettner did get used to the taste of some American foods. She even loves pizza now, but it was a different story when she was originally introduced to it by her father.
“The first time I ever had pizza, I literally cried,” said Boettner. “I was like, ‘I can’t eat this. What is it? What are you trying to do to me?.'”
Eventually, life in Milwaukee offered another way for Boettner and her family to indulge in the tastes of the home they knew in Okinawa. A Japanese restaurant called Izumi’s opened on the east side of Milwaukee in the 1980s. Boettner dared her mother to apply for a job waitressing, so she went. That was how she met Ikumi Nakayama-Comeau and Izumi Kabata, the creators and original owners.
“My mother walks in and right away meets Ikumi, and finds out she is from Okinawa. So they hit it off immediately and she got hired that day,” said Boettner.
Izumi’s would become a hub not just for Boettner’s family, but for an emerging interest in Japanese cuisine across Milwaukee.
Boettner eventually pitched in and began working there. She would roll out tray after tray of sushi, as local diners embraced California rolls and other specialties. Still, sushi was only a fraction of what she grew up eating.
“I can’t actually remember having sushi in Okinawa,” said Boettner. “In Japan, sushi was more geared for businessmen at the time. Not everybody went out and ate sushi. So to me, that was a little more foreign.”
The 1980s saw a financial boom in Japan that fueled rapid economic expansion, with Japanese culture being an important global export. While cartoons, movie monsters, and TV miniseries like James Clavell’s “Shōgun” had an immediate impact on Americans, it was having access to Japanese food – in the form of sushi – that had the biggest and longest-lasting influence.
Even now, Japanese restaurants in America are synonymous with sushi because of how Japanese cuisine was introduced and marketed in the West. Sushi became the face of Japanese food in the 1960s and 1970s, when Japanese cuisine started gaining popularity in the United States.
Sushi was also an easy entry point because it aligned with growing interests in seafood, minimalism, and high-end dining experiences. Boettner saw firsthand how Milwaukee residents discovered and embraced sushi at that time.
“We were there when that explosion of popularity happened, and suddenly people could not get enough of sushi,” said Boettner. “I had to pre-make 30 California Maki before we opened, and it was gone in half an hour.”
However, sushi continues to represent only a small fraction of what Japanese people actually eat. Everyday home-cooked meals are rarely the focus of Japanese restaurants in the U.S., in part largely due to market demand. Many traditional Japanese home dishes rely on simple, subtle flavors, which do not stand out to the expectations of American diners. Ramen and katsu dishes have made inroads in recent years, but there is still a gap in proportioned representation.
Throughout her experience at Izumi’s and after, Boettner found herself craving the simple dishes her mother used to make at home: hearty bowls of brown Japanese curry over rice, savory pork katsu, and what was known as yoshoku cuisine – which did not include sushi. They were the sort of everyday meals that Japanese people thought of as home cooking, the sort of dishes anyone in Japan might eat for lunch on a regular day.
Chief among them was the gravy-like Japanese curry rice, known as Karē Raisu. It was introduced to Japan in the late 19th century during the Meiji era, brought by the British who had adapted Indian curry into their own cuisine. Initially considered a foreign dish, it was quickly embraced and modified to suit Japanese tastes. By the early 20th century, it became a staple in military and school meals due to its affordability, nutritional value, and ease of preparation.
Over time, curry rice evolved into a national comfort food, found everywhere from home kitchens to convenience stores and specialty restaurants. It had transformed from a Western import into an everyday dish deeply embedded in Japanese food culture, symbolizing warmth, nostalgia, and adaptability.
“I wanted my mom’s home cooking. I wanted something that in Japan you could just walk down the street to the ‘mamasan’ restaurant and have some omurice, or a katsudon, or anything that’s simple but flavorful and filling,” said Boettner. “So I figured maybe Milwaukee is ready for that.
That desire led her back into the restaurant world, but as an owner this time. As a tribute to her mother, who passed away in 2014, Boettner opened Cute Robot Japanese Kitchen at 704 South 2nd Street, in the Walker’s Point neighborhood of Milwaukee in mid-August 2024.
While the inspiration for the menu also came from her mother, the restaurant’s name did not. It was a random happenstance.
“When I was designing our logo, the graphics I used all came with identifier names,” said Boettner. “So the art for the little robot illustration I liked was called ‘Little Robot.’ That just clicked with me. So I got some feedback from family, and everyone really liked it.”
The process of starting a restaurant helped Boettner realize that she had more discipline and creativity than she once believed.
“Cooking has taught me that I do have patience, and I can be patient,” said Boettner. “But it also has taught me that I can be more creative than I thought I was.”
Now, she wants people to feel welcomed in her dining space, and be free to learn about and enjoy Japanese comfort food. Above all, she wants them to encounter the same warmth she recalls from her early days in Okinawa.
“I want people to have fun when they spend time and dine with us like it’s a second home,” said Boettner. “And I hope they try and get to know dishes that most Americans are less familiar with. They are the flavors from my childhood, and it’s never too late for anyone to experience them.”
Boettner sees Milwaukee’s familiarity with sushi as a good starting point for attracting people, and interest has been steadily increasing. As she considers her journey from Okinawa to Milwaukee and places in between, Boettner credits her parents’ perseverance for paving the way.
Her father set an example by defending his new wife’s honor in Okinawa. Her mother overcame judgments from both Japanese and American communities. With everyone in her family being caught between two worlds in some way, they learned how to bring different parts of those existences together.
Whether it was modifying cultural habits, or substituting authentic ingredients for a meal by using something locally available, they adapted everything into something new and special.
Milwaukee’s Japanese community was never been large, but Boettner has watched it grow more visible since the days when Izumi’s was one of the only places offering anything beyond Benihana’s teppanyaki. She remains optimistic that more people in the city will embrace everyday Japanese cooking in the same way they originally learned to love sushi.
Over time, Boettner ultimately came to realize that she did not need the approval of anyone else to move forward. She just needed to share what she loved about growing up in Okinawa, and let her food tell the story.
“It’s what I grew up with,” Boettner added. “It’s what I’m familiar with. It’s what comforts me.”
That comfort now lives in Milwaukee, where Boettner honors the legacies of her parents by feeding neighbors, friends, and curious strangers who wander in for an authentic taste of Japan. It is another chapter in the cross-cultural story that began decades ago, on a bus in Okinawa. And it is a testament to the power of a good meal to unite places and people that once seemed worlds apart.
© Photo
Lee Matz
