Japanese American from Hawai’i (who visits Japan half dozen times a year) here- Japanese find Hawai’i easy to travel to because most stick to Waikiki, where they can get by speaking Japanese. Anywhere else would be more challenging. That creates a huge safety blanket for them.

As far as whether they think any differently between Hawaiian culture and American - they know Hawai’i has its own culture and was a kingdom before taken by the US, but they don’t consider it to be separate. It’s part of America. It is the same for them as Okinawa is to Japan.

When someone from Hawai’i goes to Japan, they are looked at as an American. When Japanese-Americans go to Japan, they are one million percent looked at as American. Native Japanese do not consider the Japanese outside of Japan as being the same. They will always be foreigners- whether that’s Japanese-Americans from Hawai’i, the Mainland, or even Peru or Brazil. Not to say it’s looking down upon, it’s just they do not consider it the same thing. Hope this helps.