Japanese Americans in the USA: Experience and Adjustment to Mainstream America 1920S-1980S

Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research University of Oran-Es-Senia Faculty of Letters, Languages, and Arts Department of Anglo-Saxon Languages

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Magister in American Civilization

Japanese Americans in the USA: Experience and Adjustment to Mainstream America 1920s-1980s

Presented by: Supervised by: Mokhtari Walid Dr. Moulfi Leila

Members of the Jury: Soutenue le 02 Mars 2015  Dr. Belmekki Belkacem (President) MCA University of Oran  Dr. Moulfi Leila (supervisor) MCA University of Oran  Dr. Benhattab Abdelkader Lotfi (Examiner) MCA University of Oran  Dr. Ouahmiche Ghania (Examiner) MCA University of Oran

Academic Year: 2014-2015

Dedication

I dedicate this work to my dear family especially my parents for their endless support

and patience throughout the making of this

dissertation. I also dedicate it to all those who

know me from near or far, everybody has

actually helped either directly or indirectly.

Acknowledgements

Writing this dissertation would have been far difficult

without the help of many people to whom I’m very

much indebted. It is my great pleasure to acknowledge

this fact and to extend my heartfelt thanks, first and

foremost to my supervisor Dr. Moulfi Leila for her commitment and constant tutoring, unstinting support and help throughout the making of this work. A special

thanks goes to Dr. Belmakki Belkacem for his support

and guidance.

I extend my gratitude to the members of the panel of

examiners namely: Dr. Benhattab Lotfi, and Dr.

Ouahmiche Ghania for having accepted to read as well

as examine my dissertation.

And a huge thanks to all friends and colleagues who

have encouraged me on my way with good pieces of

advice, and never-flagging enthusiasm.

Abstract

This dissertation tackles an investigation of Japanese immigrants to the United States of America, their experience, and their process of adjusting to the American way of life. Hence, three parts weave through this dissertation:

First, chapter one presents a historical background of Japan, its ancient role, and its rise as a world power from the Tokugawa era to the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Second, chapter two revolves around Japanese immigration to the United States and investigates the Japanese American circumstances. Chapter two also covers the endurance of internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II after the Pearl Harbor attack and their fight for survival.

And lastly, chapter three tackles Japanese Americans experience in the aftermath of World War II. Additionally, chapter three also investigates their adjustment and their assimilation to mainstream American society.

After the war, Japan was no longer an enemy but rather an economic and political ally of the United States. As a consequence, the attitudes of Americans towards Japanese changed over the years. Japanese Americans, on their part, not only climbed the social and economic ladder, but also were considered as a “model minority”.

III

Résumé

Le présent travail constitue une analyse des expériences des japonais immigrées aux Etats unis, et la manière avec laquelle ils ont assimilé dans le mode de vie américain.

Tout d’abord, le premier chapitre présente un background historique du japon, son rôle traditionnel, et son essor au niveau international dès l’ère de Tokugawa jusqu’aux les deux premières décennies du vingt et unième siècle.

Le deuxième chapitre examine l’émigration des japonais aux Etats unis. Il couvre aussi leur internement dans les camps d’évacuation et leur lutte pour leurs droits.

Le troisième chapitre traite l’expérience des japonais américains après la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale et leur assimilation dans la société américaine.

Long temps isolé, le Japon s’est ouvert sur le monde dès 1868 après l’arrivée de Commodore Mathew C. Perry d’états unis en 1953. Après un traité entre le Japon et les Etats Unis, des milliers de japonais s’établirent à Hawaii et en Californie. Malheureusement, dès le début, ils ont été toujours considérés comme une deuxième classe inassimilable à la société américaine. Le bombardement de Pearl Harbour le 7 décembre 1941declencha dans tout le pays, et surtout en Californie, un mouvement d’hostilité et haine envers les japonais américains. Soupçonnés d’espionner au profit de l’ennemi et de préparer l’invasion des Etats Unis, les japonais américains ont été envoyé dans les camps d’internement. Plus de 110, 000 japonais, dont 68 % étaient des citoyens américains, ont été rassemblés dans des centres temporaires puis transférés dans les camps d’internement isolés et en plus situés dans des régions désertiques du pays. Après la guerre, le Japon n’était plus l’ennemi mais un partenaire économique et politique aux états unis. L’attitude des américains à leur égard avait changé. Les japonais américains ont fait une ascension sociale considérable et ils sont été considérés comme une minorité modèle.

Table of Contents Dedication ...... I Acknowledgement ...... II Abstract ...... III Résumé ...... IV Table of Contents ...... V General Introduction ...... 1

Chapter One: Old Japan: A historical background of Japanese Americans

1 Introduction ...... 5 2 Japan’s geography and climate ...... 7 3 Pre-Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa shoguns ...... 9 3.1 The Daimyo ...... 13 3.2 The Samurai ...... 13 4 Opening up Japan and The Fall of the Tokugawa ...... 17 5 The Meiji Restoration ...... 19 6 Meiji Japan ...... 20 6.1 The Iwakura Mission ...... 21 6.2 The Constitution ...... 23 6.3 Eliminating the Status system ...... 24 6.4 The Army and Navy ...... 26 6.5 Economy in Meiji Era ...... 27 6.7 Education in the Meiji Era ...... 30 7 Western Literature in Japan ...... 33 8 A Sense of Nationalism ...... 34 9 Imperial Japan ...... 34 9.1 Sino-Japanese War (1884-1885) ...... 35 9.2 Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) ...... 37 10 Conclusion ...... 40

Chapter Two: The Japanese experience in America

1 Introduction ...... 42 2 Why and how they came? ...... 45 3 Meiji government and early immigrants ...... 47 4 Conditions on the plantations ...... 48 5 The Gentlemen’s Agreement ...... 49 5.1 Japanese Picture Brides ...... 50 6 The Alien Land Law ...... 52 7 Moving to the Mainland ...... 54 8 Beginning of discrimination ...... 56 8.1 The Japanese as yellow peril ...... 59 8.2 Japanese Loyalty called into question ...... 63 8.3 Japanese Internment ...... 65 8.4 No internment in Hawaii ...... 69 8.5 Experience in barbed wire camps ...... 69 9 Japanese Americans’ reaction ...... 72 9.1 Japanese Resistance ...... 74 9.3 Japanese Americans proving loyalty ...... 75 10 Conclusion ...... 78

Chapter Three: Japanese Americans’ Assimilation and Redress

1 Introduction ...... 80 2 The aftermath of World War II ...... 83 3 Realizing it was a mistake ...... 84 4 How the anti-Japanese movement declined ...... 85 5 The sansei childhood and adolescence ...... 86 5.1 An unknown past ...... 87 5.2 The Shame of incarceration after the war ...... 88 6 Initial adjustment ...... 89 6.1 The Redress Movement ...... 90 7 Japanese Assimilation ...... 93 7.1 The Survival of a minority group ...... 93 7.2 Assimilation of Japanese in the 1980s ...... 95 7.3 The Model Minority group ...... 96

7.4The future of Japanese Americans...... 97 8 Model minority taken for granted ...... 98 8.1 Discrimination still exists after all ...... 98 9 Contribution to the American Culture ...... 99 10 Compensation and payment ...... 101 11 Conclusion ...... 103 General Conclusion ...... 104 Glossary: ...... 107 Works Cited ...... 109

VII

General Introduction

“Bring me your tired, your oppressed, your huddling masses yearning to breathe free…” Emma Lazarus 1883

This extract from Emma Lazarus 1(1849-87) tells of the encouragement of immigration to U.S. shores from all corners of the world. It was meant as an incentive for all people who underwent bad conditions in their homelands and urged for a better life on the American soil. Throughout history, no country in the world has received in mass immigrants in record numbers or has done more efforts to encourage the culture of immigration as a national culture as did the United States of America. If the traits of typical immigrants into the United States are somewhat different today from what they used to be some centuries ago, the essence causes of immigration are always there such as fleeing religious persecution, facing economic hardships, or hoping for individual freedom. First, immigrants from the European continent, then, the African continent, and then, more and more people from every part of the world rushed into the United States. The Asian continent was no exception; there were many groups of immigrants among whom were the Japanese.

Right after the Gold Rush, a wide smorgasbord of people from near and far rushed to California including Asians. The Chinese went first, and then, the Japanese immigrants followed suit. These Japanese immigrants were through the process of time labeled Japanese Americans; they are American people of Japanese descent usually living in the United States of America.

At the time of the American Revolution, Japan was entirely isolated from the rest of the world either because of its isolated location or because of its rulers and their strict codes, with the samurai functioning as a sort of police. The Tokugawa ruled Japan for over two centuries during which a period of peace and stability prevailed. However, on 24th November 1852, America sent Commodore Mattew C. Perry on a mission to Japan, Perry sailed from Virginia and entered the Bay of Yedo with four warships on the 8th July, 1853. One of the main objectives of Perry’s mission was to protect the American wrecked ships, seamen and property, and to open ports for commerce. And more importantly to treat American wrecked sailors at the coast of

1 Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet born in New York city.

Japan with humanity. Shortly after Perry’s arrived in Japan’s shore, Japanese isolation ended in 1853 and in 1868, Emperor Meiji “enlightened one” took the reign and aspired to bring manufacturing, trade, and world relations to Japan. The Meiji rulers were committed to modernizing Japan or to put it another way, to catch up with westerners who seemed to be far and away in terms of civilization and technology. At the time, Japanese population increased by 30 percent in just little over twenty five years to reach 44 million by 1900.2 This was the result of a decline in death rates as well as an increase in birth rates.

Much different than China who had a long migration tradition, Japan, by the time Japanese began to migrate in the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, was a nascent imperial power. The early groups of Japanese to migrate were political refugees in1869 who settled in a short-lived colony in Sacramento and in the same year some went to Hawaii. Japanese migration to Hawaii was to take place again in 1884 with roughly thirty thousand Japanese brought under a contract with plantation owners. After the annexation of Hawaii by the U.S. in 1898, a great deal of these workers migrated to the West Coast. However, in the 1890s, significant numbers of Japanese came to San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver3.

Japanese Americans were considered among the largest minorities in the United States, but recently they have become among the sixth largest group. California has the largest number of Japanese American communities and states like Hawaii, New York, Washington, Illinois and Ohio follow respectively according to a census done in 2010. Japanese Americans are classified under a number of categories on the ground of their history, immigration, and nativity. First Japanese American generations are known as the Issei (first immigrants to the United States); the second generation is their American-born children named the Nisei; the third generation is known as the Sansei; and the fourth generation is called the Yonsei. However, the word Nikkei means all Japanese Americans despite their generation or citizenship.4

2Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc, 1981), p158. 3Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper,1990), p250 4 Jonathan H. X. Lee, and Kathleen M. Nadeau, Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife (Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 2011), p570.

Unfortunately, Japanese immigrants to the United States were not fully welcomed as some Europeans were. Different as they were with their Asian traits, culture and traditions, Japanese Americans were seen as “Oriental” and inassimilable into mainstream America. They faced discrimination from the onset, for they were hard workers. An anti-Japanese movement started to grow as they came to be known as a “yellow peril”. Discriminated against, Japanese immigrants were denied access to employment and labor market. However, when they bonded together with other Japanese forming their own ethnic communities for protection and survival, they were said to be un-assimilated and un-integrated in the American society and thus were regarded as “aliens”.

Japanese Americans found themselves in a controversy. They could not be accepted into the American society however they acted. They were considered as the “Orientals” or the “Other”. It was Edward Said, of the Palestinian origins, who spoke of “Otherness” being related to the Orient as opposed to the Occident. By and large, Orientalism, Said argues, is “the idea of European identity as a superior in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures.”5 The question of “Otherness” did not just prevail in colonization and overseas empires, it also transcended it to the interior of countries as in the United States. Accused of disloyalty as a result of their “otherness”, Japanese Americans were sent to internment en masse after Pearl Harbor for at least two or three years. Two thirds of those were American citizens born in the United States but citizenship allotted no protection because they were to constitute a threat to national security.6 Consequences went beyond the limits, for some of the assimilation made into the American mainstream and Japanese heirlooms of cultural heritage turned to be a potential embodiment of disloyalty and therefore were either devastated by the government or by the Japanese themselves.7

5 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Randome House, Inc, 1978), p7. 6 Donna K. Nagata et al. “Long-Term Effects of Internment During Early Childhood on Third- Generation Japanese Americans.” American Journal of Oethopsychiatry. Vol. 69 1 (1999). 7 Donna K. Nagata, and Garyn K. Tsuru. “Psychosocial Correlates of Self-Reported Coping Among Japanese Americans Interned During World War II.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Vol. 77 2 (2007).

In doing this dissertation, we are interested in investigating the extent to which Japanese Americans were successful in adjusting to mainstream America. How they coped with discrimination and incarceration in camps especially during and after World War II. The dissertation also aims at tackling some questions as why did Japanese immigrants leave everything behind and wanted to come to a world so far away? What were the main reasons which pushed the Japanese to migrate? How did Japanese Americans react when their loyalty to the United States was put into question? How did the Japanese Americans assimilate into the American society despite internment?

Chapter One: Old Japan: A historical background of Japanese Americans

1 Introduction

The first chapter is an overview of old Japan, from the Tokugawa shoguns to the Meiji Restoration. Basically, the chapter works as an initiative to what Japan was like, and gives an idea about the Japanese modern state and how it emerged out of the feudal system. Similarly, the technological advance made during the Meiji Era, the trade and the economic leap of Japan, from the Tokugawa to the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century.

Japan was not always as it is today; opened and cosmopolitan. It was long ruled by the Tokugawa shoguns, a reign during which the country stayed isolated for roughly two centuries and a half; foreign relations were all but closed except for a few such as the Chinese and the Dutch. Yet in due time, this was not to linger forever in a period where the race for land was endlessly sought, and the Industrial Revolution in the West made its influence for such a quest. Western powers set out looking for raw materials, new lands and colonies near and far and Japan was no exception, and was even in the way. As the country was “closed to foreigners” during the rule of the Tokugawa, Japan was to be “opened up” by an admiral from the United States making an upheaval in the years to come. Hereby, the United States sent Commodore Mathew. C. Perry to the coast of Japan seeking amity, the Japanese were strikingly overwhelmed by such power with which Perry arrived. The Tokugawa had no choice but to submit into signing a treaty of amity and then soon after treaties were signed with other five European powers.

Few years later, the grassroots peasants as well as the samurai did not like the foreign influence in the country and thus called for an Imperial Restoration of power. In 1868, the Meiji Restoration took over the Tokugawa, and put an end to their rule once and for all, and set the scene for a new, prosperous and modern Japan as we know it today. The Meiji government then was so dedicated-- unlike the Tokugawa who seemed weak and under foreign influence-- to modernize and civilize Japan in an unprecedented way that Japan has never witnessed before. Therefore, centralized

5 bureaucracy, conscript army, strenuous programs of education, and a strong system of intercourse with the West were all aspects of Meiji Japan that within a couple of decades, it turned to be among the most powerful nations of the world. Surprisingly, a hectic movement of nationalism swept Japan, and slogans like fukokukyohei,"enrich the country, and strengthen the army"; bummei-kai"ka, "civilization and enlightenment" were not only dominant at the time, but also planted in the spirits of all Japanese people.1

Moreover, Western institutions such as schools and universities, the army and the navy, as well as systems of central and local administration provided the framework through which the cultural heritage of Japan could be translated. The next 50 years of rapid modernization, involved a series of complex interactions with the West. Their common goal was to build a modern Japan. This was achieved not only by borrowing from the West but also by considerable innovation and by building on existing resources.2

1 W. G. Beasley, The Meiji Restoration (The United States: Stanford University Press,1972), p2. 2 Morris Low, Building a Modern Japan: Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Meiji Era and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p2-3.

2 Japan’s geography and climate

Despite its small and limited geographical area, Japan is the tenth most populous country in the world with about 128 million inhabitants. Its natural sources are more or less sterile. Yet miraculously, Japan is classified in modern times second after the United Stated as the most well-off country in regard to economy and production.3 Japan is composed of a long chain of islands approximately one hundred miles away from the Korean peninsula and five hundred miles from the coast of China. The aforementioned archipelago is spread diagonally from the northeast to southwest for about twelve hundred miles. Japan is composed of four principle islands; Kyushu, Honshu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido (95 percent of the total territory) and of 4000 other small islands. It is also a homogeneous society from linguistic, racial, and cultural perspectives. However, out of all those islands only few are large enough for human activity. Japan as an archipelago stretches for 1,200-miles long and it lies mainly in the temperate zone.4It was compared to Great Britain geographically and historically to be both:

“insular nations, laying off great continental landmasses; both fashioned a great maritime and naval base of power. Both have been traditionally free from foreign armed invasions. Both are monarchies; both have developed distinct cultures that have been exposed, nonetheless, to neighboring mainland cultural influences.”5

Japanese topography is heavily shaped by mountains with roughly the whole country being either hilly or mountainous. Moreover, there exist over five hundred volcanoes, sixty of which were active way in the past. This land variety gave a special pressure on the land’s crust resulting in earthquakes insofar as the average tremors reached 1,500 shocks a year. Since it has an insular location, Japan developed a homogeneous and isolated culture. Throughout its history, the country was never invaded before 1945, for even the Mongols were driven off in the thirteenth century.6 It was divided into 300 han each governed by feudal lords until the Meiji

3 Milton. W Meyer, Japan : A Concise History (The United States of America: Rowman and Little Field Publishers, Inc,2009) , p1. 4 Ibid, p4. 5 Cited in Milton W. Meyer, p2. 6 Ibid, p4,6,7

Restoration.7 However, the entire area of Japan is a little less than 150,000 square miles, approximately the size of Montana.8 The lowland plains make about 13 percent of the entire land, and more than two thirds are made by steep mountain districts.

Around the half of the nineteenth century, the First British Minister to Japan described it as “a cluster of islands on the furthest edge of the horizon, inhabited by a race grotesque and savage.” 9 Europeans knew only little about Japan and in part, they thought that the Japanese were savages, probably because the country was closed to foreigners who, if found in Japan, were very likely that they would be treated badly if not executed.

However, when it comes to climate, Japan has a rainy climate, for instance there is a rainy season between June and July, and it is very helpful in irrigation of some crops like rice. The Japanese archipelago stretches in length of 30 to 46 degrees of the north latitude which gives it an important variable climate especially because of the two seas Kuroshio and Oyashio. During the winter season, Japan receives winds from the north, cold and dry, which humidify and warm up when touching the Sea of Japan and Kuroshio resulting in the form of rain and snow particularly on the Sea of Japan.10 Moreover, Japan has short summers and long and tough winters. In general; winter’s rigor come in large part from winds in the north-west coming from Siberia.11 Shikuko, Kyushu, and south Honshu have more or less a subtropical climate. These regions encounter very hot and humid summers and mild winters with relatively little snow. The moist climate helped out a great deal the growing population in agriculture primarily in the main island of Honshu to the southwest to reach about thirty million at the dawn of 1800s.12 Location and climate has always played a major center of economy, politics and social life in Japan, for instance, the Tokugawa settled the city

7 Nobuko Kayashima, le development de l’éducation au cours de l’ère Meiji (1867-1912): modernization et montée du nation au japon. (France: printed by Institut International de planification de l’éducation. 1989), p3. 8 Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan From Tokugawa Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) p1. 9 W. J. Macpherson, The Economic Development of Japan 1868-1941 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p1. 10 Encarta 2009 11 Ibid. 12 Andrew Gordon, p2.

8 of Edo near a small fishing village in the Kanto plain due to its central position. As Andrew Gordon put it “The notion of “Japanese-ness” is an identity cobbled together in the face of a resistant geography.”13

3 Pre-Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa shoguns

The Tokugawa era commenced at the first decade of the seventeenth century. The Tokugawa rulers possessed roughly one quarter of all the arable lands, while the rest was under the daimyo control in more than 200 domains or fiefs.14 The domains hired samurai to work for them, who were about two millions by the nineteenth century. The sixteenth century witnessed the arrival of the Portuguese, the Roman Catholic religion as well as other Europeans like the Dutch. Naturally, the Japanese disliked Christianity which did not cease in growing. As a consequence of the massacre of “rebel” Christians at Shimabara under the motto of “expel the barbarians”. A wave of xenophobia spread during the 1630s prohibiting overseas travels and limiting foreign residents at home to a handful of Dutch and Chinese and therefore declaring a state of isolationism. Though traveling abroad was banned, imports were not. For instance, Japan imported sugar, spices, looking glasses, textiles and raw silk from China.15

The Tokugawa ruled Japan for over two centuries and a half. A period during which several members of the Tokugawa family presided office as shoguns, they formed a central government called the Bakufu, and the han (domains)16. Japan changed for quite a long time. It all started with one man, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542- 1616), his primary objective was to get access to power and seize the Imperial court. Ieyasu was born Matsudaira Takechiyo 17at Okasaki, in Mikawa in 1542. His mother was 15 years of age while his father Matsudaira Hirotada—who was the youngest chieftain of his Matsudaira clan—was only 17. The Matsudaira family used to have conflicts with neighboring clans Oda and Imagawa. The Matsudaira family wanted to

13 Andrew Gordon, p2 14 W.J Macpherson, p17. 15 (ibid), p18,19 16 W. Beasley, p14. 17 Kenneth G. Henshall, A History of Japan : From Stone Age to Superpower (Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p51.

9 prevent trouble with the Imagawa by sending their son Takechiyo as a hostage to the Imagawa base. Suddenly, the Oda forces launched an ambush and took the hostage to the Oda base at Nagoya. After Hirotada’s death, a truce was agreed upon between Oda and Matsudaira families in 1594 stipulating that Takechiyo was to be kept a hostage as planned from the onset to the Imagawa18. Takechiyo settled and got married in Imagawa. In 1560 Imagawa Yoshimoto, the head of the Imagawa family, was killed after having lost the battle of Okehazama to Oda Nobunaga. Takechiyo, who came to be known as Motoyaso then, swiftly became an ally of Nobunaga. Herein, Matsudaira’s borders were safe due to Oda’s alliance resulting in Motoyasu changing his focus to the Imagawa territory over which he took control in 1568. It was during this very period that he turned his name to Tokugawa Ieyasu. Again, using the Oda alliance to his advantage, Ieyasu was able to expend his territory enormously that Nobunaga started to put his loyalty into question. However, in 1579 when Nobunaga suspected his wife and son for conspiring with an old enemy; the Takeda family, Ieyasu killed them as a clear-cut evidence of his abundant loyalty. When Nobunaga died in 1582, his successor Hideyoshi took over. Throughout a number of years, Hideyoshi came to his death-knell, yet Ieyasu, overwhelmed by the properties as well as the power he possessed, broke his promise of safeguarding Hideyoshi’s young heir; Hideyori.19 To legalize his position, Ieyasu took the title of shogun (unused since 1588) from the emperor Go-yozei (r-1586-1611). He was, a legislator, a warrior, and the hero of the Sekigahara, one of the biggest battles in Japanese history.20

What is interesting about Ieyasu is the fact that his very success brought to the country peace, stability and a sense of unity. Additionally, he brought the hereditary succession of the Tokugawa; the isolation of Japan and the establishment of the feudal system; the greatness of Yedo, a city which Ieyasu started building in 1598; and eventually a lingering peace for more than two hundred and fifty years.21

18 Kenneth G. Henshall, p51, 52. 19 Ibid, p52 20 William Eliot Griffs, A.M. The Mikado’s Empire: A History of Japan from the Age of Gods to the Meiji Era (660 BC—AD 1872), (the USA: Stone Bridge Press, 2006), p305. 21 Ibid, p308

Making a title for himself as a shogun in1603, Ieyasu turned into an imperial official, the military advisor of the Emperor, head of the military class, and more or less the ruler of Japan. Provided with such a chance, he was able to control the Imperial Court as well as the Emperor's person. Ieyasu extended his influence to many Tokugawa members not only at his time but for generations to come. He first resigned the title to his son Hidetada, and preferred to follow the nation’s affairs outside of office. However, Hidetada in turn passed the office of shogun to his son Lemitsu after his death in 163222. The Tokugawa family was all nominated by the Emperor per se. Right from the outset, the Tokugawa were supposed to be guardians of the nations, but in due time, they gained indirect sovereignty through the Emperor.23

The Tokugawa were mostly protected by a fortress and stone walls, inside the fortress stands the imperial palace at the center of Edo, while the emperor and the court stayed in Koyoto for about eleven centuries until 1868.24 To enforce their rule and make laws, the Tokugawa shoguns created a centralized government at Edo (the bakufu) on top of it was a prime minister (tairo) sometimes it was left vacant by the shoguns; a council of handful elders (roju) was to advise the Tokugawa on tough political issues. Besides, a large bureaucracy of civil administration used a group of secret police (metsuke) all over Japan and its outskirts to both enforce the law, take control, and look for trouble-makers. Although the Tokugawa were three hundred miles away from Koyoto, they, nonetheless, held a robust control over the emperor and the court.25 Since they controlled him, they came to believe that he is the divine source of power. Ostensibly, the emperors in reality were weakened by the Tokugawa actions.

Ieyasu and his grandson after him made every possible strategy to keep the Tokugawa family in power. As Kenneth Henshall argued:

“Ieyasu clearly believed that enforced stability and orthodoxy were important to continued control. Change was undesirable because it was hard to predict. Mobility

22 R. H. P Mason & J. G Caiger, A History of Japan ( Japan: Tuttle Publishing, 1997), p200. 23 Ibid, p201 24 Milton W. Meyer, p103,104 25 Ibid, p104

11 was a threat. The more people acted in a settled and prescribed manner, the less of a threat they posed. Failure to act as expected was even punishable by death. Ieyasu is said to have defined ‘rude behaviour' – for which a samurai could lop off the miscreant's head –as ‘acting in an other-than-expected manner'.”26

They confined the Daimyo, the Emperor’s court, the samurai peasants, the merchants, and priests. The very strategy was very effective to forbid the daimyo from making alliances among themselves.27 The Tokugawa ranked the entire society into classes. The highest rank, who constituted about 10 per cent of the whole populace, was military administrators from the daimyo and their samurai. These samurai who, regarded as members of hereditary aristocracy, were given the right to wear two swords; long one for fighting wars, and a short one for committing hara-kiri28; in second rank came the the peasants vis à vis the main producers making about 85 per cent of the population. The peasants were treated badly because attention was given to what they produced and not to their conditions or them per se, and also because they paid the highest taxes. Respectively, the third and fourth ranks were the artisans and the merchants.29 Despite the fact that the Merchants made the lowest rank, they were getting more and more wealthy and powerful, and many of them turned into samurai or helped fuel the coup d’état later in 1868.30

3.1 The Daimyo

Ieyasu was very strategic in dealing with the daimyo by giving an order to limit castles to one per domain. He also forced the daimyo to pledge obedience or to swear oaths of loyalty to him. He banned them from forming alliances among themselves, and more importantly he sent inspectors to certify that the daimyo were loyal and under control.31 Over the years, Ieyasu imposed on the daimyo a great deal of aid so as to help him build projects mainly, the great castle of Edo. The daimyo were used

26 Cited in Kenneth G. Henshall, p53. 27 Andrew Gordon, p13. 28 The honor given to a samurai to commit suicide by himself. 29 Milton W. Meyer, p106. 30 W. J. Macpherson, p17. 31 Andrew Gordon, p15.

12 and continued to be so in the Tokugawa rule, for the single reason which was to weaken them or so much as limit their access to power. After Ieyasu, his grandson Iemitsu empowered the Tokugawa enormously. First, he came up with a new law, which stipulated the right to confiscate daimyo lands and even offer these lands to other loyal lords if he had to. Iemitsu weakened the daimyo considerably particularly when he forced them to trade with domains.32

3.2 The Samurai

The word samurai means “someone who serves” or someone who “gives a service” to nobles and it came originally from the word “saburai” which means nearly the same. But before the term “samurai” came into celebrity, warriors were known as Tsuwamono which means anything related to war as weapons and war skills.33 The samurai were one of the most conspicuous features of the Japanese society in the pre- Meiji Period just as were the European in the Middle Ages with Knights in England, Chevaliers in France, and Ritter in Germany. The samurai emerged as a power especially to keep order and preserve peace in the capital as well as other regions in the country.34 During the Tokugawa period, hundreds of daimyo employed some hundred thousand samurai to fight wars which took place in the late 1500s. These samurai took charge over portions of lands, known as fiefs and the farmers who worked on them. Protecting the land and its inhabitants from neighboring threats, they had tax income coming in from this land. Given protection by strenuous daimyo rulers, the samurai pledged royalty as well as military service to them. They were permitted to wear two swords, for some acted as policemen and order-keepers. Not surprisingly, having a range of administrative positions, or sometimes none, the samurai were paid annual salaries by the daimyo labeled as “stipends”. 35

32 Ibid, p13. الدكتور محمد اعفيف, اصول التحديث في اليابان 0661-0161) لبنان: مركز دراسات الوحدة العربية , 0202( ص 33061 34 Ibid, p168,169. 35 Andrew Gordon, p15,16.

As Japan enjoyed a long phase of peace and stability during the Tokugawa period especially by expelling foreigners from the land and declaring the state of “closed country”, interior and exterior threats went to their lowest levels and therefore, warriors were superfluous. Embarrassed by their redundancy, warriors tried strenuously to prove their existence. Hereby, the samurai ideal expression bushido “way of the warrior” came into being. One of the most famous stories about the samurai was that of the Forty-seven ronin (wanderers) who were seen as the embodiment of the samurai virtue. By 1701, the ronin’s lord Asano Maganori (1665- 1701) was insulted by the shogun’s chief of protocol Kira Yashinaka (1641-1703) which led Asano to draw his sword in the shogun’s castle. As a result of this very action being considered as a dire offence, Asano was made to commit seppuku in addition to the seizing of his domain from his family. The Forty-seven samurai swore to avenge the death of their lord and thus to kill Kira. At first, the ronin hid their intention of revenge, however, after two years, they seized a suitable opportunity where Kira was unguarded and killed him installing his head on the grave of their lord.36Surprisingly, though their action was a typical bushido, they were ordered to commit mass seppuku. The story of the forty-seven ronin was famous and legendary; almost every Japanese knows about it. Many writers have written about the ronin among whom was a ronin himself, Yamaga Soku (1622-85) who wrote about bushido and their important role in society. He accentuated traits as loyalty, self-discipline, developing the arts, and the progress of man. Yamaga argued that the samurai were to serve as a model for society:

The samurai dispenses with the business of the farmer, artisan, and merchant, and confines himself to practicing this Way; should there be someone in the three classes of the common people who transgresses against these moral principles, the samurai summarily punishes him and thus upholds proper moral principles in the land.37

Severely punished when committing a crime or breaking the rules, guilty samurai were given the ‘privilege’ of “committing suicide by ritual disembowelment famously known as seppuku or hara-kiri (stomach cutting).

36 Kenneth G. Henshell, p59-60. 37 Ibid, p61.

This tradition came into practice in the Heian38 period so as to symbolize the purity of the victim’s soul. Right after the incision, it was ritualized; an honored friend of the samurai victim would forthwith cut off his head.39

Morality during the Tokugawa period was distinct from that of the Western societies. It was much more based on what should be done regarding the law than doing right or wrong. In addition, among the essence issues addressed by Yamaga’s writing was Confucianism. The latter meant a dire discipline of recognizing one’s position, following orders, loyalty, and doing one’s duty.40Many historians wondered about the drive in which the samurai believed greatly in. One researcher, John Whitney Hall in an article on Japanese Neo-Confucianism argued that:

The typical Tokugawa samurai saw some value in each of the three world views that competed for his allegiance. Buddhism and Shinto provided for his religious needs; Confucianism gave him a rational cosmology and social ethic; Confucianism and Shinto both contributed to his conceptions of the political order . . . . If we can identify any primary commitment in the samurai's approach to these world views, it would be to what we should call immediate political realities, to a sense of his class importance, a sense of his tradition, a sense of national pride . . .41

According to Whitney, many drives were at play such as religion and traditions or even the national pride. Yet another researcher Catharina Bomberg recently published some of her researches on the samurai by identifying a handful of archaic samurai practices. Bomberg argued that we cannot come to terms with the samurai’s ethic as

38 Is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185 A.D.The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyo or modern Kyoto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, and other Chinese influences were at their height. The Heian period is also considered the peak of the Japanese imperial court and noted for its art, especially poetry and literature. Heian in Japanese means “peace”.

39 Kenneth G. Henshall, p56. 40 Ibid, p61. 41 J . W . Hall, 'The Confucian Teacher in Tokugawa Japan, in D . S . Nivison and A . F . Wright (eds), Confucianism in Action, Stanford U .P . 1959, p . 291

15 being entirely religious, for: “Buddhism prohibits all taking of life. Shinto considers death to be the worst form of pollution. The samurai thus forfeited of a favorable rebirth according to Buddhism and rendered himself according to Shinto…”42 But for Confucianism, argued Bomberg, the incentives were strenuous and highly motivating;

'According to Confucian ethics the supreme duty of the samurai was to observe the rules of loyalty, and if this observance forced him to take the lives of others, this act was extenuated by the nature of its motive. If the samurai was to receive any reward, however, it had to be in this life . . .'43

Bomberg also dealt with the extent to which loyalty went. It clearly went beyond limits, for the samurai were ready to sacrifice their own lives for their masters and, surprisingly, even if the master treated them badly:

No matter how his lord treated him he was to remain ever faithful and loyal, according to the ideals of Bushido. To follow unflinchingly and without hesitation the precepts of the warrior's code of loyalty and servitude to the master was indeed the primary motive of the samurai . This was what moved him to sacrifice himself, and the satisfaction of knowing that he had acted according to the precepts of Bushido was apparently reward enough. This faith which prevailed over every difficulty, hardship and pain could perhaps . . .be called 'an autonomous religion'44

Yet it was not the religion that mattered, it was what and how much faithful and protective these samurai that kept many other researchers wondering. The samurai after a while turned into a genuine legend and their traditions are still nowadays a source of pride and nationalism in Japan.

42 Brian Bocking. “Neo-Confucian Spirituality and the Samurai Ethic.” Religion.Vol 10 1(1980). p3. 43 Ibid.

44 Ibid..

4 Opening up Japan and the Fall of the Tokugawa

Japan in the past was entirely isolated from the rest of the world. However, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, many merchant and war-ships appeared on the Japanese waters. Japan of the time was mostly ruled by the Tokugawa shoguns despite the fact that it already had an emperor. These ships, primarily European, came with military, religious, and economic power either to trade or to preach Christianity. At the time, the shogunate ruled Japan for long, but from the 1830s onward they began to lose control. As a start, they were not able to react positively to a serious famine from 1833 to 183745. Though the shoguns tried some reforms, but they were all in vain. Things escalated when Commodore Mathew C. Perry of the United States landed on the Japanese Bay of Yedo in 1853. Perry arrived with four strong warships as well as a message: a humane treatment for wrecked seamen and castaways, the opening of ports for provisions and fuel, and also the opening of ports for trade.46It was more or less a kind of testing of American power at its very infancy as Andrew Gordon pointed out about the message “agree to trade in peace or suffer the consequences in war.”47 Delivering the message to the Emperor from his American president, Perry promised to return next year and left Japan. Having their independence from Britain, defeating it again in the war of 1812, and with the annexation of California from Mexico, the Americans developed a strong sense of trade and military ambition in the Pacific.

Too much confusion after Perry’s visit to Japan emerged. The Japanese were stunned by the power of American ships called “the black ships” leading to a widespread panic within the Japanese in Edo. The shogunate signed the Treaty of Kanagawa in March 1854 as Perry returned with nine warships, accepting the aforementioned demands48. The shoguns had no choice but to submit to the terms, for waging a war against the Americans was not an attractive solution. Soon after, similar

45 Kenneth G. Henshall, P67. 46 Ibid. 47 Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan from Tokugawa Times to the Present (New York, Oxford university Press, 2003), p49. 48 Kenneth G. Henshall, p68

17 treaties followed suit with Britain in October 1854, Russia in February 1855 and France and Holland later.49As Mason and Caiger argue in their well-read book A History of Japan on how the treaties affected the Tokugawa, “the foreign treaties were a kind of slow poison which gradually destroyed the bakufu by depriving it of its powers of independent decision.’’50 Indeed, the treaties with the west brought down the Tokugawa regime—which lasted for more than two centuries and a half—to its knees.

Meanwhile, the Tokugawa and Bakufu’s very legitimacy was called into question. The paralysis of the shogun and their reforms to deal adequately with the foreign threat triggered their very death-knell. Not surprisingly, a vicious hatred developed from the Choshu and Satsuma clans who were powerful and had huge domains. The Choshu were outraged at the shogunate’s inertia towards reform and the state of the country, especially with foreigners gaining more influence. Therefore, they attacked foreign ships at the Strait of Shimonoseki (near its domains). This in part, angered the shoguns enough to send forces as a form of punishment in the years 1865-1866, unfortunately for them their attempts of punishments were all in vain.51

In December 1867 the Shoshu and Satsuma forces marched on Koyoto. Foreign diplomats ranged in their views toward the situation, the British claimed to be formally neutral, however, the French supported the Tokugawa reformers in order to integrate Japan with the West. Eventually the samurai rebels called “men of action” who aspired to “honor the emperor and expel the barbarians” drove the Tokugawa from power once and for all. The imperial palace was seized under control. Henceforth, in January 1868, the Emperor Meiji took the throne, after the death of his father in 1867, declaring an imperial “Restoration”.52 The young Emperor who was only fifteen at the time made it to the throne but the real men behind the Restoration were “loyalist” samurai. The primary drive for the Restoration, however, was not so much a revolution as a nationalist xenophobia felt at first by the samurai and then spread like wildfire to landlord politicians and much of the rest of the country.

49 Ibid. 50 R. H. P. Mason and J. G. Caiger, p263. 51 Kenneth G. Henshall, p69. 52 Andrew Gordon, p58.

5 The Meiji Restoration

The Meiji Restoration of January 3rd,1868 offered the control of the Imperial court into the hands of committed and dedicated young men, who terminated the hereditary rule of the Tokugawa shogun making it clear that the emperor53 takes direct responsibility over Japan. The rationale of the Meiji era was the premise of restoring the emperor to his righteous status. The samurai men worked closely with several court nobles who disliked the bakufu. The bakufu per se had been under a considerable pressure and the shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837-1913), willingly gave up his position and surprisingly refused to nominate a successor.54 As he said in his letter of resignation:

Now that foreign intercourse becomes daily more extensive, unless the government is directed from one central authority, the foundations of the state will fall to pieces. If, however, the old order of things be changed, and the administrative authority be restored to the Imperial Court, and if national deliberations be conducted on an extensive scale, and the Imperial decision be secured, and if the empire be supported by the efforts of the whole people, then the empire will be able to maintain its rank and dignity among the nations of the earth- it is, I believe, my highest duty to realize this ideal by giving up entirely my rule over this land.55

Yoshinobu surprised the court by his resignation. In December 1867, Okubo Toshi-michi (1830-78) a strong samurai from the Satsuma han convinced a number of radical court nobles of the necessity of restoring the emperor’s position. Importantly, a huge number of Choshu troops marched near Koyoto from which they were removed several years ago before the restoration.56 The palace at Koyoto was defended by troops of samurai under the command of Saigo Takamori(1827-77) from Satsuma. However, things went to effect in the morning of the 3rd January 1868 when

53 The person on whom this burden fell was Mutsuhito (1852–1912), who chose the period name Meiji, meaning ‘Enlightened Rule’.He advised and aided by a Council of State (Dajo−kan) see Andressen, p79. 54 R. H. P. Mason and J. G. Caiger, p258/259. 55 McLaren, "Japanese Government Documents," The Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. 42 (1914), p. 2. 56 R. H. P. Mason and J. G. Caiger, p259.

Iwakura Tomomi (1825-83), the most powerful of the radical court nobles, made a draft statement proclaiming an Imperial Restoration that was to be read outright.57 The proclamation was heard only by a minority because of the fight. But the battle was not over, in the evening the forces prevailed again. Not surprisingly, the Tokugawa and their loyalists were kept off the new government and hereby were forced to give up their former shogun territories. The bakufu as a government in Japan came to a permanent halt. Despite the fact that some Tokugawa loyalists did not surrender so easily, the Meiji regime was able to overthrow all the rebels. 58

6 Meiji Japan

Since the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan launched its own path to modernization and to an international status. Just half a century of the Meiji rule, the country laid the basis for a national growth as well as an international expansion. This era witnessed the increase of national wealth led by the hectic sectors of both agriculture and industry. Economic modernization, political stability, and foreign trade were the salient characteristics of the time. Besides, the unity of both the people and the government in regard to nationalism resulted in an ongoing process of modernization. Meiji Japan, according to Milton W. Meyer in his fabulous book, A Concise History of Japan, can be divided into two periods. The first period dates from 1868 to 1890 whereby the leaders were mainly interested in nation and local changes, and hence put the premises of modernization on the immediate Japanese society. Politically speaking, rulers were concerned about the state, the stability, the unity of rule, and the establishment of a constitution. Economically, one of the leading industries was that of the textile, and cartels like the Zaibatsu who were of a dominant presence in the Meiji economic scenes.59The second period was from 1890 to 1912 where Japan turned into a political and economic world power. Implementation of industry and wars overseas, were all evidence of the giant leap made by Japan during the Meiji Era. In the early years of the Meiji period, rulers staff was chosen mainly by personal connections to the ranks of Chochu and Satsuma clans as well as their allies. But, in

57 Ibid, p260. 58 R. H. P. Mason and J. G. Caiger, p260. 59 M. W. Meyer, p139/140

20 due time, they gradually turned into a more impersonal underpinnings for recruitment. In 1887, a civil service exam was to be the major qualification for holding a prestigious rank in the Japanese Imperial state. Building a state founded on competences and merit instead of personal connections was of striking importance in the new Japan.60

6.1 The Iwakura Mission

For the Restoration to be different from the old regime of the Tokugawa shogunate and both vehement and effective, the new government tended to send students and statesmen abroad for the sake of bringing back information and ideas upon which the Meiji rulers would lay the foundations of reforms. The most important of these missions was the Iwakura Mission which started in 1871 wherein the Japanese students and statesmen spent two years in both the United States and Europe.61The mission group encompassed forty-eight members and fifty-four students including Iwakura as well as some important government figures as Okubo, and Ito. By and large, they gathered fundamental useful information but they were clearly unable to convince the West powers—with whom Japan had treaties—to alter them to the side of Japan.62 The mission was led by Iwakura Tomomi, an important aristocrat in the Restoration, which was the first full scale diplomacy of Japan.63The plan of the mission was to visit both major powers in the Pacific and Asia such as America, England, France, and Holland and other powers encompassing Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and Russia.64 The time of the mission spent in these countries differed considerably. America and Britain took the lion’s share with six and four months each respectively; approximately half the entire time of the whole mission, then came France with little more than three months; Germany and

60 Andrew Gordon, p64. 61 W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth, Japan: Its History and Culture (McGraw-Hill, Inc, the United States of America; 2005), p151. 62 Ibid, p152. 63 Ian Nish, The Iwakura Mission in America and Europe: A New Assessment ( ,Japan Library(Curzon Press Ltd)1998), p7 64 Ibid.

Switzerland with about four weeks each; Italy with three weeks, and the rest states, encompassing Russia, were given itinerates for two weeks maximum.65The main objective of the mission was three-fold: first, to seek recognition in the West after the Restoration and acknowledgment of the new government; second, to examine and investigate the social and the economic conditions of the different powers and seek basis for their “enlightened civilization”; and lastly, to re-negotiate the unequal treaties.66However, Iwakura put it in a different and direct way in Washington “We came for enlightenment, and gladly find it here”.67

Why the west and not some other destination or start from scratch? The Meiji leaders realized that if domestic reforms were to be proper and well-planned, the West had to be taken as a model example. As for the West, they accepted the mission warmly, for instance, in America the Daily Evening Bulletin in San Francisco wrote:

Japan is today, all the circumstances of her previous condition considered, the most progressive nation on the globe…. Unlike the Chinese, its people readily make changes in clothing, food, manufactures, and modes of living, when they see improvement therein. They are, as a race, impulsive, highly intelligent, brave to rashness, cleanly in their habits, have a high sense of personal honor, and are universally polite, from the highest dignitary to the lowest in the land, and withal are kindly disposed towards foreigners, especially Americans.68

65 Ibid. 66 Ibid.. 67 Ibid, p8. 68 Ian Nish (ed.), British Documents on Foreign Affairs, Part I, Series E, 1860–1914, vol.I, Washington: UPA, 1989

The efforts of the Iwakura mission were more or less in vain to settle or mend the treaties, only to work as a precursor for a later result that a separate treaty with the US was signed in 1878, where the issues in debate were settled.69

6.2 The Constitution

A worth noting land –mark in the Meiji politics was the Meiji Constitution of 1889, establishing the earliest representative governments in Asia.70The first draft of the constitution was done secretly in 1886 and 1887 by a brilliant group such as Ito Hirobumi and Inoue Kowashi Ito who had examined and studied European constitutions in Europe. The draft was to be examined a year later by some government officials particularly in the newly created Privy Council.71 The first steps done by reformers to build up a new government were made four times between January 1868 and September 1871 eventually a Council State (dajokan an ancient name) and six ministries were structured.72

The Constitution was presented as a gift from the Emperor to the people of Japan on February 11, 1889. From the beginning, it announced the absolute authority to the imperial sovereignty; “The right of sovereignty of the state, We have inherited from Our ancestors, and We bequeath shall it to Our descendants.”73 Sovereignty was identified in the emperor’s person .i.e. he was “sacred and inviolable”. The emperor held the position of supreme commander of the army and navy, and government ministries were directly under his control. The constitution constructed a Diet including a House of Peers (appointive), and a House of Representatives (elective) which both had equal status. The House of Peers on the one hand was composed of upper nobility, representatives of the lower nobility (counts, viscounts, and barons),

69 L.M. Cullen, A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds (New York: Cambridge University Press), p206. 70 Curtis Andressen, A Short History of Japan from the Samurai to Sony (Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2001), p88. 71 Andrew Gordon, 92. 72 W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth Olenik, p148. 73 Andrew Gordon, p92.

23 important public figures as scholars, and representatives of the highest tax payers. The House of Representatives was composed of 300 members, then increased to 466 elected by males over the age of twenty five. 74The constitution dealt with the military differently by giving it independence through “the right to supreme command”. Besides, this was in article 11 which stated that the military was directly responsible to the emperor.75

Edo was agreed on to be the capital and hence the Emperor was placed in the shogun’s castle, which soon after the placement, witnessed some important changes. Not surprisingly, the hatred for the Tokugawa regime was so apparent that in order to emphasize the break with its past, the city was re-labelled Tokyo which meant “ Eastern Capital”.76

6.3 Eliminating the Status system

In the first decade following the Restoration, the Japanese society was largely affected. The daimyo were removed as a class and gave up their domains to the Emperor.77 By 1869, the domains had virtually completely disappeared in Japan, and the land now belonged to the Emperor. However, between the years 1869 and 1887, the daimyo were appointed as governors of their former estates, and they were given one tenth of their revenues as salaries. The government also gave them titles of nobility. For instance, the last Tokugawa’s shogun was regarded as a prince, and the former holders of the smallest states turned into barons. The merchants welcomed the Restoration and its changes, yet the farmers who constituted the largest population suffered heavily and the restoration worsened their status, for in 1869 roughly third of the farmers turned into tenants of lands via heavy debts and eventually becoming dispossessed farmers.78

74 W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth Olenik, p162,163. 75 Andrew Gordon, p93. 76 W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth Olenik, p149 77 M . W Meyer, p141. 78 Ibid, p142

On the other hand, the samurai were also losing their status. Despite the fact that they made a fundamental social and hectic group in the Restoration, they were liquidated as a social class. Making along with their families about 2 millions, the samurai lost their rights and privileges. The issuing of 1872 and 1873 universal military training was a tough blow on the honored position of the samurai as warriors of an aristocratic rank. Yet another problem added to the samurai was when the government banned them from wearing the tradition of two swords which had always made them a conspicuous special class and the right to do so was granted only to soldiers and policemen. This was fully clear when the Minister of War, the Premier Sanjo, issued the proclamation to ban the custom of wearing two swords on March 28th, 1876 as it went, “No individual will henceforth be permitted to wear a sword unless he be in court dress, a member of the military or naval forces, or a police officer.”79

The government, after the Restoration, divided them into two groups the lower who were incorporated as commoners (heimin); the higher got a status of Shizoku. However, the disappearance of feudal lords left the samurai without revenues.80 In 1876, the samurai’s economic privileges were gone once and for all. Meiji leaders wiped out a whole social class. The Meiji leaders did this primarily for financial reasons. It started with reductions in stipends when the domains were abolished. Then, the rulers thought that the samurai did very little in return for their high payments. 81 The samurai genuinely showed a vicious and extreme sense of loyalty to their masters that they were willing to do and scarify all for the sake of pleasing them.

6.4 The Army and Navy

Building up a strong army was one of the most fundamental aims of the Restoration. Right at the beginning, the reformers slogans were based on the idea of a ”Rich nation and Strong Army”. Since the samurai class was ultimately gone with the disappearance of the domains, the Meiji leaders needed an army by overhauling the

79 William Elliot Griffis, A.M. The Mikado’s Empire: A History of Japan from the Age of Gods to the Meiji Era (660 BC- AD 1872) (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1883), p381 80 Milton W. Meyer, p143. 81 Andrew Gordon, p65,66.

25 military and thus building up forthwith the Imperial forces. In addition, men like Omura Masujiro and Yamagata Aritomo pledged for a conscript army to be formed from the entire population at large. In April 1871, an imperial army of a little under ten thousand samurai were recruited from the Restoration forces by the government.82 The leading figure here who constructed arsenals and military academies was Omura Masujiro. Having been assassinated by a conservative samurai, Omura’s work was to be continued by Yamagata Aritomo (1838-1922) who studied in Europe.83After being to Europe, Yamagata returned fully persuaded that mass conscription was the premise under which Japan had to build a strong military. Yamagata, then, turned to be a commander of the Imperial Guards; a force of more than 9000 modeled on the French army. By1873, he became army minister and was conspicuously vital to the government for several years. 84During the same year he came up with a revolutionary law of universal conscription starting at the age of twenty, issuing that all males were to take three years of active service and four years of reserve status85 hereby marking a striking end to the samurai fighting tradition. Besides, as the domains were abolished, the various domain forces were integrated into the army. Japan’s new military army was put into a tough test as it crashed down on a large rebellion in 1877.86With roughly two decades later, Japan’s military power went all the more robust to not only keep stability at home but also to demonstrate its power overseas.

However, in order to form the navy in the 1880s and 1890s, the new government took the shogunate warships and flotillas setting up the first units of the navy and in so doing, they took the British Royal Navy as a model.87Indeed, the British Navy was of a vital importance to its organization due to the geographic similarities between the two countries.

82 Ibid, p6,7. 83 W. Scott Morton J. Kenneth Olenik, Japan: Its History and Culture (McGraw-Hill, Inc, the United States of America; 2005), p151 84 Ibid. 85 Andrew Gordon, p67. 86 Ibid. 87 W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth Olenik, p151.

6.5 Economy in Meiji Era

During the late Tokugawa period only a little industry existed. Japan, after the Restoration, indulged into an intense program of industrialization the likes of which the world had never witnessed before. The Japanese Revolution came top-down in contrast with other countries; as a consequence it kept people’s lives and properties. In addition, Japan had a trump card to play compared with the Chinese, who believed that they had a unique civilization and therefore, it was difficult for them to accept foreign ideas. The Japanese, however, understood urgently the need to take advantage of the political and economic experiment of the West. Since they used to imitate China and important foreign knowledge, it was easy for them to westernize Japan.88 In less than a decade, the Meiji men were able to eliminate the old feudal system and start up a Western-like economic system. In so doing, Japan did not receive financial foreign help. The Japanese government rarely made debts, and if it did, it was usually small and well-planned.89 The West, from his vantage point, used to look to the land of the Rising Sun with prudence, and lending money—if ever took place—was all but highly profitable. Japan’s only way to deal with the situation was to call upon western professionals to be employed in Japan. And to attract them, the government decided to pay them far highly than their counterparts either in Europe or in America.90

The government launched a far reaching program of industrialization. It was believed that Japan has a local capacity to create since centuries and even borrowing and importing from the west embodied high innovations.91 Entrepreneurs existed on a substantial scale promoting markets and by the first decade of the twentieth century Japan was growing remarkably in terms of manufacturing.92 New export products developed some industries like silk and tea production. However, the fierce

ادوين الدفاذرريشاور, تاريخ اليابان من الجذور حتى هيروشيما. حرره,يوسف شلب الشام. )دمشق: دارعالء الدين0222(, ص, 20 89 Ibid, p 96. 90 Ibid, 91 Papadaki, Maria. “The Technological Transformation of Japan-from the Seventeenth to the Twenty- first Century.” Jouranl of Economic Behavior and Organization. Vol. 33 1 (1997), p140.

92 L. M. Cullen, A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p210.

27 competition of imported markets decreased other Japanese industries such as cotton and cloth. Farmers, who made roughly 80 per cent of the population as a whole, underwent some tough practices as paying heavy taxes which continued out of the overthrown system of Tokugawa regime.93 The existence of new technology implied that modern and indigenous industries as the weaving industry would prosper as well. The Meiji government set forth a commitment to technological education, for it fully realized that technological education was the key to a rapid industrialization.

Traditional industries like the weaving industry in the Tokugawa rule was one of the most advanced sectors which contributed greatly to the economy of the time. After the Restoration, traditional industries, the Meiji leaders thought, could be modernized via the implication of western technologies.94 At times, it was believed that imported western products hugely devastated the indigenous industries in Japan. However, others supported the idea that importation of new technologies modernized Japan. They argued that the traditional spinning sector was innovated by western technologies and that importing new technologies from the west developed traditional industries considerably. On top of that, the weaving industry embodied the best example of this phenomenon. This industry was relatively advanced before the Meiji Era and without the Western-style and mechanization.95

The introduction of some machines to Meiji Japan helped a great deal in improving design, texture and luster (among other machines introduced from the west), the weaving industry soared in productivity particularly at the dawn of the twentieth century.96 Moreover, applying synthetic dyes in 1880s both lowered costs and produced yarns and fabrics with bright colors making products fashionable and henceforth introducing fashion markets in Japan.97

93Thomas Sowell. Ethnic America: A History (New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc, 1981), p158. 94 Hashino, Tomoku. “Institutionalizing Technical Education: The Case of Weaving Districts in Meiji Japan.” Economic History Review. Vol. 52 1 (2012) ,p27.

95 Cited in Tomoko Hashino, p27. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid.

Unfortunately, low fabric quality turned into a huge problem in the weaving industry and yet one of the primary reasons was the disappearance of the traditional guilds which soon led merchants and producers to cheat. As a reaction, a number of technical schools which offered textile courses were founded to fix the quality problem.98 To make sure that the new technologies were used appropriately, institutionalized technical education was needed as a better option rather than having weavers work randomly. Many schools were established to offer education in a number of fields. For instance, the Tokyo School of Mechanics, founded in 1881, was supposed to train workers to digest the technology imported from the west but, in actuality, it gave engineering education. 99 Other schools followed suit such as the Osaka Technical school in 1897, Koyto College of Technology in 1902, and the Akita school of Mining and Yonezawa Higher Technical Schools that were founded in 1910.100A unifying feature among such high technical schools was their accentuation on dyeing and some other fields which were not dealt with at university engineering faculties. Although courses offered by Higher Schools and universities were complementary, those of Higher schools were straightly related to traditional industries that developed before the Meiji Era. The essential value of higher technical schools can well be noted in the vital role they played in the betterment of understanding the transplanted technologies and implementing them on the traditional industries in Japan.101In these technical schools, the courses were designed so as to aid traditional industries and teach subjects as weaving, wood-work, metal-work, and craft-work. The silk was the main export of Japan till the mid-twentieth century. In 1871, Japan started up a new currency the “yen” which equaled half a dollar for half a century.102 The Meiji government also aspired to build a solid infrastructure by linking most of the archipelago first through the telegraph on the European model. Besides, in 1872, the government established a railroad from Tokyo to Yokohama which soon after turned to be one of the fastest railroads in the world.103

98 Ibid, p28. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid, p29. 101 Ibid, p29-30. (p 97,98 ادوين الذفاذر ريشاور102 103 Ibid, p97,98.

6.7 Education in the Meiji Era

To bring about a dramatic change in terms of modernization, reforms were to be intensified in education. In 1871, a new Ministry of Education was founded and by 1872, compulsory education was put into play. At first, it was only six months, but over the years, it extended to reach six years in 1907.104 The educational system was modeled on the French one, to implement later American practices, and eventually amalgamating with the Japanese Confucianist principles. The latter was emphasized in 1890 in the “Imperial Rescript on Education” which laid the underpinnings of the new educational system and thus added too much accentuation on values such as duty, respect, obedience and loyalty.105 The Meiji government set out for an educational program very much like that of the military (strong army was built up to extend Japan’s power not only at home, but also overseas). For example, in 1872 four years of education were compulsory to all children, the government declared “In a village, there shall be no house without learning, and in a house, no individual without learning”106 It was clear that Meiji rulers of the time fully grasped the value of education that mass schooling was an essential key to the military and economic power. However, compulsory education was not that easy to implement because a lot of riots took place, and many children cut classes, but in due time, attending schools turned to be very common over time.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, school attendance reached 90 percent and education was idealized107. In the program, the government made important declarations. As a start, “the Government Announcement for the Promotion of Learning” made in 1872, and “the Imperial Rescript on Education” in 1890. The purpose of the “Government Announcement” was to rise the Japanese in the world and make them manage business successfully.108Everything that is relevant to learning and education is required from reading and writing, to commerce, industry, law and

104 Curtis Andressen, p82. 105 Ibid. 106 Andrew Gordon, p67 107 Ibid, p68. 108 Munakata Seiya, “The Course and problems of National Education from the Meiji Period to the Present Day.” The Developing Economics. Vol. 3 4 (1965), P541.

30 politics. It was made clear that “learning” is the principle by which all is measured, in other words, those who do not learn, will definitely become failures. The “Announcement” accentuated the fact that people of all classes learn regardless of their social status as opposed to what people used to believe that education was confined only to the samurai and people of high ranks. Therefore, the government made it abundantly strict that children go to school, and parents who refuse to send them will be punished.109

Whereas the” Announcement Program” was launched by government officials, the “Imperial Rescript on Education” was written by the Emperor per se. the “Imperial Rescript on Education” reads:

“Ye, our subjects, be filial to your parents, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives be harmonious, as friends true; bear yourselves in modesty and moderation; extend your benevolence to all; pursue learning and cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual faculties and perfect moral powers; furthermore advance the public good and promote the common interests; always respect the Constitution and observe the laws….”110

The Imperial Rescript on Education was meant to be good any when and anywhere and therefore it can be implemented in any society at any time. Universities were established. For instance in 1877, Tokyo Imperial University was founded and many others followed suit such as Koyoto University in 1897, and Hokkaido University in Sapporo in 1918.111

In 1861, the earliest English newspaper appeared on the scenes and a decade later The Japanese daily, the Yokohama Mainichi Shimbun was put into circulation. These means of press played a major role in criticizing the government leading to the passage of laws in order to control the press.112Still, due to the constant touch with the

109 Ibid. 110 Ibid, p542. 111 W. Scott Morton and J. G. Kenneth Olenik, p152. 112 Curtis Anderessen, p86.

West, Western-style, hair-cuts, and clothes turned to be the fashion and even Western uniforms were implemented at Japanese schools and universities. 113

Meiji Japan applied the study of English in secondary schools in 1876, allowed Christian churches to be established, and fervently expressed its vehement admiration of the American way of life. 114The United States was viewed as an “earthly paradise”. Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln were held up in textbooks and were taught as models to be followed by Japanese children. As Thomas Sowell, argues, in his fabulous book Ethnic America, “Perhaps never before has a foreign people been so indoctrinated with the American way of life as those of Meiji Japan.”115 This zeal desire looking for respect and acceptance by Americans was to become later a major theme in the history of Japanese Americans.

7 Western Literature in Japan

The first decades of Meiji era saw a huge amount of transplant from the West. The country imported writings and ideas of intellectual writers as Samuel smiles; Adam Smith, Daniel Defoe, Jules Verne, and Rousseau.116It was fairly necessary to fetch the keys to both understanding and catching up with the West. When a number of translations of Western philosophy, literature, and scientific writing rose more and more; many literary histories paid a great attention to the first translations of Western literature because they were extremely important to the growth of modern Japan poetry, narratives and drama.117

The literature in the Meiji period gives some ideas about the risks and opportunities presented at the time as Tokutomi Roki had written in his ferociously read novel Footprints in The Snow in 1901:“The race will go to the swift, not the empty-headed! The real testing-time in politics will come after the Diet gets going in 1890_and in everything, not only politics: the further Japan advances on the world

113 Ibid, p84. 114 Thomas Sowell, p156,157. 115 Ibid. 116 J. Scott Miller, Adaptations of Western Literature in Meiji Japan (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p11. 117 Ibid.

32 stage, the more opportunities for the really able.”118 Tokutomi implied that in order to win the race of power, technology, and advancement, Japan had to work hardly rapidly so as not to be “empty-headed”. He also believed that the Japanese had great capacities when he said that the more “Japan advances on the world stage”, the more opportunities are for the able “Japanese”.

Western literature made significant influence on Japanese literature. A growing thirst for translation was yet to prevail and some of the earliest translations included Robinson Crusoe 1895, Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help in 1870, and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty in 1871.119 These works were so popular, for they dealt with how to cope with changes. Besides, a byproduct of the widespread of Western literature led to the quest of learning foreign languages, namely English.120

8 A Sense of Nationalism

Building up a national identity is obviously a modern phenomenon. Albeit it began in Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century, it swiftly spread universally over the centuries. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt argues that the construction of national identities should be viewed as a way of making a collective identity on the ground of some already existing symbols such as history, language, territory, ethnicity, and political boundaries.121 Since there is no fixed primordial symbols, national identity is built up and shaped by certain groups like the «intelligentsia” and political “entrepreneurs”.122 Hence one of the main drives to Japan’s development as a modern state during the late nineteenth century was that of the emperor being regarded as a center of national commitment.123

118 Cited in Andrew Gordon, p66. 119 W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth Olenik, p155. 120 Curtis Anderessen, p84. 121 Dick Stegewerns, Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan: Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship? (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), p5,6. 122 Ibid. 123 Siberman Bernard. Bernard, Siberman. “Emperor and Nation in Japan.” Pacific Historical Review. Vol. 34 1 (1965), p110.

Efforts to internalize and utilize Western ideas into the Japanese society were not in vain. Meiji leaders opted for a very important project of “Building a society” in that trying with huge efforts to shape a new egalitarian social order.124 By August 1870, these efforts were put into practice by the issuance of the “Ordinance Liberating the Outcasts”( Sen min Kaiho Rei) which formally banned the use of discriminatory language among the Japanese society and especially, it referred to the outcast of society making their legal equality with commoners and hence, they came to be known as the “ New Commoners”.125 The purpose of the law was to come to terms with the biggest obstacle to the one-ess of a society.

9 Imperial Japan

Be bold and fearless! Now is the happy time For the people of Japan To show to the world What, by means of solidarity, The nation can accomplish! Japanese military song, 1904126

The Meiji Revolution metamorphosed the relationship of Japan with the world. By the end of the nineteenth century, Japan turned into a powerful nation in Asia. Not only did Japan develop a robust economy and strong army, not even did it only develop a sense of nationalism which swept Japan all over, but also an acutely demonstration of power overseas.127It imported and exported both products and peoples alike, for instance, Japan imported grain from Korea; it sold textile to China; and sent and received men and women to Asia and America either as laborers or

124 Kevin M. Doak, A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (The Netherlands: ), p136 125 Ibid. 126 I. Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book, (London: Longman & Green, 1912), p. 121. 127 Andrew Gordon, p115

34 students.128Japan at the time took all the necessary salient aspects to aspire for a potent empire.

Now that Japan had developed a strong army and navy, opportunities for mass education were created, and on top of it, advancement in industry through trial and error was paramount. These added Japan as a powerful nation to the list of world powers so as not only to seek modernization at home but also to transcend it abroad. Armed with a huge sense of nationalism, the Japanese set out for neighboring countries seeking whatever there is to prove their world place as well as taking advantage out of current issues of some weak countries.

9.1 Sino-Japanese War (1884-1885)

The Meiji foreign policy was much centralized around national security particularly around the frontiers with neighboring countries such as Korea, China and Russia. Having grasped this, it was of a considerable importance for Japan to create strategic and economic use of Korea. This latter desire was on the hope of extension to Manchuria and some parts of China. The people of Japan at the time both realized the importance of economic force and the possession of an overseas empire to raise the voice of Japan’s nationalism.

At the dawn of June 1894 as the Tonghak riots took place in Korea, the Korean government asked for military aid from China to crack down on the rebellion at home. China responded accordingly. Threatened by the presence of the Chinese in neighboring Korea, Japan set up for war by sending troops to Korea at once.129

As a consequence, Japanese troops seized the opportunity to provoke war. Seeking their own advantage, the Japanese requested for some privileges from China which the Chinese obviously rejected. The Chinese ships were attacked by the Japanese

128 Ibid. 129 Urs Mattias Zachmann, China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period:China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1852-1904 (New York: Routledge, 2009), p31.

35 navy that was backed up by the UK, 130and the war commenced on 1st August 1884. Unfortunately the Japanese were not the only ones interested in Korea, and thus both the Japanese and Chinese troops marched on Korea. Soon after, to the Chinese surprise, and in a just a couple of weeks, the Japanese young navy crushed China’s Northern Fleet in the Yellow Sea, meanwhile the Japanese army achieved victory in the battle of Pyongyang.131

Within less than a year, the Chinese were beaten not only on land but also on sea to eventually sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki in April1895132, that was in a large part to Japan’s advantage. The treaty stipulated that China was to acknowledge Korea’s independence; indemnify Japan; withdraw Taiwan; grant Port Arthur, Pescadores, and the Liaodong Peninsula, and more importantly, offering Japan and the West a commercial section with a great deal of commercial privileges and opening a new treaty ports in China as well.133The commercial part of the treaty immensely satisfied Britain; however, the ceding of Port Arthur angered Russia and Germany. This, in part, led to the Tripartite Intervention of Russia, France, and Germany on 23rd April 1895 to recommend a “friendly advice” (conseil amical) stating that Japan was to retrocede the Liaodong Peninsula for peace and stability’s sake in East Asia.134This Tripartite Intervention motivated Japan to start a ten years program of armament which in due time had a significant influence on Japan’s foreign policy. However after being put under pressure by Germany, France and Russia, the Japanese officials, hereby, digested the lesson that force was a fundamental premise in international affairs.

130 Curtis Anderessen, p93. 131 Urs Mattias Zachmann, p32. 132 Curtis Anderessen, p93. 133 Urs Mattias Zachmann, p32. 134 Ibid, p32.

9.2 Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)

Russia is doubtless strong, But her regiments do not scare us, The Russian possessions are deserted, The souls of soldiers are empty. And our homeland is mighty, She exists for many years. The sons of Japan like a storm cloud, Will rush at the enemy. Japanese military song, 1904135

Japan had it in for Russia since the ceding of Liaotung Peninsula wherein Russia made interventions and began building military bases resulting in some mineral wealth to the side of Russia.136 The war broke out when the Japanese navy attacked Russian ships on February 1904. The war was dire enough that two hundred Japanese and roughly three hundred Russians either died or were wounded fighting in Manchuria137. Japanese fighters under the leadership of General Nogi Maresuke(1849-1912), gradually took control. Having access to the Russians at Port Arthur in January 1905, the Japanese not only dominated the seas between Japan and the mainland but also achieved a historic victory over the Russians in Mai 1905.138 The seizure of Port Arthur was of extreme importance as one Russian and chief military engineer in the garrison; Collonel Sergei Rashevskii wrote in his diary:

To my mind, Port Arthur is the main objective of the war. With its seizure, the Japanese will win half the campaign, if not more. We shall lose our fleet, bastions and batterers, huge stores, and what is the most vital – we shall lose the operative base of the Pacific Squadron; besides, with the fall of Port Arthur their friends, America and Britain, will obviously begin to

135 I. Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book, London: Longman & Green, 1912, p. 122. 136 Curtis Andressen, p94. 137 Mason and Caiger, p268. 138 Ibid.

37 support them financially.139

The weight of Port Arthur was apparent, in both wars with China and Russia, and seizing it was considered by many historians as an end in itself. The Russians set on the Port battleships, naval vessels such as destroyers, torpedo and gunboats. However, the military Russian commander Rear Admiral Vil’gelm Vitgeft and his Vice Admiral Oskar Stark- though both honest and industrious- were unexperienced when it comes to executing marine operations.140Additionally, the Japanese military officers dispatched secret agents into Port Arthur in disguise of barbers, photographers, peasans and the like. These spies scrutinized and mapped out all the necessary details needed for the attacks as one Japanese navy officer put it in his diary on January 26th, 1904:

Recently, our spy, the officer of the Imperial Headquarters, has again visited the fortress. We dispatch spies there on a regular basis for a long stay. This officer informed us that the Russians do not think of war. They do no military exercises, they do not fire cannons, and in the corner of the shipyard they have stockpiled torpedo-boats, on whose decks no machinist or boatswain ever stepped.141

The Russians at the time still had their old vision of feudal Japan as backward and weak not aware of the fully-fledged military capabilities of Japan until they were taken by surprise. The war started in Mai 1905 and after too much bloodshed, the Japanese defeated the Russians particularly on the sea. Eventually the two countries reached a peaceful conclusion with the Treaty of Portsmouth which stated that Russia was to cede Southern Sakhalin and Port Arthur to Japan resulting in Korea becoming a Japanese protectorate.142On the one hand, the Japanese victory reverberated internationally sending messages to the world about Japan’s might. On the other hand, a wave of nationalism swept Japan at home re-assuring Japan’s military power and

139 Ibid. 140 Evgeny Sergeev, Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan 1904-05: Secret Operations on Land and at Sea (USA: Routledge, 2007), p56. 141 Ibid, p57. 142 Mason and Caiger, p268.

38 capabilities and therefore eliminating the thinking of white superiority over other races.143

143 Curtis Anderessen, p96.

10 Conclusion

Throughout its history, Japan underwent tough times of wars, and unrest among its population. However, after the coming of the Tokugawa shogunate and its somehow iron rule, Japan maintained a long period of peace that lasted for more than two hundred and fifty years. Not surprisingly, the expedition visit of Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s to Japan in 1853 and 1854 is credited by virtually all historians for having “opened up” Japan and hence this latter divorced an era of isolationism. The visit was decisive and paved the way to a new industrial Japan to be born starting out by the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The Meiji Restoration (1867-1868) brought with it a paradigm shift in modernization which not only made Japan trade with the West but also contributed to a global system of knowledge and “foreign intercourse”. 144By 1912, Japan had acquired all the necessary ingredients needed for a modern state. It built up a strenuous government, a constitution, a conscript army with universal measures, a growing industry and an urbanized society. Conditioned by history particularly during the Tokugawa centuries, the Japanese were pre-disposed to accept leadership and guidance from above. Hence, some historians think it is a bit tough for other underdeveloped countries to follow Japan’s lead as a model in modernization not just because of the reason mentioned but also because of heterogeneity in some countries. Historically speaking, the Meiji period came to a full stop when the Meiji emperor died in 1912. During his rule, which lasted about 44 years, Japan witnessed an unprecedented metamorphosis transforming the isolated and feudal Japan into a powerful nation on a global scale.145

By the turn of the century, the aspects of industrialization and modernization were quite embedded in Japan yet it was not fully clear until the defeat of Russia in 1905. The process brought about a serious change in the lives of the Japanese particularly upon the least able to bear them such as the poor farmers. In 1884, the English language Japanese weekly claimed about the circumstances in Japan:

144 Moris Low, p2. 145 Curtis Anderessen, p96.

“ the depression…has increased month by month and year by year….Most of the farmers have been unable to pay their taxes…In more than one case self-destruction has been restored to….If any other territory [can support them] then we should say that it would be a judicious step to get them there as fast as possible.”146

Meanwhile, the kingdom of Hawaii was a very attractive place with its sugar plantations for numerous years although at first the Japanese government restricted the immigration of its citizens because it thought that contract laborers would lower the prestige of its nation.147

146 Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (The United States of America: University of California Press, 1962), p3,4. 147 Ibid.

Chapter Two: The Japanese experience in America

1 Introduction

By the end of the Tokugawa reign and the overthrow of their system by the Meiji Restoration, Japan witnessed a period of remarkable change initiated by drastic modernization processes. In the midst of which some Japanese peasants and citizens were unhappy because their living conditions worsened. As a result, they set for a new land, a new opportunity, and a new life—these were offered by America. Not surprisingly, a considerable number of movements from rural to urban regions took place and hence, cities got overcrowded culminating in a rise of unemployment and low living standards. During all this, the country underwent some unwanted changes that led to migration to America. The emperor’s efforts to modernize Japan were on the expense of the Japanese ordinary people and poor peasants who, tired of paying higher taxes, decided to go somewhere else where opportunities were offered. Hearing stories of workers in the United States earning several times higher than them, Japanese citizens decided to go to the United States to try their American dream pushed by the difficult conditions in their homeland and pulled by America. At this time Hawaii was an attractive place to go to, and getting out of Japan was an end in itself. Yet in Hawaii everything was owned by wealthy Americans owning plantations of coffee, sugar and so on.

The Japanese who migrated usually did not belong to the lowest class or the highest class. These were young and ambitious Japanese of limited means for farming or work and who were backed up by their families to cover up for their voyage to the U.S. either through debts or through vows. Known as they were with careful savings and hard work, the Japanese did not find these traits universal which ostensibly gave them opportunities for work. When in America, the Japanese worked endlessly to repay their debts. For example, the average savings brought back to Japan by migrants annually in the early twentieth century, from the district of Hiroshima prefecture only, was more than two years’ average earnings in Japan.1 Consequently, a considerable

1 Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc, 1981), p160,161.

42 number of those who came back to Japan both paid off their debts and had enough money left to buy amounts of farmlands or to start a business.2

The Japanese made excellent laborers on the sugarcane of Hawaiian plantations. On the U.S. mainland about 40 percent of them labored in agriculture whereas the rest worked in various robust fields such as railroads, mines, lumber mills, canneries, meat-packing plants, and the like.3 During all this, the Japanese accepted low pay in tough conditions and long hours. However, when it came to piece work basis in agriculture, they earned twice as much as their rival laborers. Despite the fact that the payment was low, it was high by Japanese standards. Unfortunately, the very virtues of Japanese particularly that of hard-work would—through the run of time—turn others against them.

Japanese and Asian-Americans in general encompassed a number of problems, the majority of which were unrevealed to the public and government officials. They underwent a variety of issues in economics, education, health, and citizenship to name a few. Moreover, there was a common held belief that all Asians are one uniform group, for instance, when the Katrina Hurricane hit the coastal states of Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, much of the media coverage was primarily based on the obliteration of African American neighborhoods whereas Asians living there were ignored. Race debates are often cited on the grounds of black and white basis excluding Asians from the circle.

The Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941 turned things upside down and added insult to injury for most Japanese immigrants. Immediately after the attack, hundreds of Japanese community leaders were arrested for no obvious reasons. President Franklin Roosevelt issued the Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 with approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans living in California, Orgen, and Washington to be incarcerated in concentration camps and very many followed suit later just because of the fact that they were Japanese even if they were American-born citizens.4

2 Ibid. 3 Ibid, p162. 4 Edith Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J. Yoo, eds. Encyclopedia of Asian American issues today. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO, 2010. , p34.

It is also claimed that President Franklin Roosevelt believed in the white supremacy regarding Asians and was hugely skeptical of “Yellow Peril”. He believed that Japanese were “un-assimilable” in America. He ordered in 1936 surveillance of Japanese in Hawaii questioning their loyalty.

Despite all what they endured in internment, they tried to resist in many ways and cope with their situations. They fought in Europe, they translated documents while spying on Japan, and they kept cool at camps.

2 Why and how they came

The first Japanese to set foot on the American soil were 27 immigrants who founded a colony in 1869 in north Sacramento which disappeared without a trace and only its name remained “the Lost Colony of Wakamatsu”.5 It was held a challenge that even though the first attempt in settling in America failed, it did not discourage Japanese from coming to the United States in record numbers over the years. Moreover, the Japanese had come to a point whereby they replaced Chinese immigrants especially after Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and settled in Hawaii where they worked on sugar plantations. Accepting low salaries and bearing tough conditions, some Japanese workers became rapidly their own bosses having their own lands which later ignited the pivotal of hatred against them by the rest of other immigrants and especially by whites.6

In 1870, after the completion of the railroad, the Chinese suffered from widespread unemployment. They turned into scapegoats as they labeled themselves the “Great Driving Out”. Shortly after, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbade all Chinese from entering to the U.S. Although the legislation satisfied some anti-Chinese groups, it also crashed down on a main source of cheap-labor. But the need for workers especially in agricultural California did not seem to cease. 7Then, The Japanese government made an agreement with Hawaii in 1884 which allowed laborers to migrate from Japan to work on the plantations. With this agreement, the plantation owners had to pay for the workers transportation to Hawaii and in return the laborers would work seven days a week, usually for about a year, being paid very little. Since the conditions were difficult in Japan for most ordinary peasants, most of these seized any opportunity to leave Japan as Hawaii offered better opportunities in comparison. By 1885, over 30,000 Japanese immigrants went to Hawaii working in plantations for

5 Claude Lévy. Les minorités ethnique aux Etats-Unis (Paris: ellipses,1997), p142. 6 Ibid, p142. 7 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, ISSEI, NISEI War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), p24,25.

Americans. The conditions there were direly difficult that many returned to Japan after a short time in Hawaii whereas thousands of others stayed.8

The First generation of Japanese immigrants or the Issei were a group of selected Japanese males by the government on the grounds of health, character, and desire to work. These Issei grew up in an era that was accustomed to accept the American way of life thanks to the Meiji regime. In addition, the emergence of Japan as an international power gave them a certain pride to be Japanese while in the United States.9 The Issei were homogeneous and the largest majority came from small towns or rural areas in Japan. They came primarily from southern Prefectures of Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, and Fukuoka which made the poorest regions in Japan. 10

The Japanese immigration to Hawaii was to take place again when some plantation owners made a contract with thirty thousand Japanese laborers in 1884. A great number of those workers entered mainstream America in the American West Coast after the annexation of Hawaii in 1898.11 During the same period i.e. the 1890s, a small but a remarkable number of Japanese made it to the ports of San Francisco, Seattle and Vancour. Economic hardships were some of the main reasons behind which the Japanese migrated to America, for the scarcity of arable land and the nature of Japanese landscape was far worse in Japan than that of America or Europe. Taro Murata was one Japanese immigrant who wrote about his migration story which exemplifies the idea of economic needs when he migrated at the age of nineteen from Japan to America on a boat named Saramara and how he had to pay six dollars for the fare. At first, he wrote, he worked on the railroad in the state of Washington with roughly two thousand Japanese workers and as the time went on, he started his own business.12And there were many such Taro Japanese who came penniless from Japan and made their American dream a living reality.

8 W. Scott Ingram and Robert Asher. Immigration to the United States: Japanese Immigrants (New York: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 2005), p26. 9 Sowell, p164 10 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, p27. 11 Roger Daniels. Coming to America: A History of Immigrants and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), p255. 12 Joan Morrison and Charlotte Fox Zabusky. American Mosaic (New York, E.P. Dutton, Inc. 1980), p32.

3 Meiji government and early immigrants

The Meiji government was very prudent with immigration because of a number of reasons: first Tokugawa’s old system of closed country in and out; and second because of the ordeal of Chinese immigrants in America; and third because the immigration of poor peasants would lower the prestige of Japan internationally. The government banned immigration but was to reconsider the ban again since poverty and overpopulation prevailed in rural Japan. Therefore, it was not until 1885 that emigration was permitted due to economic pressures. Japan’s modernization was highly costly and the price was paid heavily by small farmers who had to pay taxes. Failure to pay these taxes led the government permit poor workers to seek employment abroad. The first of these impoverished were contract laborers to work on sugar plantations in Hawaii.13

From the beginning, the Meiji government was very selective in regard to migration, for only students, bureaucrats, and statesmen were dispatched abroad. While the years 1860s and 1880s witnessed approximately 200,000 Chinese immigrant laborers, only 335 Japanese made it to the United States.14 It came as no surprise that after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, agricultural requirement of laborers increased fiercely and hence the Japanese were needed to fill in the gaps particularly in Hawaii. These Japanese were young and healthy so as to do tough work on Hawaiian sugar plantations. By 1898 and the annexation of Hawaii, the Japanese rushed into it as a first step to the mainland. The majority had to pass a screening process which guaranteed that they were healthy and literate. Much of these migrants aimed to be independent farmers and hard work was used as an end for a better position. Bill Ong Hing, an author of Asian immigration, stated “They considered themselves the competent equals of white workers, with a right to make the most of their opportunities for success.”15The Japanese were welcomed to replace the Chinese. At first Japanese immigrants worked for lower wages than their

13 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, p25. 14 Bill Ong Hing. Defining America through Immigration Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), p40,41. 15 Ibid.

American counterparts, but over the years they started to ask for higher wages through strikes and walk-outs.16

4 Conditions on the plantations

In America the Japanese families were rather stable having few divorces unlike other European communities. Their children were well-disciplined that they were conspicuous at schools for their obedience, politeness and hard work. It was regarded as a matter of honor to the Japanese families that their children do well even though they come from a country where English was not spoken. 17 The Issei fully digested the idea that education was the key vehicle for mobility so they encouraged their children to do well at school. They usually made great sacrifices for the education of their children.18

Though the majority of Japanese farmers fled Japan at least for a short time, circumstances at the plantations were hard. This was what a Japanese worker explained how in Japan they could “take the day off,” because it was their own work, which was not the same case on the plantations. The worker continued, “we had to work ten hours every day.”19

Women on the plantations constituted roughly 7 percent in 1894 and 14 percent in 1920, most of whom—more than 80 percent—were Japanese. They did staff like hoeing, stripping leaves, and harvesting. Although they did the same jobs as males, women were paid less.20Describing the conditions on the plantations, a Japanese woman reported, “we had to work in the cane-fields, cutting cane, being afraid, not knowing the language. When any hoale [white] or Portuguese’s luna came, we got frightened and thought that we had to work hard or get fired.”21Another Japanese told of how a luna used to carry a whip and swung it to get laborers to work harder though

16 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, p25. 17 Thomas Sowell, p168,169. 18 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, p32. 19 Ronald Takaki . Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York: Little Brown, and company, 1989),p133. 20 Ibid, p134,135. 21 Quoted in Ronald Takaki, p135.

48 he never whipped them. Moreover, laborers were not named as they were given numbers to be identified with. One worker depicted the scene that lunas, “never called a man by his name,” he objected, “I wanted my name, not the number.”22

5 The Gentlemen’s Agreement

The dedication and commitment of the Japanese to set up their position in the American society angered white workers considerably. In the 1890s, the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League (later labeled Asiatic Exclusion League) was backed up and joined by smaller organizations as the Anti-Jap Laundry League and the Anti- Japanese League of Alameda County for fear that Japanese would overrun California.23 Japan’s uniqueness was very apparent when it won successive victories over China in 1895 and Russia in 1905. So the United States came to the conclusion that it could not restrict Japanese immigrations as it did with the Chinese. Doing so would risk losing the Japanese markets. In order to fix the problem and satisfy both sides, President Teddy Roosevelt issued a treaty known as Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907-1908. The Japanese government hereby halted passports to laborers going to the U.S., and on the other hand, allowing Japanese wives and children of laborers already working in the U.S. to reunite with their husbands or fathers.24

The influx of Japanese immigrants increased in the last decade of the nineteenth century when 27,440 entered the U.S. and from 1901 to 1908 another 51,694 were admitted. Immigrants up until 1908 were in part dominated by males. Yet after the Gentlemen’s Agreement between1909 to 1923 females constituted about two fifths of the Japanese admitted to the U.S. However, many of the immigrants returned back to Japan after a short stay.25The period between 1850 and mid 1930s witnessed a movement on the part of hundreds of Asian immigrant laborers coming from China, Japan, and Korea, and the Philippines towards Hawaii and California. They came in seek of labor, and better wages. Western capitalists in America needed cheap and plentiful labor. Unlike other Americans, Asians were able to provide for such

22 Ibid, p136. 23 Bill Ong hing, p42. 24 Ibid. 25 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, p21.

49 needs.26The Japanese formed very strenuously bonded communities that made them one strong ethnic group especially because of the “picture bride” option as a response to the Gentlemen’s Agreement.

5.1 Japanese Picture Brides

Japanese immigrants came to the U.S. in huge numbers between 1886 and 1908 and also in a second wave from 1916 to 1924. The years between 1908 and 1924 were pre-dominated by the immigration of Japanese women. This period helped in the growth of the Nisei as a second generation and the building of Japanese American communities and culture.27 By the 1900s, the use of photography was so common that brides from Japan and Japanese males living in the United States could exchange pictures and arrange marriages. Through the Gentlemen’s Agreement some twenty thousand Japanese women entered the United States. Some were wives that Japanese immigrants left home in Japan, but the majority were newly married women. Most of whom were married in Japan by proxy to men living in the United States. Usually another ceremony takes place in the United States. This came to be known as “picture bride marriage”.28

Picture brides were Japanese women coming to the United States to marry Japanese men whom they have never seen before. Marriages like these were arranged at home with both families based on certain principles as social status, personality, and background.29 If the arrangement was made, either the Japanese American male returns to Japan and brings his wife back to America, or the picture bride travels to America herself.30The Japanese Picture Bride helped in building Japanese communities in the United States as claimed in the words of Wendy L. Ng, “Japanese picture bride still allowed under the agreement gave way to the formation of families

26 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, p23. 27 Jonathan H. X. Lee , and Kathleen M. Nado, Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife (Santa Barbra: Library of Congress Cataloging in Public Data), p 569,570. 28 Roger Daniels, Coming to America, p255. 29 Scott Ingram, p40. 30 Ibid, p41.

50 and a stable Japanese community.”31 Picture bride Ai Miyasaki said “When I told my parents about my desire to go to a foreign land, the story spread throughout the town.” Another picture bride Riyo Orite, who went to the U.S. in 1913 said that, “From here and there requests for marriage came pouring in just like rain!” Riyo’s marriage to a Japanese immigrant in the United States was arranged by a relative as she put it “All agreed to our marriage,” she went on, “but I didn’t get married immediately. I was engaged at the age of sixteen” and she met her husband only after two years at that time she had just seen him in a picture.32 With the picture brides, the Japanese were no longer sojourners, they turned into Japanese Americans.33They underwent a rising Anti-Japanese sentiment. Many white exclusionists started thinking of making it hard for them to live in the United States. Their very rapid success in agricultural economy brought upon them reactions of xenophobia. By 1913, The California Alien Act, prohibited strangers of Asian origin to own lands, and limited their contract-labor of lands to only three years.34 To avoid the law, many Japanese Americans owned lands with the names of their children who were considered American citizens.35The Japanese by then were able to produce Japanese Americans, argued Jennifer Snow, “Now the Japanese could have children in America—and they would be citizens.”36

6 The Alien Land Law

Lucky enough to reunite with their children and wives brought about by the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the Japanese were able to form families and continue their

31 Wendy L. Ng, Japanese American Internment During World War II: A History and Reference Guide (Connecticut: Greenwood, 2002), p5. 32 Ai Miyasaki and Riyo Orite , interviews, in Eileen Sunada Sarasohn (ed.), The Issei: Portrait of a Pioneer, An Oral History (Palo Alto, Calif., 1983), pp. 44, 31—32. 33 Thomas Sowell, p163. 34 Claude Lévy, p143. 35 Ibid. 36 Jennifer c. Snow, Protestant Missionaries, Asian Immigrants, and Ideologies of Race in America, 1850-1924 (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2007), p 95.

51 natural growth of a community. Though Japan was disturbed by the limitation of its immigrants, it kept cool with the opportunities provided by the agreement. However, the exclusionists went on discouraging new Japanese immigrants by finding new ways especially because of the fierce economic competition the Japanese showed. During the 1910s, owning just one percent of the farmland, Japanese farmers produced over 10 percent of California’s produce.37In1913, California legislated the Alien Land Law which stipulated that, “all aliens eligible to citizenship may acquire, possess, enjoy, transmit and inherit property or any interest therein.”38 Californians were promoting the slogan “Keep California White”39.

According to the Naturalization Act of 1870, Asians were not allowed to be citizens.40 Thus, the Alien Land Law prohibited the Issei from owning land or contract it for more than three years.41 Exclusionists believed that if they could not halt most immigrants at the border, they would, at least, make life difficult for them in the United States that they would leave and go back where they come from.42 The Alien Land Law also made some anti-Japanese believe that they could halt the “Japanese invasion.” During the same year a propaganda campaign by the State Controller Chambers was under way. Many articles and magazines started linking the Japanese actions in Asia with the Japanese immigrants in the United States and thus fight for their exclusion as V. S. McClatchy argued that Japan should be regarded as “Germany in Asia”, a phrase which was said repeatedly.43

To find a loophole in the Alien Land Law, the Issei used their American born children, who were according to the Fourteenth Amendment American citizens, to buy lands in their children’s names. When tested in court, the Supreme Court passed that even the Nisei children could own property provided that they were American

37 Bill Ong Hing, p43. 38 Quoted in Bill Ong Hing.P43 39 Bill Hosokawa. Colorado’s Japanese Americans: From 1886 to the Present (Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2005), p116. 40 Bill Ong Hing, p43. 41 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, p32. 42 Bill Ong Hing, p43. 43 Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (California: University of California Press, 1962), p92.

52 born citizens.44 It was not until 1952 where the Alien Land Law was ruled unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court.45However, the Japanese tried to fight for the right of citizenship but without success. One Japanese immigrant took a case to the Supreme Court known as Takao Ozawa v. United States (1922) claiming that he should be considered as a “free white person” according to the naturalization laws. The court rejected the claim and concluded,

“To adopt the color test alone would result in a confused overlapping of races and a gradual merging of one into the other, without any practical line of separation…. The federal and state courts, in an almost unbroken line, have held that the words “white person” were meant to indicate only a person of what is popularly known as the Caucasian race…. With the conclusion reached in these several decisions we see no reason to differ.”46

The Supreme Court also ruled that the Japanese immigrants would not be naturalized as U.S. citizens because they were neither white nor Africans. 47The message was abundantly clear: Japanese were not desired in the United States. The law was altered in 1920. During the same year, the Japanese stopped the immigration of picture brides on February 25th.

In 1924, a law was issued by federal immigration and naturalization to cut off all immigration from Asian countries. It was the Act of 1924. Though it seriously limited immigrants from Europe, it was a crash on Japanese immigrants. The Japanese were not mentioned in the law, but it was clear that they were the target of the “oriental exclusion”. The law had a devastating impact on Japanese immigrants that they declined from about eight thousand migrants a year in the early 1920s to 723 in 1925.48 The Immigration Act of 1924 halted Japanese immigration to the United States for almost 30 years.49

44 Jonathan . H.X. Lee and Khathleen M. Nadeau, p571. 45 Bill Ong Hing, p44. 46 Ibid, p43-44. 47 Jonathan . H.X. Lee and Kathleen M. Nadeau, p571. 48 Lon Kurashige, Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934-1990 (California: University of California Press, 2002) , p17. 49 Scott Ingram, p49.

7 Moving to the Mainland

After having finished their contracts, thousands of Japanese laborers left the plantations. In1900, the editor of the Mani News noted that a “traveling mania” obsessed workers when a huge number of Japanese were moving from the plantations “by every steamer for Honolulu.” On the plantations, Japanese read of higher wages in California on advertisements.50The Hawaiian Star reported in 1906 that some local Japanese papers claimed a need for 2,000 Japanese to go to the coast forthwith. Wages on the coast varied from 1.35 to $4 per day. Although planters urged the Japanese Consul in Hawaii to instruct Japanese laborers to stay on the plantations, Japanese workers kept their quest for higher wages on the mainland that by 1907, about 40,000 Japanese left Hawaii for the West Coast.51

By the time it became an American territory, Hawaii was governed by American laws as well which prohibited contract labor arrangements. The plantation contract labor was banned in 1900.Therefore, workers had to finish their terms of contracts, and become free to find their own jobs. Since Hawaii was an American territory, the Japanese were free to travel to the U.S. mainland and seek jobs. There was a growing wave of emigration of Japanese laborers not only from Japan but also from Hawaii to the mainland United States.52 After an unsuccessful strike in 1908 against the terrible conditions and low wages on the Hawaiian plantations, an inordinate number of Japanese moved from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland seeking better jobs. These Japanese were lucky to find jobs easily—since the Chinese were excluded in 1882— and there was a growing need for workers especially in the railroad construction mining, fishing, and meatpacking. Japanese workers quickly earned a reputation of being industrious workers who work long hours with low wages, and they almost made no complaint about the hard circumstances. 53

50 Ronald Takaki , p147. 51 Ibid. p148. 52 Wendy L. Ng, p2. 53 Scott Ingram, p29-34.

In 1909, more than 9, 000 Japanese out of 30, 000 were working in agriculture. Many were owners of their own land. They had particular methods in agriculture especially with potato, and rice compared to their white counterparts.54Most of the Japanese moved to California that by the first decade of the nineteenth century, the Japanese were farming over one hundred thousand acres in California and over four hundred fifty thousand acres in 1919.55The majority of workers made a living for their families, but some chose different paths such as a Californian entrepreneur Kinji Ushijima (1863-1926) later known as George Shima who came to America in 1889. Just within twenty years, he turned into one of California’s most famous Japanese in America56. He was described as the “potato king” because of the crop he offered on the islands of Sacramento Delta. Due to Shima’s success and many others in Northern California, Los Angeles soon turned into an epitome city of Japanese Americans with more than 35 000 Japanese living there.57

The Japanese were surprisingly very successful especially at the fields of entrepreneurial or contract gardening. In 1928, there were over 1,300 Japanese gardeners in southern California. They did not just stick to agriculture, they also moved into other fields of business. In 1919, the Japanese owned roughly half the hotels, and one quarter of the grocery stores in Seattle. Besides, in Los Angeles, dry cleaners, lunch counters, fisheries and cheap hotels were owned by the Issei. At first, the businesses were meant for the immediate Japanese community; however, the utility of their businesses went beyond that to reach non-Japanese clientele.58

Their success in entrepreneurship businesses was partly due to the solid bonds of their communities based on family, community ties, and concepts of honor.59In 1930, about 70.20 percent of Japanese residents lived in California. With geographic expansion, residential segregation rose by Little Tokyos and little Osakas in cities

54 Claude Lévy, p143. 55 Roger Daniels, Coming to America, p253. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid, p254. 58 Thomas Sowell, p167. 59 Ibid.

55 with major Japanese populations.60 Voluntary institutions helped the Japanese out to solve problems. As a result, many associations were formed.61

8 Beginning of discrimination

The characters of Japanese workers led them to be among the most successful immigrants in the United States, but also incited other Americans against them. Since they were laborious, they were hated by American workers thinking that jobs were taken from them by the Japanese. On the one hand, labor unions hated Japanese as they were admired by bosses. On the other, the Japanese workers were resented by American business and farming communities because they feared them as successful rivals.62Ronald Takaki clearly portrayed this fear when he argues, “…the planters slandered the Japanese … and claimed they were seeking to ‘Japanese’ the islands.”63 The racial attitudes towards the Japanese were welcomed virtually by all levels of society as well as government and organizations. The Japanese were now on the spot, and the resentment against them was likely to result in a halt of immigration. In 1905, the Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) was founded in California so as to stop Japanese immigrants from coming to the U.S.64 The AEL believed that Japanese should be separated from the rest of Americans and in that forced the Board of Education in San Francisco in 1906 to refuse Japanese students and send them with the Chinese to the Oriental School that was founded in 1884.65

The rising sentiment against Japanese called for an exclusion on Japanese immigrants all at once like that of the Chinese. However, President Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 issued the so called Gentlemen’s Agreement.66 This resentment against

60 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, p29. 61 Ibid, p32.

62 Scott Ingram, p37. 63 Ronald Takaki, p53. 64 Scott Ingram, p37. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid, p38.

Japanese grew and some powerful nativists formed the Immigration Restriction League (IRL) at the close of the century to fight against what they regarded as “different” and “foreign”. The IRL’s founder, Prescott Hall, claimed that it was for Americans to decide what groups to populate America and he suggested northern Europeans like the British and the Germans as the best groups in the sense that they were progressive and energetic whereas other groups such as Jews and Asians were primitive and lazy. The IRL promoted the government to pass certain laws for immigrants to be allowed access to the U.S. and one such law was for immigrants to be able to read English. This in part reduced the number of immigrants to America.67

However, the fiercest discriminatory group on Japanese was the AEL. It said that Japanese workers sent the money they earned back to Japan, in contrast with white workers who kept their money in the U.S. and contributed to American economy. The press, too, had its share, for instance, a newspaper editorial warned, “on the far out- posts of the Western world rises the specter of the yellow [referring to the skin tone of Asian peoples] peril. . . . It is nothing more or less than a threatening inundation [flood] . . . over the Pacific Ocean.” The earliest law was the Webb-Hartley Law often known as the Alien Land Law of 1913. California state officials admitted the aim of these laws. In 1914, one official said,

“The fundamental basis of all legislation has been, and is, race undesirability. It seeks to limit the Japanese presence by curtailing [limiting] the privileges they enjoy here. And it seeks to limit the numbers who will come by limiting the opportunities for [them] when they arrive.”68

Many, Japanese towns and communities started to emerge. So, small businesses, hotels, restaurants, and barbershops were founded.69

Between the years 1923 and 1924 Many Americans complained about Japanese Americans who never seem to stop working all day long every day without taking rests or holidays which made it fairly difficult for other Americans to compete with them. Many thought that they should be evacuated from the U.S. soil which the

67 Scott Ingram p43,44

68 Ibid, p44-46. 69 Ibid, p49.

Congress partly did in 1924 by banning immigration from Asian countries.70 To make things worse, when the Japanese accepted low wages, the white Americans went even more furious because they saw that it was dangerous for their lives and jobs. Added to that, more waves of Japanese immigrants entered as well as high birth-rates; assuring the idea of the “yellow Peril”.71

However the Japanese acted, they could not please the West either by defeating China in 1895 or by the overwhelming victory over Russia ten years later. The West did not accept to bridge the racial gap with them.72 For instance, an American correspondent during the Russo-Japanese war supported the Russians because they were white and believed that it meant much to him as he reported “I now find myself hating the Japanese more than anything in the world. It is due I presume to the constant strain of having to be polite and seek favors from the yellow people.” 73The more the Japanese tried to imitate the West, the more discrimination and hatred they got. This was obvious when American labor unions, and politicians were not only persuaded of the “unassimilability” of the Japanese in America but they were also scared of their flow of immigrants to the American lands which constituted— according to them—an impending Asian invasion.74The anti-Japanese white’s problem lied mostly in the Japanese cheap labor which would undermine the standard of living of white workers.

8.1 The Japanese as yellow peril

“Japan is now a world power and is already clutching for control of the Pacific and this ultimately bring her into conflict with the United States.”

مروان بطش, مدرسة شيكاغو. مترجم عن االن كولون)بيروت: المؤسسة الجامعية لالنتاج و التوزيع,2102( ص, 36. 70 71 Ibid, p36. 72 Lon Kurashinge, p16. 73 quoted in Lon Kurashige, p16. 74 Ibid.

James D. Phelan, Nov. 12.1907 75

Prior from the beginning of their arrival, Japanese immigrants were prone to discrimination practices. They were pre-judged to be a second version of the Chinese. Hereupon, a fierce anti-Japanese sentiment started to be fostered against them at an overwhelming rate. For example, some titles of books raised the alarm of the yellow peril in the early 1920s as The New Japanese Peril (Sidney Osborne); The Japanese Invasion (Jesse F. Steiner); Must We Fight Japan? (Pitkin). These books depicted Japan as a “world ogre” and a threat not only to “the United States, but to all civilization.”76Because Japan in the words of Sadao Asada, “sought not only territorial expansion and domination of China but also control of East Asia and the Pacific. Unless the United States blocked Japan’s march, it would emerge as a colossal power”77

In 1940, there were about 127,000 people of Japanese either by birth or ancestry living in the continental United States according to a census done in the same year. Around forty-seven thousands of them emigrated from Japan before 1925 and therefore-- just like other Asians--were aliens ineligible for citizenship.78 However, their children (the Nisei) were because they were born in the United States according to the Fourteenth Amendment. In fact, their citizenship was at best a second class. This was very true particularly in California and other West coast states where the majority of the Japanese communities lived.79

Journalists and politicians already commenced a serious suspicion propaganda on Japanese Americans. For example, just one day after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Los Angeles Times invoked California for:

75 See, Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, p65. 76 Sadao Asada, Culture Shock and Japanese-American Relations_Historical Essays (Missouri: University of Missouri, 2007) , p37. 77 Ibid, p38. 78 Roger Daniels . “Relocation of Japanese Americans During World War II: The Heart Mountain Experience.” Peace and Change. Vol. 23 2 (1998). p118. 79 Ibid.

“alert, keen-eyed civilians [who could be] of yeoman service in cooperating with the military authorities against spies, saboteurs and fifth columnists. We have thousands of Japanese here…. Some, perhaps, many are… good Americans. What the rest may be we do not know, nor can we take a chance in the light of yesterday’s demonstration that treachery and double-dealing are major Japanese weapons.”80

Several other West Coast newspapers, broadcasters and nationally-syndicated columnists spoke of stories and commentaries that were most of the time erroneous about Japanese espionage and fifth columnists activities.81It was clear as made in the words of Jennifer C. Snow, “The Japanese constituted the “Yellow Peril,” and the seemingly peaceable, industrious fruit farmers of California were merely the first wave of an invasion and colonization force.”82Ironically, the claims and stories of Japanese treachery were all but chimera that no single case of espionage or sabotage was ever found in the United States by ethnic Japanese.

Some historians trace the anti-Japanese sentiment back to racism which probably started by the end of the Civil War with years of Reconstruction leading the Northerners to accept the freed slaves in the Negro question; Plessy v. Ferguson(1896) and the ideology of “separate but equal”. In the 1880s, this very doctrine was growing so rapidly especially on the part of laborers. The non- assimilation, the low standard of living, the high birth rate, the habits and mores were charges not only against the Japanese but also the European as well. Still, the Japanese were regarded as a horde of invaders. Over the years, a constant fear was held by many Americans that Japan would soon take over the Pacific and therefore invades parts of the continental United States. This very fear came to be known by the catchword “yellow peril”.83 Though the origin of the term is not fully clear, yet some link it to the direct translation of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s about a gelbe gefahr threatening the peace of both Europe and all the Christendom (the Chinese invasion à la Genghis Khan was meant). The idea ferociously started spreading in public in 1905 United States. The majority using the term felt afraid of an imminent attack from Oriental

80 Ibid. p, 120. 81 Ibid. 82 Jennifer C. Snow, Protestant Missionaries, Asian Immigrants, and Ideologies of Race in America, 1850-1924 (New York: Routledge, ,2007), p94. 83 Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, p68.

Japan—and even before Japan rose to world power, China was feared by many Californians. 84

After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, Japan emerged on the scene of world powers. Talks of a yellow peril started in Europe and then grew more and more in the United States. One journalist William Randolph Hearst started to talk about the Japanese menace, though he was not in favor of the idea before. On December 20, 1906, the San Francisco Examiner warned of Japanese spies and made its earliest contribution in the anti-Japanese campaign—an immediate fabrication that the Japanese immigrants were in reality Japanese soldiers in disguise:

“Japanese in companies of forty are having infantry drill after dark [in Hawaii] two or three nights a week [ and are] armed with rifles….The Japanese of Hawaii have secreted enough rice to feed the entire population for seven months. [There have been] recent arrivals of Japanese troops in the guise of coolies [who are] secretly preparing for hostilities.”85

At the same time, an anti-Japanese politician from California, James D. Phelan, started to worry about Japan as a threat to the United States when he argued that the Japanese immigrants were an “enemy within our gates.” Another detailed description of the expected war came from a naval hero, Richmond Pearson Hobson while he was in Congress in 1907 started to speak about yellow peril. Under the headline “JAPAN MAY SEIZE THE PACIFIC SLOPE”. Hobson criticized the Americans for their ignorance of the Japanese threat when he declared “The Yellow Peril is here,” and then, he went on, “Absolute control of the Pacific Ocean is our only safety.” Hobson believed that when Japan defeated China, it would control the entire yellow race predicting that the “Japanese are the most secretive people in the world” and that they were “rushing forward with feverish haste stupendous preparations for war….The war is to be with America.”86

Another anti-Japanese, Homer Lea, one of the leading exponents against the yellow peril and who was a general in the Chinese army and an adviser to Sun Yat-

84 Ibid. 85 Quoted in Roger Daniels, Politics of prejudice, p70. 86 Ibid, p71.

61 sen, believed that Japan could wage a war against America. Lea wrote a book The Valor of Ignorance, which was published in 1909 and was reissued after the Pearl Harbor attack. The book speaks vividly of a futuristic Japanese-American war where Japan would take over the Philippine Islands and then would land on the Pacific Coast to overrun Washington, Oregon, and California. Lea thought that a war with Japan was inevitable when he insisted that “War is a part of life, and its place in national existence is fixed and predetermined”87 and the U.S. could survive only by developing much larger army and navy than that of Japan.

Therefore, due to the constant propaganda brought about by many writers, journalists and anti-Japanese nativists, Americans felt the yellow peril was upon them. Suspicion grew, but no real action could be taken. By the first decade of the twentieth century, German sources, as well as semiofficial, attempted—though in vain—to convince Roosevelt of the Japanese threat. For instance, Heinrich Werner, a German officer who visited the U.S, warned that “Japan has a well-trained, highly efficient, standing army of 40,000 men” in California and Mexico. The yellow peril kept growing after WWI. This was made abundantly evident in V.S. McClatchy words that Japan was the “Germany of Asia”.88

The propaganda developed in the American psyche, conditioned an anti-Japanese reaction. In the south, however, the threat was sort of coming from an expected Negro rebellion. A young southerner recalled how they used to talk about a race war as he put it “when blacks and yellows would unite and meet the scorn of whites with violence.”89 After WWI, a huge reservoir sentiment of anti-Japanese emerged throughout the country. In testing American soldiers during World War II, Army psychologists found out that thirty eight to forty eight percent agreed to the statement: “I would really like to kill a Japanese soldier,” whilst merely five to nine percent agreed to the statement, “I would really like to kill a German.”90

87 Ibid, p73. 88 Ibid, p74-76. 89 Ibid, p78. 90 Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (NY: Free Press, 1985),p410.

However, according to Sowell, it was not the case. He concluded in his book Ethnic America, that despite all fears “not a single Japanese American was ever convicted of a single act of sabotage during all of World War II.”91

8.2 Japanese Loyalty called into question

Before Pearl Harbor attack, government officials had had some suspicions towards the Japanese immigrants’ loyalty and assimilability to the United States. By the fall of 1941, John Franklin Carter, close confidante to Roosevelt, made an intelligence study of the Japanese living on the West Coast in that responding to the president’s secret request of seeking information on Japanese Americans. Carter, from his side, hired another Republican businessman, Curtis B. Munson as his investigator. Munson made it to the West Coast by October 1941 where he met and integrated intensively with Japanese American community. From October to November Carter and Munson dispatched the president with a number of reports all implying the Nisei were surprisingly loyal to the United States as shown in the words of Munson, “They are pathetically eager to show this loyalty.” Carter shared the same idea with Munson arguing that even though a few Japanese in America might be dangerous, “for the most part the local Japanese are loyal to the United States or, at worst, hope that by remaining quiet they can avoid concentration camps or irresponsible mobs”.92

Similar ideas were held by an officer in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) Lt. Cdr. Kenneth D. Ringle who spent a great deal of time both in Japan and in southern California so as to investigate whether the Japanese were vehicles of espionage in the Japanese American community. In January 1942, Ringle reported that even aliens and citizens alike who would act in disloyalty constitute merely 3 percent of the whole number of American Nikei. Additionally, the Bureau of Investigation (FBI) held an identical view, for instance, in November 1940, they made security investigations in Hawaii with reports showing the Nisei—and even the Issei—as loyal to the United States. These opinions, more or less, showed a substantial degree of loyalty to their

91 Thomas Howell, p172. 92 quoted in Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2001) pp. 65–68.

63 place of birth, and thus agreed that the government had better strengthen the Nisei’s loyalty.93 Even after Pearl Harbor those ideas were persistent that the Nisei were loyal to the United States government.

Unfortunately, the views and opinions about whether the Nisei were loyal or disloyal were not the ones to determine the debate about their loyalty or incarceration. It was the U.S. army that was concerned of the final decision. Therefore, the exclusion of the Nisei from the West Coast came from an army organization known as the Western Defense Command (WDC), the service command in charge of the defense of the American West Coast. With President’s Roosevelt Executive Order of 1942, General Lt. John L. DeWitt, commander of the WDC, was given the authority to remove any persons he might think as aliens. DeWitt designated the removal of people from Japanese ancestry from military zones as California, the western halves of Oregon and Washington, and the southern part of Arizona. However, the exclusion of “aliens” did not mean others such as Italians or Germans. The General explained that in the war the Nisei were on the spot when he said:

“The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted. . . . It, therefore, follows that along the Pacific Coastal Frontier over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today.” 94

About a year later, DeWitt, in racial terms, spoke in a final report about the Nisei justifying the exclusion as he illustrated, “the continued presence of a large, unassimilated, tightly knit and racial group, bound to an enemy nation by strong ties of race, culture, custom and religion along a frontier vulnerable to attack constituted a menace which had to be dealt with.”95. Dewitt’s indictment of Japanese loyalty was so bluntly racial against people of Japanese ancestry.

93 Eric L. Muller, American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World II (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007) ,p15,16. 94 Quoted in Eric L. Miller, p17. 95 Ibid, p18.

DeWitt was not the only one to think of Japanese disloyalty particularly in the U.S army. Nine years earlier, the Hawaiian brunch of Army Intelligence (G-2) had conducted a report entitled “Estimate of the Situation—Japanese population in Hawaii.” The report stated that the Issei and Nisei in Hawaii were inferior to whites, and that they incorporated some racial traits as fanaticism, duplicity as well as arrogance. The report insisted that the Japanese Americans “resisted Americanization, while Japanese schools and churches inculcated their loyalty to the militarists in Japan.’’ And then, the author of the report went on realizing the growth of Japanese population in Hawaii, “the territory would lose all its American character.’’96During the war, the U.S. government constantly attempted to differentiate between Japanese in America and their loyalty to the United States instead of Japan and hence, people of Japanese ancestry were put into internment camps on the basis of military necessity.

8.3 Japanese Internment

The Second World War was a dramatic turning point in the lives of Japanese Americans. The Pearl Harbor attack came as a surprise and therefore outraged both Americans, and Japanese Americans like. Ron Oba, a Japanese American who was 17 at the time described the attack, “I was angry, very angry, that the Japanese would attack my country,” he continued, “I was an American.”97 Suddenly, it was as if all the early fears and discrimination by the anti-Japanese prejudice were proved by the Pearl Harbor attack. In the course of few days, Japanese Americans were prohibited from going outside their homes between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. Besides, the FBI arrested over 2,000 Japanese considered as aliens and who were thought of as potential danger. 98Most of these were Japanese leaders of organizations. Ironically, some Japanese Americans namely, the Nisei, supported the FBI against pro-Japanese attitudes of their Issei elders as threatening acts of disloyalty to America, and to the Japanese Americans in particular. Over 100,000 Japanese Americans including women and children were shipped off from March to November to large internment

96 See, Greg Robinson, p55. 97 Scott Ingram, p57. 98 Ibid.

65 facilities in isolated regions from California to Arkansas.99 A week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congressman John Rankin gave a speech in the House of Representatives where he claimed, “I’m for catching every Japanese in America . . . and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps. . . . Let’s get rid of them now!” 100

Even before the beginning of WWII, the Japanese lived on American soil and were considered as un-assimilable strangers to mainstream America. However, the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 incited all the more the suspicions of the Japanese all over America and particularly in California. Many started a movement of hostility and hatred against the Japanese who were thought of as spies helping Japan to invade the United States. Many organizations, members of Congress, and journalists suggested the evacuation of all Japanese on the West Coast.101The rising sentiment against Japanese started to put the squeeze on President Franklin Roosevelt in December and early January. They came primarily from the West Coast politicians, some second-echelon military officials especially Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion, the army’s Provost Marshal General, and Lt. Gen. John L. De Witt, the responsible over the WDC and the ranking military officer on the West Coast.102In addition, civilian heads of the army as Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy and War Secretary Henry L. Stimson were also convinced of a “military necessity” to justify mass evacuation. The xenophobia was a sabotage of the west Coast aircraft factories the output of which was of a vital importance to American war planes. There was definitely no sabotage before or after the Pearl Harbor.103 Pressures went on with senior West Coast senator, Hiram W. Johnson who organized the whole congressional delegations of California, Oregon, and Washington to unanimously forward a recommendation in February to the president saying: “the immediate evacuation of all persons of Japanese lineage and all others, aliens and citizens alike, whose presence

99 Thomas Sowell, p172-171. 100 Scott Ingram, p57. 101 Claude Lévy, p144. 102 Roger Daniels, Relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, p121. 103 Ibid.

66 shall be deemed dangerous or inimical to the defense of the United States from all strategic areas.104

In 1942, California gave an order that Japanese employees be fired. The Secretary of War Henry Stimson promoted Japanese internment as he claimed in 1942 “their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or ever trust . . .” 105 In January 19th, 1942, the Attorney General (Minister of Justice) decided to establish along the Pacific zones of security to prohibit all “stranger enemies”. A month later, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 ordering the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast implying that successful prosecution of war needs every possible action for protection against threats. The Order issued the exclusion of “any or all persons” regarded as aliens. For instance, under this order 120,000 Japanese Americans left their homes and property by force to detention facilities called “Assembly Centers” and “Relocation Centers”. The first Japanese Americans suspected were community leaders, language school teachers, judo instructors, and business people; these were arrested by the FBI in December 1941.106

Yet the Order also stated what to do with the internees in terms of housing, food, and survival equipment as pointed out in the Order:

“The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other such arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order”107

In addition, the Executive Order was reinforced by the use of force and troops as well as other agencies that,

104 Ibid. 105 Scott Ingram, p58-59. 106 Jonathan X. Lee and Kathleen M. Nadeau, p571-572.

107 See Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981), p. 208.

“ all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.”108

The War Department drafted a law which considered it a crime punishable by a year in jail and a $5,000 fine for those who disobey the military order. During the removal, a civilian agency and the War Relocation Authority (WRA), was created by the federal government as to watch over and administer the more permanent camps. These camps were away and isolated where no one lived there before. Two camps were in eastern California, two were in Arkansas, and one in each of these states; Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.109

Not only did the short-notice evacuation order cause their economic ruin, but a maximum of three and a half years of imprisonment leaving deep psychological scars among the internees, which subsequently kept them silent for decades after the war. 110For instance, Taro Murata was a Japanese American who told about his experience during World War II. He claimed that he was deeply shocked and thought of Japan “they‘re crazy! Crazy!” However, on December 7th, the FBI picked him up because he was a leader of a Japanese community, and took him to an internment camp_ especially because he sent his son to Japan. Taro described how he was not able to go out either because of the barbed wire or because of the guards watching with their guns. He worked in a cleaning shop for some people in the camp. As the war came to an end, Taro came back from the camp and borrowed some money and started a business.111

108 Ibid. 109 Roger Daniels, Relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, p124. 110 Yasuko I. Takezawa. “Children of Inmates: The Effects of the Redress Movement Among the Third Generation Japanese Americans.” Qualitative Sociology. Vol. 14 1 (1991), p39.

111 Joan Morrison and Charlotte Fox Zabusky, p34-35.

8.4 No internment in Hawaii

To the contradiction of the situation, the largest Japanese American community consisting of about 150,000 in Hawaii making almost a third of its population, was by no means affected by E.O 9066 though a handful of individuals had been interned earlier. Such draconian measures of internment were not launched in Hawai`i, in which the Japanese community was deeply rooted in terms of size, and cultural bonds in the local society. It was believed that Japanese Americans made more than one-half of the skilled labor force and therefore were of a considerable importance to not only the general economic well-being of Islands, but also to the successful prosecution of the war. Besides, this was a relatively well educated work force. Since Hawaii was considered as the command area of the Pacific war, the imprisonment of a large Japanese American community would have been so catastrophic. Still, the material and the resources to provide internment would have cost huge inordinate amounts of money to the US government.112

8.5 Experience in barbed wire camps

When arrived at the camps, internees found wooden barracks besieged by barbed wire awaiting them. In winter especially in mountain camps as in Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, the temperature could reach minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 Celsius). However, on desert camps like in Arizona, temperature surpassed 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) and on top of it, sandstorms were not only so common but also kept the internees inside the barracks.113 In the barracks, entire families were given very small spaces with no more than 20 feet (6 meters) wide and between 8 to 24 feet (2.4 to 7.3 meters). The walls were so short to the roofs that smells and sounds moved from one place to another easily.114Furthermore, places like the Tule Lake, located high in the mountains of Northern California, was dried up and

112 Franklin Odo, No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawaii during World War II (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) , p3. 113 Michael Burgan, The Japanese American Internment: Civil Liberties Denied (Wessex: White- Thomson Publishing Ltd, 2007), p41. 114 Ibid.

69 dusty with no trees. Winter temperature at its camp decreased to minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit.115Amache, situated on the dry plains of southern Colorado, was a place in which people were outnumbered by prairie dogs and rattlesnakes. It seemed as though the internees preferred them than other American neighbors as Michael L. Cooper described them, “these creatures, camp residents suspected, were friendlier than the inhabitants of the nearest town, Lamar, who posted signs, reading JAPS NOT WANTED.”116

In addition, the weather was also another enemy; sandstorms lasted for a number of days blowing the barracks and getting into clothes, beds, and food.117Every camp contained nearly similar buildings. One wood and tarpaper barracks was to house 250 to 300 people. The WRA scheduled each family of four to live in one room that was twenty five feet long. Unfortunately, big families wanted to band together, so one room could house as many as ten persons.118

In March 1942, General DeWitt told the media about plans of relocating Japanese Americans. They would be moved out from a place called the Prohibited Zone. The Zone stretches along the entire Pacific Coast and also on the border with Mexico.119When they walked in Japanese neighborhoods signs were made in store windows and on telephone poles all over California as well as in Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. The signs suggested that the Japanese go to assembly centers.120 At the end of March 1942, the earliest evacuation occurred on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Swiftly, the same thing happened in California. The military did not have to use force—despite the fact that they were allowed—because the Japanese leaders believed that following the government’s order would prove their loyalty to the United States officials.121 The War Department built 10 more large internment

115 David J.O’Brein and Stephen S. Fugita, The Japanese American Experience (Indiana University Press, 1991), p31. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 118 Michael L. Cooper, Fighting for Honor: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 2000), p31-32.

119 Michael Burgan, p37. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid, p38.

70 camps intended to receive 12,000 prisoners two of which; Manzanar and Tule Lake, were situated in California desert while others were located in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idhao, Utah, and Wyoming.122

So disappointed and disheartened by the view of camps, Japanese internees were in a state of shock to what would be done with them. One Nisei described the first sight of camps:

“I’ll never forget the sad expression on my mother’s face when she first set her eyes upon the barren tar-papered barracks, the bare-pot-bellied stove—which was to be our home for who knows how long. She tried her best to hold us together as family.”123

Another internee put it, “After living in well-furnished homes with every modern convenience, suddenly being forced to live the life of a dog is something which one cannot so readily forget.”124One of the main problems at all camps was that of privacy. Latrine and showers were shared by internees. A Japanese remembered that his mother liked her own privacy, and “this was going to be agony for her, sitting down in public, among strangers.”125 They used to live in primitive facilities, eating in mass, bathing and using communal toilets where their privacy was broken and above all, they were guarded by an army and surrounded by a barbed-wire. The camps truly broke the values of the Japanese society. As wages were not only low, but also were the same for all; that is, men, women, and children were all paid the same amount of wages. Consequently, the position of fathers was undermined as the main breadwinners. Besides, only Japanese American citizens were afforded the privilege of the camp administration but most citizens were young Nisei elevated above their Issei parents.126

Still, camps started to develop some common issues as going to school. The WRA made makeshift classrooms. There was a huge lack of equipment and a terrible shortage of textbooks. A high school graduate at Rule Lake said of the school

122 Scott Ingram, p62-63. 123 See, David J.O’Brein and Stephen S. Fugita, p62. 124 Michael L. Cooper, p28. 125Ibid, p33. 126 Thomas Sowell, p 173

71 conditions, “Every student in the camp school system suffered a great deal. I think they tried hard, but the equipment wasn’t there, and the school was in barracks. They had a blackboard and chalk and that was about it.”127At the last half of 1942, internees were dislocated from local assembly centers to the hasty constructed “permanent” camps. The housing was built of tarpaper barracks. The WRA tried to put the more American and English speaking Nisei in charge. In fact, most of the Nisei were young men, usually in the twenties, who had responsibility over the middle-aged Issei. The latter were not only confiscated of their possessions but also confiscated of their traditional authority. It was not until very recently that the Issei were given the role of officially representing their community to the whites in administration. 128

9 Japanese Americans’ reaction

Resistance took many different forms both from the part of the Japanese and also from the part of other Americans. For example, on January 10th, 1942, General Emmons129 received a letter from Washington asking for his opinion on Japanese evacuation from Oahu. Emmons answered that evacuation required construction materials and shipping space and would also require more troops to guard the islands. Emmons thought that the evacuation could have negative effects on economy and defense operations in Oahu because the Japanese made more than 90 percent of the carpenters; virtually all transportation workers; and a considerable number of agricultural laborers. It was ironically necessary to rebuild the defenses diminished at Pearl Harbor by Japanese laborers.130 But Washington enforced its orders that on March 1th, President Franklin Roosevelt approved the evacuation of 20,000 “dangerous” Japanese from Hawaii to the mainland. General Emmons minimized the number remarkably to 1,550 Japanese who were thought of as a potential threat. President Franklin Roosevelt wrote “I think that General Emmons should be told that

127 Ibid, p34-35. 128 David J.O’Brein and Stephen S. Fugita, p62. 129 who became commander of the army’s Hawaiian Department and military governor of the territory. 130 Ronald Takaki , p380.

72 the only consideration is that of the safety of the islands and that the labor situation is not only a secondary matter but should not be given any consideration whatsoever.”131

General Emmons was not the only one who resisted the idea of internment. The press did so. For example, in an article on “Hawaii’s 150,000 Japanese” published in July 1942 in The Nation, journalist Albert Horlings was suspicious of the “pressure” of Washington on military authorities in Hawaii, sounding the alert that the economic life without the Japanese in Hawaii would collapse. Newspaper editors as Riley Allen of the Honolulu Star Bulletin and Mrs Clarenu Taylor of the Kauai Garden Island criticized the U.S. government and expressed their trust in the loyalty of the Japanese. “It was an invasion of the rights of Japanese citizens on the Pacific coast to be picked up and shipped to the interior.” editorialized the Garden Island.132

The Japanese reacted against the relocation movement. One Nisei, James Omura protested against the relocation to members of Congress in 1942. Omura, who was a journalist, wrote a number of articles supporting the rights of Japanese Americans. In an article, he wrote, “Is citizenship such a light and transient thing…which is our…right in normal times can be torn from us in times of war?”133

Ostensibly, the Japanese American Citizens League worked on persuading Japanese Americans on moving to the relocations. The leader of the JACL, Mike Maraoka, released to a newspaper in Los Angeles, “we want to convince them that it will be patriotic.”134In 1940, Marokao established the Creed of Japanese Americans and a year later he printed it in the Congressional Record, the official journal of Congress, as it says,

“I am proud that I am an American citizen of Japanese ancestry, for my very background makes me appreciate more fully the wonderful advantages of this nation. I believe in her institutions, ideals and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future. She has granted me liberties and opportunities such as no individual enjoys in this world today. Although some individuals may

131 Ibid, 382 132 Ibid, p383. 133 Michael Burgan, p39-40. 134 Ibid.

73 discriminate against me I shall never become bitter or lose faith, for I know such persons are not representative of the majority of the American people.”135

The Japanese reacted to the internment as they did not want to stay passive either in camps or outside the camps. For instance, before setting out for the camps, Saburo Kido made an Address at The Emergency JACL Meeting in San Francisco on March 8th, 1942 explaining how this internment might weaken the Japanese community and that they did not know for how long or where they would be held. Kido claimed that those anti-Japanese hated the Japanese for their robust economic competition and that those anti-Japanese believed that America belongs to the “whites” and therefore using the Japanese as political “football” in America’s greatest crucial peril. On evacuation, Kido added, “Today we are preparing to go into temporary exile from the homes in which we were born and raised.... The very foundations which have taken years to build up are being torn from under us.”136Indeed, the internment was a kind of exile at home in that the Japanese lost most of what they had settled since generations for a mistake they did not commit. He wondered how the constitutional rights provided by the constitution to the American citizens could be violated. The surprising issue about Kido is that he predicted long ago the government’s mistake and how the government would feel guilty after all when he pointed out, “I am confident that the day is coming when those who are responsible for these outrageous violations of our rights will be ashamed of their conduct.”137

9.1 Japanese Resistance

Resistance took many forms like going on strikes, or performing the practice of Japanese folk tradition or religious events. In camps, Japanese celebrated New Year with rice pounding and mochi. They taught and practiced judo, baseball and basketball. The Oban festival did not seem to stop, they continued its practice with various music. Moreover, art was a means of refuge for many Japanese in the camps.

135 Quoted Michael Burgan, p39,40. 136 Bill Hosokawa, JACL In Quest of Justice (New York: William Morrow, 1982) pp. 364-6.

137 Ibid.

Since cameras were forbidden during the first years of internment, Japanese Americans turned to art to paint their impressions in those tough times and also to document life in the camps. For instance, aJapanese American, Chiura Obata, founded an art school for children in Tapaz, Utah.138

Many internees ended up in rioting as in the Santa Anita racetrack riot which was portrayed by an evacuee, Harry Kitano, who said that the riot commenced as a reaction to rumors of policemen confiscating some material for personal use. Kitano claimed that there was a direct confrontation between evacuees and those on behalf of the United States government and that some cried for “Ko-ro-se” (kill them!) and “inu!” (dog). Meanwhile a mob of 2,000 Japanese, among whom a huge number of teenagers roamed around as the rumors spread with property being destroyed until eventually a policeman was indicted during an inspection and badly beaten.139The incident, Kitano concluded, was put under control as 200 Army MPs intervened, and the installation of marshal law imposing stricter security.140 The Japanese, however, despite all, wanted to continue life normally like some Japanese American teachers who volunteered to work in the camps although paper and school equipment were very limited.

9.3 Japanese Americans proving loyalty

Several hundred Japanese opted for proving their loyalty to the U.S. government as they volunteered to go to Manzanar in March 1942. Manzanar is located in the Owens Valley 225miles to the northeast of Los Angeles.141 The majority of Japanese serving in the U.S. military in WWII were in either of these military units: the 100th Battalion that emerged in Hawaii; the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, making volunteers and draftees from the ten mainland internment camps; and the Military Intelligence

138 Jonathan H. X. Lee and Kathleen M. Nadeau, p573. 139 Quoted in David J. O’Brein and Stephen S. Fugita, p61. 140 Ibid. 141 Michael L. Cooper, p29.

Service (MIS), comprising Nisei and Kibei especially those who worked in the Pacific Theater.142

In January 1943, the U.S. army started to recruit the Nisei, who were once thought of as “enemy aliens”, but ironically, those interned youth seized the opportunity to prove their loyalty to their country in war. Over 300,000 Japanese Americans participated and fought bravely in WWII. Some units were the most decorated in the war as the 442nd Regimental Combat Unit suffering more than 9,000 injured in action against Nazi troops and earning fifty-two Distinguished Service Crosses as well as a Congressional Medal of Honor.143 On the other hand, in the Pacific, thousands of Japanese Americans served as interpreters to the military forces against Japan which, in part, changed the balance to the side of Americans, for the Japanese forces took it that Americans would not understand the Japanese language. However, there was a number of “Nisei on every battle-front reading captured documents and passing information on to allied commanders.”144

Japanese Americans enrollment into the military intelligence during WWII began at the Presidio of San Francisco. As the conflict with Japan seemed imminent in 1941, some army officers felt the need for Japanese speaking persons. Among those was Captain Kai Rasmussen who was authorized with $2,000 as well as a hangar at Crissey Field in the Presidio. About forty-five Nisei and Kibei as well as fifteen others of various extractions were enrolled for the first class on November 1, 1941.145However, after the mass evacuation of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Coast, the Japanese Language School was relocated from Presidio to Camps Savage, Minnesota, and then, re-labelled the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS).146Most of the students were recruited from the camps. John Asio was one of the earliest recruits by Rasmussen as a Harvard-trained lawyer. Asio later turned into the first Japanese American judge. David J. O’Bein noted that Japanese graduates were very skillful and useful,

142 Wendy L. Ng, p55. 143 Thomas Sowell, p174. 144 Ibid. 145 David J. O’Brein and Stephen S. Fugita, p65. 146 Ibid.

“The graduates of the school became the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Allied Forces in the Pacific. Assigned in teams, they translated captured documents and messages, analyzed features of downed enemy aircraft, interrogated prisoners, broadcast propaganda, encouraged Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender, helped prepare the instruments of surrender, worked on various aspects of the war. Crimes, trials, and were an important element of the occupation forces.”147

147 Ibid.

10 Conclusion

The Japanese immigrants went for the States when their conditions in Japan worsened. However, these immigrants found a pre-judged hatred—against the Chinese—aimed at them. A huge sentiment of anti-Asians, and later anti-Japanese emotions grounded in the idea that they constitute a “yellow peril” and that those immigrants were no better than a first wave of invaders to America. In fact, the xenophobia grew more and more to culminate in “internment” particularly after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.

The influence of internment on Japanese Americans was so devastating that a whole community was about to break down if it was not for the Japanese dedication and fighting spirit. The financial impact was huge. For instance, homes were sold in haste, and businesses which were built over a long time failed in a couple of weeks. On the whole, estimated by the government, the financial losses reached roughly $400,000,000 at 1942 price levels. Added to that was the Japanese American Citizens’ League, which was to represent the Nisei to be good American citizens. The official position of the JACL was stunning which cooperated with the internment claiming loyalty, and disapproving disloyalty (Issei) to America. The very act angered other Japanese Americans, saying that they did their best to be American citizens, yet still they were interned. 148

Some see even the use of language was somehow evasive, according to Raymond Okamura, who thinks that the American government used euphemism terminology to avoid the painful realities committed against the Japanese. Okamura argued that the event should have been called imprisonment instead of such terms as “relocation”, “evacuation”, in what he called a “linguistic deception.”149 Okamura called into question the imprisonment of Japanese Americans, especially those Japanese American citizens under the aegis of law without so much as a full-fledged evidence. Then, he tried to give an answer by claiming the government’s use of euphemistic and

148 Thomas Sowell, p172,173. 149 The Journal of Ethnic Studies Volume 10, Number 3, 1982 by Raymond Y. Okamura, p95.

78 misleading terms so as to cover the grave violation of the American constitution as well as human rights.150

The traumatic experience in Japanese Americans’ history came to make a major standpoint in the history of the United States. It was uncommon for an ethnic group— particularly one discriminated against—to prove their loyalty in tough conditions such as those of Japanese Americans. Over the years, more and more American officials began to advocate their cause. The Western Defense Command declared an end to the “military necessity”. Even President Franklin Roosevelt who authorized the Executive Order of 1942 defended publically the Japanese loyalty by the mid- 1944.151Eventually, the Supreme Court announced the unconstitutionality of interning Japanese American citizens by the end of 1944.152

150 Raymond Y. Okamura. “The American Concentration Camps: A Cover-up Through Euphemistic Terminology.” The Journal of Ethnic Studies. Vol. 10 3 (1982).

151 Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA, p155. 152 Thomas Sowell, p174.

Chapter Three: Japanese Americans’ Assimilation and Redress

1 Introduction

Many Japanese did not return to where they were before the war and stayed instead in the east or mid-west. Losing their savings and their possessions, Japanese had to start from scratch. The fortunate few who had homes welcomed the returnees. Churches established dormitories, and community facilities whereas other community institutions commenced again; newspaper, churches, and some businesses.

In the postwar era after the ordeal of internment, approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans returned back to Japan. The majority stayed in the U.S. however 45 percent moved outside the West Coast. And those who returned to the West Coast chose to live in the outskirts away from Japan-towns that they once lived in for fear of being discriminated against. Meanwhile, after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1952 which stopped racial restrictions on immigration, immigrants started to come from Japan again. The majority were either family members of Japanese Americans or war brides of American soldiers. From 1952 to 1964 about 63,000 Japanese came to the U.S. turning Japanese Americans into the largest Asian group. But due to economic boom in Japan, immigration had considerably declined. 1

After the War, Japanese Americans worked hard to get assimilated into the American society so as not to get discriminated against again. They found it difficult to assimilate or to be accepted in mainstream America because they were from the “Orient”. Said believed that the Orient was at first the invention of Europeans. The latter was a land of romance and hunting memories. Then, he makes distinct views of the Orient by both Europeans and Americans. On the one hand, the Orient is not only close to Europe but also makes its greatest ancient colonies. On the other hand, the Orient in the eyes of Americans is linked to the Far East particularly China and Japan. Orientalism in general, as Said defines it, is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of

1 Marry C. Waters and Reed Ueda with Helen B. Marrow, The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965 (London: Harvard University, 2007), p544-545.

80 the time) ‘the Occident’.2 Therefore, oriental or distinct people, culture or way of life is regarded as foreign. Japanese Americans, hence, faced a great deal of misfortune due to their oriental origins.

The Nisei got into the mainstream culture by speaking almost entirely in English and by marrying “American” girls and by adopting American lifestyle. The focus on education was so effective that both the Nisei and their offspring were pushed on the socioeconomic ladder. Most of the sansei or the third generation was from the “baby boomers” generation—who were born in postwar era. There are very few Sansei who were in the camps. After the camps were about to come to an end, Japanese Americans were recommended to resettle in areas around the United States in 1946. Despite the fact that a considerable number of Japanese American communities existed along the West Coast, many Japanese Americans especially after the camp changed destinations from Japanese ethnic enclaves to integrated middle and working class neighborhoods and cities.

Consequently, a huge number of the Sansei was brought up in areas that were away from Japanese communities. The Sansei claimed that their parents promoted their success educationally and socially because the key to the American economic ladder was through social mobility and economy.3 Throughout their life, the sansei did not know much about the black history of internment regarding their parents during World War II. However, with the coming of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the sansei commenced to ask questions about the nature of discrimination against their parents. They along with the Nisei politicians sought for a kind of redress to all the Japanese who underwent the hardships of internment.4

Many Sansei who enrolled in universities turned into university professors and particularly earned high incomes than other Americans. Their resounding success and achievements gave birth to the myth of a “model minority” after the 1960s. The latter was later over-generalized to encompass other Asian Americans and which accentuated some values as family, education and hard work. It had a positive effect in

2 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Randome House, Inc, 1978) ,p1-2. 3 Wendy Ng, p7. 4 Ibid, p7-8.

81 that the “model minority” changed the attitude of many Americans toward their Japanese fellow Americans.5

5 Marry C. Waters and Reed Ueda, p545.

2 The aftermath of World War II

In the early 1944, it was apparent that the exclusion orders for the Japanese on the West Coast might be called off. During the same year, Secretary of War Stimson suggested the end of exclusion at a cabinet meeting. His supposition was promoted by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and Under-secretary of State Edward Stettinius. This was a reelection year of Franklin Roosevelt. President Roosevelt in his campaign indicated the termination of internment yet he was prudent and cautious in that he wanted a slow process in ending the exclusion of Japanese living on the West Coast. The removal of the order was announced in November 1944 after Roosevelt had again won election. 6Eventually on December 17, 1944, Public Proclamation 21 was issued rescinding General DeWitt’s mass exclusion orders. The proclamation stated that:

“The people of the states situated within the Western Defense Command, are assured that the records of all persons of Japanese ancestry have been carefully examined and only those persons who have been cleared by military authority have been permitted to return. They should be accorded the same treatment and allowed to enjoy the same privileges accorded other law abiding American citizens or residents.”7

The government prohibited some individuals who were thought of as potential security risks to “sensitive” areas of the Western Defense Command regarding some criteria made by the Justice and War Departments.8

After the war, many questions popped up in the minds of Japanese Americans as to whether they would go back home; where they would live: how they would support their families and get re-established.9 A considerable number of farms and businesses were lost for good. A lot of Issei were so old that they could not start again from the beginning and they also needed education and assimilation, which they lacked, to engage in new fields. Contract gardening then came in that by 1958 three quarters of

6 Wendy Ng, p96. 7 (Quoted in Personal Justice Denied, CWRIC, 1982 :235-6) 8 Wedny Ng, p97. 9 Bill Hosokawa, Colorado’s Japanese Americans From 1886 to the Present (Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2005), p146.

83 all Japanese businesses in Los Angeles were in this profession.10 From the other hand, the Nisei were well educated, speaking in English, and more importantly, American citizens which freed them from occupational requirements grounded on citizenship.

3 Realizing it was a mistake

After Roosevelt left, his successor Harry S. Truman made it to the presidency by July 1946. Truman made a special ceremony for members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team which consisted of Japanese Americans telling them that they had fought both the enemy and prejudice and that they have won their battle.11Some nine months later, president Truman sent a message to Congress composed of ten-point civil rights the last three of which were of a special interest to Japanese Americans. Point eight recommended to state Alaska and Hawaii; point nine called for withdrawing racial bars in naturalization; whilst point ten recommended to compensate the economic losses to Japanese Americans as they were forced to quit their property and possessions back after the Pearl Harbor attack. The last point was more rapid than the others, when the president stated that “more than one hundred thousand Japanese-Americans were evacuated from their homes in the Pacific states solely because of their racial origin” and thereby asked Congress to pass legislation.12

The president signed the Japanese-American Claims Act on July 2, 1948 which gave the appropriation of $38 million so as to fix all property claims, a sum that now commentators admit was not sufficient.13 The statehood of Hawaii was a bit late in 1959, but was of considerable importance to the Japanese and other Asians since they were the majority in the state and this would pick up Asian American representatives and legislators in Washington.14

10 Thomas Sowell, p175. 11 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Harry S. Truman: 1946. “Remarks on Presenting a Citation to a Nisei Regiment.” July 15, 1946. (Washington: GPO, 1962), 347 12 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Harry S. Truman: 1948. “Special Message to Congress on Civil Rights.” February 2, 1948. (Washington: GPO, 1964), 125 13 Quoted in Roger Daniels, Relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II , p125. 14 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Dwight D. Eisenhower. 1959.

4 How the anti-Japanese movement declined

From 1960, about 157 000 returned to California. The attitude of Americans against them had changed; the Nisei or Japanese of the second generation were recruited in the American army, though they were segregated during the war, yet Japan was no longer an enemy but an economic and political partner, and the xenophobia this time changed direction towards the African Americans and Hispanics.15

Japanese Americans anti-sentiment was much transferred than being removed, as historian John W. Dower states, “war hates and race hates [against the Japanese] did not go away,” he went on; “they went elsewhere.”16The unconditional surrender of Japan in August 1945, according to Dower, hastened the onset of the Cold War, and therefore, accounting Japan as a vital ally against communism. Some occupation forces, Dower believes, made sure that childlike Japanese be guided and educated and also to train them for democracy.17

Japan’s occupation was regarded as positive by some Nisei. For instance, many Japanese thought that white American GIs being in Japan would teach Americans how to appreciate Japanese people and their culture and therefore eliminate racism in America against Japanese Americans. Additionally, a new sort of movies accentuated the bonded relationship between Americans and Japanese through the occupation such as Sayonara in 1957 by Joshua Logan adapted from James A. Michener’s novel revolving around interracial romance in occupied Japan. The plot was grounded on a pilot named Major Lloyd Gruver (Marlon Brando) who rather liked the quietness of Japanese women instead of the whitely girls like his fiancée. Sayonara challenged race and its proponents.

After Japan’s surrender, the American Japanese relationship was marked by U.S. terms to guarantee Japan an ally against Communism and its spread in East Asia. However, the Japanese economy swiftly recovered, and hence, a very robust

15 Claude Lévy, p145. 16 Quoted in Lon Kurashige, p124 17 Ibid.

85 competition came to the scene between the two countries particularly feeling threatened by the Japanese vehement businesses and strategies in economy.18 After the nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Americans agreed to allow Emperor Hirohito in place, in that making sure that re-building Japan would be under the watch of American eyes via the occupation years from 1945 to 1952.19

5 The sansei childhood and adolescence

The Sansei were brought up in a benign era in the aftermath world war II and did not undergo much discrimination. Most of them were born in the period between 1940s and 1960s, so their social environment was different from that of the Nisei before the war years. Many Sansei were affluent with high education standards, and more importantly, they got the reputation of being a “Model Minority”. The sansei were more gregarious than the Nisei, and they adopted American values greater than the Nisei.20 The 1950s and 1960s were decades described to be an “era of good feelings” for Japanese Americans. They did not have to fight for access to mainstream institutions; they rather went after the success in social, economic, and political spheres from which they were banned before.21

According to Minako K. Maykovich who stated in his book Japanese American Identity Dilemma (1972:59), how the Nisei wanted to get Americanized when he contended, “Anything that identified him as Japanese became taboo to the Nisei, simply because it was detrimental to his attempts to establish himself as an American.”22For example, Carol Namiki, an old sansei, also spoke of the Nisei’s assimilation:

18 Gary W. et al, Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture (Routledge, 2001), p387. 19 Ibid. 20 Yasuko I. Takezawa. “Children of Inmates: The Effects of the Redress Movement Among the Third Generation Japanese Americans.” Qualitative Sociology. Vol. 14 1 (1991), p41.

21 Lon Kurashige, p120. 22 Quoted in Yasuko Takezawa.p43.

“If you had any ties with Japan it was considered negative so that there was this—in some Nisei there was this thing to be accepted by the white community. If you were accepted by the white community, that erased the discrimination of the war and so then they felt good. And so there were a lot of families who tended to bring up their children so they would be accepted in the mainstream.” 23

5.1 An unknown past

The Nisei did not teach their children Japanese as was done to them by their parents; the Issei, neither did they accentuate many Japanese cultural values. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Nisei reported that they had to raise their children and they also had to make it ordinary in that forgetting the black history of discussing “camps”. The Sansei sometimes, from their part, overheard their parents speaking about ‘camps” in their childhood; and thought that it referred to summer camps. However, as they grew to maturity and found out about the truth of camps, the Sansei were mad not only at the government but also at their parents. As Kathy Hishomoto noted that she was around 15 when she went to a friend’s house and found in the library a book “Citizen 13660”(about camps) and how she got angry because her parents did not tell her. And more importantly, how did the Japanese just accept the order of internment “How 24 could you just allow 120,000 of you to just go into these camps?”, she wondered.

The Sansei were perplexed of the mere acceptance of following orders and going to the camps. According to another Sansei, Steve Kondo, claimed that because he was born in the U.S. he would have protested non-violently and he would have said, “…‘Hey, there’s a book of rules here in the Constitution.’ …I believe that they should have acted differently, but knowing what I know now, I can understand how they acted.” But the Nisei found that the sansei answers were a proof of their misunderstanding when the Nisei illustrated that there was nothing that could be done when they were surrounded by soldiers with guns.25

23 Ibid, p42. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid, p43.

Not surprisingly, the embarrassment did not stop with the Nisei alone, it also reached the Sansei. According to Gary Tanaka, the camps were a stigma for their entire community when he put it:

“It’s an embarrassing blotch on the community. It’s also true for the Sansei. White Americans would say, ‘Were your parents in camp?’ Then, they would ask questions, ‘How was it?’ …Parents being thrown into prison—it is almost as bad as saying ‘My parents were in jail: one was for robbery and the other one was for murder.’…What makes things magnified is, it wasn’t only your parents, but your grandparents, uncles, aunts, your friends, everybody was there. And it wasn’t just a day or two, but it was for years.”26

However, not all Sansei felt the same about it; some want to focus more on their lives than on what had happened in the past.

5.2 The Shame of incarceration after the war

The Nisei suffered shame for long under the circumstances of internment and the decades after it. As David Mura remarked that all Japanese Americans were sent to imprisonment simply because of their race and the whites formed an unfair equation about them that Japanese meant bad. A Japanese Nisei woman named Michi Weglyn also spoke of her generation as enduring “psychic damage…a deep consciousness of personal inferiority, a proclivity to noncommunication and inarticulateness, evidenced in a shying away from exposure which might subject them to further hurt.”27

Still, adds another Japanese American, Edison Uno, “We were like the victims of rape. We felt shamed. We could not bear to speak of the assault.”28 For instance, a Japanese internee’s son, Kenneth, had to learn the story of his father Korematsu’s internment at high school civics class. Surprisingly, however, even those who fought to prove their loyalty could not escape that shame. For example one soldier remembered, “When I came back from the service in 1945, people would spit at me and push me off the road. We don’t tell our kids that, we try to forget and look at how

26 Yasuko I. Takezawa, p43. 27 Paul R. Spickard, Japanese Americans: The formation and Transformations of an Ethnic Group (Rutgers University Press, 2009), p145. 28 Ibid.

88 good things are now”.29Furthermore, in order to find a job in acting or stand-up comedies, Japanese Americans, like Jack Suzuki, had to transfer his name to Jack Soo so as to look as Chinese or Korean.30

6 Initial adjustment

In the aftermath of the war, life was a bit difficult to get back to. Some Japanese did not know how to restart again. Sometimes they had to start all over again as to how to earn a living. Some were prosperous before the war, but after incarceration, they found it difficult to support their families. A Japanese American evacuee, Masao Hirata, tells of his story after the camp that they were given only twenty five dollars each. He spoke of “unspeakable hardships” to support his family. When they came back to California, he went on, they did not own a house or a car, and could not start working because the farm was not in use for five years. Hirata, summed it up, “Every Japanese person had to start again from the beginning.” While others found it easy like Tokushiga Kizuka who had some friends before the war in Watsonville helping him with a place to live as well as a lease for a land.31

Japanese associations like the JACL, which enjoyed wide spread during the war, did not directly relate most of its activities to Japanese Americans for about a decade after the end of the war. The early institutions to cater for rebuilding the Japanese communities, however, were the Buddhist and Christian churches. For instance, the Buddhist church situated in Del Dey, California started some worship practices after Japanese Americans made it back to town. Organizations such as the young Buddhist League began organizing basketball competitions while the Buddhist Sunday School started up courses for Nisei and Sansei youth in 1952.32

29 See Paul R. Spickard, p145 30 Ibid,p145. 31 Ibid, p144. 32 Ibid, p145.

6.1 The Redress Movement

When the Civil Rights Movement reverberated across the country, younger Japanese Americans began to demand answers to the unjust treatment against their parents and grandparents during WWII. They questioned the internment of thousands of innocent Japanese American citizens without a clear-cut evidence of their disloyalty to the U.S.

Along with many generations, Japanese Americans demanded that the government issue a formal apology. The latter came from President Ford in 1976. Shortly after, the Japanese American communities requested for a financial compensation for those who had lost property because of the internment. By 1970, a resolution at the national convention of Japanese Citizens League (JACL) in Chicago was introduced by Edison Uno asking redress for the internment as an official policy. Another Nisei without the knowledge of Uno, in Seattle by 1972, named Henry Miyatake, began looking for the possibility of reparations for Japanese Americans. Miyatake over the years joined the Seattle JACL and volunteered for reparations. He among other Nisei and Issei representing Seattle chapter for JACL promoted the idea of redress with individual payment plan nationally.33

During the early years of the 1970s, the idea of redress found little support since most Nisei were trying to be self-made through hard work and achievements. However, in 1978, the first Day of Remembrance was held at Puyllup fairgrounds in Western Washington ( a former temporary camp “assembly center”) and since the aim of the event was to commemorate the internment with former internees giving speeches. Soon after, the program was followed by many other Japanese Americans and turned into nationwide event in Japanese America. The program was mainly organized by a Chinese American Playwright and some Sansei approaching the redress leaders and demonstrating their keen zeal in camp and redress. One of the Sansei involved in the program remembered the first Day of Remembrance event:

33 Yasuko I. Takezawa, p45.

He [the Chinese American playwright] pitched me and said, “There would be no Japanese American art if we don’t say about Japanese American history. If we lose redress, we lose history. If these people in Seattle fail to win some kind of recognition for the injustice in the camps and to get some token payment for it as a symbol of recognition that it was wrong, then the myth camps were justified, that Nisei willingly cooperated with them, would stand. Then, no artist can create plays, books, or stories from the truth, because no one would believe them”. Then, I thought, “Gee! This is much bigger than me. I have to devote my entire soul to this.”34

The event was a huge success with more than 2,000 Japanese Americans and their friends participating in the event. The Day of Remembrance was followed by a handful of programs through the years. For example, the Day of Remembrance 1983 was noted as “Fun-Run” at a local park. The participants were to run 9,066 feet, referring to the Executive Order 9066. After completing the run, all participants were offered a T-shirt written on the back “I survived 9066” with a design of barbed wire.

Another interesting event took place in 1981as it witnessed the hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians that was basically held in Seattle and other important Japanese American communities nationwide. In Seattle more than 150 Japanese gave testimonies at the hearings. After many hearings, the Report of the Commission stated that internment was grounded on “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” The commission recommended individual payments of $20,000 as an official apology from the government. The monetary redress with the government apology is widely appreciated and supported today since it was a powerful way to stop the U.S. government from committing the same mistake either to Japanese Americans or other minorities.35

The Japanese worked with great efforts to politically demand for the justice to their elders who suffered a great deal in the internment camps. In 1980, Mike Lowry Representative of Washington came up with World War II Japanese-American Human rights Violations Act in congress. The bill suggested the payments of $15,000

34 Ibid, p45-46.

35 Ibid, p47

91 per victim in addition to $15 for each day they were interned. A year later, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) was created by Congress in order to investigate whether the internment of Japanese Americans was genuinely needed as many Americans had claimed at that time.36In 1983, the CWRIC made recommendations that the U.S. government was to pay $20,000 for every of the Japanese 60,000 surviving internees. Despite all the efforts made by CWRIC, many powerful anti-Japanese opposed the recommendation which failed in the U.S. congress.37

After a couple of years in 1987, Senator Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii re-introduced the bill aiming at giving the surviving internees $20,000. At first, the bill still faced opposition, yet growing support for the bill eventually resulted in its passage. In April 1988, the Congress passed the law in order to apologize to the Japanese who suffered from internment and they were offered a symbolic compensation.38The bill was named H.R. 442 and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on August 10, 1988. The surviving internees were given $20,000 and $1.25 billion for education to their descendants.39

The redress movement triggered a number of feelings concerning identity, sense of community as well as other traits of Japanese community. The redress enforced the Sansei identity according to one Japanese Gary Tanaka:

It reinforced my identity with Nikkei [Japanese American community]. Up until redress, my ethnic identity was things like the food I ate, people I like to be friends with, interests, things Japanese. With redress, I found a much newer, different, and also very important strong identification with my cultural, historical background, the history of my community. My parents went to the camp, that affected me indirectly. Now I have become closer to the Japanese American community, whereas originally before the redress, I wouldn’t say that I was very much close to the community.40

36 W. Scott Ingram, p79. 37 Ibid, p 80. 38 Claude Lévy, p145. 39 W. Scott Ingram, p81. 40 Yasuko I. Takezawa, p48.

Consequently, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) was founded in 1980 in order to collect information. The CWRIC reached a conclusion that a formal apology should be issued by Congress and recommended that every surviving victim would get a compensation of 20,000 dollars.41

7 Japanese Assimilation

Sociologists name the immersion into a cultural lifestyle of a country as “Cultural assimilation” or as “acculturation”.42The Japanese were unique in that their assimilation was very fast following the end of World War II. Surprisingly, after the incarceration in the camps, Japanese moved on quickly and went to occupations and educations that they were banned from traditionally. More importantly, the inter- marriages between Japanese Americans and the whites soared at a high rate that in less than half a century after the camps, half of all their marriages were with the whites.43 Post war boom was an ideal ground for the Japanese American great skills.

On the other hand, many Japanese converts to Christianity believed that the latter lied at the heart of Americanization. A great number of these converts accentuated their commitment and their conversion experiences and they differentiated between “social” and “physical” assimilation. This runs against the widely held claims of scientific racists that social, moral and mental race traits were of biological inheritance, and hence “assimilation” of races could only be achieved through intermarriage.44

7.1 The Survival of a minority group

The United States is a country that was founded on the basis of immigration and therefore those immigrants have to integrate to certain social and cultural norms blending into the “melting pot”. Provided with public norms of both freedom and

41 Mary C. Waters et al, p545. 42 David J. O’Brein and Stephen S. Fugita, p83. 43 Ibid, p84. 44 Jennifer C. Snow, Protestant Missionaries, Asian Immigrants, and Ideologies of Race in America 1850-1924 (New York: Routledge, 2007), p42.

93 democracy, acceptance into the “pot” made a great deal of controversies as to how to be an American. One of the main issues regarding assimilation is that of language (English), for most immigrants found it difficult to assimilate without a proper means of communication. Religion used to be a major assimilation issue because Protestantism was threatened by Roman Catholic and Jewish immigrants, but over the years religion has become “Americanized” as many religions are growing and establishing their own status with public activities. Food, fashion, parades, and dances have become acceptable since they form the diversity of immigrants. 45

At the dawn of the twentieth century, many immigrants from all parts of the world were thought to be likely to assimilate into the American mainstream. Immigrants would be quickly accepted by the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) in the stream if they “melt” into the American culture. For instance, a given group of immigrants were expected to forget their language, religious practices, culture and tradition,46

In the 1950s, it was anticipated that the Japanese communities would decline and vanish eventually after the tough circumstances experienced in World War II. American society, however, promoted their “success story” as well as their social and economic mobility. George de vos claimed that, “Ethnicity…is in its narrowest sense a feeling of continuity with the past, a feeling that is maintained as an essential part of one’s self-definition.” He stresses the vitality of individuals for both “collective continuity” and survival as a key element of ethnicity “If one’s group survives, one is assured of survival, even if not in a personal sense.” 47

45 Gary W. McDonogh et al, Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2001), p50. 46 Ibid. 47 Yasuro I. Takezawa, p40,41.

7.2 Assimilation of Japanese in the 1980s

During the year 1980, about 600,000 Japanese Americans were living in the United States particularly in Hawaii and California.48 During the same year most Sansei and Yonsei were apparently hugely assimilated into the American society. Besides, Marriages between Japanese and non-Japanese increased for three decades. Surveys in 1990 showed that in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Fresno, California roughly 50 percent of Japanese Americans married to non-Japanese.49

The Nisei were satisfied because the problem of language was no longer a problem for them as it was for the Issei (first generation) so they could have access to jobs easily. Their educational success allowed them to choose professions, and enter into society. Very rapidly their revenues increased and then it surpassed that of their white counterparts. In 1969, it was 11 percent superior to that of the national average.50 The rise of the socio-economic ladder brought about was continued by the third generation or the Sansei, 80 percent of whom continued their higher studies. The immigration after the war brought Japanese wives of American soldiers, businessmen, lawyers, doctors, students, and qualified immigrants of high education. These new immigrants did not start at the low ladder of economy; they immediately found descent jobs in American enterprises as well as in Japanese American societies. According to the 1990 Census, the number of Japanese Americans increased to 848,000 individuals, most of whom lived in Hawaii and California.51Despite the fact that Japanese were proud of their belongings and identity, they have become more and more Americanized due to the inter-ethnic marriages.52

48 Ingram Scott, p78. 49 Scott Ingram, p79. 50 Claude Lévy, p145. 51 Ibid, p146. 52 Ibid.

7.3 The Model Minority group

Asian Americans are considered as a “model minority” in America. In 1987, the 60 Minutes program which runs in CBS reported on the great achievements of Asians. “Why are Asian Americans doing so exceptionally well in school?” Mike Wallace wondered, and then went on, “They must be doing something right. Let’s bottle it.” On the other hand, the U.S. News and World Report pictured Asian American hard work in cover story. Then, the News-week made another cover story entitled “Asian Americans” and an article of its weekly edition “Asian Americans: A ‘Model Minority’.”53

While Asian Americans’ achievements took too much attention in the press, politicians also had their say about them. From the Whitehouse; the highest office in the country, President Ronald Reagan gave a speech to Asian and Pacific Americans illustrating their far reaching success. Reagan said that America is so abundant and diverse in regard to its heritage and that all Americans descend from immigrants in want of the “American Dream”. He Admired Asians and Pacific Americans. He believed that they were able to “preserve that dream by living it up to the bed rock values” of the United States. The principles of “the sacred worth of human life, religious faith, community spirit and the responsibility of parents and schools to be teachers of tolerance, hard work, fiscal responsibility, cooperation, and love.” It came as no surprise Reagan noted that “median incomes of Asian and Pacific American families are much higher than the total American average.” Then, in order to idolize these Asian and Pacific Americans to other Americans, Reagan expressed directly his admiration when he said we need “your values, your hard work” expressed within “our politics”.54

As noted in a book entitled A Companion to Asian Americans that Asian achievement assured the U.S. to be a land of opportunity. Success, thus, was clearly defined in narrow, materialistic terms. The movement of Asians into the mainstream of American life confirmed the idea that the U.S. was an open society, which wants to

53 Ronald Takaki , p474. 54 Ibid, p475

96 accept and incorporate those minorities and immigrants urging to assimilate.55 Importantly, adds William Petersen, “By any criterion we choose, the Japanese Americans are better than any other group in our society, including native-born whites. They have established this remarkable record, moreover, by their own almost totally unaided effort.’’56

7.4 The future of Japanese Americans

There is a remarkable change in the interracial marriages in the United States particularly with Japanese Americans who, by far, make the highest interracial marriages among Asian Americans. For instance, in New York City, researchers Liang and Ito found out that around 80 percent of U.S. born Japanese men and women got married to other ethnic groups. Japanese Americans with mixed ethnic backgrounds constitute a great deal of the so called hapa—individuals with part Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry—attempted to organize themselves as a new “ethnic” group.57

The future of the Japanese American community faces a lot of challenges because its population started to diversify. A great number of the Nisei gave in the community activities, and the new immigrants integrating to the community do not share much of the history such as internment and the redress movement. A huge number of the newcomers do not know enough about the Japanese American background and history especially because of the language barrier, and they are prone to establish their own communities based on Japanese-speaking churches, language schools, and business circles and the like.58

55 Kent A. Ono (ed), A companion to Asian American Studies (Oxford: Backwell Publishing Ltd, 2005), p217. 56 William Petersen, ‘‘Success Story, Japanese–American Style,’’ New York Times Magazine, January 9, 1966, P21

57 Mary C. Waters and Reed Ueda, p546. 58 Ibid, p547.

8 Model minority taken for granted

Japanese Americans and Asians in general were perceived as America’s model minority in regard to other ethnic groups. In fact, they lived mostly in states with higher incomes. They also have more family members working than whites. In 1980, white families in California had roughly 1,6 workers per family whereas Japanese had 2,1; the Chinese had 2,0 and 2,2 for Filipino. This may suggest that high income is linked to the number of workers in a family.59Asian males usually work as janitors, mechanist, postal clerks, technicians, waiters, cooks, gardeners, and computer programmers. They are also likely to be found in the primary sector as architects, engineers, pharmacists, school teachers, and computer system analysts, but generally they do not take high levels of management and decision making.60 Throughout the United States, only 8 percent of Asian Americans held positions as “officials” and “managers” in 1988 in comparison to 12 percent for all other groups. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Many Asian Americans hoping to climb the corporate ladder face an arduous ascent.” Even if they do technical jobs for companies, they were often prevented for higher managerial or executive positions.61

8.1 Discrimination still exists after all

Asian Americans are usually looked at as one stereotype that is different and un- American. Edwin Wong, a junior manager at Acurex, explained how he was told to change his accent sooner or else there would be consequences, “Either you improve your accent, or your future in getting promoted to senior management is in jeopardy.” Even having an accent was perceived as a problem. Wong claimed that many Caucasians thought he was stupid just because of his accent. Instead, German, French, or English was not a shame or an embarrassment. Not surprisingly, Asian Americans

59 Ronald Takaki p475. 60 Ibid, p476. 61 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, report, summary in Laird Harrison, “U.S. Study Finds Few Asians in Management,” Asian Week, May13, 1988; Winfred Yu, “Asian American Charge Prejudice Slows Climb to Management Ranks,” Wall Street Journal, September 11, 1985; Editorial, East/ West, June 30, 1988.

98 took jobs on their own merits. As Kumar Patel, head of the material science division at AT & T. “the only jobs we could get were based on merit.”62 Taking it for granted they succeeded as a model minority, many Asian-Americans were denied access to some funding for social service programs aimed at helping Asians Americans learn English and get jobs.63

9 Contribution to the American Culture

Japanese American communities developed considerably during the1920s and 1930s. This was apparent in the building of Christian and Buddhist churches, Japanese language schools, and establishing judo clubs. Besides, immigrants started cooperative associations as well. For example, protective and banking institutions were established by community leaders; picnics and parades were organized and the New Year was celebrated by pounding rice to make mochi. 64 The celebration of the traditional Buddhist Oban festival turned into a genuine celebration of the Japanese American identity and tradition. The latter is celebrated in the fall so as to honor the dead. The Oban festival became more and more a secular culture over time which was celebrated by both Buddhist and non-Buddhist as a Japanese American culture. In addition, Japanese communities established the Nisei Week in 1934 in Los Angeles to promote Japan-town business and inculcate the Nisei ancestral heritage and also to promote group unity. Therefore, Oban festival, nihon-machi or Japan-town Street Fairs as well as Nisei Week made salient features of Japanese American communities today.65

One of the most important heritages from Japanese Americans was that of food, and changing American tastes. It is very rare to find a town in Colorado Rockies without a sushi restaurant. Good sushi requires fresh fish. There were businesses selling fish, and the largest is True World Foods. Sang, K. Yuh Yoshimoto, the Denver Manager says that he supplies fresh fish to about 120 sushi restaurants three of which were Japanese whilst the rest were run by Koreans or Vietnamese. Although

62 Ronald Takaki, p478 63 Ibid. 64 Jonathan . H.X. Lee and Kathleen M. Nadeau, p571. 65 Ibid, p570.

99 not as famous as spaghetti, but the sushi seems to be taking over pizza and tacos. A typical sushi is rice with little vinegar as a flavor. The sushi chef puts on top of the rice a slice of fresh, uncooked saltwater fish as tuna, albacore, sea bass, salmon, or a little boiled shrimp or octopus.66

Japanese also spread a fast food dish labeled gyudo, gyu stands for “beef” and don is taken from the traditional tendon which is a bowl of rice with deep-fried shrimp doused with a thick sauce on top of it. One of the earliest postwar Japanese enterprises in Denver was a restaurant which served gyu-don named the Japanese Kitchen that later enjoyed a considerable success.67

Still, Japanese Americans also began to have access to politics and therefore hold high positions in American offices. For instance, Norman Mineta, who was an ancient mayor of San Jose, made the first Japanese American to be elected to the house of Representatives in 1972; S.I. Hayakawa, also an ancient head of university, was elected to the Senate in 1976.68 However, it was in Hawaii that the Japanese Americans are most powerful wherein they hold the majority of representatives in both houses of the state and especially since 1974, the governor and vice governor of Hawaii were both of Japanese origins.

During the 1980s 1990s, Japanese Americans continued to make their presence felt in American culture. For instance, Japanese American violinist Midori Goto made a fabulous performance in the classical music. Midori was born in Osaka, Japan and she was talented in music that she took violin lessons at the age of three. Yet when she reached eleven, she was invited to Julliard School of Music in New York to study. Therefore she immigrated to the United States. In 1985, she made a performance as a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Ever since the performance, Midori became one of the most well-known classical musicians in the world.69Another successful Japanese noteworthy of mentioning is the medical researcher Susumu Tonegawa. Susumu was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in medicine for his huge successful research on the human immunity system. He was born in Japan and then

66 Bill Hosokawa, Colorado’s Japanese Americans, p200-p201. 67 Ibid, p202. 68 Claude Lévy, p146 69 Scott Ingram , p81.

100 migrated to the United States in 1963 to do cancer research. He spent, as a college professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, nearly 20 years on how the human body fights infection.70

10 Compensation and payment

The passage of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 entailed a payment of $20,000 tax- free to all the sixty-thousand Japanese American survivors as well as apologies from Congress and the president.71 The body responsible for the investigation on Japanese incarceration made the recommendations with which the government acted in the 1980s that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was unjustified by military necessity and the broad historical causes were:

“race, prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership… A grave injustice was done to American citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry who, without individual review or any probative evidence against them, were excluded, removed, and detained by the United States during World War II.”72

President George H. W. Bush, in a speech commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, admitted that the internment of Japanese Americans was a “great injustice” and went on vowing that “it will never be repeated.”73

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 had some reasons such as Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society during the mid-1960s and the disapproval of the misbegotten war in Vietnam resulting in reconsidering the acts of the 1940s. By 1976, President Gerald R. Ford abrogated the Executive Order 9066 and while celebrating the nation’s two-hundredth birthday, he pointed out that America should take account of both its national mistakes and achievements. He went on,

70 Ibid, p81,82. 71 See Roger Daniels, “Redress Achieved, 1983-1990,” in Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, and Harry H.L. Kitano, eds., Japanese Americans: from Relocation to Redress, 2d ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), 219-23. 72 Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied (Washington: GPO, 1982), 18 73 Quoted in New York Times, December 8, 1991.

101

“…not only was the evacuation wrong, but Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans. On the battlefield and at home, Japanese Americans… have been and continue to be written into our history for the sacrifices and contributions they have made to the well-being and security of this, our common nation.”74

After four years, due to the Japanese American activists, ethnic organizations, and the aid of the Japanese American legislators, Congress passed a legislation which President Jimmy Carter signed creating the Presidential Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). Its mission was set to “review the facts and circumstances surrounding” E.O. 9066 and also to “recommend appropriate remedies.”75 A vivid investigation made a series of hearings held in Washington and Mid-western and Far Western centers of Japanese American population showed anger and dissatisfaction from the part of Japanese survivors and their descendants. By 1983, the CWRIC called for a tax-free payment of $20,000 to incarcerated Japanese survivors and a formal apology. It was not until five years later that Congress enacted, and President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Rights Act of 1988. Still, the payments were made during the Bush administration.76The government acknowledged the mistreatment of American citizens and the violation of constitutional rights of its citizens., the payments touched 82,220 Japanese Americans and ended in 1999.77

74 “Presidential Proclamation 4417,” Federal Register. Vol. 41, no. 35, (Washington: GPO, February 20, 1976). 75 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied (Washington: GPO, 1982), 1. 76 Roger Daniels, Relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, p126,127 77 Mary Waters et al, p546.

102

11 Conclusion

World War II, in the eyes of Japanese Americans, constitutes a major turning point in their history. The scars of internment were deeply embedded in their lives and were to linger for years. Although, the Issei and the Nisei tried to erase their black history in camps—in part by marginalizing it and so much as not speaking of it—the Sansei had to hear about it outside the house especially at schools, or by doing some research about it. They believed that it was history to tell the Japanese American story to the coming generations and therefore to contribute to the American heritage. Although, the process of assimilation was slow at the beginning, Japanese Americans did not give in, and did their best to act accordingly as loyal citizens who love their country.

The fight for achieving redress was a genuine success for the whole community even though most of the Japanese internees did not live to see or receive both the apology or the amount of money offered.78Japanese American community worked with great efforts to adjust to the American white mainstream through silences, redress, and through contributing to the American culture by adding the Japanese-ness flavor to America.

78 Wendy Ng, p111.

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General Conclusion

When Commodore Mathew Perry unlocked Japan out of its long slumber, the country woke up in the form of a revolution known as the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Since then, the Japanese started a movement of modernization that was run by militants, industrialists, and political elites. Therefore, the name of Japan rose in an unprecedented way on the international political scenes especially after defeating China in 1895 and Russia a decade later. Japan tried tirelessly to compete in the global arena of modern nation-states.

Unfortunately, the Restoration affected many classes of the society leading many Japanese peasants to seek opportunities abroad particularly in the United States of America. Thus, the shores of Hawaii were the immediate destination. At first Hawaii was a monarchy yet Americans controlled virtually its wealth by owning sugar, coffee, and pineapple plantations all over its islands. The plantations needed thousands of strenuous workers because native Hawaiians died due to a disease brought by the white settlers. Thus, dependence was to be on foreign countries, and here where Japanese workers came in becoming the primary suppliers of laborers in the plantations.79

Japanese immigrants after arrival endured very difficult conditions as they found an anti-Asian movement fostered for them which stemmed from the Chinese immigrants before them. Thus, they were suspected for their loyalty especially after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.

As George Takei80 said that the government took too much from the Japanese American community particularly when it broke its premise of “Liberty and Justice for all.” Their crime, he wrote, was as if they were the persons who bombed Pearl Harbor few months earlier. Takei assures they were “herded off like animals” to a close race track where they would live in a dirty horse stable awaiting the

79 W. Scott Ingram, Robert Asher, Immigration to the United States, Japanese Immigrants (New York: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 2005), p26. 80 George Takei, a Japanese American actor, director, and author, recently wrote an article in the Guardian, on how seventy years ago, soldiers with bayoneted rifles marched on his family’s house in Los Angeles, ordering them to leave and evacuate the house.

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“permanent” under construction relocation camps. These camps were located thousands of miles away in Arkansas in an area called Rohwer.81 His family ate and bathed with a whole community in the tough heat and the mosquito-infested swamps of Arkansas in a makeshift camp.82Takei went on that interning 120,000 Japanese Americans was both a great violation of their constitutional rights and also a destruction of families and whole communities. They remained unhealed even today after the government’s apology and redress. Takei argued, “It was half-century too late.” Even, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 unwillingly.83

However, Japanese Americans either in Hawaii or on the mainland were attached both to Japan and the United States before the Pearl Harbor attack. For instance, a number of Issei and a couple of Nisei wrote pro-Japanese articles in the Japanese press, received some Japanese sailors, or even raised money for favor of the Japanese war in China. Still virtually all the Issei and Nisei had no real contact with Japan. On the other hand, a great number of Japanese Americans proved their American patriotism by enrolling in the U.S. army as well as in other national service forms in 1940-1941. The Japanese were obviously pro-American.

However, despite the FBI reports and the investigations led by Curtis B. Munson which stated that there was no such a thing as a “Japanese problem”, President Franklin Roosevelt still suspected the Japanese and was prone to hear their disloyalty. As Greg Robinson put it, “Roosevelt’s actions show how overprepared he was to believe the worst about the entire Japanese American community, notwithstanding the lack of any firm evidence of disloyalty.” The president did not do the same thing with other aliens like Germans or Italians which, argues Robinson, “suggest that Roosevelt’s concern for security was undergirded by an implacable belief that Japanese Americans—Issei and Nisei alike—were dangerous and foreign.”84Thus, assimilation and adjustment was linked to the white race

81 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/27/we-japanese-americans-wartime- internment. Checked on Dec, 15th 2013. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 Greg Robinson, p82.

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Japanese assimilation was slow and barely noticed. For example, religious organization ranged among Japanese Americans, with a majority of the Issei practicing Buddhism, though a great deal of Japanese transformed to Christianity. Japanese Americans attitudes toward religion were prone to be superficial, for many believe that there is no problem in shifting from one religion to the other. But economically speaking, a lot of Japanese Americans take it that their socioeconomic and political success is an outcome of their own hard work and sacrifices. They are considered a model minority; the Issei (first generation) struggled the sugar plantations only to cater for a better life to their children, the Nissei (the second generation). The first Japanese immigrants developed a separate Japanese economy and community, making a greater cultural diversity to the American society.

Despite incarceration and internment camps Japanese Americans tried to stand their ground and mark their trace in history. Instead of succumbing to fatalism or racial discrimination, they did everything they could to build a positive future for their children, thinking that working hard paves the way to social, spiritual and well-being of the next generation. Like much of the other ethnic communities who founded cities after the name of their native countries, the Japanese also founded Little Tokyo in Los Angeles to both enrich the American culture and prove—at least in a way—their contribution to mainstream America. Due to their hard work, Japanese Americans and Asian Americans in general were labeled as a model minority. David J. O’Brein argues that, “… most other minority groups have not been successful as the Japanese because they have not worked as hard and they have not been persistent in their efforts to ‘quickly’ overcome discrimination.”85

Japanese American triumphed in integrating and adjusting to mainstream America through hard work, dedication, education, and discipline. Shaping a big part of the American culture and contributing to the making of America. Now Japanese restaurants, traditions, economy, even literature are famous all over the United States of America.

85 David J. O’Brein and Stephen S. Fugita, p89.

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Glossary:

The daimyo: feudal lords. Bakufu: the shogun’s administration. Shogun: an ancient Japanese title. han: domains. hara-kiri: (in Japan, especially in the past) a ceremonial way of killing yourself by cutting open your stomach with a sword Confucianism: is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the chinese philosopher Confucius. It is a complex system of moral, social, political, philosophical, and quasi-religious thought that has had a huge influence on the culture and history of East Asia. It might be considered as a state of religion of some East Asian countries, because of governmental promotion of Confucian philosophies. Assembly center: Temporary facilities used to house evacuees while the permanent relocation centers were being built. There were sixteen centers in California, Oregon, and Washington. They were on former fairgrounds, stockyards, exposition centers, and a Civilian Conservation Corps facility. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC): Government commission formed in 1981 to research and investigate the causes and consequences of the World War II relocation and internment of civilians. This commission also researched the situation of Aleuts and Alaska Natives in the Pribolof Islands. Concentration camp: Guarded facility/detention center for imprisonment or detention of groups of people for social or political reasons. Evacuee: Term used to refer to individuals of Japanese ancestry during the period from when they left their homes to live in the assembly centers. Gentlemen's Agreement. In 1907-1908, the United States and Japan came to an agreement over the immigration of Japanese laborers to the United States. Japan would stop issuing passports to male laborers as long as the United States passed no formal laws regulating immigration from Japan. While the emigration of Japanese male laborers was curtailed, Japanese women continued to emigrate as "picture brides," wives of Japanese laborers already in America. Go For Broke. Slogan of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team that meant "shoot the works" or "go all out" to get the job done. Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). Founded in 1929, the JACL is the oldest Asian American civil rights organization in the United States. It was the first Nisei organization that dealt with the social and political issues of the second generation. The JACL remained active throughout World War II and continues to the present day. Kibei. Second-generation Japanese American, born in the United States, but educated in Japan. Military Intelligence Language School (MISLS)/Military Intelligence (MIS).

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Branch of the army that formed to train soldiers in the Japanese language to be used for military intelligence in the Pacific Theater. Nikkei. Term used to describe an American citizen of Japanese ancestry. Nisei. Second-generation Japanese American, born in the United States, a U.S. citizen. The bulk of those interned were of this generation. Nisei soldier. Nisei men who fought in World War II in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Battalion (Hawaii). They also served as language specialists in the Military Intelligence Service and worked in all branches of the U.S. military. Redress. Compensation for a wrong or injury. Relocation center/internment camp. The official government term was relocation center for the ten camps run by the WRA. They were guarded facilities for detaining both aliens and U.S. citizens. Technically, internment camps were the prisons run by the Department of Justice for noncitizen, suspect aliens of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry. Resettlement. Resettlement refers to the process through which Japanese Americans reestablished their lives, work, homes, families, and community after having been in forced detention. Time period following the close of the camps, lasting approximately through the early 1960s, although there is no definitive beginning and ending point. Sansei. Third-generation Japanese American, born in the United States, a U.S. citizen. War Relocation Authority (WRA). Civilian government agency housed within the Department of the Interior designed to administer and manage the internment centers and internee population. Wartime Civil Control Authority (WCCA). The WCCA was the government agency supervising the evacuation of Japanese to assembly centers. Once individuals were moved to the relocation centers, the War Relocation Authority moved in to supervise the management and administration of the camps. Yonsei. Fourth-generation Japanese American, born in the United States, a U.S. citizen. GIs: A soldier in U.S. army especially in World War Two. WASP: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. AEL: Asiatic Exclusion League. IRL: Immigration Restriction League. ONI : Office of Naval Intelligence.

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Works Cited:

A) Books :

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 Cullen, L. M. A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.  Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigrants and Ethnicity in American Life. New York: Harper Collins, 2001.  ---. Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II. New York: Holt,Rinehart, and Winston, 1971.  ---. The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion. California: University of California Press, 1962.  Doak, Kevin M. A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (Leiden: Brill, 2007).  Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. ISSEI, NISEI War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.

 Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan From Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.  Griffs, William Eliot A.M. The Mikado’s Empire A History of Japan from the Age of Gods to the Meiji Era (660 BC—AD 1872). New York: Stone Bridge Press, 2006.  Hamilton, I. A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book, London: Longman & Green, 1912.

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 Henshall, Kenneth G. A History of Japan : From Stone Age to Superpower. Basingstok: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.  Hing, Bill Ong. Defining America through Immigration Policy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.  Hosokawa, Bill. Colorado’s Japanese Americans: From 1886 to the Present. Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2005.  ---. JACL In Quest of Justice (New York: William Morrow, 1982)

 Ingram, W. Scott, and Robert Asher, Immigration to the United States: Japanese Immigrants. New York: Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data, 2005.  Kayashima, Nobuko. Le development de l’éducation au cours de l’ére Meiji (1867-1912): modernization et montée du nation au japon. Paris: Institut International de planification de l’éducation, 1989.  Kurashige, Lon. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934-1990. California: University of California Press, 2002.  Lévy, Claude. Les minorities ethniques au Etats Unis . Paris :Ellipses, 1997.

 Low, Morris. Building a Modern Japan Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Meiji Era and Beyond. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.  Macpherson, W.J. The Economic Development of Japan 1868-1941. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.  Mason , R. H. P, and J. G Caiger. A History of Japan. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1997.  Meyer, Milton. W. Japan: A Concise History. New York: Rowman and Little Field Publishers, Inc, 2009.  Miller, J. Scott Miller, Adaptations of Western Literature in Meiji Japan (New York: Palgrave, 2001).  Morrison, Joan and Charlotte Fox Zabusky. American Mosaic. New York: E.P. Dutton, Inc. 1980.

 Morton , W. Scott, and J. Kenneth Olenik. Japan: Its History and Culture. McGraw-Hill, Inc, 2005.

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 Muller, Eric L. American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World II. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.  Ng, Wendy L. Japanese American Internment, Reference and Guide. Connecticut: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 2002.  Nish, Ian. The Iwakura Mission in America and Europe: A New Assessment ( ,Japan Library(Curzon Press Ltd)1998).  O'Brien, David J. The Japanese American Experience. Indiana University Press, 1991.  Odo, Franklin. No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawaii during World War II. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.  Ono, Kent A. (ed), A companion to Asian American Studies. Oxford: Backwell Publishing Ltd, 2005.  Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001.  Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan. New York: Free Press, 1985.  Said, Edward Orientalism. New York: Randome House, Inc, 1978.  Sarasohn, Eileen Sunada, ed. The Issei, Portrait of a Pioneer: An Oral History. Pacific Books, 1983.

 Sergeev, Evgeny. Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan 1904- 05: Secret Operations on Land and at Sea . New York: Routledge, 2007.  Snow, Jennifer c. Protestant Missionaries, Asian Immigrants, and Ideologies of Race in America, 1850-1924. NewYork: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2007.

 Sowell, Thomas. Ethnic America: A History. New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc, 1981.  Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan. New York: Free Press, 1985.  Spickard, Paul R. Japanese Americans: The formation and transformations of an ethnic group. Rutgers University Press, 2009.  Stark, Rachael. Research and Writing Skills in 20 Minutes a Day. New York: LearningExpress, LLC, 2003.

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 Stegewerns, Dick. Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan: Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship? New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005.  Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Little Brown, and company, 1989.  Waters, Marry C. et al, The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965. London: Harvard University, 2007.

 Winkler, Anthony, and Jo Ray McCuen-Metherell. Writing the research paper: a handbook. Cengage Learning, 2011.  Zachmann , Urs Mattias. China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1852-1904. New York: Routledge, 2009. أدوين أولدفاذر ريشاور. تاريخ اليابان من الجذور حتي هيروشيما. حرره, يوسف شلب الشام. دمشق: دارعالء الدين  0222. أعفيف، محمد. أصول التحديث في اليابان 8681-8181. بيروت: مركز دراسات الوحدة العربية,  0202 بطش ,مروان. مدرسة شيكاغو. مترجم عن االن كولون.بيروت: المؤسسة الجامعية لالنتاج و  التوزيع,0200

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 Encarta, ed. 2009.  Chen, Edith Wen-Chu, and Grace J. Yoo, eds. Encyclopedia of Asian American issues today. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO, 2010.

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C) Archives :

 Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied (Washington: GPO, 1982).  Concentration Camps: North America Japanese in the United States and Canada during World War II (Malabar, Fla.: Robert E. Krieger, 1981.  “Presidential Proclamation 4417,” Federal Register. Vol. 41, no. 35, (Washington: GPO, February 20, 1976).  Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Harry S. Truman: 1946.  Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Harry S. Truman: 1948.  Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Dwight D. Eisenhower. 1959. “Adress …Parliament of India.” December 10,1959. (Waishington: GPO, 1960), 831. Cf. ibid., 109, 243, 286—87, 588—89, 675.

 “Remarks on Presenting a Citation to a Nisei Regiment.” July 15, 1946. (Washington: GPO, 1962), 347.  “Special Message to Congress on Civil Rights.” February 2, 1948. (Washington: GPO, 1964).

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 Bernard, Siberman. “Emperor and Nation in Japan.” Pacific Historical Review. Vol. 34 1 (1965).  Bocking, Brian. “Neo-Confucian Spirituality and the Samurai Ethic.” Religion.Vol 10 1(1980).  Roger Daniels, “Redress Achieved, 1983-1990,” in Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, and Harry H.L. Kitano, eds., Japanese Americans: from Relocation to Redress, 2d ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991).  Daniels, Roger. “Relocation of Japanese Americans During World War II: The Heart Mountain Experience.” Peace and Change. Vol. 23 2 (1998).  Hall, J . W. 'The Confucian Teacher in Tokugawa Japan', in D . S . Nivison and A . F . Wright (eds), Confucianism in Action, Stanford U .P . 1959.

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 Hashino, Tomoku. “Institutionalizing Technical Education: The Case of Weaving Districts in Meiji Japan.” Economic History Review. Vol. 52 1 (2012).  McLaren, "Japanese Government Documents," The Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. 42 (1914).

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 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, report, summary in Laird Harrison, “U.S. Study Finds Few Asians in Management,” Asian Week, May13, 1988; Winfred Yu, “Asian American Charge Prejudice Slows Climb to Management Ranks,” Wall Street Journal, September 11, 1985; Editorial, East/ West, June 30, 1988.

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Abstract

Long isolated, Japan opened its shore to the world in 1868 after the arrival of Commodore Mathew C. Perry of the United States in 1853. After a treaty was signed between the two countries, thousands of Japanese migrated and settled in Hawaii and California. Unfortunately, from the onset, they were always considered second class as inassimilable to mainstream America. Suspected of spying on the United States during WWII to help invade America, Japanese Americans were evacuated and sent to internment camps. This dissertation tackles an investigation of Japanese immigrants to the United States of America, their experience, and their process of adjusting to the American way of life. Hence, three parts weave through this dissertation: First, chapter one presents a historical background of Japan, its ancient role, and its rise as a world power from the Tokugawa era to the first two decades of the twentieth century. Second, chapter two revolves around Japanese immigration to the United States and investigates the Japanese American circumstances. Chapter two also covers the endurance of internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II after the Pearl Harbor attack and their fight for survival. And lastly; chapter three tackles Japanese Americans experience in the aftermath of World War II. Additionally, chapter three also investigates their adjustment and their assimilation to mainstream American society.

Key Words:

Japanese Americans; Ethnic minorities; Assimilation; Adjustment; Integration.Pearl Harbor; Model Minority; Internment camps; Relocation Camps; Immigration.