From a “Contagious” to a “Poisonous Yellow Peril”?: Japanese and Japanese Americans in Public Health and Agriculture, 1890S – 1950
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From a “Contagious” to a “Poisonous Yellow Peril”?: Japanese and Japanese Americans in Public Health and Agriculture, 1890s – 1950 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Jeannie Natsuko Shinozuka IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Donna Gabaccia, Co-Advisor Ann Waltner, Co-Advisor May 2009 © Jeannie Natsuko Shinozuka 2009 Acknowledgements The act of writing this dissertation was not a solitary endeavor. There have been many, many individuals who have helped me along the way. I am deeply grateful to my dissertation committee: Donna Gabaccia, Ann Waltner, Rose Brewer, Kale Fajardo, and Malinda Alaine Lindquist. My co-advisors, Donna Gabaccia and Ann Waltner, deserve a great deal of gratitude since they shepherded this project from start to finish. Specifically, this study benefited from Ann Waltner’s expertise in East Asian history and Donna Gabaccia’s knowledge of Asian immigration and global history. I had the opportunity to work with a number of talented scholars during my undergraduate and early graduate training who have greatly influenced my intellectual formation. During the earliest stages of my undergraduate education at La Sierra University, my senior honors thesis mentor, Rennie B. Schoepflin, encouraged me in field of the history of medicine. Special thanks also to Cheryl Koos and the late Clark Davis for their support while at La Sierra. I have been fortunate to have had Marjorie Kagawa-Singer, Valerie Matsumoto, and Rachel Lee on my master’s thesis committee while at UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center. The guidance of Valerie Matsumoto in particular has been foundational in shaping my sense of professionalism and intellectual growth in more ways than she will ever know. I would also like to acknowledge the generous funding I have received while researching and writing this dissertation. I wish to thank the Historical Society of Southern California/John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, The Huntington Library for the Evelyn S. Nation Fellowship in the History of Medicine, the University i of Minnesota for the Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences, and the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota for the Diversity of Views and Experiences (DOVE) Summer Fellowship to assist me in completion of my research. Along the way, I also had the opportunity to conduct archival research at a number of different archives and would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance: William Greene at the National Archives in San Bruno, Marie Masumoto at the Japanese American National Museum, Tab Lewis at the National Archives in College Park, Paul Wormser at the National Archives in Laguna Niguel, Jessica Holada at the California State University, Northridge’s Special Collections and Archives, and Marilyn Crane at the Loma Linda University Archives. The people who have assisted me at the Huntington Library are too numerous to list here, but they among them are: Christopher Adde, Peter Blodgett, Alan Jutzi, Dan Lewis, Juan Gomez, Meredith Berbée, Catherine Wehrey, and Kate Henningsen. I was also privileged to have met Eliott Gorn, Michelle Nickerson, Lauri Ramey, Sianne Ngai, Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Danielle Coriale, Liz Hutter, and Kariann Yokota while in residence at the Huntington Library. Special thanks to Liz Hutter, who eventually became my dissertation partner and cheerleader at the University of Minnesota. I presented an early version of what is now chapter one at the annual American Association for the History of Medicine in Montreal and I would like to express my gratitude to Marta Hanson, Stephen Pemberton, and Karen Kruse Thomas for their support and critical feedback. An early version of chapter two was also presented at the ii Association for Asian American Studies in Atlanta, and I am grateful for the encouragement of my fellow co-panelists, in particular Eiichiro Azuma. I was also especially fortunate to have been mentored by a number of exceptional scholars over the years, including Noro Andriamanalina, Rose Brewer, Cindy Cheng, William Deverell, Rod Ferguson, Susan D. Jones, Troy Kaji, Valerie Matsumoto, Don Nakanishi, Jeani O’Brien, Jane Sato, Irene Suico Soriano, and Devra Weber. I would like to acknowledge the support of MJ Maynes during her tenure as chair of the History Department at the University of Minnesota. For their archival assistance during the very early stages of my dissertation research, I would like to express special thanks to Nayan Shah and Natalia Molina. Finally, this dissertation was written when sadly, Philip J. Pauly, passed away. However, I had the opportunity to meet Pauly at the History of Science Society’s annual conference and would like to acknowledge the encouragement and suggestions he made shortly before his passing. While at the University of Minnesota, I was blessed to have met wonderful colleagues, including Kelly Condit, M-Y Hsieh, Magnus Helgason, Anne Huebel, Mechelle Karels, Emily Murai, the Pierre-Louis Family, Johanna Leinonen, Amanda Nelson, Kim Park Nelson, Chantal Norrgard, Juliana Hu Pegues, Chanida Noy Phaengdara, Fang Qin, Mike Ryan, Mary Strasma, Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote, Andy Urban, Nancy Vang, Florence Mae Waldron, Catie Watson, Zhiguo Ye, and Liz Zanoni. Additionally, this dissertation was written while I was an active member of Más(s) Color. Writing this dissertation was also very much about community activism and I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Catie Watson for helping create safe spaces for graduate students of color. iii My family and friends helped sustain me during those long, arduous days and nights of reading and writing well before and during my study at the University of Minnesota. They include Ann Chao, the Hamamura Family, Cathy Horinouchi, the Sato Family, and Katie and Peter Seheult. Ann Chao, Fang Qin, Sandi K. Hamamura, and Jane Sato went above and beyond by letting me bounce off ideas and providing me with an audience. I would also like to thank my family for their support of my education. My mother in particular helped provide crucial funding during the long years it took for me to obtain my doctorate. And of course, I would like to acknowledge the support my Japanese American Seventh-Day Adventist community has provided me with all these years—spiritually, physically, and otherwise. Last, but not least, I thank God. iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my parents and my community for their enduring support. v Abstract In the late nineteenth century, increasing agricultural trade and mass Asian migration facilitated the transpacific exchanges of Japanese insect, plant, and human immigrants. This dissertation, “From a ‘Contagious’ to a ‘Poisonous Yellow Peril’?: Japanese and Japanese Americans in Public Health and Agriculture, 1890s – 1950,” challenges the nation-bound paradigm within the history of American public health and agriculture by examining how the “contagious and poisonous yellow peril” image applied first to Chinese immigrants was also imposed on plants, insects, bodies, and pathogens from Japan in the late nineteenth century. As Japanese and Japanese Americans in California resisted this stigmatization, early views of Japanese and Japanese American plants, insects, fishermen, and farmers as a “contagious yellow peril” evolved into a “poisonous yellow peril,” leading to their “quarantine” in the form of incarceration during World War II. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, this study examines the emergence of “biological nativism” and its correlative, “a contagious yellow peril” which soon expanded to include Japanese immigrants. Linking fears of diseased bodies to that of injurious insects from Japan, these earliest biotic exchanges occurred within a larger transpacific dialogue between health officials and agriculturalists. Throughout the 1910s, government officials increasingly monitored environmental dangers from East Asia and Mexico, as well as “infected” produce sold by Japanese fishermen and farmers within their borders. Fears of perils from Mexico and Japan led to a heightened awareness of biological attacks on “native” plants and bodies and the implementation of vi federal plant quarantine legislation. During the 1920s and 1930s, fears of a “contagious yellow peril” transformed into a “poisonous” menace in the form of the Japanese beetle pest and a rising second-generation Japanese American population. By World War II, government officers enacted a host of regulatory mechanisms in order to eradicate or at least control the beetle pest and prevent the sale of “poisoned” Japanese produce. Quarantine in the form of internment and the medical treatment of Japanese American prisoners helped transform them into viable citizen-subjects worthy of conservation. Yet health officials’ changing views of Japanese Americans was determined in relationship to their American Indian and Mexican counterparts. In weaving together stories that are often told separately—including American history, Asian history, public health history, environmental history, and Asian American studies—this study reveals how racial and state formation unfolded across larger transpacific exchanges during American empire-building. Examining the lives of Japanese and Japanese Americans through the lens of public health and agriculture reveals how some species can be included while others could not. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgements