AMERICAN NATIVISTS AND THEIR CONFRONTATION WITH JAPANESE LABOR AND EDUCATION IN CALIFORNIA 1900-1930 CHRIS SAGER A Thesis Submitted to the University of North Carolina Wilmington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History University of North Carolina Wilmington 2012 Approved by Advisory Committee Candice Bredbenner Glen Harris Taylor Fain Chair Accepted by Dean, Graduate School TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 Overview ................................................................................................................. 1 Nativism Scholarship ............................................................................................... 7 Japanese Language School Scholarship .................................................................. 8 CHAPTER 1: ECONOMIC ANXIETY AND AMERICAN NATIONALISM IN ANTI-JAPANESE NATIVISM ................................................................................... 16 Confrontation between Japanese-Americans and West Coast Labor .................... 16 Heightened American Nationalism in the Postwar Era ......................................... 29 CHAPTER 2: THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE SCHOOL CRISIS .................................. 35 The Americanizers’ Argument .............................................................................. 35 The Japanese-American Response ........................................................................ 43 CHAPTER 3: THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE SCHOOLS .................................................................................................. 54 Education in Japan during the Meiji Restoration .................................................. 54 The Monbusho Influence on the California Language Schools ............................ 60 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 79 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................. 93 ii ABSTRACT The anti-Japanese sentiment that existed in California during the early part of the twentieth century was a reaction by white Americans to the perceived threats that Japanese immigrants posed to American labor and security. Fearing that the Japanese were on a mission to “Orientalize” the Pacific Coast, white Americans used racial and ethnic attacks against Japanese- Americans in an effort to persuade Americans to call for the exclusion of Japanese-Americans and to institute limitations on Japanese immigration. Following World War One, a heightened sense of American nationalism led to an anti-Japanese sentiment that focused on aspects of Japanese-American culture deemed to be “subversive” and a threat to American society. Japanese churches and schools were identified by “Americanists” as instruments of sabotage that would turn against Americans in the event of a conflict between Japan and the United States. The result was an attempt by the Americanists to “Americanize” aspects of Japanese culture so that they would teach Japanese immigrants how to be proper American citizens. This thesis examines the anti-Japanese movement against Japanese-American labor and Japanese-language schools in the pre and post- World War One periods to illustrate how a nativist movement can form and the tools it will use to sustain itself. The anti-Japanese nativist movement was a movement based on economic anxieties and American nationalism that viewed foreigners as a threat. Americanists argued that Japanese-language schools that were formed in California at the turn of the century were teaching loyalty to Japan and imperialism to second generation Japanese-Americans. An examination of the early history of the schools reveals that while the schools’ curricula originally reflected the Japanese government’s insistence that Japanese subjects pledge allegiance to the emperor, it was the Japanese-language school officials iii that first attempted to reform the schools so that they taught American ideals first, and Japanese heritage second. Together, the anti-Japanese labor movement and the Japanese language school crisis help to illustrate how a nativist campaign can stoke paranoia and provoke exaggerated fears of foreign “others” in an effort to sustain itself and gather support for its anti-immigration agenda. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks go to Dr. Fain for his guidance and assistance through this thesis process. I am grateful for your leadership that allowed me to develop my subject and improve my writing. Also, thank you for your advice as I worked towards my Masters degree. It was always helpful and greatly appreciated. Thank you to my committee members for their notes and suggestions that helped greatly improve my work. Finally, thanks to all my family members and friends that supported my decision to return to school. Thanks for your support as I begin my new career. v INTRODUCTION Throughout the middle to late part of the nineteenth century and continuing into the early part of the twentieth century, immigrant groups such as Irish, Catholics, Italians and Chinese became targets of American nativist groups such as the Know-Nothing Party, the American Protective Association, and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner. These groups organized efforts that sought to define, limit, and protect what they determined to be the “national character.” Each of these movements combined to contribute to the long history of American nativism; anti-immigration movements designed to reserve the fullest privileges of citizenship for true “Americans.”1 Beginning in the first years of the twentieth century and continuing through the Second World War, nativists sought to diminish the influence of immigrant Japanese, a group nativists perceived to be a threat to their economic well-being and American national security. The first Japanese to immigrate to the United States, known as the Issei generation, began to arrive in significant numbers in the latter part of the nineteenth century continuing into the first few decades of the twentieth century. In 1890, the United States census shows that the total number of Japanese residents was approximately 2,039. That figure increased to 72,157 in 1900 and to 72,157 in 1910.2 The immigrants arriving from Japan were desperately poor farmers and laborers who lived in poverty and because of overpopulation in Japan, were considered to be outcasts. Unable to find or maintain any kind of significant wealth in Japan, lower-class Japanese left for America in search of jobs that were unattainable in Japan. In general, the Japanese 1 Dale T. Knobel, America for the Americans: The Nativist Movement in the United States (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), xiii. 2 Roger Daniels, Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 1. immigrants were the least literate, the least westernized, most traditional of Japanese citizens, and as a result the most unlikely to assimilate into American society.3 These newcomers to the West Coast of the United States found jobs in many different areas of American society. Large numbers of Japanese found work on fishing boats and in fish canneries, while others turned to work as farm laborers. Eventually, the Japanese were recruited for seasonal labor in lumber mills. Working these blue-collar jobs allowed the Japanese to accumulate enough income to eventually purchase their own land. While living in Japan, the Issei developed knowledge of drainage and fertilization techniques. Bringing this knowledge to America combined with an intense work ethic, the Issei were able to transform undesirable land and swamps in thriving farms.4 Many Issei who chose not to become farmers were able to establish themselves up and down the West Coast as business owners as they opened restaurants, hotels, and boarding houses while others became fisherman. The economic success of the Issei put them in direct competition with the elite white American business owners residing on the West Coast. American farmers appreciated the Japanese as hard-working agricultural laborers, but they felt increasingly threatened as the immigrants became successful and grew to be the farmers’ direct competition. The Issei who had established farms and businesses on the West Coast decreased the pool of available labor and offered economic competition to white businesses. The Issei’s success also challenged the idea of white supremacy. The failure of the Issei to “fulfill their role” in society angered whites of all social classes.5 To white American business 3 Page Smith, Democracy on Trial. The Japanese-American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 52. 4 Greg Robinson, A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 10. 5 Robinson, A Tragedy of Democracy, 13. 2 owners, the role of the Japanese-American was one of blue-collar worker who labored in the fields and worked all day on American boats. As the Japanese integrated themselves