Japanese Americans in Arizona

Japanese Americans in Arizona Karen J. Leong and Dan Killoren Colorado River, were moved in 1865 to a U.S. government–established reservation for Colorado River The area known today as Arizona has hosted multiple Indian tribes. civilizations for thousands of years. During the first As the population increased so did Arizona’s millennium AD, the Huhugam established villages in diversity. Anti-Asian sentiments and the resulting vio- Arizona’s Lower Gila Valley and the Sonoran Desert of lence contributed to Chinese and Japanese Americans northern Mexico. Distinct indigenous cultures, includ- moving from California to the Southwest. African ing the Maricopa, Navajo, Apache, Walipai, Yavapai, Americans settled initially as farmers, cowboys, and Aravaipai, Pima, Pinal, Chiricahua, Cocopah, Hopi, freighters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Havasupai, Pascua Yaqui, Kaibab-Paiute, and Quechan centuries; cotton production attracted more migrants coexisted throughout the area. However, with Span- from the Cotton Belt. The swelling Japanese American ish colonization in the sixteenth century and the (Nikkei) population at the twentieth century’s dawning establishment of settlements, tensions flared between was due mainly to agricultural expansion in the Salt colonists and Indian nations. River Valley, which also experienced the concurrent The region underwent more dramatic change migration of Mexicans from southern Arizona and as a result of the 1821 Mexican Revolution in which Mexico’s Sonoran region. Mexico overthrew Spanish rule and as the belief in Settlement patterns, class distinctions, and institu- Manifest Destiny motivated the arrival of land-seeking tional racism sparked interactions between Nikkei and American families and individuals. The U.S.–Mexico African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Ameri- War in 1848 and the subsequent 1853 Gadsden Pur- can Indians. In the 1920s and 1930s shared socioeco- chase resulted in the U.S. adding Arizona territory nomic status and occupation shaped the multiethnic (and other lands) from Mexico, and the granting of neighborhoods of South Phoenix, where African territorial status in 1864 further diversified Arizona. Americans, Yaqui Indians, and Mexican Americans Completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1877 worked close by Chinese entrepreneurs and Japanese contributed to the opening of mines and the develop- agriculturalists. In Tucson Mexicans and Yaqui Indi- ment of agriculture, which attracted more migrants ans settled Barrio Libre, where Chinese capitalists and from throughout the U.S. and increased the U.S. Euro American merchants and farmers also lived. Army presence to protect these Euro American set- Arizona was not a primary destination for most tlers. In 1912 Arizona became the forty-eighth state. mainland Japanese immigrants (Issei), who moved east For American Indian communities in this terri- of California for land, jobs, and opportunities. Some tory, the ongoing arrival of foreigners caused great moved north from Mexico to Arizona. A demand for turmoil, violence, and dispossession. Beginning in the Japanese male laborers resulted from the exclusion of 1950s and continuing until the turn of the twentieth Chinese immigrants in 1882, at a time when the South- century, conflict between new migrants and indig- west’s need for mine and railroad workers peaked and enous communities led to the latter’s relocation to agriculture emerged as a key industry. In Phoenix many reservations. Two distinct communities—the Pima in Issei were agricultural workers; in Williams they were the Gila Basin and the Maricopa from the Southern chiefly railroad workers. Colorado River—were coalesced by executive order By the turn of the century, more Japanese Ameri- into the Gila River Reservation. The Mohave and can families had settled in the Salt River Valley, where Chemehuevi, who lived in western Arizona along the they often leased land and planted crops. Because Japanese Americans in Arizona crops were trucked to the downtown Phoenix mar- their children to learn how to speak Japanese and ket, such small-scale agriculture was termed “truck understand Japanese culture. Additionally, boys could farming.” Wives and daughters worked on the farm attend martial arts classes in both Mesa and Phoenix, alongside men: women supervised the workers, sorted and after World War II girls could learn traditional and washed produce, and packed crates for market dance from Janet Ikeda, who was trained in Japanese in addition to performing domestic duties; they also dance and had moved from Los Angeles to Mesa. often sold produce from stands on their farms. At the Along with other minority groups, Nikkei suffered beginning of the twentieth century Glendale had the institutional racism in many forms: state and federal largest Nikkei community. There was also a commu- legislation discriminated in the areas of immigration, nity in South Phoenix near South Mountain as well as citizenship, land ownership, and marriage. Immi- a smaller one in Mesa. grants of Asian descent could not become natural- These families stimulated the growth of the val- ized, and because the livelihood of most Arizona ley’s Japanese American population, which led to a Nikkei revolved around agriculture, laws regulating demand for rice and shoyu. While only a few Japanese land ownership of noncitizens significantly affected farmers and merchants lived in Phoenix proper, most their ability to make a living. Alien land laws in the farmers drove their produce to the Phoenix market in West commenced with California’s 1913 and 1920 the early morning to sell to grocers, and most families statutes. Following suit in 1921, the Arizona legislature drove into the city for shopping, so a few Phoenix and restricted land ownership to citizens, effectively pro- Glendale businesses imported Japanese goods from hibiting Issei from purchasing land. Japanese farmers Los Angeles for sale to the local population. After subverted these restrictions by leasing land from Euro a U.S. boycott of Japanese goods in the 1930s, the Americans or purchasing it in their citizen children’s Tadano family opened the nation’s first shoyu factory names. in Glendale. In 1865 Arizona’s territorial legislature passed Local community members also created a fabric its first law regulating interethnic marriage, which of cultural institutions. H. O. Yamamoto and his wife prohibited “Caucasians” from marrying African founded the Phoenix area’s first Buddhist Church, Americans and mulattoes. Subsequently the Arizona located on their farm; in 1932 Reverend Hozen Seki Supreme Count ruled that people of mixed Euro held the first services in an empty building on their American ancestry could neither legally marry in land. Four years later, the church moved to a build- Arizona nor—because they were not considered Euro ing at 43rd Avenue and Indian School Road. Some American— challenge the statute’s constitutionality. members of the Nisei (U.S.-born citizens) generation This restriction extended to “Orientals,” thus further can recall their parents carving the church’s original restricting marriage partners for Japanese. pews and altar from wood. Kiichi Sagawa, a Christian Racially biased legislation concerning educational convert, began to conduct Sunday School classes on segregation also had a major impact on Arizona’s his property in Tolleson, eventually purchasing land minority groups. In 1909 the territorial legislature for the Japanese Free Methodist Church, founded in endorsed the segregation of African American stu- Phoenix in 1932. dents, while the 1912 state constitution went further, Transcending differences of faith, the community mandating African American segregation at the as a whole supported the Japanese-language schools elementary level and permitting it in high schools; established in Phoenix and Mesa: the Issei wanted though it was not required by statute, other ethnic Japanese Americans in Arizona minorities were also placed in segregated schools. In with Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 1925 Romo v. Laird in 1925 successfully challenged 7, 1941. Not only did it precipitate war with the U.S., school segregation, a court victory that allowed Mexi- but it also had serious negative ramifications for the can Americans to attend the heretofore whites-only Nikkei (the majority of whom considered themselves Tenth School in Tempe. Nonetheless, segregation to be “American,” not “Japanese”). In February 1942 continued statewide: for example, American Indian President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive students were consigned to segregated boarding and Order 9066, which authorized the removal of “desig- reservation schools from 1925 to 1950. nated persons” from delineated military zones in the The withholding of suffrage also effectively sup- western states. One such zone literally split the state pressed the rights of ethnic minorities. Not until 1924 of Arizona and its Japanese American community in did the federal government recognize American Indi- two—a single street could determine which families ans as U.S. citizens, and they were not given voting would be “evacuated” into concentration camps and rights until 1948. The Arizona legislature passed other which could remain “free” outside the camps. Those statutes intended to restrict minorities’voting rights: removed were placed in Poston—the only “relocation a literacy test was imposed in 1912, which required all center” administered by the Commissioner of Indian voters to read English; this requirement

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