INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES AMONG ASIAN AMERICANS IN THE U.S. WEST, 1880- 1954 By EUNHYE KWON A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2011 1 © 2011 Eunhye Kwon 2 To my Mom and Dad 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Louise M. Newman, the chair of my supervisory committee, for her endless, stimulating, and generous mentoring. I want to thank my committee members, Angel Kwolek- Folland, Elizabeth Dale, Sheryl Kroen, Sarah Kovner, and Malini Schueller, for their stellar reading of my work. Archivists at the National Archives at Washington D.C. and at College Park, Maryland, helped me find invaluable sources for my project. The Department of History at the University of Florida generously supported my research with the 2007 Milbauer Grant for Dissertation Research, the 2008 George Pozzetta Dissertation Research Award, and the 2011 Vance Award in Women’s History. Most of all, I thank my mother and father for their loving care, which enabled me to complete my study. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ..........................................................................................................7 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................10 2 THE LEGAL AND SOCIAL REGULATION OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN ASIAN AMERICANS AND WHITES IN THE AMERICAN WEST, 1880S TO 1930S .................38 Articulating Racial and Sexual Qualifications for American Citizenship through Regulation of Interracial Marriage between Asians and Whites ........................................43 Protecting Their Matrimony against Anti-Miscegenation Laws: Interracial Couples’ Evasion of the Laws ............................................................................................................52 Journalists’ Representations of Intermarriage between Asian Men and White Women: From Sensationalism to Exoticism, 1909–1922 .................................................................57 Progressive Missionaries and the Birth of the Survey of Race Relations, 1923–1924 ..........61 White Society’s Opinions about Intermarriage between Chinese and Japanese Men and White Women, 1924 ...........................................................................................................66 Chinese and Japanese Americans’ Opinions about Interracial Marriage, 1924 .....................71 3 CULTURAL PLURALIST DEFENSE OF INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE AND MIXED RACE, 1907–1937 ....................................................................................................77 Franz Boas and “the Questions of Race-Mixture” .................................................................83 W.E.B. Du Bois and “the Real Problem of Miscegenation in America” ...............................87 Sidney Gulick and “the American Japanese Problem” ...........................................................97 Robert Park and the Question of “Racial Hybrids” ..............................................................104 4 INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES AMONG THE FIRST TWO GENERATIONS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE AMERICANS, 1890–1942 ...................................................112 Marriages of Chinese and Japanese Immigrants to White Missionaries: Stereotypes and Realities .............................................................................................................................118 Public Schools, Universities, Workplaces, and Neighborhood as Locations of Interracial Relationships between Chinese and Japanese Immigrants and White Women ................122 Motivations and Expectations for Marriage involving Chinese and Japanese Immigrants and White Women.............................................................................................................126 Interracial Couples’ Relationships with Their Parents .........................................................135 Interracial Families’ Relationships with the White and Asian Communities .......................139 5 Home Life of Interracial Families Consisting of Asian Immigrant Husbands and White Women ..............................................................................................................................145 First-Generation Japanese American Women’s Marriages to White Men ...........................152 Interracial Relationships and Marriages involving Second-Generation Japanese Americans in the U.S. West before WWII ........................................................................155 5 GENDERING THE “CAUCASIAN ENVIRONMENT” OF INTERRACIAL FAMILIES: THE MIXED MARRIAGE POLICY DURING THE INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE AMERICANS, 1942–1945 ..............................................................................160 From Evacuation Orders to the Mixed Marriage Policy, 1942–1943 ..................................165 Camp Managers’ Understandings about the Racial Categories in the Mixed Marriage Policy, July 1942 to January 1943 ....................................................................................172 Debates over the Meaning of a “Caucasian” Environment between the WDC and Camp Managers, July to December 1942 ....................................................................................175 Challenging the Rule of Blood Quantum and Claiming a “Caucasian Environment”: Half Japanese, Half White Mothers of Three-Quarters Japanese Children ......................180 Confounding a White Patriarchal Definition of a “Caucasian Environment,” June 1943 ....188 Aftermath of the Mixed Marriage Policy, July 1943 to January 1944 .................................192 6 GUARDING THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF THEIR JAPANESE-AMERICAN FAMILIES: WHITE WIVES AND MOTHERS IN MIXED MARRIAGE FAMILIES, 1942–1954 .....198 Evacuation of Mixed Marriage Families, Spring 1942 ........................................................202 “As If I Were a Person of Japanese Ancestry”: the Status of Non-Japanese Evacuees during the War...................................................................................................................206 The Mixed Marriage Policy and Interracial Families Consisting of an Issei Husband, a White Wife, and/or Their Children ...................................................................................208 The Mixed Marriage Policy and Interracial Families Consisting of Nisei Husbands, White Wives, and/or Their Children .................................................................................212 Individual White Americans’ Sympathy with the Hardships of Interracial Families Headed by Japanese Husbands and White Wives .............................................................216 Sharing the Hardship of Japanese Americans: White Women Internees’ Camp Experience .........................................................................................................................221 Addressing the Equal Treatment of Interracial Families: Responses of the White Wives of Japanese Men to the Evacuation Claims Act of 1948 ..................................................225 7 CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................................237 LIST OF REFERENCES .............................................................................................................245 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................257 6 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EIP Estelle Ishigo Papers, Japanese American Research Project, Department of Special Collections, University Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles. MMP Mixed Marriage Policy Files 291.1, Box 28, Record Group 499, Central Correspondence, 1942–1946, Wartime Civil Control Administration and Civil Affairs Division, Western Defense Command and the Fourth Army, Records of U.S. Army Defense Commands (WWII), National Archives at College Park, Maryland. RJAR Records about Japanese Americans Relocated during World War II, created 1988-1989, documenting the period 1942–1946, Record Group 210, National Archives at College Park, Maryland. SRR Survey of Race Relations, 1924–1927, Hoover Institution Archives, Standford University. WRACF War Relocation Authority Case Files, Record Group 210, National Archives at Washington D.C. 7 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES AMONG ASIAN AMERICANS IN THE U.S. WEST, 1880- 1954 By Eunhye Kwon May 2011 Chair: Louise M. Newman Major: History My work is about the first two generations of Chinese and Japanese Americans who married whites in the U.S. West between 1880 and 1954. It was a time when interracial marriage was illegal in most of the states. From two major archival sources—the Survey of Race Relations, 1924–1927, and records about Japanese American internees during World War II—, my work finds that more than two hundred Chinese and Japanese Americans and their white spouses could circumvent miscegenation laws and lived as legally married couples in the U.S. West before the 1950s. Existing