Families Precede Nation and Race?: Marriage, Migration, and Integration of Japanese War Brides after World War II A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Masako Nakamura IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (History) Erika Lee and Elaine Tyler May August 2010 © Masako Nakamura, 2010 Table of Contents List of Figures----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ii Introduction-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1 Chapter 1 Families Precede Nation and Race?: The 1947 Amendment of the War Brides Act and the American Family------------------------------------------------------------------------------------23 Chapter 2 Making “Model Minority Brides”?: American Red Cross Brides Schools for Japanese Wives of U.S. Servicemen in Japan, 1951-1963-----------------------------------------------75 Chapter 3 “Are War Brides Happy Here?”: Sociological Studies of the Marital Adjustment of Japanese War Brides------------------------------------------------------------------------------137 Chapter 4 Social Workers and Japanese Wives: Politics through the Japanese War Brides Club at the International Institute of San Francisco----------------------------------------------------177 Chapter 5 Life Stories of Japanese War Brides in Japan and the United States from Their Own Perspective, 1930s-1950s------------------------------------------------------------------------216 Chapter 6 Longing for Japan: Transnational Organizing, Shaping Identity between Two Countries, and Remembering--------------------------------------------------------------------262 Conclusion-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------298 Bibliography---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------302 Appendix A----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------320 Appendix B-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------322 i List of Figures Figure 1. Reception of a bride school sponsored by the CWA, Tokyo, March 16, 1951--89 Figure 2. Commencement of a “military bride school,” Tokyo, May 14, 1935------------90 ii Introduction Abstract Unlike other war brides of World War II, the international and interracial marriages between Japanese women and U.S. servicemen, which were seen as the products and symbols of the U.S. occupation, posed distinct challenges to the American and Japanese state and, in particular, to the image of American families at home and abroad. This dissertation examines how these Japanese women were treated as a “problem” by American and Japanese societies and how the “problem” was approached through diverse but intertwined sites, venues, and agents such as legal discourse, American Red Cross brides’ schools in Japan, social science studies, and Japanese War Brides Club at the International Institute in San Francisco, in the late 1940s and 1950s. It also examines how these women responded to those approaches, how they remembered their experiences, and their ongoing transnational relationships with their two home countries, Japan and the United States. I argue that Japanese war brides, who were the majority of not only Asian war brides, but also postwar Japanese immigrants, played a key role in redefining the “American family” and concepts of race and citizenship. They became central to the debate about the makeup of the “ideal American family” and led to changes in postwar U.S. immigration policy as well as popular and scholarly understandings of not only “Japanese war brides” but also interracial marriages. Disciplining these ex-enemy nationals, who were considered to be racially inassimilable and ineligible for citizenship, 1 into good wives and mothers of U.S. citizens became an important mission for Americans in the United States and Japan during the rise of the Cold War. Their “successful” marriages and integration became a display of American racial tolerance in early Cold War America. As a result, the image of these women shifted from a “problem” to a showcase of ideal, “model minority” brides. These Japanese women, both individually and collectively, played a significant part in changing American and Japanese perceptions of “Japanese war brides” and interracial marriage since they had made their decisions to marry U.S. servicemen and immigrate to the United States as young women. Background World War II and postwar U.S. occupations in Asia and Europe mobilized nearly sixteen million American men. It is estimated that roughly one million of them married overseas. Nearly three quarter of these foreign wives eventually entered the United States as “war brides” from more than fifty countries.1 Japanese war brides comprised the majority of Asian war brides due to the U.S. occupation of Japan (1945-1952) and the Korean War (1950-1953) which brought U.S. soldiers to their military bases in Japan.2 Japanese war brides also became the first Japanese immigrants allowed to enter the United 1 Elfrieda Berthiaume Shukert and Barbara Smith Scibetta, War Brides of World War II (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1988), 1, 2. 2 At least 30,715 Japanese women were allowed to enter the United States as wives of U.S. servicemen from 1947 through the 1950s. Between 1947 and 1975, 66,681 Japanese wives were admitted to the United States. U.S. Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, Annual Reports, 1947-1975. 2 States since the Immigration Act of 1924 ban on Japanese immigration. They constituted the majority of postwar Japanese immigrants through the 1960s. Given the strong anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States prior to and during World War II that resulted in the incarceration of 110,000 Japanese Americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the marriage, migration, and integration of Japanese war brides became an unexpected problem to be solved and contained in both the United States and Japan. American-Japanese marriages crossed many borders that fell into three categories: 1) interracial marriages that crossed racial boundaries; 2) marriages that crossed political boundaries between former enemy-nationalities; and 3) marriages that crossed legal boundaries between U.S. citizens and aliens who were “ineligible to U.S. citizenship.”3 In occupied Japan, Japanese women who were associated with American GIs, in both casual and formal relationships, were lumped together as prostitutes and traitors. The fraternization between American GIs and Japanese women became a symbol of Japan’s defeat and humiliation. It was also considered a threat to Japan and Japanese men’s masculinity, patriarchal authority, and eugenics and the purity of the Japanese “Yamato” race. Almost all the brides’ parents objected to their marriages at first because they worried about their daughters’ life in the United States, the prospect that they might never be able to see their daughters again, or the disgrace their marriages would bring to the family. Many parents reluctantly came to accept their daughters’ decision, but some disowned their daughters by telling them never to come back or even by removing them 3 Japanese immigrants were considered as inassimilable and the U.S. Supreme court case, Ozawa v. U.S. (1922), ruled that Japanese were “ineligible to citizenship.” Japanese war brides were first allowed to enter the United States in 1947 but it was not until 1952 that they were granted the right to apply for citizenship. 3 from their family registry. In a symbolical sense, these women were also disowned by Japan, which was seen as a “family nation” that revered the Emperor as the head of the family. Japanese war brides were not the only foreign wives to come to the United States married to American servicemen. For example, at least 90,588 foreign wives entered the United States from Europe, Australia, and New Zealand between 1946 and 1948.4 Despite that, Japanese war brides attracted unparalleled attention from American government bodies, the military, media, popular culture, social scientists, and social welfare agencies. During the Cold War era, families were seen as the bedrock and safeguard of American capitalism and healthy democracy in both U.S. postwar domestic and foreign policies. In particular, women were expected to be “good” wives and mothers as homemakers for America. However, racialized definitions of “the American family” surfaced when the nation faced an unprecedented influx of Japanese war brides beyond racial and national boundaries. These women, unlike prewar Japanese immigrants who first settled in their predecessors’ ethnic enclaves when they arrived in the United States, directly entered into mainstream American society as homemakers of American families. In the immediate postwar era, anti-Japanese sentiment toward ex-enemy nationals was prevalent, and Japanese immigrants, who were ineligible for citizenship until 1952, were considered to be racially inassimilable in American society and culture. In addition, in the late 1940s and 1950s, many states had anti-miscegenation statutes. How did the United States respond to the contradiction that these Japanese women were 4 This figure does not include those who were admitted to enter the United States as alien fiancées of U.S. servicemen. INS Monthly Review (June 1949), 168. 4 represented as "inassimilable aliens" ineligible for citizenship while also being