Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese Exclusion and Incarceration by Rachel Schreiber (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese Exclusion and Incarceration by Rachel Schreiber Paul C. Mishler (bio) Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese Exclusion and Incarceration. By Rachel Schreiber. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2022. xi + 215 pp. This biography of Elaine Black Yoneda joins many other studies of radical activists that have explored individual lives rather than organizational histories or studies of radical ideologies. The author, Rachel Schreiber, is a dean at the Parsons School of Design in New York, and her earlier work was in art history, especially printmaking in the radical movement in the United States. She "discovered" Elaine Black Yoneda when she was asked to curate a historical exhibition on Jewish life in California. In her introduction Schreiber details the multiple tendencies in the writing of history that she draws on to produce this portrait of a remarkable woman. She names the "new biography" as a way to flesh out the lived experiences of individuals who may figure in organizational or social histories, but only as types. Then she talks about the contributions of women's history and the ways it has offered us a historical perspective that highlights both gender inequality and oppression and can bring to life the experiences of women who have been neglected previously. Finally, she draws on the multi-ethnic history of California and details her subject's position at the intersection of these three narrative traditions. It is a marvelous book not only because it brings to a larger audience the life of Elaine Black Yoneda and grounds it in clear writing and broad knowledge of the kinds of historical explorations that have informed her research. Importantly, it can also be read by someone who knows little about the scholarly literature on, for example, left-wing Jewish immigrants and their families. Similarly, Schreiber's discussions of class and ethnicity in California during the first half of the twentieth century; issues around anti-Japanese war-time incarceration; and complicated debates within the Japanese and Japanese American community are all done so well that any reader will understand the multiple strands of history that informed Elaine Black Yoneda's life. It is both supremely well-researched and scholarly and accessible. Elaine Black Yoneda was a significant figure in the Communist Party in California. She was born in 1906 to immigrant Jewish radicals in New York City. Her father became quite successful as the owner of dry-goods store in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, where she grew up. While her parents were Communists themselves, their daughter initially showed little interest in radical politics. She was, by her own account, more interested in expensive dresses and fancy restaurants, an early iteration of what has become known as a "valley girl." Elaine Black's life changed when she was arrested by accident at a workers' demonstration and was outraged by the police brutality she [End Page 416] witnessed. As a result, she attended the March 6, 1930, demonstration that had been organized by the Community Party, in response to the crisis caused by the onset of the Great Depression. She became an activist for the International Labor Defense (ILD), the CPUSA legal defense organization, quickly becoming a leader of the ILD in California. It was in this capacity that Elaine Black met Karl Yoneda, a Japanese American Communist. She was delivering bail money after Karl and others had been arrested at a workers' demonstration. It was "love at first sight" for both of them. The high point of this period in her life is when she became the only woman on the Executive Committee of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike representing the ILD. The second period of Elaine's life was after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. As the United States moved toward war with Japan, Japanese and Japanese Americans were told to leave the West Coast because they were all deemed security risks. They were forced from their homes and jobs and resettled in barren camps away from the West Coast. Karl was sent to Manzanar War Relocation Camp in eastern California near the Nevada border. Elaine decided that she, along with...