The Limits of Americanism and Democracy: Korean Americans, Transnational Allegiance, and the Question of Loyalty on the Homefront during World War II

Abstract

On the fateful morning of December 7, 1941, Koreans in Hawai'i received the news of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor with mixed emotions. One Korean woman, who came to Hawai'i as a picture bride in 1919, cried when she first heard the news. Some tears were for joy and some for sadness, she recalled. was first of all happy because America was at last on our side against the Japanese; and then I was sad thinking about the boys who were being killed.While Americans coped with the shock, Koreans in Hawai'i and the continental United States saw the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor as confirmation of Japanese imperial ambitions and brutality they knew all too well. After many years of failed attempts to fight off Japanese imperial power, Korea had been officially colonized by Japan in 1910. Responding to the political events unfolding in Korea, over 7,000 pioneer Korean immigrants who came to Hawai.i as plantation laborers beginning in 1903 actively launched a Korean nationalist movement well ...