The Meaning of Loyalty: The Case of Kazumaro Buddy Uno

Abstract

A central theme in Japanese-American history has been the question of loyalty of the American-born second-generation., Before the Second World War, the Nisei were never recognized as genuine Americans. Anti-Japanese racists alleged that they constituted an unassimilable, dangerous alien element within American society. In response to this negative characterization, the Nisei endeavored to convince the American public, by frequent public declarations, that they were, like all other Americans, equally loyal to the United States. The military necessity rationale, advanced by the War Department to justify the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans, was based on the racial assumption that there were no means to distinguish loyal JapaneseAmericans from disloyal ones. Japanese-Americans who protested internment, resisted military service, or renounced their American citizenship were all branded as disloyal persons. Much of Japanese-American history written during the postwar period one-sidedly stresses the wartime heroism of Nisei soldiers and the overall loyalty of Japanese-Americans during and after the Pacific War. Kazumaro Buddy Uno (1913-1954), also known as George K. Uno, was a well-known Nisei in the prewar JapaneseAmerican community. Throughout the thirties, he was active as a journalist writing in English for the JapaneseAmerican vernacular press. Because of his pro-Japan reporting before Pearl Harbor and his wartime work for the Japanese Army, Uno became and remains a controversial