Japanese America Research Articles

Chrissy Yee Lau. New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America.

Chrissy Yee Lau. <i>New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America</i>.

Review: New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America, by Chrissy Yee Lau

Review: <i>New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America</i>, by Chrissy Yee Lau

Notes on Contributors

Eiichiro Azuma is Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of two award-winning monographs: Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (Oxford University Press, 2005) and In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan's Borderless Empire (University of California Press, 2019).Cameron Givens is a PhD candidate in history at The Ohio State University. His dissertation, provisionally entitled “A Rumor of War: Fear, Misinformation, and the Making of Modern America, 1915–1924,” examines the cultural construction of internal enemies during a decade defined by the nation's approach to, experience in, and demobilization from the First World War.Robert O'Sullivan is a historian of American, European, Atlantic and Imperial history, and the history of the Irish in the United States. He is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. He received his BA from the University of Cambridge in 2019, and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge in 2020.Gerson Rosales is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is currently writing a dissertation about the long history of Salvadoran migration to the San Francisco Bay Area.Kristalyn Shefveland is the author of Anglo-Native Virginia: Trade, Conversion, and Indian Slavery in the Old Dominion, 1646–1722. Current research projects include Old Florida: Yankee Settler Colonialism in the Land of the Aís and Seminole and a co-edited volume, The Great Upheaval: War, Migration, and Transformation in Early Modern America, 1675–1725.

Review: Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War, by John E. Schmitz

As we watch in horror the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are again faced with the question of how much responsibility individual citizens should bear for the atrocities their political leaders inflict upon other nations. We also are forced to think what should be done with the expatriates supportive of their aggressive homeland, and how the people connected to the adversarial nations through ethnic ties should be treated when they may or may not be sympathetic to their ancestral nations.John E. Schmitz’s Enemies among Us illuminates the complications posed by these questions by presenting how the U.S. government treated enemy aliens and U.S. citizens with ethnic ties with the enemies during World War II. Schmitz uses historical sources as well as personal episodes, including those of his grandparents who were incarcerated in POW camps as naturalized German Americans, to show that warring nations tend to prioritize national security concerns at the expense of individual human rights.The forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans (which Schmitz calls “relocation and evacuation”) is a prime example of the governmental abuse of its war powers. To this tragic episode of human rights violation, Schmitz adds the “internment” of German, Italian, and Japanese aliens and a smaller number of German and Italian Americans, and he tells a larger story of involuntary—and mostly wrongful—confinement of individuals whose loyalty was rendered suspicious. Schmitz’s research on the executive records, the FBI records, and the War, State, and Justice Departments’ archives reveals the comprehensive scheme of the Roosevelt Administration aiming at protecting the nation from fifth-column activities not only within the United States but in the Western Hemisphere. The earlier chapters elucidate how J. Edgar Hoover took advantage of FDR’s fear of the fifth column to transform the FBI into a formidable secret police agency. The book also offers much information on the U.S. government’s intervention into Latin American policies regarding the arrests and deportation of alleged Axis sympathizers and alien enemies.By connecting the “internment” schemes on the East and the West Coasts, this book illuminates the “internment” of Japanese nationals (Issei) in detention centers—an understudied aspect of the wartime Japanese American experiences—as a part of the larger anti-espionage federal policy. The hostage exchange scheme explains the abduction and shipment of Japanese Latin Americans along with German Axis sympathizers to the United States. Schmitz describes how the federal enemy alien policies were confusing and often shifted clumsily. In the case of the hostage exchange policy, the government had to abandon the scheme because it turned out to be more dangerous to deport subversive internees to the enemy nations than to keep them in the United States. The book illustrates the overall injustice that befell those who were labeled potentially adversarial, and the primary sources show how the U.S. enemy alien policies were poorly managed.The major problem of this book lies in its handling of the story of 110,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated in the War Relocations Centers. The book would have worked better if it had focused on the treatment of Japanese, German, and Italian enemy aliens. Schmitz carefully distinguishes the terms “internment” (detention of enemy aliens) and “relocation/evacuation” (involuntary removal of American citizens), but often his arguments become muddled throughout the book. On the latter issue, scholars in Asian American studies—such as Eiichiro Azuma (2005, 2019), Brian Masaru Hayashi (2004), Masumi Izumi (2019), and Erik K. Yamamoto, Lorraine J. Bannai, and Margaret Chon (2020)—have produced many works that explain the complex and significant roles Japanese Americans played in West Coast agriculture and in the debates related to national security and civil liberties. The book’s bibliography and many of the simplistic and faulty descriptions of the state of Japanese America before and during World War II reveal that the author was ill-prepared to explain how issues of national security, loyalty, and race intersected with one another when Japanese Americans were locked up in the inland concentration camps.

Transpacific Fascism in John Okada’s No-No Boy

ABSTRACT This essay urges a reconsideration of John Okada’s No-No Boy as a transpacific text which engages with the erased history of Japanese America’s entanglements with fascism, particularly by situating the novel in relation to Japanese writers such as Tosaka Jun, Uno Kōzō, and Mishima Yukio. Rather than classifying No-No Boy as a fascist or anti-fascist text, an aesthetic conception of fascism demonstrates how this distinction is increasingly obscured by Cold War geopolitics. In its attempt to critique fascism, No-No Boy finds itself mobilizing ableist and liberal discourses for which the expulsion of the fascist as an unhealthy and deviant element of the national body ironically restores an idealized and militaristic nation-state.

“Just Enough Mystery”: Multivocal Afterlives of a Tokugawa Refugee in Japan and the United States, 1868–2018

Abstract This article examines the life and afterlives of Okei, a political refugee from the Japanese Boshin Civil War (1868–69), who became the first Japanese woman interred in North American soil. Looking at a shared space of commemoration, in this case a grave site in California, this paper tracks how Okei’s memorialization on both sides of the Pacific constructed specific communal identities over a hundred and fifty years. Okei’s legacy has been consciously constructed by different actors to at once prove the resiliency of the Japanese spirit, provide an origin story for Japanese America, glorify Japanese expansionism, promote U.S.–Japanese friendship, establish regional prestige, and embody internationalism. Despite these multivocal trans-Pacific interpretations, all renderings of Okei’s story share one key similarity: the manipulation of history to empty Okei’s life of its divisive political context. A history replaced by multiple myths, the Okei narrative came to express contrasting yet parallel identities grounded in that lonely hill in California.

Book review: Eiichiro Azuma, In Search of Our Frontier Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire

Eiichiro Azuma, In Search of Our Frontier Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire (University of California Press, 2019), $75.

In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire

In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire

In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire by Eiichiro Azuma

In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire by Eiichiro Azuma

In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan's Borderless Empire by Eiichiro Azuma

In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan's Borderless Empire by Eiichiro Azuma

Science of the 470 Sailing Performance

This paper holds a significant place in the Journal of Sailing Technology, as the very last publication of Prof. Masuyama, published posthumously, and co-authors by Dr. Ogihara. For many decades, Prof. Masuyama has been a very influential and respected member of the sailing yacht research community world-wide, holding the chairmanship of the Sailing Yacht Research Association of Japan for close to 20 years, and being involved with the Japanese America’s Cup Challenge. His expertise and academic research have impacted generations of researchers, and his work on high performance sails, sailing yachts and velocity prediction remains at the forefront of sailing technology. It is therefore with great honour that the Journal of Sailing Technology presents the very last insights of Prof. Masuyama into the sailing performance of the 470 Olympic class dinghy.

Review: In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire, by Eiichiro Azuma; Liminality of the Japanese Empire: Border Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan, by Hiroko Matsuda; The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868–1961, by Sidney Xu Lu; Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood, by Dean

Book Review| July 03 2020 Review: In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire, by Eiichiro Azuma; Liminality of the Japanese Empire: Border Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan, by Hiroko Matsuda; The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868–1961, by Sidney Xu Lu; Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood, by Dean Itsuji Saranillio In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire. By Eiichiro Azuma. (Oakland, University of California Press, 2019. 353 pp.)Liminality of the Japanese Empire: Border Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan. By Hiroko Matsuda (Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. 205 pp.)The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868–1961. By Sidney Xu Lu (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2019. 310 pp.)Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood. By Dean Itsuji Saranillio (Durham, Duke University Press, 2018. 282 pp.) Wendy Matsumura Wendy Matsumura University Of California, San Diego Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2020) 89 (3): 455–462. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2020.89.3.455 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Wendy Matsumura; Review: In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire, by Eiichiro Azuma; Liminality of the Japanese Empire: Border Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan, by Hiroko Matsuda; The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868–1961, by Sidney Xu Lu; Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood, by Dean Itsuji Saranillio. Pacific Historical Review 3 July 2020; 89 (3): 455–462. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2020.89.3.455 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2020 by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan's Borderless Empire by Eiichiro Azuma

In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan's Borderless Empire by Eiichiro Azuma

日比嘉高著『ジャパニーズ・アメリカ 移民文学・出版文化・収容所』

日比嘉高著『ジャパニーズ・アメリカ 移民文学・出版文化・収容所』

Kiyoshi Karl Kawakami and Japanese America between the Two World Wars

ABSTRACTKiyoshi Karl Kawakami was one of the most influential Japanese immigrant journalists to defend Japanese imperialism. He did so at a time when Japanese immigrant communities showed various responses to Japan’s becoming an Asian empire between the two world wars. This article shows how a Japanese immigrant journalist utilized minority politics to represent Japanese immigrant communities in the United States. Cooperating with the Japanese government’s public diplomacy and propaganda projects, Kawakami also linked the interests of his home country and Japanese immigrant communities to American national interests. For this purpose, he utilized the notions of open-door international trade and anti-communism – both widely shared by the American public – to justify Japanese imperialism and hide its colonial nature.

A “Model” Minority: Japanese Americans as References and Role Models in Black Newspapers, 2000–2010

The model minority began as an ideology pitting Japanese Americans against African Americans, using the former's economic success to deflect assertions of the persistence of race. In stressing enmity, research on black attitudes toward Asian Americans points to the utility of the myth in segmenting the two communities. The thrust of reporting on Japanese America in thirty seven black newspapers from 2000 to 2010 shows something different. Two frames emerge: Japanese Americans function as a reference group serving to reinforce the historical substance of racial profiling of minorities, and as a role model for developing a strategy for black efforts at reparations.

Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America

Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America

Our Culture and History: The Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians by Don Whereat Patty Whereat Phillips, Melody Caldera, Ron Thomas, Reg Pullan, and Stephen Dow Beckham

 Reviews What is missing from this book, and from the work of nearly every historian of Japanese America (this reviewer included), is the experience of Japanese Americans after World War II. Walz’s history covers the years 1882 to 1945: sixty-three years. From 1945 to the present is sixty-eight years. Yet we still lack a history of that very different era for Japanese Americans, when many thousands more immigrated and whose stories don’t fit the Issei-Nisei-Sansei generational model of most JapaneseAmerican history writing. EricWalz has given us what may turn out to be the definitive treatment of inland Japanese Americans, and happy we are to have it. Now maybe Walz, or someone else similarly skilled, can give us the history of Japanese Americans since 1945. Paul Spickard University of California, Santa Barbara Our Culture and History: The Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians by Don Whereat with Patty Whereat Phillips, Melody Caldera, Ron Thomas, Reg Pullan, and Stephen Dow Beckham Don Whereat, Newport, Oregon, 2011. Illustrations, notes. 390 pages. $24.95 paper. OurCultureandHistory consistsof sixtyarticles written primarily for the Coos,Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw tribal newsletter during the early 1990s. Tribal member Don Whereat wrote the newsletter and most of the articles in order to disseminate and preserve knowledge of tribal history and culture within the community. The other authors contributed either to the newsletter or to this volume for the same reason .Most of the brief and wide-ranging articles are organized under the category History, but several appear under subdivisions of Language and Ethnology, Cultural Practices, Myths and Spiritual Practices, and Miscellaneous. The Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw are three affiliated coastal Oregon tribes that became confederated in the early twentieth century. They represent different language and culture groups but have interacted and associated with each other since long before whitecontact.Theirhistoriesareentwinedwith each other, and today they are governed by a single tribal entity. Present-day knowledge of their culture and heritage has benefited from oral histories,archaeological work,the research of several early twentieth century ethnologists — including most notably John Peabody Harrington ,Leo Frachtenberg,and Melville Jacobs — and from documentation of their relations with the federal government.Whereat utilized all these resources to write the newsletter articles in his efforts to document and edify his community. In some cases he summarized the sources; in others he transcribed them directly. Whereat’s historical vignettes begin in the pre-contact period but focus most heavily on the nineteenth century. He also includes brief articles on some key court cases that have impacted all of Indian country, including his tribes. Stephen Dow Beckham’s contribution consists of an annotated chronology of key dates in tribal history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.PattyWhereat Phillips, the tribe’s linguist, provides several articles on cultural practices. Archaeologist Reg Pullen contributed an article describing the findings from a site near present-day Bandon.Whereat’s section titled “Language and Ethnology” provides brief biographies of numerous linguists and ethnologists who worked with the tribes, which helpfully provide readers with an understanding of the outsiders who recorded tribal knowledge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The section on myths incorporates mythology and a discussion of its role in tribal life. The articles are brief and easy to read, and the book is a valuable resource for members of  OHQ vol. 114, no. 2 the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw tribal community as well as those interested in tribal and local history in Oregon. Teachers will find some of the stories useful in lesson plans. The book is most valuable, however, because it reflects what people inside the tribal community believe to be the important aspects of their history and culture.As such,it provides insights not only into the past but also into the meaning of that past to the present-day community. David R.M. Beck University of Montana Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau: The Jesuit, the Medicine Man, and the Indian Hymn Singer by Chad S. Hamill Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2012. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 192 pages. $21.95 paper. Chad Hamill’s book is...

Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America

Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America

ReviewClaiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America. Asian American History and Culture Series. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011. xi + 254 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $58.50.) Shelley Sang-Hee Lee

Review<b><i>Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America</i></b>. Asian American History and Culture Series. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011. xi + 254 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $58.50.) Shelley Sang-Hee Lee