Unfound: The Princeton Journal of Asian American Studies - Volume 3, 2016

Unfound The Princeton Journal of Asian American Studies

2016 VOL. 3

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 1

UNFOUND Co-Editors-in-Chief

Editorial Staff

Andrew Hahm ’17 Rebecca Weng ’18

Managing Design Editor

Angela Feng ’19 Cailin Hong ’17 Michelle Mui ’17 Ling Ritter ’19 Catherine Wang ’19 Nicholas Wu ’18 Ivy Xue ’20 Jianing Zhao ’20

Cailin Hong ’17

Layout Staff

Faculty Advisor Professor Anne Cheng

Catherine Wang ’19 Ivy Xue ’20

2 | UNFOUND

LETTER from the editors

Dear reader, In a year of intense political turmoil, precipitated in no small measure by a refusal to confront issues of race and identity, we need more than ever to affirm the important work done by ethnic studies scholars around the country to grapple, engage, and revolutionize how we think about, write about, and talk about these issues. As small of a role this journal may play in the greater landscape of social issues facing the world today, putting together this issue has given us hope anew for the road ahead.

Every previous issue of Unfound has affirmed the vibrancy of undergraduate research in Asian American studies, and the one you are reading today is no different. But a surge in the number of article submissions from a greater diversity of institutions than we’ve seen in previous issues leads us to believe that there is a new generation of Asian American studies scholars in waiting. This also made it infinitely harder to decide on the four articles ultimately chosen for publication. Two articles present research on two relatively unknown events in Asian American history: the exchange of Japanese Peruvian prisoners during World War II and anti-Chinese riots in Jamaica throughout the early twentieth century. One article discusses the history of Japanese American baseball, while another analyzes American nuclear policy through the lens of necropolitics.

We are proud to see this journal grow, and we are equally humbled to have witnessed a tremendous year for Asian American studies at Princeton. With University President Christopher Eisgruber’s approval of the creation of an Asian American studies track in the American studies program, proposed by the faculty task force on American studies, we are eager for what is to come next. It is our hope that this will serve as an impetus for more Asian Americanist faculty hires by the Program in American Studies.

Sincerely yours, Andrew Hahm and Rebecca Weng Co-Editors-in-Chief, Unfound

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 3

ABOUT UNFOUND

NAME

SELECTION PROCESS

The title Unfound refers to the ambiguities of the Asian American experience. “Unfound,� in its most basic sense, simply refers to something that remains elusive. But the word connotes deeper, emotional meaning upon reexamination.

Unfound implies that there is something to be discovered. Unfound implies that someone has tried and tried again to find what she has been looking for, only to come up short. Caught between two identities, the Asian American seeks to carve out her own place in the greater American narrative. Asian American studies and Unfound seek to create a space where what has remained unfound can be discovered.

All articles submitted to Unfound go through a double-blinded selection process. Following blinding by our managing layout editors, articles are distributed to our selection editing team, of which our managing layout editors are not a part. Each article is read by at least two editors and graded according to a standardized rubric that takes into account factors such as quality of argumentation, quality of writing style, and quality of research. Following discussions between all editors comparing the relative merits of all submitted articles, articles are selected based on group consensus.

SUBSCRIPTION PROCESS

SPONSORS

If you would like to subscribe to receive physical copies of Unfound, please email us at unfoundjournal@gmail.com and include your name, address, and institution (if applicable). A subscription fee will apply. Virtual copies of Unfound are available at unfoundjournal.com via ISSUU.

Unfound is a publication of the Princeton Asian American Studies Committee.

This journal is possible due to the generous support of the Program in American Studies, the Asian American Studies Research Fund, and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students.

4 | UNFOUND

TABLE

of CONTENTS Oral Histories of Japanese Americans in World War II: Internment Camps, US Military Service, and the Peruvian Prisoner Exchange

06

Mikka Kei MacDonald, Bates College ’16

The 1965 Anti-Chinese Riot in Jamaica: Anti-Colonial Frustration and Jamaican-Chineseness in the Postcolonial Nation

44

Danielle Wilson, The University of Chicago ’15

Modeling the American Way: Japanese American Baseball, American Global Anti-Communism, and Transnational Racialization in Occupied Japan

76

Benjamin Swartz Hartmann, University of Minnesota ’17 Nuclear Reasoning from Bikini Atoll to Daiichi Fukushima: Necropolitics and Citizen-Building

106

G. Pe Benito, Barnard College ’15

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 5

Oral Histories of Japanese Americans in World War II: Internment Camps, US Military Service, and the Peruvian Prisoner Exchange Mikka Kei MacDonald, Bates College ’16 Abstract After Imperial Japan attacked the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States reacted by declaring war on the Empire of Japan, and by marking over 200,000 people of Japanese descent living in the Americas as the enemy. This essay explores the experiences of people of Japanese descent living in the United States during World War II, with data gathered from interviews, primary source documents, and secondary accounts. The first section is dedicated to the historical background, while the second recounts individual experiences of the war. As a whole, this article offers insight into three specific groups of Japanese: those who were incarcerated in US internment camps; those who served in the US military; and those who were traded in the United States’ prisoner exchange with Peru. Most notably, the findings on the prisoner exchange are one of the first published in-depth accounts of both the event, and the emotions and actions of those who lived through it.

Introduction and Methodology It is easy to forget animosity; it is easy to forget enmity. In the case of the United States’ actions against Japanese Americans during World War II, it is easy to forget history. In the 21st century, the relationship between the United States and Japan is remarkably strong, with politicians on both sides routinely acknowledging that they are one of each other’s strongest allies.1 In a study completed by the Pew Research Center, over half of all Japanese citizens reported viewing the United States in a “favorable” light, with as many as 85 percent noting their affinity towards the United States.2 The United States, in turn, has shown positive emotions towards Japan.

In a poll conducted by Gallup, 81 percent of Americans viewed Japan as favorable, and ranked the country as the fourth most favorable after Canada, Great Britain,

1. Takashi Inoguchi, “Review,” Review of Restructuring the US-Japan Alliance: Toward a More Equal Partnership, by Ralph Cossa, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 74, no. 3 (1998): 713-714, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2625069.

2. Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes & Trends, “Opinion of the United States: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of the U.S.?,” accessed February 12, 2016, http://www.pewglobal.org/ database/indicator/1/country/109/.

6 | UNFOUND

and Germany.3 With these national sentiments, discussions surrounding the hate that permeated the United States and Japan’s relationship in the 1940s can seem foreign, out-of-place, and even wrong.

The historian John Dower discusses this phenomenon in his book War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War.4 In his writing, Dower explains how and why we forget, and argues for the continued acknowledgement of the past, even in cases where the barbarity of an event is so great that the general public would opt to forget that it ever happened: In a world that continues to experience so much violence and racial hatred, such a dramatic transformation from bitter enmity to genuine cooperation is heartening, and thus the fading memories of the war pose a paradox. It is fortunate that people on all sides can put such a terrible conflict behind them, but dangerous to forget how easily war came about between Japan and the Western Allies, and how extraordinarily fierce and Manichean it was. We can never hope to understand the nature of . . . international and interracial conflict . . . if we fail to work constantly at correcting and 3. Frank Newport and Igor Himelfarb, “Americans Least Favorable Toward Iran,” Gallup, March 7, 2013, accessed February 7, 2016, http://www.gallup.com/poll/161159/ americans-least-favorable-toward-iran.aspx.

re-creating the historical memory.5

Although it is fortuitous that the relationship between the United States and Japan is so strong, it is harmful to ignore the history in favor of a more comfortable disregard.

As a result, the gross violations against the Japanese Americans often go overlooked: their experiences are often ignored, their perseverance often forgotten, and their history, in many respects, is being lost.

There are several theories concerning the general silence regarding Japanese internment camps in wider academic discussions, and the majority can be traced to post-traumatic stress. In 2003, psychologists Donna Ngata and Wendy J. Y. Cheng completed a study that examined the use of memory and recollection among Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps during the 1940s. In their paper ‘Intergenerational Communication of Race-Related Trauma by Japanese American Former Internees,’ the authors examine how the Nisei family members relayed their history to their following generation. The majority of the study examined “intergenerational communication patterns” by collecting information on “the frequency, length, degree of comfort, and mode of conversation that have characterize[d] . . . [their] internment conversations with their children.”6 The researchers found

4. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and

Power in the Pacific War, (New York: Pantheon

5. Dower, War Without Mercy, 3.

Books, 1986).

6. Donna K. Nagata and Wendy J. Y. Cheng,

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 7

that there was a remarkable lack of communication between Nisei parents and their Sansei children about their history in the camps. Fifty percent of Nisei mentioned their experience in the camps fewer than ten times, with 25 percent mentioning their experiences less than five times. Additionally, over 70 percent of conversations that actually took place concerning their history happened in an average of less than fifteen minutes. The data offers the assumption that even when the subject of Japanese internment was breached in the privacy of the internees’ own family conversations, it was done quickly and briefly.

While recent generations of Japanese Americans, and certainly the older members of the Japanese community who went through the internment camps, are beginning to speak more about the Japanese American experience during World War II, there are still many questions that go unanswered.

A second theory proposed is that the story of Japanese internment just does not fit in with our wider conversation of the United States’ involvement in World War II. “History is written by the victors,” Winston Churchill tells us. In the 1950s and beyond, the United States, through media and politics, has painted itself as the

According to Nagata and Cheng’s report, “Research on trauma survivors with posttraumatic stress symptoms report frequent avoidance of thoughts, feelings, activities or situations associated with the traumatic event.”7 When asked whether her father ever spoke about his time in the camps, Tami Ito remarked, “No. No, he rarely talked much about the camps at all.”8 In the same vein, Bruce Ito, when speaking about his own father, noted that “he rarely spoke about the camps.”9

hero in the story of World War II: a clear white knight among darkness, the Good who triumphed over Evil.10 While these remarks are often wellvalued, Americans cannot forget our own mistakes during the war period.

Chief among them: our willingness to incarcerate an entire race on the grounds that their ethnicity might cause them to rebel.

In a frame of mind that is especially topical in the current political and social climate of the United States, the goal of this project is to better understand the United States’ action during World War II and to learn from them. In a time when varying demographics are facing heightened discrimination, both from their society and their government, lessons reaped from the 1940s are becoming increasingly meaningful: we have political figures requesting a

“Intergenerational Communication of RaceRelated Trauma by Japanese American Former Internees,” American Journal of

Orthopsychiatry 73, no. 3 (2003): 266-278, doi: 10.1037/0002-9432.73.3.266.

7. Nagata and Cheng, “Race-Related Trauma

by Japanese American Former Internees,” 275.

8. Tami Ito, interview by the author, February 17, 2016.

9. Bruce Ito, interview by the author, March 7, 2016.

8 | UNFOUND

10. Dower, War Without Mercy.

ban of Muslim immigrants, race riots breaking out after police shootings, and a Democratic mayor who argued for a suspension of Syrian refugees by using FDR’s action against JapaneseAmericans to legitimize removing people’s rights on the basis of their identity.11 12 When looking at modern racial violence, it is easy to peer in, with hands cupping our peripheries, and wonder how the United States could have reached such a moment of riots 11. On December 7, 2015, Presidential Candidate Donald Trump issued a press release “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on [with regards to recent terrorist attacks].” See Donald J. Trump, “Donald J. Trump statement on preventing Muslim immigration,” Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., December 7, 2015, https://www. donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.trump-statement-on-preventing-muslimimmigration.

12. On November 18, 2015, Mayor David Bowers of Roanoke, Virginia asked his local agencies to “delay any further Syrian refugee assistance until these serious hostilities and atrocities [such as the Paris attack] end.” In his defense he stated, “I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears

and anger; this article serves to be one of the many hands that are pointing towards our own history for the answer.

I explore the experiences of people of Japanese descent living in the United States during World War II with data gathered from interviews, primary source documents, and secondary accounts. The first part of this essay is dedicated to the historical background, while the second follows three separate narratives of Japanese American experiences during the war.

As a whole, I offer insight into three specific groups of Japanese: those who were incarcerated in the US internment camps, those who served in the US military, and those who were traded in the United States’ prisoner exchange with Peru. In addition to outside research, I conducted a series of eleven interviews with seven people: three Nisei surviving Japanese Americans who experienced World War II, and four Sansei Japanese Americans who are immediate decedents of those alive during the War.13 In order to protect the privacy of those profiled, individuals are only referred to by their first names.

This project is significant for both its breadth and its offering of new academic material. The histories

that the threat of harm to America from ISIS

13. Japanese history in the United States

now is just as real and serious as that from

is often organized in generations. Since

our enemies then.” See David A. Bowers,

the majority of Japanese American families

“Statement of Mayor David A. Bowers,”

immigrated to the United States in the late

City of Roanoke, VA, Office of the Mayor,

1800s, most of the generations within the

November 18, 2015, http://www.roanoke.

families parallel each other. Following are the

com/david-bowers-statement-on-syrian-

terms used for each generation of the family,

refugees/pdf_54895fc2-dcfa-50a9-9e40-

from first immigrant to fourth-generation

4c382ed7ab4e.html.

American: Issei, Nisei, Sansei, Yonsei.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 9

and analyses detailed in my project are unique in that they explore the Japanese American experiences that have not previously been detailed.

Most significant are my findings on the Peruvian Prisoner Exchange, which occurred between the governments of Peru and the United States in the mid1940s. Two of my interviewees were able to offer first-hand accounts of the event which, defended by available print media and reports from the time, offer a new look into an international agreement that has been rarely discussed. Although it was one of the foundations of Japanese internment experience in the United States, little

on Pearl Harbor changed this course and fueled what would erupt into an explosion of anti-Japanese sentiments and fears in the United States.

In the days following Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States began to take swift and immediate actions both at home and abroad. While the federal government was declaring war on the Empire of Japan, local government offices began taking action in their own municipalities. Foremost, without announcement or legislation, representatives from different police and safety departments along the West Coast began to detain people of Japanese descent. Circling back to

has been written on this subject, and what literature is available is limited and often secondhand.

defend these actions on the federal level, the United States Justice and War Departments immediately ordered the detainment of “suspicious enemy aliens” living in the continental United States, Hawaii, and Alaska.15 The names of these “enemy aliens” were chosen based on their relation to community organizations and profitable businesses, resulting in over several hundred arrests in the days after Pearl Harbor. In the years following, no evidence could be given that proved these alleged traitors had actually committed crimes.16 The fear that permeated the United States at the time, and specifically the West Coast, was immense. On their part, many Caucasian Americans were fearful of foreign powers invading the United States: they witnessed the destruction

Immediate Effects of Pearl Harbor By the 1940s, the immense conflict of the Second World War had already broken out in Europe and in Asia, but the United States had hitherto been adamant on remaining removed from the fighting. Still recovering from World War I two decades earlier, Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts from 1935 to 1939, allowing the United States to support the Allied powers in Europe, while still adhering to the isolationist policies that they promised their public.14 The attack 14. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of the Historian, “The Neutrality Acts, 1930s,” accessed

15. Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great

February 13, 2016, https://history.state.gov/

Betrayal (Toronto: MacMillan Company, 1969).

milestones/1921-1936/neutrality-acts.

16. Girdner and Loftis, The Great Betrayal, 11.

10 | UNFOUND

of Pearl Harbor at the hands of Imperial Japan, and they received continuous coverage of the brutality and violence being experienced in Europe. For Japanese Americans, this fear was the same, but with the additional apprehension of the very government they were told would protect them. In the evening of December 7, 1942, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) sent a telegram to President Roosevelt, condemning the actions of Japan: The Japanese Americans are stunned and horrified by this morning’s unwarranted attack

by Japan upon American soil, our country. We want to convey to you that we unequivocally condemn Japan for this unprecedented breach of good faith. In behalf of our 15,000 members in the 56 chapters of our Japanese American Citizens League, we unreservedly volunteer the facilities of our office to the defense of our land . . . Now that Japan has instituted this attack upon our land, we are ready and prepared to expend every effort to repel this invasion together with our fellow Americans.17

Although JACL had no military connections with the government of Imperial Japan, they took precautions to drape themselves in undeniable patriotism. In their telegram to President Roosevelt, they restated their loyalty and their dedication 17. Mark Rawitsch, The House on Leamon

to protecting their home, the United States of America. In JACL’s statements after the attack on Pearl Harbor the organization worked to condemn the actions of Imperial Japan while reminding the United States government and people that they too were Americans.

Along with the Japanese American Citizens League as a whole, individual Japanese Americans worked to prove that they were as American as the nonAsian citizens around them. Concerned of suspicions that could be aroused because of their culture and heritage, Japanese Americans along the West Coast “began to destroy what seemed, at the time, incriminating evidence against them.”18 Religious artifacts were ruined, and family heirlooms were either tossed away or given to trusted Caucasian neighbors and friends. At the same time, many of these Japanese Americans worked to display how deeply they believed in the American war effort: some radio operators quit their jobs, “so that there would be no suspicions of their . . . loyalty”; men enlisted into the army; Japanese families advertised their donations to the Red Cross.19 However, despite precautions and outward oaths of loyalty, the discrimination against the Japanese Americans continued.

Government Policy These smaller events of fear and discrimination foreshadowed larger

Street: Japanese Pioneers and The American Dream (Boulder:

18. Girdner and Loftis, The Great Betrayal, 10.

University Press of Colorado, 2012).

19. Girdner and Loftis, The Great Betrayal, 11.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 11

and more formal government policies against the Japanese that would occur in February of the following year. In the 1942 campaign for internment camps, there were two specific sets of evidence that defended the move for mass incarceration, both of which were later proven to be inaccurate. The first set of arguments was led by United States General DeWitt, who propagated a witchhunt of Asian Americans along the West Coast. In his recommendations to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, DeWitt cited instances in which Japanese Americans and “enemy” nationals living in California were coordinating anti-American efforts

improbability of these occurrences, “[at] the time of Stimson’s letter, there had been no Japanese forces off California for more than a month.”21 Apart from General DeWitt’s assertions, the only evidence found related to the story directly contradicted it. These reports that were eventually given to the Attorney General Biddle were, at their root, false.

The second set of evidence that led to the instatment of internment camps claimed that people of Japanese descent living on Hawaii were guilty of aiding enemy ships and planes during the actual raid on Pearl Harbor. However, even these broad allegations proved

with Imperial Japanese forces at sea.

In a letter to Attorney General Francis Biddle, Secretary Stimson relayed the evidence that DeWitt initially submitted:

to be untrue. The only anti-American communication between Imperial Japan and Japanese Americans on the Islands was the case of an individual on the small island of Niihau.22 Known as the Niihau Incident, in a “bizarre chain of events,” a 22-year-old Imperial Japanese Airman Shigenori Nishikaichi crashlanded on Niihau after unsuccessfully trying to return to his ship. While the residents of Niihau initially avoided him, a Japanese American by the name of Yoshio Harada offered him assistance. After news came of the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese pilot was killed by the inhabitants of Niihau, and Yoshio Harada committed suicide in apparent shame for his actions against the United States. In later reports, this incident would be exaggerated and

. . . [there have been] shore-toship and ship-to-shore communications, undoubtedly coordinated by intelligent enemey [sic] control . . .A few days ago it was reported by military observers on the Pacific coast that not a single ship had sailed from our Pacific ports without being subsequently attacked.20

After the fact, it became clear that these reports could not be accurate.

Although there have been investigations searching for counterevidence, there has not been any documentation of communications between the shore and the Japanese ships. To add to the 20. Roger Daniels, The Decision to Relocate the

Japanese Americans (Philadelphia: Lippincott,

21. Daniels, Decision to Relocate, 24.

1975), 24.

22. Daniels, Decision to Relocate, 24-5.

12 | UNFOUND

used as evidence that having Japanese Americans so geographically close to Imperial Japan put the entire United States at risk.

While the Niihau Incident was an instance of an American offering support towards a member of the Imperial Japanese army, it was not significant and it did not put the rest of the United States at risk. Later, it would be described as the actions of a young individual who responded in a moment of ignorance and terror, before taking his own life as punishment. Even from a militaristic standpoint, United States officers did not believe that Niihau suggested any

Enemy.”25 The article compares the “Chinese public servant” to the “Japanese Warrior,” and offers stepby-step instructions on how to ensure that Americans were directing their public anger at the right person of Asian descent. Drawn as a diagram over the photo of a Japanese man, Life Magazine detailed how a Japanese person would have “massive cheek and jawbone,” “earthy yellow complexion,” and “broader, shorter face,” among other physical characteristics compared to their Chinese counterparts.26 The general sentiment in the media was to be fearful of Japanese, but not the Asian American population as a whole.27

premeditated forms of espionage.

After fulfilling investigations of Pearl Harbor afterward, Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons “reported to the War Department that careful investigation had disclosed that there had been no sabotage during or after the Pearl Harbor attack.”23 However, this was not the narrative that influenced the progression of United States policy. The government needed action; a nation at war needs someone to blame.24 Outside of these government conversations, the practice of extreme racism was further reflected in national and local media. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Life Magazine issued a report entitled “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese: Angry Citizens Victimize Allies with Emotional Outburst at

After the war, historian Morton Grodzins completed a study of West Coast newspapers, analyzing reader responses and letters to the editor concerning the Japanese in the postwar period. Of those who were in favor of the internment camps, he noted the following: The sincere patriotism of those demanding evacuation as a measure of immediate national defense can be accepted at full value.

25. “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese: Angry Citizens Victimize Allies with Emotional Outburst at Enemy,” Life, December 22, 1941, 81.

26. “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese,” 81.

27. U.S. Congress, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, “Part 2: Recommendations, Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians,” in Personal Justice

23. Daniels, Decision to Relocate, 27.

Denied (Washington, DC: Government Printing

24. Daniels, Decision to Relocate, 29.

Office, 1983).

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 13

But it is clear that popular beliefs with respect to Japnese Americans were not based on actual fact. It is no less clear that those beliefs were used to support, and were supported by, deep-seated racial prejudice, the desire for economic gain, and the courtship of political favor. These last factors served to magnify the dangers of American Japanese, to minimize the danger of German and Italian alien enemy groups, and to impede consideration of any alternative to the wholesale exile of the Japanese.28

These arguments for the internment of Japanese Americans were loud, angry, and largely wrong. However, interesting in Grodzins’s study are his findings that the public dislike towards Japanese only arose after the creation of the internment camps were announced. In both editorials and letters to the editor, sentiments concerning the people of Japanese descent were noticeably more favorable prior to the end of January than they were afterward. According to Grodzin, the change in tone was not due to any additional evidence concerning the Japanese coming to light; rather, it coincided with the public knowledge that President Roosevelt was considering the installment of wartime camps. This suggests that it was not the public’s emotions that demanded for extreme government action, but rather it was the offering of extreme action by the United States government that encouraged more hatred and

discontent towards the Japanese.

On March 9, 1942, the repercussions of Executive Order 9066 would form through the Congressional passing of Public Law 503. United States Executive Orders have the force of law, but they still require the action of a legislative body to enforce it. Public Law 503 offered this enforcement, and mandated that refusal to follow the directions of a military officer acting under the authority of the Executive Order would qualify as a federal offense. The bill mandating the law moved through Congress with near-unprecedented speed: On March 17, 1942, the House Committee on Military Affairs only took a half an hour to discuss the bill before approving it unanimously. On March 19, both houses passed the bill by voice vote, and out of the five hundred and thirty-seven voting members of Congress, only one offered a vocal opinion against the bill. While the legislation was moving through the houses, Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH) stated that, “I think this is probably the sloppiest criminal law I have ever read or seen anywhere . . . I have no doubt that in peacetime no man could ever be convicted under it, because the court would find that it was so indefinite and so uncertain that it could not be enforced under the Constitution.”29 Despite the lone protest, by March 21, the legislation was signed into 29. Peter H. Irons, Justice at War: The Story

of the Japanese American Internment Cases (Berkeley: University of

28. Girdner and Loftis, The Great Betrayal.

14 | UNFOUND

California Press, 1993), 68.

law by President Roosevelt, and the enforcement of Executive Order 9066 was granted in the United States.

Evacuation in the United States Although Executive Order 9066 required that government agencies help to “protect the property and economic interests of the people removed to camps,” little evidence of this can be found.30 With often only a week to rid themselves of their belongings, Japanese families were forced to sell their businesses and homes at rates far less than they were worth. As Albert’s daughter would later state in an interview: “Everything they worked for was taken away . . . [Albert] had a couple of trucks, he had a small business, you know, you’re working hard. And for [the government] to just come back and say, ‘Okay, well, you’ve got to go. You’ve got to sell things for nothing . . .’”31 This loss of property was spread throughout the population of Japanese Americans and other interned nationals. “Farmers desperately looked to neighbors to help take care of their crops, but like many Japanese-American business owners, they faced financial ruin. Families lost everything, forced to sell off homes, shops, furnishings, even the clothes they couldn’t carry with them, to buyers happy to snap them up for next to

nothing.”32 The total property loss for Japanese Americans as a result of the internment is estimated to be around $1.3 billion, and the net income loss is estimated to be $2.7 billion.33 In all, the financial and economic losses suffered by the Japanese Americans as a result of the evacuation was immense, and only added to the additional suffering caused by being incarcerated.

The evacuations themselves occurred in two stages, with the majority of Japanese Americans first being placed in “assembly centers” before being relocated to a camp in the interior of the United States. Since Executive Order 9066 was passed and implemented before the US had time to build the actual camps, the War Department needed to find a place to house the Japanese Americans before they would become relocated farther inland.34 Colonel Karl Bendetsen ordered two teams to search for places to build temporary housing for the Japanese, before more permanent internment camps could be built. In less than a week, his teams reported that they had found seventeen suitable areas for such housing. Ultimately, fifteen of these areas were designated as Japanese “assembly centers”: one in Oregon, 32. Public Broadcasting Service, The War At Home: Civil Rights and Japanese Minorities, accessed March 7, 2016, http://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_home_ civil_rights_japanese_american.htm.

30. U.S. Congress, “Report of the

33. U.S. Congress, “Report of the

Commission,” 91.

Commission,” 119-120.

31. Tami Ito, interview by the author,

34. U.S. Congress, “Report of the

February 17, 2016.

Commission,” 121.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 15

one in Washington, one in Arizona, and twelve in California. In 1942, Albert’s and Lois’s families would both be placed in the assembly centers at the Pullyap Fairgrounds near Tacoma, Washington.

Amidst the degrading conditions and forced habitation in horse stalls, it was here that Lois and Albert first met.

After being evacuated from their homes, and upon arrival at the assembly centers, internees were checked in, and brought to the places that would serve as their home for the following months.

Individuals were documented, given a cursory medical examination, and their luggage was searched for anything that the War Department deemed unsafe for

The assembly centers had the internees to sleep in pens for months while—with little information of the outside world—they waited.

The internees first began to leave the assembly centers and enter the relocation centers, or internment camps, at the end of May 1942. The majority of Japanese Americans were moved from the assembly centers to the internment camps on trains, where conditions continued to hold similar levels of discomfort and dehumanization as the centers from which the internees had come. Sleeping stations were only available for infants and the physically handicapped,

the Centers. Their “homes” provided by the War Department were limited.

Although assured rooms of at least 10 x 20 feet for each couple, actual housing conditions were horse stalls of the same size, but populated with three to six people. In Yoshiko Uchida’s book Desert Exile, the historian offers the following description:

meaning that most of the Japanese were forced to sit throughout the trip; ventilation proved to be a challenge since the windows were covered; toilets would overflow, “soaking suitcases and belongings on the floor.”36 When they were allowed to disembark from the train, most evacuees found themselves in the middle of a desert.

In an effort to remove the Japanese from the coast, the War Department built the ten major internment camps farther inland. The primary internment camps in the United States were placed in Central Utah (Topaz) in West-Central Utah, Colorado River (Poston) in Western Arizona, Gila River (Rivers) in Central Arizona, Granada (Amache) in Southeastern Colorado, Heart Mountain

The stall was about ten by twenty feet, except for three folded Army cots lying on the floor. Dust, dirt, wood shavings covered the linoleum that had been laid over manure-covered boards, the smell of horses hung in the air, and the whitened corpses of many insects still clung to the hastily whitewashed walls. High on either side of the entrance were two small windows which were our only source of daylight.35

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 70.

35. Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The

Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family

16 | UNFOUND

36. U.S. Congress, “Report of the Commission,” 149-151.

in Northwestern Wyoming, Jerome (Denson) in Southeastern Arkansas, Manzanar in East-Central California, Minidoka (Hunt) in South-Central Idaho, Rohwer in Southeastern Arkansas, and Tule Lake (Newell) in North-Central California. The camps were typically several acres large, lined with a series of barracks for families to live in, and mess halls for the internees to hold school, meals, and other community events. Generally located in an open field or plain, where it would be easy to monitor internees in case anyone tried to escape, the camps were surrounded by tall metal fences, topped with barbed wire, and dotted with

removed from their homes, often at gunpoint, these Japanese families were transported in a series of US military warships to New Orleans in the United States, after which they were moved to internment camps farther west.38 In the grand and expansive theater of the 1940s, the stories and experiences of these internees are often lost; in the wider history, Japanese Peruvians in World War II are often no more than a literal footnote.

lookout towers and watchmen. When Paul, the husband of a former internee interviewed for this project, first saw his surroundings, he asked his mother why there were men with guns in the tower. “For our protection,” his mother answered. Only five at the time, Paul responded, “But if they’re for our protection, why are they pointing the guns toward us, and not away?”37

the end of the 19th century. In the late 1800s, many South American nations were looking to increase immigration, while the government of Imperial Japan was encouraging its citizens to move abroad. In their recovery after their Pacific War with Chile (1876-1883), Peru “entered a phase of rapid economic growth as a result of economic expansion in Western Europe and the subsequent increase in demand for raw materials.”39 At the time, Europe’s economy was continuing to evolve as the result of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s and early 1800s. As a consequence, its economy demanded increasing levels of cotton, sugar cane,

Prisoner Exchange with Peru While Japanese were removed from their homes along the West Coast of the United States, a similar situation was occurring thousands of miles south in Latin America. In 1942, over two thousand people of Japanese descent living in Latin America were used as pawns in a series of prisoner exchanges with the United States. Forcibly

Migration to Peru Mirroring the Japanese migration to the United States, Japanese also began migrating to Latin America towards

38. Ayumi Takenaka, “The Japanese History in Peru: History of Immigration, Settlement, and Racialization,.” Latin American

Perspectives 31, no. 3 (2003): 77-82, doi: 37. Helen Kimura, interview by the author,

10.1177/0094582X04264745.

March 18, 2016.

39. Takenaka, “Japanese History in Peru,” 77.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 17

and guano from countries overseas.

While European laborers were largely devoted to managing the industry, South America, in turn, focused its efforts on providing the natural resources needed for production.

Previously, nations in South America had been able to rely on free labor to bolster their economic needs, but the abolishment of the slave trade in 1854, and the cessation of the “coolie” trade in 1874, offered a remarkable and recent void in Peru’s labor market.40 The equation that fueled industry in Europe in the late 1800s was missing a vital link: Europe had the industry, and South America had the resources, but

them. These sentiments spread past private conversations and into public legislation. Between 1873 and 1906, a series of “white preference laws” passed in Peru, which gave economic and social incentives to migrants originating from Ireland and Spain, particularly.42 However, in competition with the more economically prosperous nations of Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, Peruvian campaigns to attract white migrants were largely fruitless.

Ultimately, the Peruvian government turned its begrudgingly welcoming embrace towards Asia, and in 1873, the nation opened formal diplomatic relations with Japan.

what they lacked was labor.

It should be noted that for Peru, the Japanese were not the ideal migrants that the nation was hoping to welcome. The need for laborers was recognized, but the Peruvian government was specific in their tastes.

In the late 1800s, Peru’s population and government were largely led by people with European ancestry, and mirroring the sentiments of other nations in South America, government officials in Peru said the inclusion of “yellow” or “African” races into the Peruvian populace would lessen the purity of their country.41 White Peruvians did not want to become the minority, and they did not want their nation considered ‘unwhite’ by the regions around

For its part, Japan was actually encouraging its own nationals to go overseas. The opening of Peru’s doors at the end of the 1800s came on the heels of significant economic and political restructuring in Japan; encouraged by public campaigns orchestrated by their government, many of these low-income families saw the hope of better lives in South America.

In 1868, the nation experienced the Meiji Restoration, in which Emperor Meiji reinstated Imperial rule, while working to industrialize a largely agrarian society.43 While promising greater long-term economic prosperity, the immediate industrialization of the Japanese economy forced out traditional agricultural industries, and left over one million peasant households

40. Takenaka, “Japanese History in Peru,” 82.

41. Jeffery Lesser, Negotiating National

42. Takenaka, “Japanese History in Peru,” 82.

Identity (Durham & London: Duke University

43. Takenaka, “Japanese History in Peru,”

Press, 1999), 22.

82-84.

18 | UNFOUND

unemployed.44 Forced to find employment opportunities elsewhere, the Japanese found their answers abroad. Where Japan was limited by mountainous regions, inadequate spaces for agriculture, and moves towards industrialization, Peru offered a mild climate and an economy reliant on the exportation of agricultural resources.

On a large scale, this shift overseas did initially offer economic success to both the Japanese people and their government, largely in the form of remittances. While the Japanese economy was still landing on its feet after the series of reforms under the

needed laborers, Japan needed economic opportunities, and as a consequence of necessity, the two cultures began to interact.

Meiji Restoration, additional support to Japanese families was brought by individual Japanese laborers who were working abroad. This push for outward and international migration lasted until the start of the Second World War, and throughout this time Imperial Japan continued to urge migration across the Pacific. In 1937, just before the war expanded in full scale across the globe, remittances sent back to Japan totaled 911,134 Yen, the second highest of any level of remittances to the island nation from Latin America at the time.45 Peru

Peruvians predictably lent itself to mistrust and misunderstanding between the two demographics. It did not help that many of the Japanese who were arriving in Peru were also not marrying Peruvians.46 This meant that the Japanese population grew as a result of individuals bringing spouses over from Japan, not from assimilating with existing Peruvian families. The insular manner in which the Japanese were expanding offered a transplant of culture: Japanese language centers and traditional Japanese schools began to pop up around the country. As a whole, it is clear that neither the Japanese immigrants nor the Peruvians themselves made a concerted effort to

44. Motoko Tsuchida, “A History of Japanese Emigration from the 1860s to the 1990s,” in Temporary Workers or Future Citizens?:

Japanese and U.S. Migration Policies, edited

Tension in Pre-war Peru The sudden increase of Japanese immigrants in Peru caused an antiJapanese sentiment to begin to grow in the country. Foremost was the issue of assimilation. While many Japanese were able to study and learn English before immigrating to the United States, Spanish proved to be a harder language to master before migrating.

The challenges in communication between the immigrants and the

by Myron Weiner and Tadashi Hanami (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 77-119.

stable/165454.

45. James L. Tigner, “Japanese Immigration

46. Lika C. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten:

Into Latin America: A Survey,” Journal of

The US Internment of Japanese Peruvians

Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 23,

During World War II,” Asian American Law

no. 4 (1981): 457-482, http://www.jstor.org/

Journal 9, no. 5 (2002): 163-193.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 19

assimilate the two cultures, and their political and private relationships began to suffer as a result.

In concert with the social challenges of assimilation, natives of Peru began to fear for their economic stability as more Japanese moved into their country. The Japanese were eager to create a stable life in their new environment, and the stereotype of the Japanese laborer was that “his work habits stamped the average Peruvian as a second-class worker.”47 The Japanese Peruvians quickly found economic success through agriculture and small businesses, and their willingness to work for comparatively low wages angered

Imperial Japan began to mark out more territories and spread its sphere of influence in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), both of which resulted in strong Japanese victories.

In the case of the Russo-Japanese War, the success of Imperial Japan came as even more of a shock, as the battle marked the first major instance in which the Asian nation had triumphed over a Western state. For the Japanese, these victories were largely seen as proofs that the Meiji Restoration’s vow of modernization was rewarding. For many states such as Peru, this rise to power brought with it a warning, and

Peruvians who were unemployed. As a result, Peruvian laborers began to rebel and grow “anxious as they saw the industrious immigrants succeed as small businessmen and independent farmers.”48 Just as in the United States during the Japanese evacuation, the general sentiment towards Japanese peoples living abroad began to worsen.

Additionally, many of the Japanesefearing Peruvians had just witnessed the economic and military conquests by Japan on the Asian nation’s neighboring regions of Korea, China, and Russia; watching an influx of these recent conquests only heightened their fears. North and Latin Americans had watched—from a distance—as

a fear of losing independence to the growing threat of Japan.

Although the Japanese migrants were not associated with the Imperial military or government, they were the only representation that Peru had of the danger they saw from overseas.

For the majority of Peru’s existence, Asian faces were not common, and their eventual migration to the region with their unfamiliar identity brought caution to the locals. News outlets such as the Lima newspaper La Prensa helped to fuel these anxieties: “If, as a growing number of Peruvians concluded, expanding Japanese economic desires had prompted an invasion and military conquest in East Asia, would not this pattern repeat itself in Japanese-Peruvian relations?”.49 Both socially and economically, the

47. C. Harvey Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle

of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981).

49. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 163-

48. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 165.

193.

20 | UNFOUND

growth of a Japanese population in Latin America was seen as a threat by native Peruvians. The combination of the Japanese population’s unwillingness to assimilate and the recent military expansions of Imperial Japan created an environment of animosity between the Japanese and native Peruvians. These sentiments would grow as Japan became a larger presence in World War II, and would later set the stage for the peoples of Japanese descent living there at the time of Pearl Harbor.

United States Action in Latin and South America The action of the United States to request a prisoner exchange with Peru was not a spontaneous or surprising undertaking, and a focus on Latin and South America was present in the United States’ foreign policy agenda since the outbreak of the War in Europe.

Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US was already forming a presence in Latin and South America. US diplomatic representatives and intelligence operatives wielded the majority of the United States’ influence in the region.

As a whole, the presence of the United States in the region before Pearl Harbor can be examined most specifically in the first two Meetings of Ministers of Foreign Affairs (1939, 1940), and in President Roosevelt’s creation of the Special Intelligence Services (1940).

The Meetings of Ministers of Foreign Affairs (MMFA), also known as the Panama Conferences, were a series of conferences held between

representatives of nations in the Americas from 1939 to 1942.50 The primary purpose of the meetings to create an alliance of North and Latin American countries whose goal was—above all else—to protect their security and livelihood against the growing conflicts in Asia and Europe.

When news first came of meetings in 1939, the United States took efforts to collaborate with its Southern neighbors.

On September 3, 1939, United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent a telegram to the United States Ambassador to Argentina, Norman Armour. The message asked for Armour to do as much as he could to ensure diplomatic relations between the United States and Argentina: “The outbreak of a general European war constitutes in the judgment of this Government a potential menace to the peace of the Western Hemisphere and consequently justifies the resort to inter-American consultation.” This telegram was followed by similar messages from the Secretary Hull to United States Ambassadors in Brazil, Venezuela, and Panama, among others. These series of communications reflect the fear that the United States had at the prospect of a spreading war, and also the steps that the country was taking to ensure their security, even before Imperial Japan’s attacks on Pearl Harbor.

50. Carl B. Spaeth and William Sanders, “The Emergency Advisory Commitee for Political Defense,” The American Journal of International Law 38, no. 2 (1944): 218-241, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2192694.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 21

The result of the First MMFA was the Declaration of Panama. The Document was signed on October 3, 1989, and cemented the American nations’ unity, while establishing a security zone around South America.51 Foremost, the Declaration reinstated the agreeing nations’ dedication to remaining neutral while the fighting in Europe continued: The Governments of the American Republics meeting at Panama, have solemnly ratified their neutral status in the conflict which is disrupting the peace of Europe, but the present war may lead to unexpected results which may affect the fundamental interests of America and there can be no justification for the interests of the belligerents to prevail over the rights of neutrals causing disturbances and suffering to nations which by their neutrality in the conflict and their distance from the scene of events, should not be burdened with its fatal and painful consequences.52

It was evident that the fighting had the likelihood to spread, and after witnessing the international destruction 51. William Sanders, “Consultation Among the American Republics: The Panama Meeting of 1939,” World Affairs 102, no. 4 (1939): 231-234, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20663342.

52. U.S. Department of State, “Neutrality (Declaration of Panama),” in United States

Treaties and International Agreements: 17761949 – Multilateral Treaties, compiled by Charles I. Bevans, 3:608 (Washington, DC:

caused by the recent Great War (1914-1918), these nations took precautions to ensure that they would not also be swept into the conflict. The United States’ efforts to ensure that these nations would not willingly enter the war—and as a result, bring the fighting closer to the United States— were successful. Together, these nations were able to build a contingent community based on the common goal of protecting the Americas from outside violence.

The Second MMFA was held less than a year later in July 1940, and came as a reaction to the increased violence in Europe. Information about this conference is largely credited to Carl Spaeth, a member of the conference designated by the United States, who covered the procedures for US federal use. In his report, Spaeth explains how “the conclusions adopted by this meeting were consequentially more specific [than the First MMFA], although falling short of the final step of naming names.”53 This second conference began to form plans to prevent the action of Axis nationals who might be living in Latin and South America, and urged for increased precaution of immigration and travel in and out of the region. Furthermore, “[the Conference] also recommended effective police supervision of foreign

Government Printing Office, 1968), https:// www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-

53. Spaeth and Sanders, “Emergency Advisory

ust000003-0608.pdf.

Committee,” 220.

22 | UNFOUND

non-American groups, and proposed that measures be taken to prevent and suppress any illegal activities in any way controlled by foreign governments, foreign groups or individuals.”

According to historian Lika Miyake, the 1939 and 1940 meetings in Panama also laid the groundwork for what would eventually evolve into the widespread capture and deportation of people of Japanese descent living in the Latin and South America.

This fear included base levels of conflict, but it also encompassed the rise of immigrants in South America; there was mistrust that foreign nationals would bring the conflicts of their country with them to their new home. As a result, the diplomatic meetings in Panama, “called for proposals to suppress violations of neutrality and subversive activities by nationals of belligerent countries or others seeking to promote the interest of belligerent powers in the territory and jurisdiction of all of the American Republics.”54 These meetings solidified the Latin and South American ideology, which believed that expatriates living in their territory posed a deep and growing threat to their safety and security.

Armed with the consensus of these meetings and the ties to some of the Latin and South American countries, the US government began to gather knowledge on potential German and Japanese spies living south of the United States. In June 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the creation of

the Special Intelligence Service, a counterintelligence taskforce based out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, aimed at gathering information from enemy nationals living abroad.55 An FBI-contracted report on the missions was unclassified in 2004, and detailed more of the history behind this initiative: It was agreed among the officials of the interested agencies and departments of the Government that the FBI’s Special Intelligence Service would operate throughout Latin America (with the exception of Panama which would remain under exclusive Army jurisdiction) for the purpose of obtaining all types of information including economic, industrial, financial and political that might be of interest to the various departments and agencies of the Federal Government. It was also agreed . . . that this Service would emphasize its operations abroad to the obtaining of data relating to the activities . . . [that] were . . . detrimental to the best interest of the United States in connection with the war then being waged in Europe or otherwise.56

Although the original mission of these agents was to seek out suspected German strongholds, many of these activities became centered on the nearly-unmatched size of Japanese 55. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation,

History of the S.I.S. Division, 8 vols.

(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), accessed April 17, 2016, https://vault.fbi. gov/special-intelligence-service.

54. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 167.

56. Ibid.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 23

immigrant populations in Panama, Brazil, and Peru. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, these populations were monitored, but not acted against.

Permanent operations in Peru did not begin until January 1942, with the deployment of two United States FBI agents to the country to instate a training program for the Peruvian National Police.

The Effects of Pearl Harbor From the United States’ perspective, its efforts in forming alliances in Latin America. Just as Pearl Harbor created immediate waves through the lives of Japanese Americans living in the United States, the attack on the US Naval Base in Hawaii created immediate ramifications for peoples of Japanese descent living in Latin America as well. These immediate effects included the policy implementations led by the United States, and more collaborative measures to protect Latin America through the formation of the Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense at the MMFA. In the days following Pearl Harbor, the United States worked with Panama to imprison members of the Japanese community living near the Panama Canal. Due to their proximity to the Canal–passage through Central America served immense economic and militaristic advantages to those nations who controlled it–they became the first group of Japanese nationals to be detained and held without trial: “Five days after Pearl Harbor, Wilson notified

24 | UNFOUND

Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles that Panamanian authorities had rounded up all Japanese men, women and children.”57 This effort between the US and Panama, in their effort to capture and detain Japanese nationals, would be used as a precedent and blueprint for similar efforts elsewhere in the region. In the months following these arrests, the United States would encourage other countries in the locality to do the same, citing the danger that might come from foreign enemies of the state, and the ability of conflicts between nations to spread across either the Pacific or the Atlantic oceans.

At the same time, US representatives in Peru began to worry. “Within days of the attack . . . US Ambassador to Peru Henry Norweb consulted with Peruvian Foreign Minister Alfredo Solf y Muro about what was to be done with Peru’s Japanese population.”58 After talking with Solf y Muro about the threat of Japanese nationals, Ambassador Norweb reportedly sent a telegram to United States Secretary of State Hull from Lima: The Minister said that Peru would sever diplomatic relations with Japan immediately if it knew what to do with the large Japanese population. In reply to the Minster’s question about what we were doing with Japanese citizens, I replied that they were being placed in concentration camps when such action is necessary. The Minister thought it would be impossible to intern 57. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 168.

58. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 169.

Japanese in Peru because of the large numbers and of the expenses involved. He asked if we had any suggestions to make, and repeated that Peru is disposed to sever diplomatic relations with Japan.

It is suggested that the Department might authorize me to inform the Ministry for Foreign Affairs that the United States would welcome a severance of diplomatic relations with Japan by Peru and that our Government would be willing to lend financial assistance in connection with the necessary internment of Japanese citizens in Peru.59

However, before additional incarcerations and internment procedures were made, representatives from the American nations met for the Third MMFA. A month and a half after the attack on Pearl Harbor, members of these states met in Panama to discuss the threat level. The greatest result of the Third MMFA was the creation of the Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense (EACPD), which “concerned itself almost exclusively with ways and means of combatting the political warfare of the Axis.”60 From April 1942 to June 1943, the EACPD enacted twenty-one programs 59. Raymond Henry Norweb, “The Ambassador in Peru (Norweb) to the Secretary of State,” in Foreign Relations of the United

States Diplomatic Papers, 1941, The American Republics, edited by William M. Franklin and E.R. Perkins, vol. 6 (Washington, DC:

throughout the participating Latin and South American states, with four primary objectives: (a) The control of dangerous aliens; (b) The prevention of abuse of citizenship; (c) The regulation of entry and exit and the prevention of clandestine crossing of frontiers; and (d) The prevention of acts of political aggression, including espionage, sabotage and the dissemination of totalitarian propaganda, and the protection of vital information through censorship controls.61

These objectives paved the way for the internment programs, and offered legality to initiatives that worked to limit the rights of foreign nationals.

In conjunction, objectives (a) and (d) permitted “the detention and expulsion of dangerous Axis nationals” on the measure that their freedom was a security threat to the Latin and South American regions at large.62 While this action was authorized across Latin America, the density of the Japanese population in Peru led United States officials to focus their efforts on detaining Japanese nationals living in and around Lima and the Peruvian coast.

Secretary Hull and Undersecretary Welles were among those officials who believed that it would be beneficial to “remove all Japanese from these American Republic countries for

Government Printing Office, 1963), https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1941v06/d275.

61. Sanders, “Panama Meeting,” 232.

60. Sanders, “Panama Meeting,” 235.

62. Sanders, “Panama Meeting,” 232.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 25

internment in the United States.”63 Under their encouragement, the initiative by the US government was two-fold: first, the internment of Latin American Japanese would ensure that the United States would be able to keep close watch on populations suspected of aiding the Axis powers; and second, the removal of the Japanese from the Latin American countries would serve as a precaution against Axis sympathies in those Latin American countries themselves.64 The US government could not trust their allied partners in the South to control completely the Japanese population on their own.

After the Third MMFA, Peru began

to the Peruvian government was at risk of being “brutal[ly]” detained as inmates in Peruvian jails.66 Chie remembers how in the days and weeks after the war, “our family, our friends” were being arrested “without committing a crime.”67 In essence, in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese nationals living in Latin America were targeted immediately.

The actual removal of Japanese living in Peru did not follow the plan that the United States had put in place. It was soon apparent that the other demands of war offered a limited number of excess ships and resources needed to

to instate policies that worked in accordance with the United States’ plans for Japanese internment. In 1942, Peru allowed the United States to enter the country to build “military installations.” At the same time, the Peruvian government themselves began to close Japanese schools and businesses, and limited the communication within the Japanese community by shutting down their newspapers, canceling their assets, and confiscating their phones.65 These restrictions grew until early 1943, when the government of Peru officially passed legislation allowing the Peruvian government to seize property belonging to Japanese nationals. Through a series of day and nighttime arrests, any Japanese considered to be “suspicious”

accomplish the large-scale internment that the American Ambassador and officials had initially envisioned.

According to Edward Ennis, the Chief of the Department of Justice’s Alien Enemy Control Unit, the speed at which the internment process was taking place in Peru offered considerable room for error.68 Although “a few Peruvian officials tried to maintain some kind [of] effective screening method,” they told that the Americans were not able to offer individual investigations for each detained Japanese national. Unwilling to challenge the efficiency, there is little proof that any distinction was made between violent and non-violent Japanese Peruvians, or even between those who were Japanese citizens or 66. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 170.

63. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 169.

67. Chie, interview by the author, February 8,

64. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 170.

2016.

65. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 168.

68. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 174.

26 | UNFOUND

simply Peruvian citizens of Japanese descent. Instead, it was believed that the security of the nation should come first, and—whether or not they have had access to trial—individuals of Japanese descent should be prepared for internment in the United States.69 However, despite the chaos surrounding the deportation and imprisonment, a significant number of Japanese were captured and shipped off of the Latin American mainland. These deportations occurred on a series of warships from April 1942 until midyear 1943.

The Japanese, who were forced to travel on these ships, reported the inhumanity of their experiences. At a

to hold onto. Upon arriving in the United States, “the Immigration and Naturalization Service held hearings to establish that the internees entered illegally because they lacked the proper paperwork.”71 From here, Japanese captives were sent to the internment camps. Labeled as “enemy aliens,” they joined the Japanese Americans captured and interned in the camps already, until their ultimate and full release in 1943.

For Peru, the United States’ insistance on Japanese internment was not controversial. As is evident in Ambassador Norweb’s telegram to Secretary Hull, the Peruvians were eager to prove their loyalty to the United

loss for excess resources, the ships used by the United States were cramped and dark, with limited food and water. Chie would later remember how men were quartered off onto the lower decks, while women and small children were pressed together on the upper decks of the warships. On their way to the US, some ships paused in Panama and unloaded the Japanese into temporary camps along the canal. Here, “camp guards forced the inmates to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance before sending them to labor in the rain forest.”70 Other ships went straight through the Canal and entered the United Sates through the Gulf of Mexico. Before arriving in New Orleans, the Japanese internee’s paperwork and passports were confiscated, offering the captives no legal forms of identity

States, and were similarly restless in ridding their nation of the Japanese.

In Miyake’s analysis of these events, the historian argues that “Peruvian officials saw the war as a serendipitous opportuntiy to rid Peru of its Japanese population altogether.”72 The Japanese tainted the ethnicity of the Peruvian nation, failed to properly assimilate into Peruvian culture, and posed a threat to Peruvian laborers through their economic success. However, in Peru’s haste to rid the country of foreign nationals they saw as a threat, they did not succeed in their efforts conclusively.

The lack of order by the United States in Peru before the forced evacuation meant that many of the families who were detained were chosen randomly. It did not matter if they served a legitimate threat to Latin America because of their

69. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 175.

71. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 173.

70. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 172.

72. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 171.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 27

Japanese heritage; what mattered was that they were gone.

Narratives Following are the stories of three different groups of people, all of whose narratives are centered on the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and the effects that the United States’ involvement in World War II had on them. For their privacy, all of the individuals listed are only referred to by their first names.

Albert’s story begins on the West Coast, and follows him to his assigned internment in Idaho. Albert’s older brother’s story, Dr. William’s, is based on Hawaii, and follows his experiences

Kei, who immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s. Although Japanese, his parents raised him and his two brothers in an environment that was as “American” as possible: the goal was not to hold on to their cultural heritage; it was to fit in, and to survive. His father George taught himself English and soon became a leader in their local Japanese American community, while his mother—likely a bride brought over from Japan— raised the children at home. Albert’s daughter, Tami, remembers how her father would recall being told to, “Be American! Be American . . .You’re in

as a Japanese American working as a Medical Resident on the same Island as Pearl Harbor. Finally, Atsumi and Chie’s stories begin in Peru, and follow their life events as they are forced to participate in a prisoner exchange with the United States. All of these stories circle the same actions by world leaders—whether it was Imperial Japan’s decision to attack the United States, or President Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066—but ride different reverberations resulting from the war.

Albert: Japanese American Internment When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1942, Albert was 26 years old, and was working in Portland, Oregon as a truck driver.

Albert was born on April 20, 1916 in Portland, the second of three children born to Japanese citizens George and

28 | UNFOUND

Albert after the war

America. Be American! ”73 Those orders, often ubiquitous in the home of an immigrant, would become a lasting 73. Tami Ito, interview by the author, February 17, 2016.

mantra throughout Albert’s life.

This demand to assimilate would permeate multiple dimensions of Albert’s life, even before the United States’ entrance into the war. Although they were taught the Japanese language at home, English was their primary language, and the language that would promise them a future. However, it is clear that while raising their children as Americans, there was still a disconnect between the parents’ and the children’s cultures: while pushing for an American lifestyle, George and Kei would quietly hold on to the Japanese traditions through which they were raised. In the morning, Albert’s mother “would

was particularly brutal. He was knocked out, became injured, and according to his daughter, “struggled [slightly] in memory and math.”76 Perhaps as a result of his injury, after graduating high school Albert did not decide to attend college, and instead sought out canning and trucking jobs as a source of employment.

From a young adult onwards, while his older brother became recognized for his affinity for academics, Albert became recognized for his love of the outdoors. As he grew older, some of his personal relationships became strained: with his wife, his children, his country. And yet through this time

serve a good all-American breakfast to the boys, and then she would go back to the kitchen to eat her breakfast of rice.”74 In later interviews with Albert’s family members, the word that seemed to serve as a nucleus to the family was ‘respect’: your actions reflect the entire family; if someone disagrees with you, say nothing; and if you want to succeed, work hard.

While successful, Albert, in many ways, grew up in the shadow of his older brother.75 Throughout high school and after graduation, Albert worked odd jobs, with a portion of his earnings going to help support the eldest child, Willie, through university and medical school. In high school, Albert was a wrestler, and one match

his relationship with nature never wavered. After graduating high school, Albert began to work summers for the canning industry in Alaska, where he could escape outside stressors by hunting, fishing, and camping away from the denser populations further south. In the winters, he would then come back south as a truck driver, and soon he saved up enough money to buy and manage a small fleet of trucks on his own. His history before the war is not clear: many records are lost, and his narrative comes from interviews with family members and what was published in newspapers during the time. What is clear is that while his older brother continued his pursuit of becoming a surgeon, Albert married and began a family in Oregon.

On the morning of the Pearl Harbor

74. Tami Ito, interview by the author, February 17, 2016.

75. Daryl Ito, interview by the author, March

76. Tami Ito, interview by the author,

15, 2016.

February 17, 2016.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 29

Attack, Albert was living in Portland, Oregon with his first wife Mary, and his children, Greg and Craig. In the days following the attack, Albert’s father George was immediately picked up and taken in for questioning and arrest. Still viewed as a leader in their Japanese American community, George was seen as a threat in the days after Pearl Harbor. As Albert’s daughter tells the story, the Police Chief knew George and his friends had gone to school with Willie, Albert, and Harold Kay: “[The Police Chief] came in and said, ‘I am sorry Mister Ito, but we have to arrest you. We have to take you in.’”77 From current interviews it is not clear exactly where his father was taken after the arrest, although it is supposed that he eventually ended up in an internment camp near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Being one of the early arrestees, George also had the luxury of appearing before a judge: As the story goes, [the judge] accused George of being an enemy alien because he had traveled to Japan. And he basically told the judge that was a lie, or he called the judge a liar. I am not sure which. What I do know is that they tabled his request and it took . . .calls to his senators in order to finally get out of camp. [The community in Portland] thought themselves very much as Americans, and as citizens who worked hard. I think being told that they were otherwise was very, very dif77. Tami Ito, interview by the author, February 17, 2016.

30 | UNFOUND

ficult for them.

After his father was arrested, Albert’s mother, wife, and children were all who remained near him in Portland. And for a while, they were left alone by the War Department. The anti-Japanese rhetoric and propaganda continued to build around them, but for a while their lives and livelihoods were safe. For Albert and his family, the breaking point came in the spring of 1942, when all residents in their neighborhood were given a week to evacuate and sell their belongings under the Executive Order 9066.

After the order to evacuate, Albert and his family were relocated to an assembly center at the Puyallup Fairgrounds in Western Washington. For nearly five months, from April 28, 1942 until September 12, 1942, the Puyallup Fairgrounds, also known as “Camp Harmony,” served as temporary housing for people of Japanese descent from regions in Washington, Oregon, and sections of Alaska. In the assembly center, horse stables were turned into barracks, while parking lots became area used for the mess halls, showers, and latrines. The conditions, by many accounts, were subhuman: residences were crowded, unhygienic, and barely converted from their original

state as quarters for livestock. It was at the Puyallup Fairgrounds that Albert first met a Japanese American woman named Lois, from Yakima, Washington. It should be noted that at the time, Albert was still married to his first wife, Mary.

While Lois and the rest of her family were relocated to Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Albert and his family were moved to Minidoka in Idaho. The Minidoka War Relocation Center was centered in Magic Valley in the Snake River Plane in Idaho.

Holding over nine thousand Japanese Americans, the camp consisted of twelve barracks, along with three schools for student-aged residents: two elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school.

Knowledge of Albert’s personal experience in the camps is limited. Although married to Mary entering the camps, the couple split either during the war, or very soon afterward. For himself, Albert would not spend a great deal of time discussing the war in the years to come, nor his experience as an internee.

When asked how much time he spent discussing these topics afterward, his daughter Tami explained that, “He really didn’t . . . in fact he rarely talked about camp at all.” It was in the past, and it appears that in many

respects Albert tried to put his history behind him.

Just over 500 miles away, Lois’ family was settling in Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

Similar to Minidoka, the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center was on a wide expanse of desert.

The center is named after the mountain in sight of the camp: a jutting rock face whose summit, it is told, resembles a heart. The Heart Mountain camp was one of the largest during the war,

Heart Mountain internment camp housing six hundred fifty barracks, and holding nearly

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 31

11,000 residents.

After leaving the camps in 1943, Albert first moved to Salt Lake City, Utah to work as a mechanic, before ultimately marrying Lois and building a life with her in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. In the early 1950s, Albert and Lois’ move towards the Chicago suburbs coincided with “The Great Migration,” the period of time when approximately six million African Americans moved into cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and the West. As a result, white

Lois in Heart Mountain internment camp

populations in urban centers such as Chicago, began to migrate towards the suburbs.

32 | UNFOUND

When Albert and Lois began to look for smaller towns to move into, the neighborhoods were exclusively white. When they decided on a property, they needed to meet with members of the community: “There was concern about having ‘the Japs’ move in . . . and so [Albert and Lois] said, ‘You know, we’re really not interested in moving in where we’re not wanted.’”78 At the meeting they decided to give it a try, and if they were not welcome, they would leave. The family bought a piece of land, and began to build a home.

After working as a rate clerk for a trucking company in the city, Albert would drive to their property and physically construct the house. Lois, then pregnant with their second son, helped with the logistics and nailing in the floorboards. As the story goes, as the young couple worked, they began to earn the respect of the watching community and, “by the time they got to the garage, all the neighbors were helping.”79 Even after the war had ended, the sentiments toward Japanese Americans still wavered, and the hesitancy of Japanese Americans themselves remained.

78. Tami Ito, interview by the author, February 17, 2016.

79. Tami Ito, interview by the author, February 17, 2016.

Years afterward, Albert would explain to his daughter how his race and others’ hatred continued to affect his day-today life. As the non-white and as the “Jap” family, the Itos stood out in their suburban neighborhood: “Anything you do, you represent your family’s name. You represent [the] family. You represent Japanese Americans. So don’t mess up, [and] it was always, ‘we are being watched.’”80 As Albert continued to grow older, stresses of his marital relations—which had been strained and then broken with his first wife— began to form in his marriage with Lois.

While his wife stayed in Chicago, Albert welcomed his relationship with the

told to move. The suggested regulations that would displace these residents would include Albert. In reaction, and with wounds, Albert was angry. In words to one of his sons, the aging former internee allegedly confided, “They’ve taken my land away before, they’ve taken my belongings before, they’ve taken my belongings. I’ll be standing here with a gun if they try and do it again.”81 Although he chose not to talk about the camps, according to his immediate family members, it was clear that Albert’s time in

outdoors, and built a cabin north, on the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, near the border of Canada. Like his business in Portland, and his home in Chicago, Albert built the cabin from scratch.

Mirroring the actions of his Issei parents, he built a foundation and a life where there had not been one before.

After moving to Minnesota, buying his land, and building his cabin, a controversial environmental movement to protect the Boundary Water Canoe Area restricted use along the northern lakes. While Albert’s cabin was outside of the predetermined wilderness zones, there were some who argued for the zones to be widened, and that residents living near the current wilderness area be

the internment camps continued to haunt him. Afterward he would mention the small, often fleeting moments of hesitancy and fear that continued to surface. He would say, “You know how when you’re sitting at a stoplight, waiting for the light to turn green? And then someone crosses the street and sort of just looks at the cars as they cross? The first thing I always think of is that they’re looking at me, because I am Japanese. And then I have to remember, no. They’re not.”82 William: Medical Office for the US Military After Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl 81. Tami Ito, interview by the author, February 17, 2016.

80. Tami Ito, interview by the author,

82. Tami Ito, interview by the author,

February 17, 2016.

February 17, 2016.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 33

Harbor, not all Japanese Americans faced the threat of detainment: the majority of people who were incarcerated were living within the “Exclusion Area” on the West Coast of the United States. Most individuals and families of Japanese descent who did not hold residence within the area were—at least by the official acting body of the United States War Department—left alone. This dichotomy in how Japanese Americans

Newspaper clipping of Willie’s medical success were treated meant that members of the same family often had vastly different wartime experiences. In the case of George and Kei’s family, while their son

34 | UNFOUND

Albert was removed from his home in Portland, their eldest son William was allowed to remain free 25,000 miles west, on the islands of Hawaii, and their youngest son studying at the University of Oregon would eventually serve in US Military Intelligence.

At the start of the United States’ involvement in the war, William was completing his medical residency at Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Willie, as he was known, became the first in his family to enroll in higher education when he was accepted to the University of Oregon in Eugene. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, the eldest brother went on to earn a medical degree from the University of Oregon Medical School in 1939, before moving to Honolulu to complete his training as a surgeon at Queen’s Hospital. Now known as The Queen’s Medical Center, the hospital is only ten miles away from the Pearl Harbor Naval base.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Willie was traveling to Queens Hospital to complete his medical rounds. Unbeknownst to him at the time, six Japanese aircraft carriers were circling in towards the American-held Hawaiian Islands in the middle of the Pacific. While most of the island was still preparing for their day, at 7:48 am the Imperial Japanese military began to launch 353 fighter planes, bombers and torpedo planes into the United States’ Hawaiian airspace.83 The destruction 83. Mark Parillo, “The United States War in the Pacific,” in Why Air Forces Fail: The

was instantaneous. As bombs dropped towards the American battleships, cruisers, and airships on the Honolulu coast, the 26-year-old JapaneseAmerican doctor from Portland was entering his rounds. His son, Bruce, recalled how his father would remember suddenly hearing the piercing sounds of “sirens and sirens . . . all of the sudden, there was a lot of activity.”84 Although not recognized at the time, this moment

Willie and partner in Hawaii in Hawaii marked the initiation of the United States’ involvement in the Second World War. Standing on the Anatomy of Defeat, edited by Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 89.

frontline of his country’s involvement in a global conflict, Willie began to work.

Due to their proximity to the harbor, William and his colleagues were quickly pulled into the fray. At the time, there were four naval medical hospital locations at the base: Navy Hospital Pearl Harbor that held 250 beds, the naval hospital ship (the USS Solace, AH - 5), the naval hospital ship (the USS Argonne, AG-31), and a mobile hospital with largely makeshift facilities.85 As these locations became overrun with injured military personnel and civilians, the wounded began to flood further inland into Queens Hospital. It would be a day and a half before Willie and his fellow medical professionals were able to rest.

In the following days, the island of Oahu reacted by instating a state of emergency. In an interview, Willie’s son Bruce explained how his father would recall blackouts over the island: “At night [people living on the island] had to cover their windows. There was a curfew, [people] weren’t allowed out on the street.” In the aftermath of the attack, Hawaii—and the United States as a whole—was in a state of fear. Their country, whose home front survived World War I relatively unscathed, now appeared as vulnerable as the countries across the Pacific and the Atlantic that were already crumbling at the hands of war.

Since news of the War’s severity in Europe and East Asia was well covered

84. Bruce Ito, interview by the author, March 7, 2016.

85. Parillo, “War in the Pacific,” 77.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 35

in the United States before the US’ own entrance into the conflict, the US immediately assumed that it was Imperial Japan who had attacked them. As a result, the fear for Japanese Americans living in the United States was two-fold: there was a fear of Japan, the outside enemy; and there was also a fear of the American public’s reaction to the Japanese ethnicity. Although the Asian presence was more pervasive in Hawaii, where the Asian population was larger and more intermixed with nonAsian communities, Asian immigration to the United States as a whole was still a comparatively new phenomenon.

In the waves of ethnic migration to

United States began to exist in separate worlds. While Albert was being forcibly removed from his home in Portland, William rose to become a military Medical Officer. Willie’s status as a doctor offered him legitimacy in the eyes of the United States government; from the War Department’s perspective, Willie’s education and medical training meant that he was more trustworthy even as someone whose ancestry was Japanese.

In an analysis of William’s Japanese American experience on Hawaii, it should be noted that his community’s antagonism towards the Japanese living in Hawaii was much less severe than

the United States during the 1940s, the Japanese were some of the more recent immigrants in the continental United States; in the 1940s the Japanese Americans were still, in many respects, the outsiders.

According to reports, within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack, some “people of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii were rounded up, arrested, and kept in holding cells and local jails before being transferred to camps across the islands.”86 With little knowledge about attacks against their country, except for the fact that the most recent assault was made by Imperial Japan, many immediate reactions in the United States were to detain the Japanese.

Willie himself did not have to go to the camps. Japanese Americans separated by the stretch of Pacific between Hawaii and the mainland of the

that of the mainland communities.

Through World War II and until 2010, the Japanese marked the largest ethnic group on the Hawaiian Islands: the island’s relative proximity to Japan meant that the state served as an immediate site of emigration for Japanese looking for more economic opportunities in the United States.

As a result, there are tangible and recognizable effects of Japanese cultural influence in Hawaii, and the synthesis of Japanese, native Hawaiian, and contemporary American culture. As opposed to being seen as “foreign,” many Japanese Americans were simply seen as “Hawaiians”; instead of being associated with the Japanese, in Hawaii most Japanese Americans were simply recognized as Americans. As his son remembers, Willie “felt fortunate to be on Hawaii.” The large base population of Asian immigrants who already lived

86. Parillo, “War in the Pacific,” 101.

36 | UNFOUND

on the island meant that the JapaneseAmerican experience during the wartime was largely less severe in terms of discrimination and racism than many people were facing on the mainland of the United States.

After the end of World War II, William returned to his career as a civilian surgeon in Hawaii. While the American psyche as a whole was still wary of people of Japanese descent living in the United States, William’s professional life in Hawaii proved the levels of success that a member of an oppressed ethnicity could achieve. Just over a decade after the outbreak of the war in the United States, William

was also an American-educated doctor well on his way to becoming one of the leading surgeons in Hawaii. Even while many of his direct family members were detained on the mainland of the United States, Willie was promoted to the status of a Medical Officer during World War II. In essence, while the War Department did not detain every single individual of Japanese descent living in the United States, the nondiscriminatory manner in which they arrested Japanese who were living in the “Exclusion Area” allowed the internments camps to symbolize an attack against the Japanese-American population as a whole. In this way,

became the first Japanese American to be elected President of the Honolulu Medical Society.

William’s son, Bruce recalls how his father would remember his wartime experience. Although Willie would speak some about his time as a Medical Officer, the topic of the internment camps that many members of his family were forced to experience were largely unspoken. Bruce, who lived with his father for much of his life, explained how Willie did not engage in “too much discussion about the camps . . . [it was like] opening old wounds.” Similar to many Japanese Americans who have been interviewed about their wartime experiences in the United States, talking about internment camps offers senses of discomfort and pain. Willie was not a suspect in the eyes of the American government: he was of Japanese descent and he could speak Japanese, but he

although the internment of Japanese Americans did not force Willie to leave his home, the move against his family still made the actions of the United States government personal and lasting.

Atsumi & Chie Over three thousand miles south of the United States, Japanese nationals living abroad were also experiencing the effects of Imperial Japan’s attack on the United States. On December 7, 1941, sisters Atsumi and Chie were living with their family in Peru. Their parents were Issei, and had emigrated from Japan at around the turn of the century, and following the propaganda and incentives of the Japanese government, ultimately settled in Peru in search of economic and social opportunities.

Arriving in Latin America, the family joined a Japanese community that was already beginning to establish itself in

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 37

the region. Atsumi remembers how the community maintained a relatively traditional Japanese lifestyle: in the private sphere, traditional gender roles were maintained, Japanese was spoken, and Japanese cultural norms took precedence over Peruvian ones; in the public sphere, they attended a Japanese high school in Lima and frequented Japanese businesses. “The Japanese,” Atsumi remembers, “had power in Peru. [They] were business people, big people. Peru didn’t like us.”87 It was in this environment that the Japanese nationals in Peru found themselves when Imperial Japan committed the air raid on Hawaii in 1941. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Lima based newspaper El Tiempo broke headlines highlighting the growing danger of Japan. Translated into English, the headlines read “War Between The United States and Japan,” “Japanese Troops Land in Singapore,” and “Scathing Japanese Air Raid on Base at Pearl Harbor.”88 This news was followed immediately by a series of dual actions taken by the United States and Peru, whose relationship was built prior to the attacks in case an event like this occurred. While members of the Japanese community in Peru were not arrested as quickly as they were in Panama and the United States, crackdowns on the community in Latin 87. Atsumi, interview by the author, March 11, 2016.

88. “Guerra Entre Estados Unidos y Japon.”

America were quickly enacted. Atsumi and Chie’s father was ordered by the government to sell his business, and both of the sisters recall how many of their Japanese friends and community members were sent to jail. Along with the businesses, Atsumi and Chie’s school, and other Japanese schools in the region, began to close at the order of the government.

Coverage of attack on Pearl Harbor by Lima-based Newspaper, El Tiempo Then came news of the detainment.

Similar to Executive Order 9066 in the United States, the government in Peru ordered mandates demanding people of Japanese descent—both Peruvian and Japanese citizens—be accounted for and arrested. The first targets of the evacuation process were “consular and diplomatic officials, as well as some prominent businessmen.”89 Their deportation from the country then offered precedence for the United States and Peruvian government to begin deporting additional civilians and families from their home. During the initial stages of this process, there was a loose set of criteria for those Japanese

El Tiempo (Lima, Peru), December 8, 1941.

38 | UNFOUND

89. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 173.

who would be deported: mainly, community leaders, teachers, and businessmen. As their father owned a Japanese-run business in Lima, Atsumi and Chie’s family was part of this first group. However, moving forward, the lack of organization around the system of deportation in Peru meant that ultimately, “those deported to the US were a random lot,” and families were often chosen at the vagary of the Peruvian official in charge.90 There was no proof of coordination between these individuals and the Imperial Japanese military, and no evidence to suggest that their presence in Latin America marked a significant advantage to

however, after two weeks their mother was found and temporarily placed in jail. When it was clear that their deportation would be inevitable, Atsumi and Chie were picked up and, despite their mother’s fragile condition, the family was forced to abandon the home that they had made for themselves in Peru.

The first part of the family’s journey took them from Lima to the Peruvian ports on a seven hour train ride, where the United States warships were waiting for them. Accompanied by others from the Japanese community, the family comforted their mother as their world as they knew it began to change. At

their country of origin. Despite this void, ultimately around two thousand members of the Japanese community in Peru were detained and relocated to the United States.

When the family was told that they had been chosen as one of the families to be deported, they asked for there to be some type of understanding and leniency. Apart from the exorbitant loss of home and livelihood, their request was motivated by the health of their mother, who was pregnant at the time.

She was so far into her pregnancy that she was not in a state to be traveling, especially under the extreme emotional distress that the evacuation was placing on her. Their father worked to put them in hiding to avoid being taken to the United States: Atsumi and Chie were sent to their godfather’s, who then hid them elsewhere. Despite their efforts,

some point through the train ride, Chie and Atsumi’s mother began to experience extraordinary pain. To the distress of herself and the people around her, it quickly became clear that—with the stress of being detained and evacuated without her consent— something else was going wrong. When she began to bleed, it was evident that the mother was having a miscarriage; on the train ride to the port, the family lost the life of this unborn son. Chie recalls an ambulance coming to the train to pick up her mother after the miscarriage. “She was so weak,” Chie remembers, “But she didn’t want to be separated from . . . us.”91 Due to the state of her health, their mother was given a pass from boarding the warships headed towards the United States, yet the rest of her family was not. In just 91. Chie, interview by the author, February 8,

90. Miyake, “Foresaken and Forgotten,” 176.

2016.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 39

days after losing a pregnancy, Chie and Atsumi’s mother refused continued care so that she could accompany her family on their journey.

By virtue of the lack of resources on the part of the United States military at the time, the warships being used to transport the Japanese Peruvians and Japanese nationals were not equipped to handle the population. There was not enough room. Upon boarding, Chie recalls that men 12 years and older were sent to the hull, while women and children stayed on the upper decks.

Their brother and father were separated from them with little communication, and both parties were forced to wait

threat: they had done nothing wrong in Peru, nothing illegal, and yet they were being treated as criminals unworthy of even the formality of a trial.92 When they traveled through the Panama Canal, some of the men were forced to disembark, being told that they would work in labor camps along the canal until a more permanent location could be found for them. The families and individuals who remained on the ship were ordered inside with covered windows, for fear that they would take knowledge of the Canal and convey it to enemy intelligence. Through this, the Japanese detained from Peru were not prisoners of convenience. Despite the

to see where their voyage would take them. Without full knowledge of what awaited them at the end of their voyage, the families were transported along the Northern coast of Peru, through the Panama Canal and ultimately landed in the United States port of New Orleans.

Through their journey, women and children were allowed to look out of the ship, but the expanse of water made it difficult to understand exactly where they were. In interviews with Chie and Atsumi, the significance of 21 days repeatedly surfaced: 21 days of caring for their mother on a ship; 21 days of uncertainty; 21 days of fear.

In their voyage, the family was treated as the enemy. A family of schoolchildren, a sick mother, and a businessman, they were handled as if the happenings of the war fell to them.

In her recollection, Chie notes how their family could not possibly pose a

hasty and unorganized manner in which they were detained, the Japanese were deported not only because they were disliked, but also because their presence was feared.

After arriving in New Orleans, Atsumi and Chie’s family was transported to San Antonio, and eventually arrived in the Crystal City War Relocation Center in Texas. After arriving, Chie recalls how they were welcomed into the camp. “Oh, the [Japanese Americans] welcomed us as members of the family, making us all feel much better.”93 Although welcomed, the Japanese from Peru were largely separated from the Japanese who were American citizens: communities began to form, not maliciously, but instead

40 | UNFOUND

92. Chie, interview by the author, February 8, 2016.

93. Chie, interview by the author, February 8, 2016.

on account of shared language. The family spoke Japanese, Spanish, but little English; until now, they had never needed English. Then, due to health complications, on March 2, 1943, the sisters lost their father. At 48 years old, the patriarch had challenged the odds by leading the immigrant family to thrive overseas. He brought his family to Peru after experiencing hardship in Japan, and built a name for himself and his business in Latin America; he never expected to die in a camp in the United States. Not long after his death, the family was released from Crystal City.

Ultimately, Chie and Atsumi would be in American internment camps for two and a half years. The family owned close to nothing after the camps: most of their possessions and finances had either been lost in the detainment process, or through the wear of the camps. Returning to South America to continue the life that had been taken from them was not a possibility. “Peru didn’t want us,” remembered Chie. “[Our] options were to go back to Japan or stay in America.”94 The family decided to stay in the United States.

After being released, they followed the majority of Latin American families who had been interned during the war, and moved to Seabrook Farms to provide labor to the New Jersey food processing company.95 Seabrook Farms was located on the opposite coast of the United States 94. Chie, interview by the author, February 8, 2016.

95. Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle of Hate, 82.

where more of the animosity towards Japanese Americans during the wartime had originated. During the war years, the Farms experienced a shortage of workers as their previous employees had enlisted into the military. The effects of this loss of labor coincided almost perfectly with the release of the thousands of Japanese Americans from the internment camps: After being “ . . . featured in Readers Digest, the name Seabrook conjured images of mechanized farming, wartime spirit, and harmonious labor and race relations. Within a year, nearly 1,000 workers had relocated to Seabrook from internment camps throughout the South and Southwest, and the total number of Japanese Americans resettled there reached close to 3,000.”96 In need of human capital, Seabrook Farms sponsored thousands of former internees in the process of moving out of the camps, and their ability to host large numbers of people meant that most families did not have to split up. There, the women carved and managed the ice for Seabrook’s frozen vegetables, earning $0.75 per hour and slowly building up saving to support themselves.

In the years following, the sisters would continue to stay together.

Around 1948, just a few years after being released from the camps, Chie and Atsumi were able to save up enough money to move to Chicago, as they heard there was a growing community of former Japanese internees living in 96. Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle of Hate, 99.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 41

the area. Although they had neither the government’s welcome nor their own desire to move back to Peru, the family would return on several occasions to the country that had left them to the Americans. Their cousins and other relatives, who had not been chosen to board the warships in 1943, were still living in the country. As time passed, both Chie and Atsumi gained United States citizenship; their younger brother enlisted in the United States army; Chie married a man named Gerald, a Nisei Japanese American who had been detained at Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming.

When speaking of their experiences, neither Chie nor Atsumi cite anger or resentment about their experiences.

In the sisters’ lives, there was never any time for hatred or anger. After being released from the camps, with their mother fragile and their father recently deceased, the importance of their lives was not in dwelling on what had happened, but persevering to ensure that their family would continue to survive. Both Chie and Atsumi argue that certainly the past cannot be forgotten, but from their own recollection and memory, negative emotions about their past experiences do not appear to offer any advantages to their current lives. On the loss of the Japanese Peruvian narrative in wider historical accounts, Atsumi laments that the experiences of her family still need to be remembered: “It should be in the history, so that [a similar event]

does not happen again.”97

Conclusion Although Albert, Willie, and Chie and Atsumi’s experiences during World War II are different, all three reflect the ways that racially spurred hate and discrimination can manifest themselves during times of national stress. As a whole, this research project takes two forms. In the first section, I offered a general review of the history behind the American decision to incarcerate persons of Japanese descent in the 1940s. By focusing on periods before, during and after the attack on Pearl Harbor, in both the United States and Latin America, I created a foundation on which we can explore the details and significance of the narratives.

This second section explored the use of memory in Japanese American internment camps, and examined three stories that reflect three major narratives of members of Japanese American individuals during World War II. Although my interviews and research covered multiple relatives of those individuals profiled, for the purpose of this research paper and the resources available to me, I distilled them into three primary stories. The first followed Albert of Portland, Oregon, who was transferred to an assembly center in Washington before ultimately being relocated to Minidoka camp. The second examined the life of William, Albert’s older brother, who 97. Atsumi, interview by the author, March 11, 2016.

42 | UNFOUND

was completing his medical residency in Hawaii at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. While his family and younger brother were sent to camps in the interior of the United States, Willie rose to become a Medical Officer for the United States Army. Lastly, I looked at the experiences of Chie and Atsumi, whose parents moved to Peru around the turn of the century. As Japanese nationals living abroad, their family was chosen by the Peruvian government to be used in a prisoner exchange with the United States. The two sisters, with their family, were then placed on warships with approximately two thousand other Japanese living

although challenging, this history does need to be remembered. We are living in a time in United States history where the personal characteristics that we are told to be proud of, and that we are told to celebrate, are being lessened to steps on a pyramid: our gender, our religion, our ethnicity; whether our skin color is dark or light; whether our family arrived in this country five thousand years ago, five hundred years ago, or five weeks ago. These personal stories reflect both the injustices that have been experienced in our country within just the past 75 years, and the need to remember these experiences so that the cycle of discrimination can eventually

in Peru, ultimately being relocated to an internment camp in Texas. As a whole, these stories reflect three different experiences of Japanese during World War II. Together, they exhibit not only the variances in legislation and government action, but also the continuing threads of endurance and perseverance that ran through them all.

Similar to other minorities in the 1940s, the treatment of the Japanese living in the Americas during World War II was unjust. In their memory and recollection of the events, many Japanese Americans and their family members cite shame as a reason for not telling their story. They cite shame from having to endure the internment camps, from being seen as an enemy, and as something less than human.

However, what was clear in the interviews with both former internees and their direct family members, is that

come to an end. Although not in the same form as the internment camps, the United States’ history of prejudice continues to repeat itself, and it is only by continuing to remember the past that the United States can progress.

Bibliography American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

“Legend of the Crane.” Accessed January 30, 2016. http://sos-walk.org/sos/crane.htm.

An Act of March 21 1942, Public Law 77-503, 56 STAT 173, to Provide a Penalty for Violation of Restrictions or Orders with Respect to Persons Entering, Remaining In, Leaving or Committing any Act in Military Areas or Zones. Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-2011. General Records of the United States Government, 17782006, Record Group 11. National Archives Building, Washington, DC. Atsumi. Interview by the author. March 11, 2016.

Bowers, David A. “Statement of Mayor David A. Bowers.” City of Roanoke, VA. Office of the Mayor. November 18, 2015. http://www. roanoke.com/david-bowers-statement-onsyrian-refugees/pdf_54895fc2-dcfa-50a9-

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 43

9e40-4c382ed7ab4e.html.

Chie. Interview by the author. February 8, 2016.

Daniels, Roger. “The Bureau of the Census and the Relocation of the Japanese Americans: A Note and Document.” Amerasia Journal 9, no. 1 (1982): 101-105.

Daniels, Roger. Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II. Berkshire Studies in History. Berkshire Studies in Minority History.

New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.

Daniels, Roger. The Decision to Relocate the Japanese Americans. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975.

Dower, John. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

Executive Order 9088 of February 19, 1942, Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe

Kimura, Helen. Interview by the author. March 18, 2016.

Kimura, Sumi. Interview by the author. March 18, 2016.

Lesser, Jeffrey. Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Minkel, JR. “Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II.” Scientific American. March 30, 2007.

Accessed February 16, 2016. https://www. scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-theus-census-b/.

Merriam Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Racism.”

Accessed February 17, 2016. http://www.

Military Areas. Code of Federal Regulations, title

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism.

3 (1942). https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.

Miyake, Lika C. “Forsaken and Forgotten: The

php?doc=74.

Gardiner, C. Harvey. Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States.

Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981.

Girdner, Audrie, and Anne Loftis. The Great

U.S. Internment of Japanese Peruvians During World War II.” Asian American Law Journal 9, no.

5 (2002): 163-193.

Nagata, Donna K., and Wendy J.Y. Cheng.

“Intergenerational Communication of Race-

Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans

Related Trauma by Japanese American Former

During World War II. New York: MacMillan

Internees.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry

Company, 1969.

73, no. 3 (2003): 266-278. doi: 10.1037/0002-

“Guerra Entre Estados Unidos y Japon.” El Tiempo (Lima, Peru), December 8, 1941.

“How to Tell Japs from the Chinese: Angry Citizens Victimize Allies with Emotional Outburst at Enemy.” Life. December 22, 1941.

Inoguchi, Takashi. “Review.” Review of

9432.73.3.266.

National Park Service. “WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument.” https://www.nps.gov/ valr/index.htm.

Newport, Frank, and Igor Himelfarb. “Americans Least Favorable Toward Iran.” Gallup. March

Restructuring the US-Japan Alliance: Toward a More

7, 2013. Accessed February 7, 2016. http://

Equal Partnership, by Ralph Cossa. International

www.gallup.com/poll/161159/americans-least-

Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944) 74, no. 3 (1998): 713-714. http://www.jstor. org/stable/2625069.

Irons, Peter H. Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Ito, Bruce. Interview by the author. March 7, 2016.

Ito, Daryl. Interview by the author. March 15, 2016.

Ito, Tami. Interview by the author. February 17, 2016.

44 | UNFOUND

favorable-toward-iran.aspx.

Niiya, Brian. “Public Law 503.” Densho Encyclopedia. Accessed February 17, 2016. http:// encyclopedia.densho.org/Public_Law_503/.

Norweb, Raymond Henry. “The Ambassador in Peru (Norweb) to the Secretary of State.” In Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1941, The American Republics, edited

by William M. Franklin and E.R. Perkins, vol.

6. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1963. https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1941v06/d275.

Parillo, Mark. “The United States in the Pacific.”

In Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat,

stable/165454.

Trump, Donald J. “Donald J. Trump statement on

edited by Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris.

preventing Muslim immigration.” Donald J. Trump

Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006.

for President, Inc. December 7, 2015. https://

“Pearl Harbor.” History. 2009. Accessed February 6, 2016. www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/ pearl-harbor.

Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes &

www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donaldj.-trump-statement-on-preventing-muslimimmigration.

Tsuchida, Motoko. “A History of Japanese

Trends. “Opinion of the United States: Do you

Emigration from the 1860s to the 1990s.” In

have a favorable or unfavorable view of the

Temporary Workers or Future Citizens?: Japanese and

U.S.?” Accessed February 12, 2016. http://

U.S. Migration Policies, edited by Myron Weiner and

www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/1/

Tadashi Hanami, 77-119. Basingstoke: Macmillan,

country/109/.

1998.

Prange, Gordon W. At Dawn We Slept: The Untold

Uchida, Yoshiko. Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a

Story of Pearl Harbor. New York: McGraw-Hill,

Japanese American Family. Seattle: University of

1981.

Washington Press, 1982.

Public Broadcasting Service. “The War At Home:

U.S. Congress. Commission on Wartime

Civil Rights.” Accessed March 7, 2016. http://

Relocation and Internment of Civilians. “Part 2:

www.pbs.org/thewar/at_home_civil_rights_

Recommendations, Report of the Commission on

japanese_american.htm.

Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.”

Rawitsch, Mark H. The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American Dream.

In Personal Justice Denied. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983.

Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2012.

U.S. Department of State. Bureau of Public Affairs.

Rogers, William A. “For Heaven’s Sake, Do Not

Office of the Historian. “The Neutrality Acts,

Embarrass the Administration.” Cartoon.

1930s.” Accessed February 13, 2016. https://

Harper’s Weekly. November 10, 1906.

history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/neutrality-

Sanders, William. “Consultation Among the American Republics: The Panama Meeting of 1939.” World Affairs 102, no. 4 (1939): 231-234. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20663342.

Smithsonian Institution. SIRIS: Smithsonian

acts.

U.S. Department of State. “Neutrality (Declaration of Panama).” In United States Treaties and International Agreements: 1776-1949 – Multilateral Treaties, compiled by Charles I. Bevans, 3:608. Washington,

Institution Research Information System. Accessed

DC: Government Printing Office, 1968. https://

March 7, 2016.

www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-

Spaeth, Carl B., and William Sanders. “The Emergency Advisory Committee for Political

ust000003-0608.pdf.

U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. History of the

Defense.” The American Journal of International

S.I.S. Division. 8 vols. Washington, DC: Government

Law 38, no. 2 (1944): 218-241. http://www.jstor.

Printing Office, 1947. Accessed April 17, 2016.

org/stable/2192694.

Takenaka, Ayumi. “The Japanese in Peru: History

https://vault.fbi.gov/special-intelligence-service.

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

of Immigration, Settlement, and Racialization.”

“Japanese Relocation During World War II.”

Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 3 (2004): 77-

Educator Resources: Teaching With Documents.

98. doi: 10.1177/0094582X04264745.

Accessed March 7, 2016. https://www.archives.gov/

Tigner, James L. “Japanese Immigration

education/lessons/japanese-relocation/.

Into Latin America: A Survey.” Journal of

Yu, Lumeng. “The Great Communicator: How FDR’s

Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 23,

Radio Speeches Shaped American History.” The

no. 4 (1981): 457-482. http://www.jstor.org/

History Teacher 39, no. 1 (2005): 89-106.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 45

The 1965 Anti-Chinese Riot in Jamaica: Anti-Colonial Frustration and Jamaican-Chineseness in the Postcolonial Nation Danielle Wilson, The University of Chicago ’15 Abstract Several instances of “anti-Chinese” violence across Latin America and the Caribbean have been documented from the end of the nineteenth century up through the mid-twentieth century.

The minimal scholarship on “anti-Chinese riots,” as they are called, portrays them as inevitable consequences of Chinese settlement. In Jamaica, a country with an understudied history of Chinese indentureship, three of these riots occurred during the first half of the twentieth century, one in 1918, one in 1938, along with the labor riots across the Anglophone Caribbean, and, the subject of this paper: the riot in 1965. Through an examination of the sociohistorical processes surrounding the riot—namely the processes of nation-building and the internationalization of black consciousness—I argue that the riot in 1965 was not necessarily directed at the Chinese, but can be better characterized as a public manifestation of frustration towards the postcolonial status quo. The ambivalent construction of Jamaican-Chineseness—a symbol of multiracialism and of the postcolonial, Eurocentric elite—effectively eased the transition to a postcolonial society that was invested in maintaining the racial and socioeconomic hierarchy rooted in a history of slavery and British colonialism.

On August 31, 1965, the front page of the Daily Gleaner reported that an altercation between a Chinese bakery owner and his black female employee resulted in riotous behavior throughout West Kingston. According to the Gleaner, a mob “about 300 strong” gathered outside the Lue brothers’ shop and proceeded to stone the building until a police riot squad cleared the area.1 The crowd then made its way through the downtown Kingston area, looting and stoning businesses, most of which were owned

by Jamaican Chinese. Through a radio broadcast, the Acting Prime Minister Donald Sangster called on the nation to “protect the rights of nationals of every origin” and ensured that the government would “see to the maintenance of law and order.”2 This incident—which left one policeman fatally shot, six civilians shot, and ninety arrested—is referred to by scholars as the anti-Chinese riot of 1965.

Following official Gleaner coverage of the incident itself, civilians and local government officials alike debated the significance of the riot in “Letters to the Editor” 1. “Smashing,” Daily Gleaner, August 31, 1965, 1.

2. “Law and order will be maintained,” Gleaner, August 31, 1965, 1.

46 | UNFOUND

throughout the September 1965 issues.

For over a month, Jamaicans from all racial and professional backgrounds engaged in a sustained discourse about who the Chinese were in this early moment of independence, whether they were “Chinese or Jamaican,” “Chinese Jamaicans,” respected “countrymen of this new nation,” or self-contained merchants with little to contribute to society. These questions were couched in discourses of popular understandings of the newly independent nation; the Chinese were simultaneously symbols of a harmonious, multiracial democracy, and of a postcolonial, Eurocentric elite because of their perceived economic status.

These ambivalent perceptions of the Chinese were compounded by an internationalizing black consciousness, and to an extent, a class consciousness led by black power intellectuals and activists across the Caribbean who were fighting the underbelly of “creole multiracialism” that masked the starkly unequal reality on the ground. Creole multiracial nationalism, associated with Norman Manley, Jamaican Premier from 1959 to 1962, and his contemporaries, is defined as the political tradition that was intended to achieve Jamaican independence “within the bounds of established British democratic liberalism” by establishing a multicultural and multiracial identity against the “imperial identity imposed by British rule.”3 The creole nationalist project

was symbolized by the national motto, ‘Out of Many, One People,’ which was widely reflected in popular discourse and permeated the public imaginary.

The riot has received negligible scholarly attention, and historians have been imprecise in grouping it with other “anti-Chinese” riots in Jamaica and across the Americas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Evelyn Hu-DeHart queries whether the Chinese could ever be perceived beyond the dichotomy of “indispensable enemy” or “convenient scapegoat,” as the population that was often blamed for taking local jobs, depressing wages, or engaging in immoral business practices.4 Echoing Hu-DeHart, Howard Johnson suggests that the combination of perpetual “alien” presence on the island and periods of “structural strain” are to blame for the 1918 and 1965 riots, respectively. This teleological frame of analysis is insufficient, as it naturalizes anti-Chinese conflict, suggesting it to be an inevitable consequence of economic instability and the visibility of the Chinese as “middlemen minorities.” In Marxist analyses of the riot, anti-Chinese conflict is an inevitable consequence of the economic disenfranchisement of the “lumpenproletariat,” “that sector of the unemployed . .

(Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014), 36.

4. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, “Indispensable Enemy or Convenient Scapegoat? A Critical Examination of Sinophobia in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1870s to 1930s,” in The Chinese in

Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Walton 3. F. S. J. Ledgister, Michael Manley and Jamai-

Look Lai and Tan Chee-beng (Leiden: Konin-

can Democracy, 1972-1980: The Word is Love

klijke Brill, 2010).

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 47

. [that] is permanently detached from the labour market [and] survives mainly through petty and organized crime.”5 Stone, in particular, suggests a connection between the 1965 instance of anti-Chinese violence and “economic nationalism . . . [and] multiracialism.”

However, Stone frames racially motivated violence towards “white, brown, Chinese[,] and other minorities” as a consequence of working class alienation under capitalism, conflating race with class as historical actors often did.6 By 1965, the Chinese had been in Jamaica for over a century and comprised a small, 1.2 percent of the population.7 Most Chinese considered themselves

nationalism “left intact the racial order underpinning colonialism” while projecting onto the world stage an image of political stability that encouraged foreign investment, particularly from the United States.8 By the early twentieth century, the Chinese had ostensibly achieved varying degrees of monetary success, most notably in the grocery retail trade, and, to a lesser extent, in middle-class professions. Either was greatly influenced by racialized imaginings of Chinese “industriousness” during the indentureship period and up through the twentieth century. Combined, these factors—a nationalism that did not match reality and the appear-

“Jamaican” as most of them were second- or third-generation Jamaicans or had been born on the island. However, the newly independent government was actively working to establish a national identity that heralded racial inequality, propping up the harmonious “melting pot” of Chinese, East Indians, and other ethnic minorities, alongside the creole and Afro-Jamaican majority. Through its assertion of “non-racialism” that ignored social reality, creole multiracial

ance of material success—marked the Chinese as a scapegoat for anti-colonial sentiment in this August 1965 incident.

In this thesis, I argue that the “anti-Chinese riot” in 1965 was not necessarily directed at the Chinese, but can be better characterized as a public manifestation of frustration towards the postcolonial status quo. The ambivalent construction of Jamaican-Chineseness—a symbol of multiracialism and of the postcolonial, Eurocentric elite—effectively eased the transition to a postcolonial society that was invested in maintaining the racial and socioeconomic hierarchy rooted in a history of slavery and British colonialism.

Framing the riot as a consequence of competing ideologies has stakes for further historicizing the Chinese in

5. Carl Stone, Class, Race and Political Be-

haviour in Urban Jamaica (Kingston: University of the West Indies, Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1973), 146.

6. Ibid., 146-47.

7. David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), quoted in Orlando Patterson, “Context and Choice in Ethnic Allegiance,” in Ethnicity: Theory and

Experience, ed. Nathan Glazer and Daniel P.

8. Percy Hintzen, “Creoleness and nationalism

Moynihan (Cambridge: Harvard University

in Guyanese anticolonialism and post-colonial

Press, 1975), 321.

formation,” Small Axe 8, no. 1 (2004): 113.

48 | UNFOUND

Jamaica, as the scholarship is painfully scant. Jamaica has always had a smaller population of Chinese in comparison to its comparative contexts in the British West Indies, Trinidad and Guyana. This relatively small population might be the most obvious explanation behind the lack of historiography on the Chinese of Jamaica, but it is an oversimplification at best. Jamaican historiography in general largely operates, quite literally, in terms of ‘black and white.’ As anthropologist Diane Austin-Broos notes, “Talk about the Caribbean deploys numerous oppositions: Africa/Europe, Old World/New World, black/white, north/ south, haves/have nots.”9 The presence

analysis of Jamaican national identity-formation in the 1960s on the 1965 anti-Chinese riot, I argue that frustration directed towards the Chinese was a consequence of general frustration towards the broken promises of independence.

of the Chinese is over-determined as an “alien” population in a predominately black country or negated because of their negligible representation in the census. These rigid binaries, reflective of the historical landscape, both produce ambiguity and foreclose the possibility of writing histories of those people rendered ambiguous.

The following analysis seeks to demonstrate the importance of the Chinese to a nation-building story that has historically marked them as peripheral, contributing to interdisciplinary efforts to write the Chinese into narratives of Jamaican nationhood.10 Locating my

that scholars have fallen into the trap of ahistorical naturalization. At face value, it appears as if Chinese people, and, by extension, other peoples of Asian descent, are bound to experience violence wherever they go, limiting their abilities to contribute to the constantly

9. Diane Austin-Broos, “Jamaica, the Caribbe-

or relegate Chinese participation in nation

an, Africa: Some Oppositions and Their Poli-

building in the Caribbean Basin to a footnote.”

tics,” in The African-Caribbean Worldview and

Tzarina T. Prater, “‘We are Jamaicans. We are

the Making of Caribbean Society, ed. Horace

Brothers’: History, Brotherhood, and Indepen-

Levy (Kingston: University of West Indies

dence in Kerry Young’s Pao,” Anthurium 11, no.

Press, 2009), 11.

2 (2014): 1.

10. “Chinese Jamaican writers create tapes-

11. Hu-DeHart, “Indispensable Enemy or Con-

tries of fable, myth, and memory that include

venient Scapegoat,” 65.

Anti-Chinese Violence Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean The dominant narrative in the historiography of Chinese migration to the Americas maintains that “outbreaks of Sinophobia” inevitably result from Chinese settlement.11 This narrative is so pervasive in the minimal scholarship on the “phenomenon” of Sinophobia

tales of the quotidian to generate new sources and archives to address silences, battle Orientalist discourses and racist stereotypes, fill some of the aporias in historical narratives, and demonstrate that they are a part of, not apart from, Jamaican national history. These cobbled together texts are more than appeals for inclusion. They interrupt the logic and operations of the machines of history by disrupting and challenging narratives that exclude

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 49

evolving national identities to which they do, indeed, belong. Upon entering the archive to study the manifestations of anti-Chinese animus, scholars have found that historical actors oftentimes expressed their motivations crudely, blaming Chinese immigrants for “corrupting the race” in an early twentieth century Mexican context and describing them as “aliens” throughout the region.

Scholars have reified these stereotypes by analyzing the motivations behind “anti-Chinese” attacks using the same terms as their historical actors. As scholars simplify the motives of their historical actors, who, are in this case, predominately of African descent and

1938, Chinese shops were attacked in the midst of the labor riots that broke out across the Anglophone Caribbean.

On August 28, 1965, Joyce Copeland, an employee of a Chinese-owned bakery on Spanish Town Road in West Kingston, had a dispute with her boss over a radio she was buying from the shop on installments. According to the Gleaner report, “She said one of the brothers then pulled down the shutters to the bakery and then set about beating her.”

The news spread rapidly, and an angry mob gathered outside the shop. The next night, “the stone-throwing started again at about 9.00 o’clock. Hundreds soon gathered in front of the building;

afflicted by systemic poverty, they simultaneously reify prolific stereotypes of Chinese peoples in the Americas and those of their “attackers.” Upon closer analysis of the ways in which these motives were products of concurrent sociohistorical processes, we learn more about how the processes of racialization and nation-building were contingent upon one another.

There have been three documented instances of anti-Chinese “riots” in Jamaica since the Chinese were first brought to the island to work as indentured laborers after emancipation in 1838. In 1918, Chinese shops were looted and attacked across the island in response to rumors that “an Afro-Jamaican policeman had been killed by his sweetheart’s Chinese lover.”12 In

chaos resulted. Traffic was diverted from the area as police using tear gas and batons fought the crowd for over an hour.” During the three-day period of chaos, a Chinese man was beaten “by a gang of youths,” two policemen were shot, and commercial activity in downtown Kingston came to a screeching halt after most Chinese establishments closed for all of Monday.13 Hu-DeHart draws a parallel between this moment and two primary instances of anti-Chinese violence in Sonora, Mexico. In 1916, schoolteacher José María Arana attempted to garner the support of local politicians and mobilize communities in support of ordinances aimed toward the destruction of Chinese shopkeeping. His campaign was short-lived, however, as Sonoran gov-

12. Laura Putnam, Radical Moves: Caribbean

Press, 2013), 111.

Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

50 | UNFOUND

13. All citations from page 1 of the Daily Gleaner, August 31, 1965.

ernor Cesario Soriano was “quite outspoken in his condemnation of Arana’s inflammatory rhetoric and scandalous tactics.”14 This was also a period of heightened awareness of Chinese immigration to Mexico, as Chinese-owned businesses continued to crop up and prosper throughout the region. From 1929 to 1932, state representative of Cananea, José Angel Espinoza aligned with a group of politicians at the federal, state, and local levels to wage a campaign against the Chinese “at a time when many working and middle class Mexicans confronted the economic crisis of the world depression.”15 Hu-DeHart compares the 1965 in-

realm of everyday life, second- and third-generation Chinese were generally regarded by the Afro-Jamaican majority as creole, and regarded themselves as such as well; they spoke Jamaican patois, ate traditional Jamaican cuisine, and played on Jamaican national sports teams. After the 1965 riot, Albert Lue, a son of the shop-owner who was accused of the physical confrontation with Copeland, rumored to have instigated the initial rioting, pled the position of many Jamaican-Chinese to the Gleaner: Every member of my family excepting my mother was born in Jamaica and we regard ourselves as Jamaican despite our ances-

cident in Jamaica to these campaigns in Mexico forty years earlier: “As in Mexico, it seemed, building nationalism rested in part on pursuing a xenophobic and racist agenda.”16 The anti-Chinese posturing in Mexico may have been more aptly compared to the 1918 riot in Jamaica, however, as historical actors in both instances claimed to have felt wronged in their respective contexts during periods of wartime “structural strain.”17 Chinese immigration to Jamaica had essentially come to a close after the dissolution of the last strict immigration quota in 1956.18 In the

Many Chinese institutions intended to preserve aspects of Chinese culture, such as the Chinese public school with all instruction in Chinese, were now open to all Jamaicans.20 In 1954, mem-

14. Hu-DeHart, “Indispensable Enemy or Con-

Jamaica,” in The Chinese in the Caribbean, ed.

venient Scapegoat,” 65.

Andrew R. Wilson (Princeton: Markus Wiener

15. Ibid., 94.

Publishers, 2004), 87-88.

16. Ibid., 98.

19. “Statement by Mr. Albert Lue,” Daily

17. Howard Johnson, “The Anti-Chinese Riots

Gleaner, September 3, 1965.

of 1918 in Jamaica,” Caribbean Quarterly 28,

20. Anshan Li, “Survival, Adaptation, and Inte-

no. 3 (1982): 27.

gration: Chinese in Jamaica,” in The Chinese in

18. Gail Bouknight-Davis, “Chinese Economic

the Caribbean, ed. Andrew R. Wilson (Prince-

Development and Ethnic Identity Formation in

ton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004), 65.

tral background just as any other Jamaican who has to disregard his English, Indian or African ancestry, and stick to the land of his birth which makes him a Jamaican. We have worked hard and sacrificed a lot and if we have achieved a measure of success it should not be used as a weapon against us, because of our race.19

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 51

bers of the Chinese Retail Association debated changing the association’s name to “Jamaica Retailers’ Association” as a means of combining “two cultures of the east and the west.”21 By many scholars’ logic that frames anti-Chinese violence as a result of petty jealousy or a perpetual “alien” presence in the Americas, the 1965 incident is inexplicable.

Evidence around the incident that initiated the rioting is inconclusive, demonstrating the fact that actors rallied behind a rumor that they may have been uncertain was true. In an interview with Trevor Gardner, who was working as a contractor during the time of the incident and claims to have been within two hundred feet of the rioting, the “radio story” was completely fabricated by the press. In his alternative account of the incident, what actually happened was markedly different. According to him, Copeland was actually the Chinese shop-owner’s girlfriend, and when Copeland found out that the shopkeeper was arranged to be married to a Chinese woman, an altercation ensued: This lady went up and had an altercation with the Chinese wife.

She came back to him and a frackus [sic] developed because the woman had mishandled or roughed up the wife . . . And when the relatives or whatever of this woman had found out about this physical altercation between the husband and the girlfriend that brought a bunch of

family into the shop.22

Outside of work practices, what was it, then, that once again made the Chinese targets of violent attacks in August of 1965? Not explicitly organized by the Jamaican government—or any specific group—can the disturbance be properly characterized as “anti-Chinese”?

Immediately following the disturbance, common stereotypes of the Chinese as “a peace-loving people, industrious and thrifty, living within their means” began to appear in letters to the editor throughout the Gleaner.23 At the same time, intellectuals and activists were developing black power agendas, centered on the social, economic, and political disenfranchisement of black peoples worldwide after colonial empires had broken up into independent nation-states.

Public intellectual and renowned Jamaican choreographer, Rex Nettleford, delivered a lecture at the University of the West Indies at Mona (UWI) titled, “National Identity and Attitudes to Race in Jamaica,” which was then published in that month’s issue of Race, the journal of the London Institute of Race Relations, in the Caribbean Contemporary Studies series of Bolivar Press in Kingston, and reproduced in serialized form in the Gleaner.24 In the thir22. Trevor Gardner, Telephone Interview with Author, January 11, 2015.

23. Letter to the Editor, “Unfortunate incidents,” Daily Gleaner, September 10, 1965, 24.

24. Rex Nettleford, Mirror, Mirror: Identity,

Race and Protest in Jamaica (Kingston: LMH 21. Ibid., 64.

52 | UNFOUND

Publishing Limited, 1998), 15.

teen-page essay, Nettleford assesses Jamaican “racial attitudes” of the 1960s, in response to “the [national] identity problem” that had become the focus of much of the creative energy of the new nations emerging in the mid-twentieth century.25 He concludes the piece with a statement that was characteristic of the more radically-minded thinkers of the time period: . . . in Jamaica the blacks . . . are still enslaved in the social structure born of the plantation system in which things African, including African traits, are devalued and primacy is given to European values in the scheme of things.26

According to Nettleford, this “plantation structure,” a rigid “colour-class correlation” of “poor-black, a middle-class and privileged brown man, and a rich or wealthy white man,” presented the Chinese (and East Indians) with a predicament that would last throughout the twentieth century.27 In his 1969 text, he forwards a similar claim: “The choice left open to the Chinese-Jamaican has been between white rich and black poor: he can hardly be blamed for not choosing the latter.”28 Nettleford may have overstated the agency of Chinese in the early post-indentureship period and perhaps through the mid-twentieth century. It was not merely a choice for the Chinese, who

were never a monolithic community, to enter this middle stratum of society. From the moment indentureship was conceptualized, the Chinese were imagined as a racialized other by British planters.

“Jamaican Chinese” in Transition from Slave Society to Free Society In her seminal work on early Jamaican nationalism, cultural anthropologist Deborah Thomas contends that the ideology of creole multiracial nationalism “had its roots in late-nineteenth-century perceptions of Africa, in the history of consistent and extensive migration, and in the emphasis on the part of (black and brown) middle-class mobilizers upon cultural modernization.”29 She ultimately argues that an “authentic nationalism” failed to develop in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries due to the growing “fear of a black planet.”30 Caught between a “new racism” with roots in Social Darwinism and British colonial policy—a “‘new imperialism’ . . . justified through the pretense of philanthropy,” early nationalists31 had to demonstrate 29. Deborah Thomas, Modern Blackness:

Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2004), 30.

30. Ibid., 33.

31. Thomas centers the argument of this

25. Rex Nettleford, “National Identity and

chapter on the authors of Jamaica’s Jubilee,

Attitudes to Race in Jamaica,” Caribbean Con-

which is considered one of the first published

temporary Studies 1 (1965): 3.

critiques of racism in Jamaica. She argues that

26. Ibid., 15.

these five authors were early black nationalists

27. Ibid., 7.

to intervene in a scholarly debate about the

28. Nettleford, Mirror, Mirror, 183.

roots of Jamaican nationalism.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 53

that they were just as “civilized” as the British, yet different from the “barbaric” masses.32 The result was that these early nationalists were put in the position where they could only advocate for reform rather than a more radical form of anticolonialism. This section seeks to pull apart the tightly woven strands of Thomas’ argument about the “problem of Nationalism” in Jamaica—ideologies of black inferiority held across the hemisphere, rooted in “perceptions of Africa,” and the migration history that has hardly been taken up by contemporary scholars of the Caribbean. The Chinese, or, rather, perceptions of the Chinese, played a role in these config-

century, contemporaries of Adam Smith theorized the systemic replacement of African slaves on what were primarily sugar plantations. William Layman, captain of the Royal Navy who had served many years in the East and West Indies, claimed to have developed the idea for what would become the system of indentureship.33 By Layman’s calculations, the Chinese were best fit for the task, “being ‘inured to a hot climate, and habitually industrious, sober, peaceable, and frugal.’”34 Indeed, this was one of the most common depictions of Chinese in colonial documents that considered indentured migration to the West Indies. Layman’s ideas were

urations, ultimately marking them as scapegoats for anticolonial sentiment.

Dominant scholarship has portrayed even the earliest instances of anti-Chinese animus as manifestations of petty, working-class creole jealousy. Upon a more critical examination, however, “anti-Chinese sentiment” was constructed alongside its counterpart in the Caribbean—anti-black racism.

Before Jamaica’s independence was even a thought, the question of Chinese belonging was connected to the hierarchical systems of plantation slavery and colonialism to which the Chinese were latecomers. By 1838, slavery was abolished in the British West Indies, beginning with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and ending with the dissolution of the apprenticeship system in 1838.

When the British were negotiating the slave trade at the turn of the nineteenth

reflective of the ways in which Europeans accounted for the “differences” between Africans and Chinese at the end of the eighteenth century, through biological and environmental logics that suggested, “If the tropics had made the African lazy, the Chinese was industrious by nature.”35 A pattern across the British colonies, tropes of Asian docility and African laziness were constructed with the importation of Chinese (and East Indians) indentured laborers. With the revolution in Saint Domingue fresh in the minds of West Indian planters, the Chinese—“civilized free men”—would “set the Africans an example of rational liberty,” ultimately averting rebellion as 33. B. W. Higman, “The Chinese in Trinidad, 1806-1838,” Caribbean Studies 12, no. 3 (1972): 22.

34. Ibid., 22.

32. Thomas, Modern Blackness, 33.

54 | UNFOUND

35. Ibid., 21.

they were “too sensible to be led away into riots.”36 At the same time, colonial perceptions of the Chinese were ambivalent, as some planters complained that the Chinese were too “independent— that is, less submissive and controllable—in terms of their attitude toward estate management.”37 In colonial discourse, ambivalence was ultimately linked to the question of “whether or not the migrants were perceived as supporting the colonial order.”38 Layman concluded that the introduction of Chinese indentured laborers to the plantation economy was a matter of practicality, as the plantation would turn a profit if worked by Chinese in-

Neither black nor white, Asian migrants “represented a vexing anomaly whose contested status would reconstruct American identities after emancipation.”41 For example, in 1869, when African Americans and Radical Republicans were working to recast the United States into a multiracial democracy . . . disaggregating race and American citizenship,” Southern planters “plunged into the global competition for plantation labor, fueled by revamped dreams of white supremacy and enslaved labor.”42 Fully invested in the “coolie” myth despite federal condemnation of the coolie trade, would-be traders attributed “white” traits “to Asian mi-

dentured laborers but suffer heavy losses if by slaves.39 However, as American historian Moon-Ho Jung’s work on the “coolie trade” in the second half of the nineteenth century demonstrates, indentureship was ultimately a means of maintaining a system in which whiteness was culturally and economically privileged above blackness especially, but also above ‘“Chineseness.” He argues that the ambiguous and constantly evolving “coolie” construction was pivotal “in the reconstruction of racial and national boundaries and hierarchies in the age of emancipation.”40 36. Anne-Marie Lee-Loy, Searching for Mr.

grant laborers, who, they now claimed, deserved a chance to join the ‘nation of immigrants.’”43 In passing the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was framed as a protection of white and black labor from “coolie” competition, Congress enforced the conflation of citizenship and race, reproducing a national identity of “whiteness.”44 Though there has been no academic research on a similar “coolie myth” in the Anglophone Caribbean, Jung’s analytical framework illuminates the striking parallels between twentieth century Louisiana and its cross-Atlantic trading partners. As Jamaica transitioned from slave society to free society

University Press, 2010), 12.

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

37. Ibid.

2006), 5.

38. Ibid., 16.

41. Ibid., 7.

39. Higman, “The Chinese in Trinidad,” 22.

42. Ibid., 108.

40. Moon-Ho Jung, Coolies and Cane: Race,

43. Ibid., 7.

Chin: Constructions of Nation and the Chinese in West Indian Literature (Philadelphia: Temple

Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation

44. Ibid.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 55

through indentureship, constructions of the Chinese as industrious, docile laborers helped to ease the transition while maintaining the black-white—or, African-European—binary to which plantation slavery and its counterpart, capitalism, gave rise. After the plantocracy was replaced by a national bourgeoisie at the turn of the twentieth century, popular culture kept white merchants in the present connected to their privileged pasts. One publication, a lifestyle magazine called Planter’s Punch, accomplished this task through its often satirical content. In one such monograph, titled, “John Chinaman in Jamaica,” with the subheading “by one

nity by the Jamaican population” was inevitable.46 For the white middle-class elites, Chinese cultural assimilation into dominant society—by learning English and practicing Christianity, in one sense, and dominating the mercantile class, in the other—was both desirable and threatening. Homi K. Bhabha famously attributed this ambivalence to the “forked tongue” of colonial discourse, concluding that “produced at ‘the intersection between European learning and colonial power,’ the colonized Other becomes a subject of ‘double articulation’—that is, a ‘forked tongue’—represented as both having and not having the potential to actually

who knows him,” the author provides a lengthy, two-page description of the Chinese in Jamaica, making a case both for and against “him” through the use of Orientalizing tropes.

The author spends the duration of the text describing the everyday life and history of “John Chinaman,” his personalized “Mr. Chin.” Though the Chinese would “certainly dominate the business and professional life of the country” if they “numbered fifty thousand,” they were merely a “new social and financial influence” because they represented such a small percentage of the overall population.45 He explains that the Chinese still represented a distinct group because of their establishment of Chinese institutions (hospitals, charities, schools, etc.), but “assimilation of the Chinese commu-

become ‘civilized.’”47 Thus, the “Chinaman” could learn English and absorb other European cultural norms in order to gain enough acceptance to make him feel comfortable buying commercial goods from their shops, but he was not to acquire enough capital to enter the class above him. In what reads like a warning, the author writes, “The Chinaman born in his own country will never master our language but he masters our trade . . . For this purpose he learns English sufficiently well to drive a good bargain.”

Chinese success in the retail grocery trade has been the subject of rigorous critique and archival research as well as the grounds upon which the 46. Ibid., 10.

47. Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man,” in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge,

45. “John Chinaman in Jamaica,” Planter’s

2008), 122, quoted in Anne-Marie Lee-Loy,

Punch 1, no. 4 (1923-24): 9.

Searching for Mr. Chin, 11-12.

56 | UNFOUND

greedy capitalist, “Mr. Chin”48 stereotype has been constructed in the realm of quotidian life. In contrast to the dominant scholarship that portrays the participation of the Chinese in the grocery retail trade as a monopoly, Gail Bouknight-Davis argues that it was the “character of Chinese-owned retail grocery shops” that made it such a viable industry.49 Using similarly essentializing logic (i.e. Chinese success in the grocery trade was due to their character and habits), Li Anshan notes that the “Chinese had a well-earned reputation for thriftiness and hard work, and they emphasized a practical education of children in the rudiments

Instances of anti-Chinese violence are almost unanimously attributed to this economic aspect of Chinese identity across Latin America and the Caribbean, and, by extension, of other people of Asian descent across the Americas.

Arguably the most famous theory used to describe the phenomenon of violence from “host” populations towards ethnic minorities is Bonacich’s seminal work on “middleman minority theory.” She argues that commonalities amongst various ethnic groups such as South Asians in East Africa, Chinese in Southeast Asia, and Jews in Europe offer explanations for their persistent role as “middleman between producer

of commerce.”50 He attributes the lack of creole competition in the retail trade to the fact that African slaves “had not yet developed the requisite commercial skills” after emancipation. Scholars have shown that the Chinese did, in fact, experience some degree of competition from creoles. However, it was the inherently disenfranchising system of plantation slavery that often caused these small businesses to fail, since the “lack of capital, credit and general inexperience in business matters often caused the failure of the enterprises of the small creole retailers.”51

and consumer, employer and employee, owner and renter, elite and masses,” most significantly their intentions to return to their country of origin.52 Not only is Bonacich’s theory problematic because it ignores historical context, thus naturalizing “middleman minorities” and the attacks waged against them, but it is also simply inaccurate in the case of the Chinese in Jamaica, who had either settled on the island or been born on it by the first third of the twentieth century. While their economic status—perceived or real—impacted the ways in which Chinese were perceived by the Afro-Jamaican majority, there were other factors at play, namely racialized tropes and pervasive conceptions of national identity.

48. “Mr. Chin” is the colloquialism for Chinese shopkeeper across the Anglophone Caribbean. It is still used today.

49. Bouknight-Davis, “Chinese Economic Development,” 90.

50. Li, “Survival, Adaptation, and Integration,” 58.

52. Edna Bonacich, “A Theory of Middleman

51. Johnson, “The Anti-Chinese Riots of 1918,”

Minorities,” American Sociological Review 38,

23.

no. 5 (1973): 583.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 57

Caribbean Migration and Labor Movements During the Interwar Period The Chinese in Jamaica, like the “coolie” in the United States, represented an ambiguity during a time of national and international transition. In the 1930s, as challenges to the colonial order manifested in various ways across the Caribbean, reform, rather than breaking from the underlying structure of colonialism, hinged on constructions of the Chinese as domestic “job-takers.” As Marcus Garvey waged small campaigns against the Chinese and other ethnic minorities that were supposedly taking jobs from working-class Afro-Jamaicans on the island, nationalists of reform were working to demonstrate “the debilitating effects of Jamaica’s history of plantation slavery” that were maintained due to colonial racialization of the Chinese.53 This section takes up the second strand of Thomas’ argument, that of “consistent and extensive migration,” demonstrating the ways in which incipient forms of nationalism in Jamaica hinged on ambivalent perceptions of “Chineseness.”

The early 1920s and 1930s was a period of mass migration of Afro-Caribbean individuals throughout the circum-Caribbean to seek opportunities for employment. As export economies contracted, “A rising cadre of populist politicians sought to ban the arrival of English-speaking Afro-descendants and, sometimes, to kick out those already there.”54 And as bans were imposed on

Caribbean migrants across the region, organized workers in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean were making demands on the state, and national destiny was identified “with the health and virtue of the working classes as never before.”55 In the Anglophone Caribbean, however, with no popular access to the polity via the vote, an incipient nationalism couched in nativist politics (“Jamaica for the Jamaicans!”) substituted the populist bargains elsewhere in the Caribbean.56 Chinese bodies became the repositories of displaced anger towards the colonial order that began to give way with the rise of organized labor in the 1930s.

In 1924, the US Johnson-Reed Act radically restricted Afro-Caribbean migration to industrialized countries in the North Atlantic. At the same time, there was a significant increase in Chinese migration, specifically Chinese laborers who were returning from Panama and Cuba.57 Anti-Chinese sentiment towards these returnees was compounded by widely felt frustration towards anti-black immigration policies in the surrounding republics. A September 7, 1932 Gleaner article stated, “We are not actuated by racial feelings­­—when we ask: Why should Jamaica open her doors wide to Chinese immigration, when but few of her sons and daughters can migrate to nearby countries to enter larger fields of industry?”58 In 1927, Marcus 55. Ibid., 83.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid., 111.

53. Ibid.

58. Daily Gleaner, September 7, 1932, quoted in

54. Putnam, Radical Moves, 2.

Lara Putnam, Radical Moves, 115.

58 | UNFOUND

Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Jamaica Native Defenders Committee (JNDC), returned to the island after being deported from the United States and delivered an impassioned speech in front of a large number of Jamaicans: When I look upon the people of this country, their naked condition— their diseased and dirty condition—do you think that I, so long as there is a God, could keep my mouth closed and my soul stead as a black man, and let the Chinaman, the Syrian sap the wealth of this

could maintain the status quo by giving heed to anti-Chinese nativist sentiment through immigration restrictions rather than positioning themselves to lead other, more radical collective identities that would position them as the targets.61 The inability of upper and middle class Jamaicans to immigrate to the United States freely due to the Johnson-Reed Act brought attention to the “immigration of aliens”62 at home, leading Jamaica to follow other countries within the British Empire and institute anti-Chinese restrictions.63

country while our people die in poverty?59

Shortly after, he launched the People’s Political Party and the Jamaica Workers’ and Labourers’ Association. Although he did not win a seat in the Legislative Council in the 1930 elections, during his self-exile to London between 1927 and 1935, Garvey “organized support for an electoral manifesto that embraced self-government, the protection of labor through minimum wage legislation and land reform, and the establishment of institutions of higher education and training.”60 It was Garvey and the UNIA that built the foundation in Jamaica for an organized nationalism, which hinged on the “problem” of Chinese competition to domestic jobs. Garvey’s nativist protonationalism, that declared “Jamaica for the Jamaicans,” was much less threatening to island elites who

Barrington Watson, Out of Many One People, 1962, Source: George A. Smathers Libraries digital archive

Most importantly, this popular anti-Chinese racism—connected to notions of citizenship and the state through immigration restrictions—was motivated by frustration with an overall system rather than a particular people.

Putnam highlights the fact that “Chi-

59. Daily Gleaner, December 12, 1927, rpt. In Hill, Garvey and UNIA Papers, vol. 7, 23-24,

61. Putnam, Radical Moves, 120.

quoted in Lara Putnam, Radical Moves, 114.

62. Ibid., 112.

60. Thomas, Modern Blackness, 45.

63. Ibid., 84.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 59

nese immigration had no impact on job prospects for those (working-class) Jamaicans most harmed by foreign restrictionism . . . retaliation against white immigrants from the restrictionist countries was off the table.”64 Chinese people were not actually taking domestic jobs at all. In reality, “Chinese” was legally re-constructed as an “alien” presence via immigration legislation, for example, which targeted those with “one or more parents ‘of Chinese or Syrian race’” in the face of “working-class assertiveness” and “Race First” political energy.65 The Chinese, specifically in Jamaica, were conveniently scapegoated by the masses

to the Jamaican public that crises of unemployment and caste-like racial stratification would radically change.

The efforts of intellectuals committed to pan-Africanism, consciousness-raising and solidarity-building among black peoples throughout the African diaspora came to a head as colonies were fighting independence battles across the global south. For these “New Nations” across the Americas, the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘nation’ were—and are—contingent upon one another: “ . . . they are in motion, their meanings constructed, their natures processual, their significance at any moment shaped by their historical context.”67 Jamaica was no

for the anti-blackness they experienced abroad and perceived threats to their economic stability from the Chinese at home. When labor riots began to break out across the Anglophone Caribbean in the late 1930s, the Chinese businesses bore the brunt of working-class rioting (referred to as the “anti-Chinese riot of 1938” by scholars), while in Trinidad, “a strong current of local thought embraced anticolonial antiracism rather than anti-Chinese racism.”66

different, a predominately “black” society according to demographics, and a constructed “brown elite” society, according to Guyanese intellectual and activist, Walter Rodney. The reformist nationalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that hinged on constructions of the Chinese as “aliens” who were stealing domestic jobs had now become hegemonic, consolidated as creole multiracial nationalism.68 The new conception of the independent ‘nation’ was dependent on ambivalent constructions of Chinese, which comes into focus through a sustained discourse around “Jamaicanness” immediately following the 1965 riot.

Transitioning to Independence and the Construction of Jamaican-Chineseness In the 1960s, a similar set of challenges to the status quo led to displaced anger towards the Chinese once again in 1965, this time, in the face of formal independence, which was a promise

67. Thomas C. Holt, foreword to Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, ed. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, Karin Alejandra

64. Ibid., 113.

Rosemblatt (Chapel Hill: University of North

65. Ibid., 120.

Carolina Press, 2003), x.

66. Ibid., 224.

68. Thomas, Modern Blackness, 33.

60 | UNFOUND

In 1958, the British called the West Indies Federation together, a shortlived political union made up of islands in the British West Indies that was intended to function as an initial stepping stone towards independence for the participating colonies. To remain in the Federation or to become independent was decided by a national referendum in 1961, resulting in the dissolution of the Federation and constitutional independence for Jamaica. From 1962 onwards, Jamaica continued a process of nation-building, contingent upon its mutually constitutive symbols of ‘race’ and ‘nation,’ formalized in the ideology of creole multiracialism. “Nation-building,” for the purposes of this argument, involves aspects of the ‘nation’ that are both tangible, “the structures, the institutions and constitutions which form the skeleton of the state,” such as the inheritance of the Westminster system of government from British colonialism, on the one hand, and “imaginary,” on the other.69 This section focuses on the latter, specifically the nationalism that was propagated by the newly independent government to usher in an emerging neocolonial reality.

The newly independent, “brown elite” politicians, namely Alexander Bustamante and his contemporaries, attempted to rally Jamaicans of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds behind the cause of their conception of the nation by imagining “Jamaica as a Creole

nation, implying a supposedly neutral, colourless, raceless, secular space.”70 The political tradition of creole multiracialism is commonly attributed to Norman Manley, one of the key figures in the struggle for independent nationhood who would go on to found one of the nation’s two main political parties, the People’s National Party (PNP) in 1938. In a November 10, 1957 broadcast, then Chief Minister Manley invoked this multiracial ethic to underline Jamaica’s exceptionalism: The greatest contribution Jamaica and the West Indies can make to the world is to prove that a society can be made where black and white and brown and yellow live together as men and women in mutual harmony and shared respect. Look around the world. Look at the bitterness in Africa and the same in the Southern States of America and be proud to belong to a country which will one day help to teach the world that it is the worth of a man and not his colour or race that count in life.71

A direct challenge to existing linkages to a recent colonial past enabled a “new and powerful” national identity to be created relatively easily.72 This ideology 70. Annie Paul, “No Space for Race? The Bleaching of the Nation in Postcolonial Jamaica,” in The African-Caribbean Worldview and

the Making of Caribbean Society, ed. (Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2009), 103.

71. Rex Nettleford, Manley and the New Jamai-

ca (New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 69. Mary Chamberlain, Empire and Na-

1971), 160.

tion-Building in the Caribbean (Manchester:

72. D.A. Dunkley, “Hegemony in Post-Inde-

University of Manchester Press, 2010), 14.

pendence Jamaica,” Caribbean Quarterly 57,

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 61

was so pervasive that the 1965 riot was shocking to the majority of the population that was uncritical of the status quo (or at least did not act out on their frustrations). In the September 1965 issue of Spotlight, the editor writes: The disturbances in westend Kingston took us all by surprise. So completely out of character were they, the entire nation was completely stunned . . . [it] shocked us into a new sense of reality that our national motto –“Out of Many, One People” –does not really represent the racial unity we thought existed. 73

Similarly, in a statement issued to the Gleaner by the Chinese Benevolent association, Maurice Tenn affirms that “Fundamental principles” were at stake in the events of the riot, reaffirming a break from the racial prejudices of the past:

Jamaican public and assuaging domestic working class frustration, creole multiracialism functioned to stabilize Jamaica’s reputation as an “exceptionally” politically stable and racially harmonious society to encourage the foreign investment of capital.75 The postwar economic policy of ‘industrialization through invitation” located the United States at the center of its efforts.

With the American civil rights movement well underway and national leaders at least rhetorically committed to egalitarian ideals of a liberal democracy, anything (i.e. the 1965 riot) that would impact Jamaica’s emerging reputation on the world stage as an example of “multiracial paradise” had to be “stamped out” immediately. Gardner recounts the aftermath of the riots from memory: . . . on radio and on TV, I know that the existing Prime Minister at

We have on all sides worked hard

the time came out strongly [with]

to create a truly multi-racial and

the resources that could tamp this

non-racial society, for we believe

thing down. I mean this is not

that this is the supreme issue of

allowed to really get out of con-

the century and that Jamaican can

trol . . . Everything had to be done,

lead and teach the great nations of

political groups were made to issue

the world how to dwell together in

statements on the radio. It had to

unity. We must not let old prej-

be immediately extinguished and it

udices on any side destroy what has been so carefully nurtured and built up in our time.74

In addition to cultivating trust and pride in the political elites’ conception of the “race-less” nation among the

was.76

Just a few months before the riot in June, Martin Luther King, Jr. visited the University of the West Indies (UWI) at Mona to give the keynote address

no. 2 (2011): 11.

75. Obika Gray, Radicalism and Social Change

73. “WHAT WAS THE CAUSE?” Spotlight 26,

in Jamaica, 1960-1972 (Knoxville: University of

no. 9 (1965): 5.

Tennessee Press, 1991), 56.

74. Letter to the Editor, “Jamaica, the greatest

76. From a telephone interview with the au-

loser,” Daily Gleaner, September 7, 1965.

thor.

62 | UNFOUND

for the graduating class of 1965. The institution and intellectuals the university produced were critical in fostering a “sense of common destiny” in the West Indies through scholarship and policy proposals.77 In his keynote address, King urged graduates to embrace the challenges of “this New Age” and become agents of social change across the globe. More significantly, he echoed the Jamaican government’s multiracial nationalism, reinforcing Jamaican exceptionalism to the nation’s future leaders and professionals: And so this is the challenge facing the world, indeed the challenge facing the world is made real right in this island: ‘Out of many, one people.’ This is the great new challenge of mankind, and until America learns this and till all other nations of the world can learn this we will also border on destruction.78

Effectively an ideology liaison between the United States and the Caribbean, King reinforced Jamaica’s national identity at home and abroad.

Jamaicans traveling to the US acted as liaisons as well. Five disillusioned Jamaican-Chinese students wrote into the Gleaner from Selma, Alabama following the 1965 riot, “We firmly believed that we were Jamaican citizens, but it appears that we are but second-class citizens, who must be humiliated and 77. Chamberlain, Empire and Nation-building, 12.

abused because of petty jealousies.”79

Migration Similar to the interwar period, the postwar period saw a wave of Caribbean migration throughout the circum-Caribbean, especially West Indian technicians and servicemen who were returning from the war. After the labor riots of 1938 and other similar uprisings related to the problem of mass unemployment, the colonial government “believed that British manpower requirements could be met by recruiting workers in those colonies which suffered high levels of unemployment.”80 From 1942 onwards, colonial immigrants had a relatively easy time migrating to Britain, incurring practically no restrictions on their rights to enter and settle in contrast to their European immigrant counterparts.

The end of the war and reconstruction demanded an increase in labor, and in 1948 the Empire Windrush brought 492 West Indian males to the port at Tilbury.81 Though colonial immigrants had a relatively “easy” time finding work abroad, the “cheapness of Commonwealth labour [was] always contrasted with its putative social and political

79. Letter to the Editor, “Jamaica’s reputation impaired,” Daily Gleaner, September 9, 1965, 8.

80. Zig Layton-Henry, “The New Commonwealth Migrants, 1945-62,” History Today, December 1985.

81. Evan Smith and Marinella Marmo, Race,

West Indies,” June 20, 1965, digital archive of

Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control: Subject to Examination (London: Pal-

The King Center in the “Speeches” collection.

grave Macmillan, 2014), 26.

78. “MLK’s Address at the University of the

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 63

cost.”82 Thus, as more immigrants of color began to populate Britain, the “issue” of Commonwealth immigration began to surface in parliamentary debates. Until the Notting Hill riots in September 1958, when hundreds of white youth “attacked West Indians and their property in the London borough,” legislation around the “problem” of immigration had been minimally considered or was not passed.83 On the first day of November 1961, the Conservative government presented the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill. It was passed on February 27, 1962 and went into effect on July 1, 1962.84 So many hopeful Jamaican migrants rushed travel agen-

better life. In August 1965, the Labour government introduced a White Paper modifying the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Bill, which required immigrants to apply for a work voucher according to the applicant’s employment prospects,87 effectively eliminating the possibility of Caribbean immigration to Britain. August and September issues of the Gleaner and the September issue of Spotlight Magazine, the two of the most prominent news media publications, explicitly denounced the nominally race-neutral restrictionist actions of the British government.

In “The Politics of UK Colour Curb” in “The Nation” column of Spotlight,

cies in the months leading up to July 1 that more than a thousand Jamaicans were unable to leave because of aircraft shortages.85 This piece of legislation began the host of restrictions on “New Commonwealth”86 immigration that would persist until 1971.

With heavy unemployment on the island, Jamaicans sought economic opportunity by migrating to the United States and Britain. After the McCarren Walter Immigration Act of 1952 temporarily halted West Indian immigration to the US, Britain became the host country of Afro-Jamaicans seeking a

Associate Editor Len Nembhard opens the piece with, “Britain’s ‘White Paper’ clamping down on Commonwealth immigration should have been labelled ‘Anti-Black.’” Frank Hill, public intellectual and political columnist for Spotlight, published a lengthy piece in the September 1965 issue called, “Commonwealth: Meaningless.” He pointed to the declining economic benefit of Commonwealth trading patterns, emphasizing that the central issue at hand was Britain’s violation of “One of the unifying forces in the Commonwealth in recent years . . . [is] its firm stand against racial discrimination.” Regardless of the economic stability offered by remaining in the Commonwealth, Britain’s explicit racism was grounds for the need to “make an immediate

82. Ibid., 27.

83. Ibid., 26.

84. Ibid., 30.

85. “This Day In 1962,” Daily Gleaner, June 20, 2012.

86. The “New Commonwealth” generally refers to the former British colonies and was

87. “Commonwealth Immigration control and

used in debates around immigration restric-

legislation,” The National Archives, accessed

tions after WWII.

January 10, 2015.

64 | UNFOUND

re-appraisal of our attitude to and our position within the Commonwealth.”

He underlined the symbolic meaning of Commonwealth membership, ending with the question of the century: “Can we continue to have the British Queen as the highest symbol of nationhood for Jamaica?”

The retention of trade arrangements and the political power of Commonwealth membership was another intended consequence of creole multiracial nationalism, which was anti-colonialist yet not “anti-imperialist since the PNP had begun encouraging direct investment of foreign capital by the mid-1950s.”88 In Acting Prime Minister Donald Sangster’s official statement on the riot, he was explicit to those involved in the “disorder” that it was a “matter for settlement by law and no one will be allowed to take the law into his or her own hands.” According to the Gleaner, following his statement, he gave a radio broadcast with the recent Commonwealth restrictions as the central focus: I have just sent a mission to England to look after their interests with British Government and to talk to them. If we are to expect equity from the United Kingdom and from any other country in which our Jamaicans find themselves then we must be sure that

world. In other words, we must protect our minorities or we cannot expect our minorities to be protected in other countries. 89

As Jamaicans were seeking work abroad because of unemployment at home, it was in Sangster’s interest to keep the migration path from the island to Britain open as an “escape valve” rather than make the radical changes to the political and economic structure necessary to the relief of structural unemployment. In the Caribbean Marxist tradition of celebrated intellectual and revolutionary West Indian activist, C. L. R. James, he accuses the middle-class “brown” political elites of having “turn[ed] a blind eye to the spectres of unemployment and underemployment, in fact do everything to maintain things essentially as they were”90 in the context of an overall sentiment felt by many across the Anglophone Caribbean during this time period: “The effects of slavery and colonialism are like a miasma all around choking us.”91 In placing onus on Jamaicans alone to “do equity to everybody in this country” while refusing to condemn Britain’s racist actions, Sangster sent the message to the Jamaican people that he did not think that race—or class, for that matter—was central to the plight of the majority Afro-descended population.

we do equity to everybody in this

89. “Law and order will be maintained,” Daily

country whether they were born

Gleaner, August 31, 1965, 1.

in Jamaica, whether their ances-

90. C. L. R. James, “The Middle Classes,” in

tors came from Africa or England or from any other country in the 88. Thomas, Modern Blackness, 54-55.

Consequences of Class and Color: West Indian Perspectives, ed. David Lowenthal and Lambros Comitas (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1973), 90.

91. Ibid., 92.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 65

He resorted to the rhetoric of multiracialism instead of looking deeper into the conflict and taking responsibility for the motives behind those who had decided to take “the law into their own hands.”

As political elites were building a popular understanding of Jamaica as a “non-racial” nation, black intellectuals, activists, and community leaders were working to expose the historical and social on the ground reality of black peoples everywhere. In his 1965 speech, “National Identity,” Nettleford emphasizes the “hyperbolic” nature of the national motto that was “almost daily invoked in sermons—secular and

on our corporate nationality” and acknowledging the reality of a continued European (“white”) influence: “The white, however, [sic] much we fight against the idea, because our way of life and civilization is theirs, from our laws, education and government down to the last movie, car, and television set.”95 Radical and sophisticated analyses of these deeply ingrained social ills negated through creole multiracialism were further disseminated by “grass roots intellectuals” through “constant gatherings and ‘groundings’ at street corners” in urban centers.96 During the 1960s, Western Kingston was characterized by disproportionate rates of

religious—to make into a fact what is as yet an inspiration.”92 In order for the motto to be actualized, “bold economic and social” adjustments were critical.93 Access to adequate educational opportunities and a radical redistribution of capital needed to be accompanied by a shift in “racial attitudes,” as blackness was “not regarded as the desirable symbol for national identity.”94 According to Nettleford and his contemporaries, Jamaica was plagued by the European values inherited from its colonial past. A man named Maurice Phillips wrote to the Gleaner, expressing his disdain for the Chinese, the “race which has done less to genuinely incorporate and merge itself into the life of our country,” while at the same time condemning an “increasing emphasis

unemployment, poverty, and crimes of survival: “permanently detached from the labour market . . . [the lumpen] survives mainly through petty and organized crime.”97 In a survey conducted among residents of Western Kingston in the 1960s, 74 percent of respondents expressed “hostility” towards multiracialism, likely a result of self-conscious understandings of their social position that came from street corner rallies and a worldwide atmosphere of black consciousness-raising.98 Rastafarianism, a grassroots political tradition that recuperated an inherent dignity in black identity and “demanded Repatriation for its adherents to the homeland of black Africa,” once 95. Letter to the Editor, “Ethnic rubbish,”

Daily Gleaner, September 20, 1965.

92. Nettleford, “National Identity,” 15.

96. Stone, Class,Race, and Political Behavior, 146.

93. Ibid.

97. Ibid.

94. Ibid.

98. Ibid., 147.

66 | UNFOUND

again began to gain traction among the disillusioned black youth in Western Kingston.99 As the 1967 national election approached, gang violence in this section of the parish became tied to the two major political parties, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the PNP.”100 In an interview with Peter Lyew, a Jamaican Chinese man who was around nine-years-old during this time period, he describes the political climate: It was the first time that the blacks would have power through elections. If you were a politician, you could not ask for a better setting with which to choose a cause to run on. In order to galvanize the votes, the political parties had to

the imbrication of race and class in the social order as a whole, and the efforts to change this order.”102 In the years leading up to the 1965 incident, two other incidents are documented as “rebellion” against the Jamaican government. In 1960, Reverend Claudius Henry’s Rastafarian organization, the African Reform Church, and the First Africa Corps, an armed militant black organization from New York instigated the first of such incidents. Chinese were attacked in Kingston during this incident, though this detail is not included in some scholarly accounts of the incident.103 In 1963, six Rastafarians attacked a Shell gas station at Coral

The attitudes Lyew describes were characteristic of the strains of Black power circulating through the time period, and the 1965 riot “pointed to

Gardens and later went after a group of police and civilians who had confronted them. Eight people were killed in total, and the three Rastafarians who survived were hanged. In July and August 1966 there were reports of “tit-for-tat” gang clashes, in which eight out of ten businesses that were burnt down were Chinese-owned.104 Political scientists and historians alike, however, have incorrectly overstated the class component of these incidents, asserting that the frustration of Kingston’s “lumpenproletariat” made Western Kingston into a “volatile social and political flashpoint.”105 Stone, in

99. Nettleford, Mirror, Mirror, 124.

102. Randolph B. Persaud, Counter-Hegemony

find a common cause . . . it was to undo the wrongs of the non-blacks . . . My dad, initially, showed some interest in attending the political rallies and he did attend some. But the tone and the attitude against those [who] were not black prevented him from continuing to attend. It was against anyone who was not black. If you were not black, the common man considered you to not be a Jamaican.101

Riot in Jamaica” (unpublished paper present-

and Foreign Policy: The Dialectics of Marginalized and Global Forces in Jamaica (New York:

ed to the Latin American Studies Association

State University of New York Press, 2001), 13.

XVIth International Congress, Washington,

103. Yelvington, “The 1965 Anti-Chinese

D.C., 1971), 12.

Riot,” 12.

101. Peter Lyew, telephone interview with au-

104. Ibid., 91.

thor, March 30, 2015.

105. Terry Lacey, Violence and Politics in Ja-

100. Kevin Yelvington, “The 1965 Anti-Chinese

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 67

particular, asserts that the lumpen’s status as alienated workers was directly correlated to strong feelings of resentment “towards white, brown, Chinese and other minorities.” This ties into Bonacich’s middleman minority theory, which asserts an “inevitable conflict of interest” between the middleman and his clientele, business, and labor.106 It is the tendencies towards thrift, self-sufficiency, and the preservation of cultural distinction among these ethnic trading minorities that lead to Marxist class-based conflict.107 Upon examination of the sociohistorical context in which some of these conflicts have occurred, however, it is clear that the

looked “one vital factor and that is the racial reaction.” He called the Jamaican people to action, citing the causes of the Watts riots: high unemployment rates, poverty, and “to the extent that the rioters identified their frustrations with Whites, there was a racial bias to the riots.” This comparison drew further attention to the Jamaican government’s continued problematic relationship with the United States, whose foreign policy “soon came to be understood, popularly, as an extension of its practice of racial oppression against its Black population at home.”108 All of these instances—the one in 1965 arguably the most violent and

“problem” is much more about unchanging, exploitative systems than the “natural” characteristics of any particular ethnic or racial group.

A few days before the riot, the Watts rebellion (or “Watts riots”) broke out in Los Angeles, California, and an editor of the Gleaner drew the parallel between the Watts Rebellion and the 1965 riot in Jamaica in an editorial from the September 12, 1965 issue. In the editorial, titled, “TROUBLE-MAKERS --- here as everywhere in today’s world,” the “Political Reporter” provided an analysis of the 1965 riot in a global context, as the title suggests. He argued that those who had written and spoken about the anti-Chinese riot had over-

productive of the most sustained public discourse—were expressions against the perceived position of the Chinese in postcolonial Jamaican society. This position was, once again, an ambivalent, colonial construction contingent upon an emerging neocolonial reality.

In a letter to the editor in the September 14 issue of the Gleaner, titled, “Chinese or Jamaican” Mrs. Simon Moone echoed Lyew’s statement above, employing Chinese stereotypes: “In my view, the facts are that beside being good merchants with the instincts and tendencies of merchants, few of them make any real contribution to the uplifting of the communities to which they live.” In the same moment, “a new term appeared

maica, 1960-1970, (Totowa: Frank Cass and

108 Percy Hintzen, “Afro-Creole Nationalism

Company, Ltd., 1977): 87.

as Elite Domination,” in Foreign Policy and the

106. Bonacich, “A Theory of Middleman Mi-

Black (Inter)national Interest, ed. Charles P.

norities,” 589.

Henry (New York: State University of New York

107. Ibid., 592.

Press, 2000), 204.

68 | UNFOUND

to describe Chinese in Jamaica as yet another part of the new island nation’s multi-ethnic tableau—‘Jamaicans of Chinese Origin.’”109 “Jamaican Chinese” as a racialized identity category was symbolically held up to connote a “non-racial” state, though the independent government refused to take the necessary steps to make this aspiration into a reality. While politicians like Manley would hold up the small population of Chinese on the island to prove that the world should look to Jamaica for an example of a society “where black and white and brown and yellow live together . . . in mutual harmony,” there was always another side to the story. Sidney Mintz, a foundational scholar in the field of Caribbean anthropology, he recalled in an interview some notable experiences during his time conducting field work in Jamaica.

In 1954, he attended a talk by Manley at the UWI: . . . he talked about the contemporary Jamaican situation. It was entirely acceptable, but for one point in the middle of his talk, when he quite suddenly launched a miniharangue against the Chinese . . . He really made it plain that he saw the Chinese as socially objectionable, as outsiders, as an obstacle to Jamaican development. Nobody else reacted like I did.110

In speeches by Manley throughout the mid to late twentieth century, he emphasized the idea that “Jamaica needs all its people,” though it is apparent from the above quote that he may actually have felt quite differently, reinforcing the constructed-ness of multiracial nationalism.111 Chinese themselves affirmed this symbolic role, exemplified by the Chinese Benevolent Association’s statement in the Gleaner: Over the past years the Chinese, perhaps more than any other minority group, have made very great strides toward integrating and assimilating themselves into the life of Jamaican society. They have unequivocally identified themselves with anything Jamaican, and have brought meaning to the country’s motto “OUT OF MANY ONE [sic].”112

Instead of radically altering the structural underpinnings of the colonial racial order, the Jamaican government and national institutions resorted to reformist, anti-black, and pro-capitalist adjustments. With the pressure on formerly British-operated institutions, such as commercial banks, to employ Jamaicans of color, “the Chinese were among the first to be used to break tradition. They provided a gradual and smooth transition for the more recent developments in those very commercial banks.”113 While the Chinese were

109. “Out of many . . . ,” Spotlight 24, no. 7 (1960): 16, quoted in Anshan Li, “Survival,

111. “Untitled statement,” Daily Gleaner, Sep-

Adaptation, and Integration,” 62.

tember 1, 1965, 1.

110. Charles V. Carnegie, “The Anthropolo-

112. “Jamaica, the greatest loser,” Daily Glean-

gy of Ourselves: An Interview with Sidney W.

er.

Mintz,” Small Axe 10, no. 1 (2006): 150.

113. Nettleford, “National Identity,” 7.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 69

beneficiaries of a pervasive sense of anti-blackness inherited from a colonial past, they did not wield the economic and political power of the honorable “white” (brown) elite. Instead, as Nettleford articulates above, the Chinese were a “safe” population—i.e. not of African descent—that would act as a placeholder in settings such as middle-class job markets that were previously under the control of whites.

It was a similar situation in Trinidad, where “Chinese physicians, dentists, lawyers . . . reflect greatly not only the ability of the Chinese in adapting themselves, but also the administration of the British in making conditions favor-

the nation’s leading cultural publication, founded by former Prime Minister Edward Seaga, Helen Chinsee published an essay titled, “A Chinese in Jamaica.” Chinsee was the wife of Rupert B. Chinsee, the first Jamaican Chinese appointed to the senate in 1962. Though she came from an elite background of scholars and wealthy landlords, and the Jamaican Journal is a private publication, this portrait of the Chinese in Jamaica is telling of the ways in which Chinese—elite Chinese in particular— were self-identifying during the mid to late 1960s.

In the essay, Chinsee tells the story of Pa Chinsee (“Pa”), father of her

able for their development.”114 If immigrants could prove that they were coming to Jamaica to engage in commercial activities, they experienced no restrictions to entry. Chinese merchants who were successful in their homelands were attracted to the possibility of commercial enterprise in Jamaica.115 Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Jamaican Chinese sometimes self-identified with the accusations made against them as “greedy capitalists,” a product of these selective colonial immigration policies. In the March 1968 issue of the Jamaica Journal,

husband, Rupert, and founder of Chin See Bros., a successful Jamaican corporation. With a similar life trajectory to many of his peers, Pa began as an indentured laborer in Brazil and then in Jamaica. Story has it that he was one of the few “very determined ones” who had enough will power to keep away from the “shabby rum shops” that the other laborers would squander away their small wages at after long days at the plantations, earning enough money to go into business for himself as a farmer.116 Eventually, Pa was able to scrape together some money and start up a small shop, doing “clean” business the “Chinese way,” and climb up the ladder to establish his successful firm.

Throughout the biography, the author stresses Pa’s thriftiness and determination, ultimately calling her fellow

114. Arthur Young, “A visiting Chinese journalist looks at the West Indian Chinese in the late 1920s,” China Weekly Review, May 11, 1929, quoted in Walton Look Lai, The Chinese in the

West Indies, 1806-1995: A Documentary History (Kingston: The Press University of the West Indies, 1998), 236.

115. Li, “Survival, Adaptation, and Integra-

116. Helen Chinsee, “A Chinese in Jamaica,”

tion,” 58.

Jamaica Journal 2, no. 1 (1968): 11.

70 | UNFOUND

countrymen to action: What Pa Chinsee did, you too can accomplish [emphasis in the original]. The world is still a place where determination, work and thrift can combine to push a man ahead, where a man can be the master and not the slave of his fate.117

This individualistic narrative of overcoming structural limitations was a point of inflected critique in Nettleford’s “National Identity” essay: The important thing about all this is that the black-skinned Jamaican senses that he must compete on the same ground as his brown, Chinese and white compatriots. In many a case he has to work twice as hard because of the handicap of being years at the base.

Psycologically [sic], he does not possess too strong a racial memory of great cultural achievements as these European, Chinese and Indian compatriots.118

Without accounting for the historical barriers that made this brand of individualized success accessible to the Chinese, Chinsee naturalized the “Chinese way” of ascending the socioeconomic ladder.

In addition to discussing the “bootstraps” ethic throughout the piece, Chinsee brags about Pa’s descendants, “business-men who rub shoulders with the descendants of the very planters for whom Pa Chinsee worked as an inden-

tured labourer.”119 Though she likens financially successful Jamaican-Chinese to white planters with intensions of inspiring others to follow in Pa’s footsteps, her logic is couched in the pro-capitalist, anti-black discourse that provided the basis for anti-imperialist platform of activists like Walter Rodney and Rex Nettleford. In colonial Trinidad, such Chinese tropes—“Chinese colonists”—are celebrated as “exemplary citizens. They are the most law abiding section of the community, without exception; frugal and painstaking in all their undertakings, they provide a worthy example to other colonists.”120 The Chinese gained immense privileges, such as middle-class employment, because they eased the transition from a racialized caste system to something that aspired to be “post”-colonial.

Instead of appearing as a threat to the status quo, the Chinese were identified as: . . . a peace-loving people, industrious and thrifty, living within their means and calmly exercising a stabilizing influence on those of us who care to learn from them. It is a great pity that a people who have integrated themselves so admirably into the Jamaican society should be singled out for abuse.121

Harkening back to the colonial image of the “industrious” Chinese indentured 119. Chinsee, “A Chinese in Jamaica,” 14.

120. Editorial, The Daily Chronicle, April 1, 1923, quoted in Walton Look Lai, The Chinese

117. Chinsee, “A Chinese in Jamaica,” 14.

in the West Indies, 268-69.

118. Nettleford, “National Identity,” 14.

121. “Unfortunate incidents,” Daily Gleaner.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 71

laborer, this letter to the editor draws on assimilationist discourses that once again called into question whether or not the Chinese were supportive of the status quo. Far from “unassimilable alien,” the Chinese were considered by some to be a “stabilizing influence” on the economy, and, by extension, on the new “corporate” national identity. Another Gleaner reader writes that the Chinese have “fully integrated” because they are “generous contributors to every money-raising effort for the support of deserving causes, all Jamaican” and “For many years now Jamaican Chinese have taken a lively interest in the political life of Jamaica and

disillusioned with a government that promised change and a general public that accepted the unchanged status quo, and inspired by the famous work of Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power (1967), Walter Rodney gave a series of lectures off-campus in the poorest sections of Kingston, inciting the “greatest upheaval in Jamaican society since independence in 1962.”124 In his speeches, consolidated into written prose in his 1969 book, The Groundings with My Brothers, Rodney sent the message to the masses that postcolonial society in the West Indies was rife with the same race and class disparities produced under the systems of slavery and

some few, a very active interest.”122 To be considered “integrated” as a racial minority in Jamaica—to be considered “Jamaican”—was intimately tied to a combined perceived and real position in the class hierarchy.

A year after the 1965 riot in Jamaica, the mainstream civil rights movement in the United States became the “black power” movement. This has been commonly attributed to a moment at the June 17 rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, when Trinidadian-American revolutionary activist Stokely Carmichael famously declared, “We have been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothing. What we gonna start saying now is BLACK POWER!”123 Similarly

colonialism: There is the mistaken belief that black people achieved power with independence, e.g. (Malaya, Jamaica, Kenya), but a black man ruling a dependent State within the imperialist system has no power. He is simply an agent of the whites in the metropolis, with an army and a police force designed to maintain the imperialist way of things in that particular colonial area.125

He echoed Garvey’s sentiment forty-two years earlier in a similar period of internationalizing black consciousness, waging similar charges against the 83 (1997): 433-34.

124. Ian Thomson, The Dead Yard: A Story of

122. Letter to the Editor, “Chinese fully inte-

Modern Jamaica (New York: Nation Books,

grated,” Daily Gleaner, September 16, 1965, 8.

2009), 97.

123. Charles J. Stewart, “The Evolution of a

125. Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My

Revolution: Stokely Carmichael and the Rheto-

Brothers, 4th ed. (London: Bogle-L’Ouverture

ric of Black Power,” Quarterly Journal of Speech

Publications Ltd., 1975), 18.

72 | UNFOUND

West Indian Chinese, who he claimed had become “bastions of the white West Indian social structure.”126 Unlike their radical counterparts in the People’s Republic of China, who were “fighting against white imperialism,” Rodney argued that the Chinese in the West Indies were “to be identified with Chiang-Kai-Shek and not Chairman Mao Tse-tung.”127 While he was not charging the Chinese for taking away domestic jobs in the name of a “Jamaica for Jamaicans,” Rodney was making an arguably even larger claim: that it was the Chinese who could be blamed for the continued oppression of black peoples in the Anglophone Caribbean.

Conclusion: Riot or Rebellion?

In his 1989 film, Do the Right Thing, American film director and writer, Spike Lee, tells the story of a Mookie (played

by Lee himself), a young black man working as a deliveryman at the local pizzeria in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The pizzeria is owned by Sal Fragione, an Italian American who employs his two sons, one of whom outwardly displays racist opinions towards black people. The film takes place over the course of one day—the hottest day of the year—and tensions rise along with the temperature. At the climax of the film, three main characters, Buggin’ Out, Radio Raheem, and Smiley, march into Sal’s Pizzeria at the end of the day, demanding he change the pictures on his “Wall of Fame,” which only featured 126. Ibid., 29.

127. Ibid.

famous Italian-Americans, despite the fact that almost all of Sal’s customers were black. Sal demands that Raheem turn his boombox down, he refuses, and Sal destroys the boombox with a baseball bat. Raheem attacks Sal, and the altercation spills out onto the street, attracting a massive crowd. The police arrive, arresting Buggin’ Out while Raheem is placed in a chokehold by one officer that kills him.

Furious onlookers destroy Sal’s restaurant and set it on fire. From there, the angry mob heads towards the only other local business, a Korean-owned grocery. In this famous ending scene, ML, one of the older main characters, leads the mob towards the grocery as he yells, “It’s your turn, sucka!” at Sonny, the owner of the shop who is defending his storefront by waving around a platform broom and yelling, “I no white! I no white! I no white!” ML stops, puzzled, “What?” he asks, “I’m black!” Sonny answers.

ML is startled by Sonny’s assertion that he is black, “No white!” and responds, “Where you black at?” “You, me—same! We same,” Sonny insists.

Coconut Sid gets ML to walk away from Sonny, “ML, leave the Korean alone, man. He’s alright.” In this profound moment of cross-racial solidarity, the fluidity of racial categories are portrayed in the face of police brutality and the rigid anti-blackness characteristic of contemporary, ‘multicultural’ American society. The trope of the “inassimilable” Asian shopkeeper loosens as two seemingly oppositional racialized others

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 73

confront the realities of a shared sense of racial oppression.128 Through the medium of film, Lee is able to demonstrate the context behind the motivations of his actors, who are predominately black, many of whom are unemployed or employed by folks who refuse to hang pictures of prominent African Americans on their “Wall of Fame.” The historical archive presents slightly fewer creative possibilities, but scholars across the disciplines are imagining new frameworks that bring “invisible” or “forgotten narratives” into public consciousness. Such is the case for scholarship on Chinese—and, by extension, Asians and other ethnic minorities—across Latin America and the Caribbean. Though the current scholarship portrays instances of “anti-Chinese” violence as the inevitable consequence of Chinese migration, I hope to have opened up the space for new understandings of these incidents.

According to Hu-DeHart, unlike “the deep-seated anti-black racism that ensued from centuries of African slavery,” anti-Chinese racism does not have “a deep historical basis for its development and nurture over time.”129 Though these two forms of systemic racism manifest differently, through a historical contextualization of “black-onChinese” violence, I have demonstrated how these two formations of systemic 128. Do the Right Thing, DVD, directed by Spike

racism can be contingent upon each other. The docile, industrious “coolie” was brought to the West Indian sugar plantation that could no longer turn a profit so long as the “lazy” African was working it, perpetuating an exploitative system that maintained a white-black cultural and economic hierarchy. In the 1920s and 1930s, nativist nationalism targeted the Chinese for “taking domestic jobs,” though the bigger picture showed that Afro-Jamaicans were frustrated with limited work opportunities at home and anti-black immigration restrictions cropping up across the circum-Carribean, limiting employment opportunities abroad. Citizenship was also at stake as the Jamaican colonial government put anti-Chinese immigration bans into effect in order to assuage the working-class, “Race First” collective identities that wanted a “Jamaica for Jamaicans!” In a feedback loop, Chinese were constructed as “alien” through the immigration laws, perpetuating an incipient nationalism that appeared to be fueled by anti-Chinese sentiment.

Upon constitutional independence in 1962, the Jamaican people expected a break from their colonial past—a “truly independent Jamaica”—but received a new flag accompanied by an empty national motto instead.130 At the same time, intellectuals and activists were cultivating black solidarity around the world, emphasizing the ways in which

Lee (1989; Universal City, CA: Universal City Studios, 2001).

130. Letter to the editor, “General feeling of

129. Hu-DeHart, “Indispensable Enemy or

frustration,” Daily Gleaner, September 4, 1965,

Convenient Scapegoat,” 98.

10.

74 | UNFOUND

the treatment of black people, from the United States to Jamaica, was rooted in anti-black pathologies inherited from plantation slavery and colonialism. The Chinese in Jamaica were held up, and sometimes held themselves up, as symbols of a break from this colonial past, as a central component of the “many” in Jamaica’s “One People.” Chinese were seen as financially successful by poorer Afro-Jamaicans, which was contingent upon selective colonial immigration criteria and the systematic disenfranchisement of Afro-Jamaicans.

Frustrated with an unchanged system, which was ushered in by the farce of creole multiracial nationalism, publicly manifested in the 1965 riot.

What is at stake in a continued characterization of this incident as a riot, and an “anti-Chinese” riot at that? As was clear during the 1938 labor riots, the lootings and damages to Chinese shops and violence directed towards Chinese people were not motivated by anti-Chinese sentiment, per se, but towards the entire racial and economic social structure in Jamaica. Additionally, in 1965, competing conceptions of what the newly independent nation could become—a non-racial, egalitarian society under creole multiracial nationalism or a “black” nation, that represented the interests of its majority Afro-descended population—brought ambivalent perceptions of Jamaican-Chineseness into public discourse.

Once again, Chinese bodies became the scapegoats for anticolonial frustrations.

The 1965 riot is better characterized as

a rebellion, albeit a small one, as Afro-Jamaicans rose up against their neocolonial oppressors in a moment when black people worldwide were raising up their fists in the name of Black Power. It is my hope that scholars continue to loosen their categorizations and caricaturizations of people of African descent and people of Asian descent, so ML-Sonny moments become the status quo—or, better yet, protected from systematic erasure.

Bibliography Chinsee, Helen. “A Chinese in Jamaica.” Jamaica Journal 2, no. 1 (1968): 10-14.

“John Chinaman.” Planter’s Punch 1, no. 4 (192324): 9-10.

Austin-Broos, Diane. “Jamaica, the Caribbean, Africa: Some Oppositions and Their Politics.” In The African-Caribbean Worldview and the Making of Caribbean Society, edited by Horace Levy, 10-25.

Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2009 Bonacich, Edna. “A Theory of Middleman Minorities.” American Sociological Review 38, no. 5 (1973): 583-94.

Bouknight-Davis, Gail. “Chinese Economic Development and Ethnic Identity Formation in Jamaica.”

In The Chinese in the Caribbean, edited by Andrew R. Wilson, 69-90. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004.

Carnegie, Charles V. “The Anthropology of Ourselves: An Interview with Sidney W. Mintz.” Small Axe 10, no. 1 (2006): 106-77.

Chamberlain, Mary. Empire and Nation-Building in the Caribbean. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2010.

Dunkley, D.A. “Hegemony in Post-Independence Jamaica.” Caribbean Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2011): 1-23.

Gray, Obika. Radicalism and Social Change in Jamaica, 1960-1972. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991.

Higman, B.W. “The Chinese in Trinidad, 1806-

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 75

1838.” Caribbean Studies 12, no. 3 (1972): 21-44.

Hintzen, Percy. “Afro-Creole Nationalism as Elite

tion: Chinese in Jamaica.” In The Chinese in the Caribbean, edited by Andrew R. Wilson, 41-68.

Domination,” in Foreign Policy and the Black (Inter)

Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004.

national Interest, edited by Charles P. Henry, 185-

Look Lai, Walton. The Chinese in the West Indies,

215. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000.

Hintzen, Percy. “Creoleness and nationalism in Guyanese anticolonialism and post-colonial formation.” Small Axe 8, no. 1 (2004): 106-22.

Holt, Thomas C. Foreword to Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, edited by Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, vii-xiv. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. “Indispensable Enemy or

1806-1995: A Documentary History. Kingston: The Press University of the West Indies, 1998.

Nettleford, Rex. Mirror, Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica. Kingston: LMH Publishing Limited, 1998.

Nettleford, Rex. “National Identity and Attitudes to Race in Jamaica.” Caribbean Contemporary Studies 1 (1965): 1-16.

Nettleford, Rex. Manley and the New Jamaica. New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1971.

Patterson, Orlando. “Context and Choice in Ethnic

Convenient Scapegoat? A Critical Examination of

Allegiance.” In Ethnicity: Theory and Experience,

Sinophobia in Latin America and the Caribbean,

edited by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan,

1870s to 1930s.” In The Chinese in Latin America

305-49. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

and the Caribbean, edited by Walton Look Lai and Tan Chee-beng, 65-102. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2010.

James, C.L.R. “The Middle Classes.” In Consequenc-

1975.

Paul, Annie. “No Space for Race? The Bleaching of the Nation in Postcolonial Jamaica.” In The African-Caribbean Worldview and the Making of

es of Class and Color: West Indian Perspectives,

Caribbean Society, edited by Horace Levy, 95-114.

edited by David Lowenthal and Lambros Comitas,

Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2009.

79-94. Garden City: Anchor Press, 1973.

Johnson, Howard. “The Anti-Chinese Riots of 1918 in Jamaica.” Caribbean Quarterly 28, no. 3 (1982): 19-32.

Jung, Moon-Ho. Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and

Persaud, Randolph B. Counter-Hegemony and Foreign Policy: The Dialectics of Marginalized and Global Forces in Jamaica. New York: State University of New York Press, 2001.

Prater, Tzarina T. “‘We are Jamaicans. We are

Sugar in the Age of Emancipation. Baltimore: Johns

Brothers’: History, Brotherhood, and Indepen-

Hopkins University Press, 2006.

dence in Kerry Young’s Pao.” Anthurium 11, no. 2

Lacey, Terry. Violence and Politics in Jamaica, 19601970. Totowa: Frank Cass and Company, Ltd., 1977.

Layton-Henry, Zig. “The New Commonwealth Migrants, 1945-62.” History Today. (December 1985).

Ledgister, F.S.J. Michael Manley and Jamaican Democracy, 1972-1980: The Word is Love. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014.

Lee-Loy, Anne-Marie. Searching for Mr. Chin:

(2014): 1-23.

Putnam, Laura. Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Rodney, Walter. The Groundings with My Broth-

ers, 4th ed. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications Ltd., 1975.

Smith, Evan and Marinella Marmo. Race, Gender and

Constructions of Nation and the Chinese in West

the Body in British Immigration Control: Subject to

Indian Literature. Philadelphia: Temple University

Examination. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Press, 2010.

Lee, Spike. Do the Right Thing. DVD. Directed by Spike Lee. 1989. Universal City: Universal City Studios, 2001.

Li, Anshan. “Survival, Adaptation, and Integra-

76 | UNFOUND

Stewart, Charles J. “The Evolution of a Revolution: Stokely Carmichael and the Rhetoric of Black Power.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 83 (1997): 429-46.

Stone, Carl. Class, Race and Political Behaviour in Urban

Jamaica. Kingston: University of the West Indies, Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1973.

Thomas, Deborah. Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2004.

Thomson, Ian. The Dead Yard: A Story of Modern Jamaica. New York: Nation Books, 2009.

Yelvington, Kevin. “The 1965 Anti-Chinese Riot in Jamaica.� Unpublished paper presented to the Latin American Studies Association XVIth International Congress, Washington, D.C., 1971

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 77

Modeling the American Way: Japanese American Baseball, American Global Anti-Communism, and Transnational Racialization in Occupied Japan Benjamin Swartz Hartmann, University of Minnesota ’17 Abstract Professional baseball, America’s pastime, during the period following the Second World War, told the story of new integration within the sport: Major League Baseball’s color-line was smashed with the inclusion of UCLA product Jackie Robinson in 1947. During this time, the historic career of Yankee great Joe DiMaggio, a second-generation Italian-American immigrant from the Bay Area, was also coming to its end. Missing from this narrative are the Japanese-American players, famous on the West Coast for the talented teams produced within their communities. At this time, Japanese-American players had much success playing in the professional leagues of Japan. This paper investigates the complex transformation of Japanese-American racialization and Japanese-American baseball as an agent of United States influence and partnership with Japan following the devastation of the war and the atomic bombs and explores the role of the great American pastime in both the domestic and the international arena.

Dubbed America’s pastime, baseball has been more explicitly associated with American ideals, patriotism, and identity than any other sport. Jacques Barzun wrote in 1954 that “whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and the realities of the game.”1 Race, ethnicity, and immigration have long occupied a central component of this rhetoric of Americanism and baseball. Though faced with different challenges, Joe DiMaggio—the son of Italian immigrants—and Jackie Robinson—the son of African American sharecroppers—both became part of baseball and part of the greater American consciousness and identity that the sport encapsulated. Both cases illustrate the power and importance of baseball, as well as sports more generally, as an arena or stage for ironing out American race and ethnic relations.

Eighteen years prior to Barzun’s keen observation, a 21-year-old made his debut with the iconic New York Yankees. A second-generation Italian immigrant born in San 1.Jacques Barzun. God’s Country and Mine; a Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954).

78 | UNFOUND

Francisco, California, Guiseppe Paolo DiMaggio would become known as the Yankee Clipper, Joltin’ Joe, an institution of the Yankees’ and baseball’s greatest in the outfield of Yankee Stadium. Joe DiMaggio’s rise to transcendent baseball stardom was interrupted from 1943-45 as he heroically served his country in the effort against the Axis of Evil.2 Twenty-one years after Joe DiMaggio’s debut, another ball player would lace up his cleats in New York, capturing the attention of baseball fans and the nation at large. Another Army veteran, the 28-year-old Jackie Robinson from Pasadena, California, would shatter the color barrier and become the first person of color to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in Major League Baseball.3 Robinson was more than a ball player, and his experiences—widely followed, ruthlessly criticized, and closely covered—were intertwined with the challenges, changes, and contentious nature of race relations in the United States following the Second World War. Robinson’s inclusion and integration into the nation’s beloved pastime was by no means smooth or transformative for American society as a whole. His inclusion and success in professional baseball, restricted and difficult though it may have been, represented a turning point in America’s racial inclusivity and 2. “Joe DiMaggio Statistics and History” Baseball-Reference.com. 2016. (Accessed April 12).

3. Russ Crawford, The Use of Sports to Promote

discourse during the age of Cold War politics. Moreover, it contributed to the growing national conversation about race and racial attitudes in the United States. This paper, however, tells a story that is less known than those of DiMaggio and Robinson and complicates even further our understanding of the relationships among baseball, race, social incorporation, and American Cold War political ventures: that of Japanese American baseball players.

Contemporary to Robinson and Dimaggio, this group of ball players was demonstrating its talent, quality, and ability on the diamond. These men too were sons of immigrants and living in racialized bodies but remained excluded from participation in the highest levels of the American pastime. Baseball was not absent in Japanese American communities; moreover, baseball was a significant part of the ethnic collective activity. Japanese American baseball players, though skilled and from the same region of the country as DiMaggio and Robinson, were never granted access to Major League Baseball during this era. Though some had received limited interest from professional and minor league teams, it was not until 1975 that Japanese American Ryan Kurosaki made it to “the show” with the Saint Louis Cardinals.4 How and where, then, did Japanese American baseball players compete in professional baseball during this era?

the American Way of Life During the Cold War: Cultural Propaganda, 1945-1963 (Lampeter:

4. Kerry Yo Nakagawa, Japanese American

The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009), 195-244.

The History Press, 2014), 212.

Baseball in California: A History (Charleston:

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 79

In 1951, during the US occupation of Japan following World War II, Japanese American military man Cappy Harada and Japanese clubs recruited Wally Yonamine along with several other star Japanese American players to travel across the Pacific Ocean to play baseball and raise the morale of the war-torn nation. In Japan, these men would go on to succeed on the field—winning batting titles and championships—and be credited with recreating Japanese baseball in a more professional, passionate, and Americanized style.5 Their recruitment, however, did not come without United States involvement. US Occupation military officials served

story in its appropriate historical context. First, I will provide a brief discussion of the rise of anti-Asian sentiment through exclusionary immigration movements and legislation starting in the 1850s and cumulating in 1924 with the Immigration and Naturalization Act. The second section will examine the Japanese American racial position and anti-Japanese American hostility in the United States during the Second World War. The third section will give an overview of the struggle for global dominance and existential superiority between the United States and the Soviet Union following WWII and the role of the athlete on the ideological

as the original architects and recruiters of this transpacific connection meant to strengthen Japanese baseball leagues and engineer higher morale in the Japanese public following the war.

American Cold War foreign policy and involvement in Asia, in its campaign to minimize Soviet influence, resulted in a re-imagination of the Japanese citizen, aligning with the American Occupiers’ ideals of what it meant to be a democratic citizen in a capitalist society in a body perceived as Asian.

Though DiMaggio and Robinson were given access to the professional league, Japanese Americans were left on the sidelines. This study will investigate the role and consequences of Japanese American participation in professional baseball in both the United States and Japan following the Second World War until 1960. It is important to place this

battlegrounds of the Cold War. It is only in placing the long and colorful history of Japanese American baseball in the aforementioned contexts that the full significance of this story can be fully understood.

Locating and understanding the role of Japanese Americans in the professional enterprise of the sport in this era is a complicated endeavor, involving analysis of both domestic and foreign involvement. Japanese American involvement in professional baseball following World War II represented the complex identity and positionality of Japanese Americans at that time. Japanese American professional baseball players played a critical role in representing persons of Japanese descent in the United States as both assimilable and Americanized, while also erasing the ethnic-specific anxieties of Japanese Americans as traitors,

5. Ibid., 92-98.

80 | UNFOUND

dangerous threats, and Japanese soldiers-in-waiting - thus, always outside of mainstream American culture and the American way of life. Furthermore, Japanese American professional baseball players were an instrumental part of postwar relations between the United States and Japan. Baseball worked to create, restructure, and maintain a close relationship between the countries.

This relationship benefited the United States’ foreign policy endeavors to combat Soviet influence in Asia during the Cold War era by strengthening the partnership and transmitting ideals for the Japanese citizen through the sport.

Japanese American baseball players

impacted the venture of playing baseball in Japan. In the 1850s, an unprecedented wave of Chinese migrant workers descended onto the United States, resulting in a social and political struggle to deny the inclusion of persons of Asian descent into the American system and citizenship by, ironically, frequently claiming of a racial incapability of assimilation.6 In 1882, a ten-year federal ban on Chinese immigration was passed, due in large part to anti-Chinese leagues and efforts of White labor unions on the West Coast.7 This ban would be renewed every ten years until made permanent in 1902.

Japanese migrants began replacing Chi-

thus occupied a space of both Japanese and American, modeling to their new teammates and fans the qualities and ethnics needed in order to succeed in the sport and partake in the post-war American-influenced democratic capitalist system. The Japanese Americans’ position as both outside the mainstream American baseball cultural framework and as important communicators of Americanism through the sport at certain moments and in particular spaces, further articulates and illustrates the fluidity of racialization and rejects the omnipresence of race itself.

nese workers, and they faced increased pushback on their presence.8 Theodore Roosevelt brokered the “Gentleman’s Agreement” between the Japanese and United States governments in 1908, in which the nations agreed against blatant exclusion and instead decided that Japan would issue visas to travel to the United States under the agreed terms. In 1924, however, the United States passed a full ban on immigration from Asia, with the exception of the Philippines. Stateside, anti-Asian legal measures were pursued. In California, where most Japanese Americans lived, a 1913 law deemed that all “aliens ineligible for citizenship” were prohibited

Rising Fear of the “Yellow Peril” to War-Time Incarceration It is essential to detail the historic anti-Asian precedent that began in the 19th century to fully capture and analyze how Japanese/Asian American racialization was constructed and

6. Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 59-88.

7. Though this law allowed a few persons to enter the country if they met established criteria of income and status.

8. Ibid.. 89-108.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 81

from owning land and could only lease land up to three years.9 This law explicitly targeted persons of Asian descent, as they were the only individuals who matched this new category. Within ten years, similar laws mushroomed in Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Oregon, and Idaho, stripping Japanese immigrants, Issei, access to land ownership. Their second-generation children, Nisei, were legally citizens under the birth right citizenship clause in the 14th amendment, which was upheld by the Supreme Court for persons of Asian descent in the case of a second-generation Chinese American Wong Kim Ark v. United States in 1898.10 It was

only to prove that Japanese Americans were hiding the true evidence that they were all secret agents for the Japanese government from the War Relocation Authority (WRA).11 Because of racial discrimination, Japanese Americans lived and worked in particular sectors and were segregated in social and cultural locations, forced to form tight ethnic communities. These conditions ironically and unfortunately only enhanced resentment against and distrust of Japanese Americans. After the attack, calls for investigation and removal intensified, leaving Japanese Americans in a state of fear and uncertainty about their fate.12

this climate of anti-Asian sentiment that surrounded the systematic social and legal exclusion and discrimination of Asian and Japanese persons , which manifested in the wartime distrust and incarceration of the Japanese American people Prior to the attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, distrust and suspicion surrounding the Japanese American community thrived. The FBI itself had conducted an investigation into Japanese Americans. Although they found no threat or physical evidence of dangerous activity or espionage, this was, in an exercise of tortured logic, used as evidence in itself on the grounds that the Japanese race was too sneaky and smart to be caught. In other words, a lack of evidence served

On February 19, 1942, in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack and the United States’ declaration of war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order giving the military authority to bar individuals from particular areas as they saw fit for national security.13 Of the 120,000 persons of Japanese descent living on the West Coast, about two-thirds of whom were United States citizens, were forcibly relocated, first to assembly centers and then to concentration camps set in 11. Scott Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of

Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Low Angeles (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 115-121.

12. Erika Lee, Making of Asian America, 109136. Jere Takahashi, Nisei/Sansei: Shifting

Japanese American Identities and Politics 9. Ibid., 109-136.

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997),

10. Ibid., 109-136.

85-112.

Ibid., 84.

82 | UNFOUND

13. Erika Lee, Making, 211-228.

remote locations throughout the nation, mostly in deserts.14 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in these camps throughout the war, with some being able to leave camp to move to Midwest or to the East Coast or to fight within racial segregated combat units.15 Without trial and presumed guilty only because of their race, Japanese Americans were dispossessed and displaced from their homes with no evidence of a single individual participating in espionage.16 Out of the xenophobic suspicion and imprisonment the Nikkei, people of Japanese ancestry outside of Japan, emerged from the traumatic experience of wartime, wrongful incarceration. Not

imprisoned in camps were never connected to any wrongdoing, Japanese Americans continued to face discrimination after leaving camp and reentering American society. From 1944 to 1948 around 80 cases of escheat were brought forward in California against Issei (claiming that property of persons who died during the war years now belonged to the state), resulting in an approximately a quarter of a million dollars in loses, while the Evacuee Claims Law “made it virtually impossible for them to reclaim fully their property losses,” further demonstrating the hardships Japanese Americans faced upon reentry.18 Japanese Americans

so much angry, Japanese Americans were more determined than ever to prove their patriotism and commitment to—though skeptical, weary and fearful of—the country. This commitment to state actions served as a representation of their patriotism, consistent with the Japanese American Citizenship League’s (JACL) official stance and the general sentiment of the Japanese American community in regards to incarceration. Though the government’s use of concentration camps was wrong and unneeded, it was important to be as obedient as possible, in an effort to show loyalty and serve the United States in its war effort.17 Though the war was over by 1945 and those who had been

were not released into a society ready to embrace and accept them; rather, they faced resentment over the war and a lingering racism fueled by postwar xenophobia.

The sociologist Takahashi describes two strategies utilized by Japanese Americans to combat racial prejudice: first, legal intervention and lobbying, and second, what he calls “making do.”19 Under the leadership of the JACL, Japanese Americans’ direct political action came in the form of strategic moves. A noteworthy example of this work is the statement JACL president Mike Masaoka would make while testifying before a Congressional hearing regarding immigration reforms in 1951.

Prior to the passing of Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, or the McCarran-Walter Act, it was illegal for per-

14. Ibid., 211-228.

15. Ibid., 211-228.

16. Scott Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of

Race, 164-169.

18. Ibid., 114.

17. Jere Takahashi, Nisei/Sansei, 85-112.

19. Ibid., 113-131.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 83

sons from Japan to immigrate to the United States, as they were classified “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” or were legally barred from the naturalization process.20 Masaoka argued, “As an American, and not as a person of Japanese ancestry but as an American, I think as Congressman Judd pointed out, the passage of this kind of legislation would dramatically emphasize our position of friendship and good will to these peoples . . . in our fight against communism.”21 Masaoka used his access to the law making process to assert his Americanism and his commitment to the American mission against Communism, strongly identifying himself

waves. By going about their everyday lives Japanese Americans hoped that they could portray themselves as American enough for acceptance by the state and the greater society. This approach limited the active involvement of Japanese Americans in making the context and systems of their existences better, creating a space for sympathetic White liberals to push for greater opportunities for Japanese Americans. In 1945, WRA Director penned a letter in the Resettlement Bulletin, a publication distributed to those working to resettle Japanese Americans. Titled Towards the True Meaning of Democracy, Myer’s work voices the “need for providing

and other Japanese Americans as firmly American.

Japanese American issues were not presented as specific to them and their racial experience, but rather in a broader nonracial context. Regular Japanese Americans tried to “make do” or as Thelma Thurston Gorham wrote for the NAACP’s publication The Crisis in 1945, “Japanese Americans tread carefully and diplomatically; and they live by an age-old adage, ‘don’t curse the dark, light a candle!’”22 Because of fear of discrimination, oppression, and violence from both racist citizens and a state that had just imprisoned them, Japanese Americans focused on reconstructing their lives instead of making

a means of compensation for real and personal property losses directly resulting from evacuation” and to address “racial discrimination in our naturalization laws.”23 Although Japanese Americans “making do” did not result in direct conflict that could have led to racially charged backlash and discrimination, the Japanese American inclusion and movement of towards equal rights was ultimately controlled, discussed, and enacted by White individuals, commonly the same ones who had incarcerated them and not Japanese Americans.

Instead of challenging the institutions and actively fighting for equality and greater opportunity, Japanese Americans were able to return to some normalcy as they stayed quiet, negative sentiments against Japanese Americans

20. Erika Lee, Making, 211-228.

21. Jere Takahashi, Nisei/Sansei, 128.

22. Thelma Thurston Gorham., “Negroes and

23. Dillon S. Myer, “Towards the True Meaning

Japanese Evacuees,” The Crisis, November

of Democracy,” Resettlement Bulletin, April

1945, 331.

1946.

84 | UNFOUND

began to decline, and the US occupied a newfound ally, Japan.

Cold War, American Race Relations, and Sport At the same time on the global platform, Soviet Union and world-wide communist movements pointed to racial discrimination and injustice in the United States. In order to legitimize communism and attack the power of the United States and capitalist world, they declared the United States hypocrites and racism a natural byproduct of democracy and capitalism. The Soviet Union’s declaration hurt the American effort to promote itself as a leader in global justice. In response, and to keep communism at bay in Asia, the United States pushed to address racial discrimination to enhance its global position and agenda.24 In order to accomplish this, the state held up stories of successful Asian Americans and other persons of color as examples of democracy at work, using the discourse of what would become scrutinized and critiqued, with the rise of Asian American studies and racial justices moments in the 1960s, as the model minority myth.25 These stories portrayed individuals overcom24. Robert Lee, “The Cold War Construction of the Model Minority Myth,” In Contemporary Asian America: A multidisciplinary Reader, Second Edition, ed. Min Zhou and J.V. Gatewood. (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 469484.

ing struggles and discriminations that they faced as individuals and refrained from implicating systemic issues. This narrative did not match the real experience of Japanese or Asian Americans, as dictated by Kurashige.26 The use of Asian Americans in this endeavor was threefold: to communicate to Asian nations the successes of persons perceived to be like them, to promote the merits of the democratic and capitalist systems more generally, and to define citizenship. Critical in this effort was the assertion that racial discrimination and oppression was overcome by the individual, through effort and hardwork within the established system; policy or structural transformation were irrelevant.27 Japanese Americans thus faced continued discrimination and distrust connected to their ancestry, even as the discourse of the model minority began to take hold and to be perpetuated by the state and its members. This created the context where Japanese Americans were not accepted into Major League Baseball at home but were able to play baseball and promote democracy, capitalism, and the American Way of Life in Japan following the Second World War. Cheng writes explicitly about how the US used Asian American athletes in their state making to strengthen their global influence while profiting from the model minority discourse.

After Korean American and military doctor Sammy Lee won his gold med-

25. Scott Kurashige, Shifting, 186-204. Robert Lee, “The Cold War Construction of the Model

26. Scott Kurashige, Shifting, 186-204.

Minority Myth,” 469-484.

27. Ibid., 186-204.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 85

al in diving during the 1948 Olympics in London, he was sent around Asia, where he performed diving routines and spoke to crowds about the greatness of America and its progress in race relations. Though Lee himself was not sold on the message or its reality, he carried out the state’s mission. Cheng shapes this in the language of “Asian American firsts,” and how “firsts” were showcased by the state and media as stories of how Asian Americans overcame discrimination, further laying the groundwork and perpetuating the model minority myth.28 In other arenas, sports were already being used to reshape the nation. There

opportunities earned by Black athletes in professional baseball, as well as other levels of sports and leagues—especially basketball—were created by Soviet anti-American propaganda demonizing the nation for its treatment of a particular subgroup of the population for simple racial characteristics.30 The success and coverage of the Black athlete both forced change in national perspectives towards race and reflected a new era of American race relations, which Crawford suggests accelerated inclusion at a faster rate than in the nonsporting arena.

Moreover, the male athlete became a powerful image of the strong American

is a long history of talented Black baseball players and lore surrounding the Negro Leagues, but it was only when Jackie Robinson played for the Dodgers in 1947 that the highest levels of modern baseball were integrated. During this time, Black individuals were able to enter into America’s pastime, previously barred by race, through much struggle, conflict, and turmoil.29 Crawford argues that the acceptance of the Black athlete showed a symbolic shift towards integration and transforming the climate of race relations as African American athletes were allowed to engage in the American way of life as never before. He asserts that the new

citizen in the Cold War era. Countering the Soviet’s communist doctrine was what Crawford refers to as the “American Way of Life,” the athlete representing the ideals of self-determination, hard work, and individualism.

These men were used to champion such images as the antithesis to the communist model. Though not with the same numbers and access as Whites, Black baseball players’ engagement in baseball allowed them to partake in the portraying and celebration of both masculinity and the American Way of Life, but not without both real and threatened conflict and violence. Because of their outsider status in the sport and without an opportunity for forced integration, Japanese Americans were never representative of the national citizen, at least domestically, and continued to have outsider societal status to the nation as

28. Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Citizens of Asian

America (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 85-95.

29. Russ Crawford, The Use of Sports to Promote

the American Way of Life During the Cold War, 195-244.

86 | UNFOUND

30. Ibid., 197-200.

a whole.

While Japanese Americans were beginning to be reintegrated back into their lives after a half decade of racial judgment and punishment, Blacks did not see the same increase in opportunity in their lives, particularly after having made some “gains” during the war years.31 In fact, a critical part of the Black experience was facing increased calls for segregation and intensity of Jim Crow policies, which would have lasting impact on Blacks and their ability to accumulate wealth.32 Japanese Americans and Blacks thus have divergent paths of integration and exclusion from the American way of life in its broadest societal sense. This is important because even though the integration of the Black athlete became more prominent after 1945 and into the 1950s, it was not representative of the domestic reality of the lives of the population as a whole. This stands in contrast to the portrayals and language used by the state and media about Japanese American athletes on national and international race making. It was within this context—post-war re-entrance after race-based incarceration, the complex process that was Cold war race relations and foreign diplomacy, and the beginning of baseball’s integration— that these Japanese Americans would travel across a sea to a place they had never been in order to participate in the American pastime.

An Enduring Companion: America’s Pastime and Japanese America Baseball serves as an important symbol of Americanism and was used to mobilize Americanization, anti-communism, and other ideologies. Evidence of this can be seen through the “Ball Play” campaign by The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues.

Launched in 1955, the campaign attempted to form a national holiday or celebration surrounding baseball. Organizers unleashed massive advertising and state sponsorship. Forty governors had declared their intentions to issue their states’ participation in the holiday, according to a letter written to all participating organizations, which included amateur and professional groups, showing a general consensus that such an event would be good for the nation. This letter laid out future steps organizers should take to promote the celebration, such as landing an advertising “spot” on the Ed Sullivan show on March 20, 1955, called “Toast of the Town” (though the spot was lately changed to April 10th).33 The following year, the association issued a statement of the day’s success, which included “18 cooperating amateur organizations and [ . . . ] the professional clubs throughout the nation,” as well as a push to create an entire week of baseball from April 7-14, 1956.34 Bob Finch, in charge of 33. Bob Finch, “Just Before the Battle, Mother,” 1955, Box 38, Folder National Athletic Association, Social Welfare Archives, University

31. Scott Kurashige, Shifting, 13-35.

of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

32. Ibid., 13-35.

34. “A Statement of the Plans, Purposes, and

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 87

promotions, used the slogan, “the game is worthy of the best, we can give it,” at the end of the promotional material he sent out to media sources. Though not explicit in its intended goals from the day, Finch’s message alludes to patriotic and emotional conditions of the media sources, implying both that there is something inherently great about baseball and deeply connected with America’s own uniqueness and singular greatness.35 How sports of the era were intended to impact citizens becomes evident when unpacking promotional materials of the National Sports Festival. The festival was promoted with the idea that

civic influence and transmission of the American way of life. Because of the symbolism surrounding the sport, the common agreement of its promotion and portrayal of American values and their success therein, baseball carried great potential for Japanese Americans to gain access into the American mainstream via baseball. Looking further at the history of Japanese American baseball, however, the sport served as a critical role in ethnic formation and solidarity, rather than assimilation into the mainstream.

Baseball was not only a deeply American activity but also had long been a Japanese American one. Jap-

sports would create physically healthy, active, and strong citizens, vital to the nation in its combat with the Soviet Union and communism throughout the world. The Festival also sought to promote “attitudes of civic pride.”36 Sports were seen as a way of creating the bodies and civic ideals of a proper postwar American citizen and consumer. Baseball, and sports more generally, were thus celebrated for their power of

er,” 1955, Box 38, Folder National Athletic

anese Americans participated in and consumed their ethnically segregated league, by playing games behind the barbed wires of the concentration camps with intensity and fanatic passion.37 Baseball was an important element of community life for Japanese Americans, as evinced by the numerous Japanese American leagues and segregated teams along the West Coast that had been around since the early 1900s.38 Japanese American teams would frequently play tournaments against Black and White teams prior to the war with large success, including exhibitions with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in 1927, as the two Yankee greats toured the West Coast.39 Baseball and Japanese America

Association, Social Welfare Archives, University

37. Kerry Yo Nakagawa, California, 92-98.

Objectives of the Promotion of National Baseball Week- April 7-14, 1956,” Box 38, Folder National Athletic Association, Social Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

35. Bob Finch, “Just Before the Battle, Moth-

of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

38. Samuel Regalado, Nikkei Baseball: Japa-

1954, Box 39, Folder National Athletic Asso-

nese American Players from Immigration and Internment to the Majors League (Champagne:

ciation, Social Welfare Archives, University of

University of Illinois Press, 2012), 115-116.

Minnesota, Minneapolis.

39. Ibid., 92-98.

36. “Fact Sheet: 1954 National Sports Festival,”

88 | UNFOUND

were deeply intertwined – a relationship that can be traced back to the first mass arrivals of Japanese immigrants.

Japanese American baseball developed into ethnic competitions and recreation, serving as a form of Japanese American community building, rather than a presentation of assimilation to a greater American audience. Japanese American baseball was greatly shaped and influenced by Issei, first-generation immigrants from Japan, who migrated with knowledge of the game. Civil War veteran Horace E. Wilson crossed the Pacific with a bat and ball in his suitcase to help create an all-boys academy in Japan in 1871. Wilson was under

in Hawaii, who simply played baseball in the free time they had.41 Unlike other immigrant groups, the Issei, upon their arrival, did not have to learn the rules or to develop a love for the game. They arrived already knowing the game. In Nakagawa’s discussion of baseball and the Issei, “baseball provided admission to the mainstream in America, even if it was only for a few hours on the ball fields.”42 However, baseball functioned as a critical form of group leisure and recreational activity for Japanese American men (as well as women who were both present and well-represented in Japanese American baseball leagues for women).43 Though it was part of the

contract with the Japanese government as an advisor to the creation of a new, “modern” Japanese education system during the Meiji restoration. Wilson brought baseball to Japan as a tool to teach the values the Japanese government wanted to promote, as well as to teach the enjoyable and recreational qualities of the game. Baseball quickly grew in popularity and was played in school clubs by boys across the nation.40 The Issei did not pick up baseball to promote ideas of assimilation, but arrived having already played it, a game that they had already come to love. Some of the original ethnically segregated teams that the Issei played on were made up of young field workers

mainstream, Japanese Americans’ engagement with the sport was impacted and molded by their race, rather than inclusion into the mainstream. From the early years of Japanese immigration into the United States, persons of Japanese descent first used baseball for their intragroup recreation and solidarity and not for purposes of group assimilation or Americanization.

The prominence of baseball in the Japanese American community would only grow in the American context, becoming an intergenerational affair.

Nisei Sayo Kubo recounted: “My mom and dad would say tomorrow is BBC [Baseball Crazy] Day, and I would be so excited.”44 These days were usually Sundays. Many Japanese Americans

40. Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, Transpacific Field

of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War (Chapel Hill:

41. Kerry Yo Nakawaga, California, 17-19.

The University of North Carolina Press, 2012),

43. Ibid., 80-84.

13-19.

44. Ibid., 49.

42. Ibid., 39.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 89

would tell Nakagawa that “church and ballpark” was where they would spend their Sundays, often one of the few days off from work.45 Baseball served as a large community gathering, interwoven into community life similar to their religious beliefs and practices. The “golden years” of Japanese American baseball, as Nakagawa referred to them in his book, were the 1920s and 1930s.

The success of these leagues, however, was not connected with the power of redefining race position for Japanese American; rather, it was about the quality and popularity of the baseball played in these leagues.

Japanese American teams would also

ball. The “golden years” of Japanese American baseball paralleled the rise of the fear of the Yellow Peril, which eventually led to the exclusion of Asian immigrants in 1924 and the racist discrimination and restrictions of Japanese Americans that forced them into certain occupations and locations (like strawberry picking, which disallowed some Japanese Americans from playing in White leagues, as the seasons overlapped)—this all less than two decades before the nation would decide that Japanese Americans were too dangerous to live on the West Coast simply because of their race.48 Michael L. Mullan argues that group pride and gaining respect

go out and play non-Japanese American squads, though frequently these teams were also segregated. Star pitcher for the Wapato Nisei baseball team Harry Honda remembered a game in Roslyn, Washington, during the 1936 season, “where they’d never seen a Nisei.”

Honda recounts that after a crowded and hard played game they were invited back.46 Honda would relate this to the fact that “through sports, you can get rid of a lot of discrimination,” but would continue to say “sometimes the fields weren’t always level.”47 Japanese Americans were able to create bridges between themselves and other racialized groups through baseball prior to World War II. There were limits to the successes of Japanese Americans through base-

from Whites motivated the interest for a large number of Japanese Americans; however, this analysis misses the important collective experience that Japanese Americans were able to gain through the sport, distancing themselves from the realities of intensifying racial prejudice and their everyday lives.49 Thus, while gaining limited White respect in regard to their abilities in the sport itself, baseball before the war served as a space for Japanese Americans to enjoy collective leisure, solidarity, pride, and identity in the face of racial prejudice and oppression.

Despite the powerful symbolic connection between baseball and Americanism, Japanese American baseball 48. Ibid., 61.

49. Michael Mullan, “Ethnicity and Sport:

45. Ibid., 59.

The Wapato Nippons and Pre-World War II

46. Ibid., 70.

Japanese American Baseball,” Journal of Sport

47. Ibid., 70.

History 2, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 83.

90 | UNFOUND

could not overcome racial discrimination that resulted in wartime incarceration. Wartime confinement in the camps only intensified the consumption of and participation in the sport.

Baseball served as a venue for Japanese Americans to foster community and provide recreation, while also unintendedly challenging the position of Japanese Americans as outsiders and dangerous to American society. Baseball teams and leagues were quickly set up in the camps after 120,000 Japanese Americans were expelled from the West Coast. Diamonds and backstops were even set up at the temporary Assembly Centers, while the WRA set up perma-

three ladies sewed them on for us, and they looked real professional.”53 Future actor Pat Morita reminisced the in early 2000s about how “teenagers and adults would gather every night to watch the games” at Gila River where Kenichi Zenimura, regarded as one of the fathers of Japanese American baseball and prominent player/coach from the Fresno area, had worked for countless hours to create a professional quality field.54 The award-winning children’s book by Ken Mochizuki tells the tale of a young boy’s camp experience, based mainly on his father’s stories.55 The powerfully titled Baseball Saved Us captures how baseball provided recreation, structure,

nent camps.50 Nisei George Omachi recalled that “without baseball, camp life would have been miserable. There was no torture or anything like that, but it was humiliating and demeaning being incarcerated in your own country.”51 The incarcerated worked hard to recreate baseball within the camps. All ten camps built fields, leagues, and teams, with the same level of professionalism as on the outside.52 At Topaz in Utah, they used the canvas-covered ticking from the mattresses that were given to them by the government in order to make their jerseys. Hugo Nishimoto, who managed the Tule Lake 1943 championship team, remembered how they “ordered jerseys from Sears-Roebuck . . . the pants were potato sacks that came from the farm . . . two or

and leisure to Japanese American boys who were incarcerated but also created a larger sense of community.56 Unjustly imprisoned for their race, Japanese Americans were able to feel some sense of normalcy and happiness through the sport. In 2014, Michael Beschloss wrote an article in the New York Times which quoted a former prison of the American concentration camps who had said that playing baseball was like “wearing the American flag” for those who were interned.57 However, this fails to see baseball in the camps for its most powerful function. Japanese Americans 53. Ibid., 110.

54. Ibid., 118.

55. Ken Mochizuki. Baseball Saved Us (New York City: Lee & Low, 1993).

56. Ibid.

57. Michael Beschloss. “For Incarcerated Jap-

50. Kerry Yo Nakagawa, California, 104.

anese-Americans, Baseball was ‘Wearing the

51. Ibid., 108.

American Flag’.” The New York Times, June 20,

52. Ibid., 108-118.

2014, D1.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 91

did not participate in baseball while in camps to affirm their Americanism.

Instead, baseball was used to gain normalcy and promote positive emotions during a tragic time and to recreate the Japanese American community that had been built around the game before the war.

Historian Samuel O. Regalado writes that the post-war era “was a first in their world, for the Japanese in America had played continual ball since 1905 . . . however, throughout much of 1945 and into 1946, evacuees concerned themselves with the transition from camp to home.”58 Though baseball would return into the 1950s and beyond, this was a

anese American baseball was able to reenter into the same position it had prior to the war: namely, able to help break down feelings of suspicion with their positive performances, though still not able to obtain acceptance into mainstream baseball. Fibber Hirayama played for an all-White high school baseball team in Exeter, California.62 In an interview in 2013, he discussed how he was treated. Though other schools would mock and harass him for his Japanese American identity, his team and the town were firmly on his side, something that Hirayama was grateful for decades later. His story is a telling example for how baseball interacted

strained period for Japanese American baseball leagues and community.59 The ethnic-specific teams and leagues were unable to recreate their prewar form, as many Japanese Americans were preoccupied with the hardships created by their incarceration and the population more dispersed across than prior to the war, but Japanese Americans were still playing ball. Kenichi Zenimura quickly reestablished his team after the camps and joined the field with collegiate and Negro League clubs.60 Several Nisei were able to play collegiately, like Fibber Hirayama and Zenimura’s sons at Frenso State University.61 Jap-

with American race relations of the era. Open discrimination was met with pushback in Hirayama’s personal defense. He was embraced as a ball player and a person, but his discrimination and harassment was not seen within a larger system of systemic oppressions.63 For Hirayama, and those like him, his presence in baseball was able to help ease ethno-racial tension for individuals, but it was not able to combat it at a systemic level. The intense hostility was taken out, but the underlying marginalization was never addressed. Baseball allowed a platform that eased tension and allowed

58. Samuel Regalado. Nikkei Baseball: Japa-

“Fresno State Tops Honolulu Stars.” Los Ange-

nese American Players from Immigration and Internment to the Majors League, 115-116

Nakawaga, California, 134-141. United Press.

59. Ibid., 115-120.

les Times, October 6, 1946, A6.

62. Robert Fitts. Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game (Carbondale:

60. Ibid., 118.

Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 59.

61. No Author. “Five Former Bulldogs Head

Interview of Fibber Hirayama.

For Pro Camps.” The Daily Collegian: Fresno

63. Interview: Fibber Hirayama 2013. By iBase-

State University, January 18, 1955, 3. Kerry Yo

ballChannel. https://vimeo.com/42582246

92 | UNFOUND

exchange but was neither able to transform American race relations nor able to move Japanese Americans out of their prewar marginal status.

Why is it that no Japanese American baseball player made it to the big leagues in this era, though there was such a rich history of Japanese American baseball? It was not until the end of the 1950s that Major League Baseball expanded west of the Mississippi river, when the Dodgers and the Giants moved to California.64 The majority of Japanese Americans and Japanese American baseball players lived on the West Coast; however, this is not a simple answer for why no Japanese Ameri-

a lack of talent or western geographic location but by racial antipathy and club hesitance. In 1932, a high school championship game in California saw a matchup between Hoover High School and Santa Maria, pitting Ted Williams and pitcher Lester Webber, who would both go on to play professional ball, against each other. Scouts witnessed Webber fan Williams three times that day, but they would also see the Nisei freshman shortstop George Aratani.

Aratani would hit .500 on the season and earn high praise from Yankee’s scout Joe Devine. Though he was invited with Webber to work out with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was never able

can ever made it to the big leagues. As stated before, Joe DiMaggio and Jackie Robinson, as well as Ted Williams, were from the same areas of California as the great Japanese American players of the time.65 A few Nisei, like Henry Honda and George Aratani, got looks from scouts, but no Japanese American made it to the show.66 This was not caused by

to make it to the show, unlike the other two.67 Henry Honda was signed by the Cleveland Indians in 1941 from the San Jose Asahi, but the contract was voided after the attacks on December 7th, 1941.

After the war, Honda decided to leave baseball and settle down with his longtime girlfriend.68 Several players after the war also piqued the interest of some big league clubs. Jiro Nakamura and Hank Matsubu formed the first all-Nisei battery, pitching and catching respectively, in minor league baseball playing for the Modesto Reds, a farm team of the Pittsburgh Pirates, though neither would move beyond the Reds.69 Wally Yonamine, a Nisei from Hawaii, after playing a season in the NFL with the

64. Kerry Yo Nakagawa, California, 62.

65. “Joe DiMaggio Statistics and History | Baseball-Reference.com.” Baseball-Reference. com. 2016. http://www.baseball-reference. com/players/d/dimagjo01.shtml. (Accessed April 12). “Jackie Robinson Statistics and History | Baseball-Reference.com.” Baseball-Reference.com. 2016. http://www. baseball-reference.com/players/d/robinjan02. shtml. (Accessed April 12). “Ted Williams Statistics and History | Baseball-Reference.com.”

Baseball-Reference.com. 2016. http://www.

Ibid., 136.

baseball-reference.com/players/d/willite01.

67. Ibid., 78-80.

shtml. (Accessed April 12).

68. Ibid., 136.

66. Kerry Yo Nakawaga. California, 78-80.

69. Ibid., 155.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 93

49ers, signed to play with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League coached by former major league pitcher Lefty O’Doul in 1950.70 He spent his time with their affiliate club in Salt Lake City, until O’Doul told him about an opportunity to play in Japan. Yonamine decided that “if [he] stay[ed] in the States, the best [he] could do was AAA ball . . . [and he] just would have been wasting [his] time.”71 In 1952, Satoshi “Fibber” Hirayama was offered a minor league deal by the Saint Louis Browns after three years of being a two-sport star at Fresno State in football and baseball, but the following year he went into the service.72 While stationed

nese American players saw the only real opportunity and success in the sport if they traveled internationally. However, their lack of inclusion in elite level of America’s pastime limited the impact that such integration could have for transforming the position or perception of Japanese Americans. Clubs hesitated to give Japanese American players an opportunity during and following the period of intense racial hostility that occurred surrounding the era of World War II. Baseball for Japanese Americans thus did not primarily represent their Americanism to the society at large, nor did it provide an arena for either real or symbolic inclusion of Japanese Amer-

at Fort Ord, Kenichi Zenimura (leader of Nisei baseball in the Fresno area and father of Hirayama’s long-time friend and college teammate Harvey Zenimura) offered Hirayama a chance to play for the Hiroshima Carps with Zenimura’s son.73 After his discharge from the service and the Saint Louis Browns’ agreement to released Hirayama from his contract, he traveled across the ocean to play ball.74 Though some Japanese Americans were given minimal attention in the United States, Japa-

icans through America’s sport in the Cold War’s “American way of life.” Japanese American baseball players continued to be positioned on the margins of American society. Undeniably talented, these Nisei found their professional baseball prospects to be better in a foreign land than in their home country.

70. Marion Dunn. “Mustangs, Bees Divide Pair; Shepard Shines.” Deseret News, July 20, 1950, A11. Interview with Wally Yonamine. Robert Fitts, Remembering Japanese Baseball, 21-25.

71. Ibid., 23.

72. Interview with Fibber Hirayama. Ibid., 5960. No Author. “Five Former Bulldogs Head For Pro Camps.” The Daily Collegian: Fresno

State University, January 18, 1955, 3.

73. Robert Fitts, Remembering, 60.

74. Ibid., 59.

94 | UNFOUND

From Baseball to Yakyu Baseball might have been brought to Japan from the United States, but it did not remain a strictly American game.

Across the ocean in Japan, the game’s style of play, its ethics, and the ideals attached manifested in a distinct Nipponized fashion. Sandra Collins deconstructs the Nippion-ness of baseball, or Yakyu in Japanese, in the Meiji period (1868-1912) as Western in origin but integrated with the bushido, the samurai codes, “with baseball in order to inculcate the discipline of the sport

along more Japanese lines.” At the same time, the Meiji government embraced sports in general as a method to transmit ideals to the nation’s youth and its citizens.75 The state’s use of the sport became even more extreme in their efforts to socially engineer the new Japanese state. Guthrie-Shimizu wrote that “beginning in 1937, all participants at the annual national middle-school tournament were required at the opening ceremony to pledge their allegiance to ‘the spirit of Bushido’ and to ‘make all of their bodily faculties available to serve in national exigencies.’”76 Hirofumi Naito, a Japanese infielder for the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, recalled how in

of the evil self-centered American culture.78 The game was “reviled by [the] militarist government as an ‘enemy sport’ incongruent with the nation’s “true spirit,’” even if it was adored by the nation’s citizens.79 De-Americanization and de-Westernization became a key feature of government regulated Japanese sport. Baseball within Japan at the end of World War II was the same game as the American pastime but with an entirely different set of ideals and ethics, manufactured to aid the efforts of the imperial state.

1948 he was required to polish shoes or use the communal bath once it had been used by all the senior players or sempai, a seniority system where by senior players were given preferred treatment, an established hierarchy practiced by samurais for years before.77 The war years continued to change baseball in Japan. In 1943, military-styled uniforms were adapted, as well as replacing any trace of English words or letters in the game and on uniforms with Japanese. The following year all player numbers were stripped from jerseys for being individualistic, proclaimed to be the key characteristic

In the American Occupation period of Japan after the war, former enemies became fast friends as these nations formed a partnership that served the interests of both nations. The United States was able to establish an Asian ally in the face of the Soviet Union, and Japan was able to use the United States to rise out of ravages of the war and gain prestige in international relations. Following the end of the Second World War, Japanese morale was low, as the nation and its people attempted to figure out their new place in the world after defeat while mourning the violence and death.80 Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada, US Army officer, part of the American occupation of Japan effort (and scouted by the Saint Louis Car-

75. Sandra Collins, “Sporting Japanese-ness in an Americanised Japan.” The International

Journal of the History of Sport, 28, 17 (Dec 2011):

Modeling the American Way through Yakyu

2451.

76. Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, Transpacific Field

78. Ibid., 178.

of Dream, 173.

79. Ibid., 199.

77. Interview with Hiroumi Naito. Robert Fitts,

80. Interview with Tsuneo Harada. Robert

Remembering, 13.

Fitts, Remembering, 1-3.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 95

dinals right before the war), recounted years later that General MacArthur had pondered during a staff meeting, “What can we do to get the morale of the Japanese people back?” Harada proposed baseball, positing, “I think if we brought an American baseball team here, the Japanese people would love that, and it would really help bring the morale up.”81 Harada reached out to his friend Lefty O’Doul, who had toured in Japan in the 1930s, to bring the San Francisco Seals, who he was managing, for a tour of Japan in 1949.82 Every game sold out completely, and General MacArthur would say that all the diplomats together would not have been

Harada.85 In total, he would bring four players to the Tokyo Giants, and several more to other teams, like the Hiroshima Carps.86 A 1958 Sports Illustrated article about Fibber Hirayama, “An Outfielder for Hiroshima,” said that “he was greeted by 10,000 persons” and “the city’s copious affection for him can only be ascribed to its conscious appreciation of his present talents.”87 An instant fan favorite, Fibber Hirayama created a lasting connection between the two nations through his presence. Under specific instructions to raise morale and endorsement of both the United States military forces and corroboration of Japanese government and baseball

able to do that [raise the morale of the Japanese people]. This is the greatest piece of diplomacy ever.”83 It was such a success that the father of professional baseball in Japan, Matsutaro Shoriki, asked Harada to find a foreign ballplayer to play for his Tokyo Giants. Harada had the idea to search for a good Nisei player, which lead him to recruit Wally Yonamine, who was playing in the minor league team in Salt Lake City, the farm team for the San Francisco Seals.84 Yomanine was originally signed by Lefty O’Doul upon the suggestion of

executives, Cappy Harada sought to raise Japanese morale through baseball, and it was this impetus that prompted the importation of Japanese American talent to Japanese baseball. This government-sponsored revival emphasizes the diplomatic relationship that was strengthened through the sport and the Japanese American involvement. Baseball and the American-born players of Japanese descent played a vital role in building this connection. Infield for the Tokyo Giants Shigeru Chiba joked with Yonamine in 1951, “as a rule, we don’t like Nisei. But you’re one good Nisei. You did everything we did. You

81. Ibid., 3.

82. Ibid 4.

83. Kerry Yo Nakagawa, California, 144.

84. Professional baseball teams will have af-

85. Interview with Tsuneo Harada. Robert

filiated clubs in minor leagues where they can

Fitts, Remembering, 4.

send players that need further development

86. Ibid., 4-6.

before playing on the professional club. This

87. Mark Harris, “An Outfielder for Hiroshi-

allows the main club to retain the contract of

ma.” In Diamond: Baseball Writes of Mark Har-

the player, without having to play the develop-

ris. (New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc.,1994), 179.

ing player before they are ready.

Mark Harris, An Outfielder for Hiroshima, 178.

96 | UNFOUND

slept with us, you ate the food, and you didn’t grumble . . . I’ll back you up one hundred percent.”88 Yonamine’s success in Tokyo broke down attitudes about Nisei and Americans held by Chiba and other Japanese baseball players and fans. These Japanese Americans served as agents of the United States on the baseball diamond, bridging the two nations from on the field. The exchange that occurred through the sport created an environment for the average citizens from Japan and from the United States to understand each other and additionally allowed for American influence on the level of the individual person.

Japanese Americans not only came to

simply, “We had a uniquely Japanese way . . . there wasn’t much fighting spirit. Then, Wally Yonamine came over from Hawaii . . . He changed the way we batted, the way we fielded, the base running, the way we practiced, everything.”90 He gives complete credit to Yonamine and speaks directly to the profound influence Japanese American players had on the Japanese game.

Japanese Americans would run to and from the bench at the end of each inning, run out grounders to the infield, and break up double plays. In the 1951 Japan Series Yonamine knocked the ball out of the fielder’s glove while sliding into third. Naito would say, “It was an

play baseball during the years following the war but they also changed how the game was played and the culture behind it. New Japanese American players played a more aggressive, American brand of baseball that would take over the style of play in Japan.89 This is an important indication of an exchange of the ideals of hard work and self-made success through effort, and contributed to the Americanization and Westernization of the Japanese citizen as the nation entered into a relationship with the United States by promoting individualistic ideals suitable for American capitalism, while simultaneously combatting the ideals and ideologies of the Soviet Union and communism.

Japanese player Hirofumi Naito put it

eye-opener for the fans. It was also very impressive to the people in uniform and playing professional baseball.

From then on, we started practicing sliding seriously.”91 Yonamine would drag Naito to the field of the farm team on off days to practice for hours on particular elements of each’s game, and “this way of practicing was something that Wally brought over to Japan.”92 Though Yonamine was considered “dirty” at first for his aggressive play, it would become more accepted.93 Japanese players changed how they played to account for this new style; for example, infielders would throw the ball at Fibber Hirayama’s head if he tried to

90. Ibid., 17.

88. Interview with Wally Yonamine. Robert

91. Ibid., 17.

Fitts, Remembering, 25-26.

92. Ibid., 17.

89. Interview with Hiroumi Naito. Robert Fitts,

93. Interview with Wally Yonamine. Robert

Remembering, 17.

Fitts, Remembering, 23.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 97

break up a double play.94 It was not only the game that changed, but the locker room culture as well. The sempai-kohai relationship was a significant part the clubs that Japanese American players entered.

Yonamine refused to participate after a couple weeks and felt that the system slowly broke down after he no longer followed, a contribution he believed made the game better.95 Dick Kashiwaeda, also from Hawaii, helped the Tokyo Giants players represent themselves to management. Tired of waiting for the manager to be the first one to eat at team meals, the team “asked [the Japanese American] to talk to the own-

American game.

The involvement of Japanese American players went beyond reshaping the game, and also included transforming the Japanese citizen. Much like the Olympic diver and US military man Sammy Lee, Black athletes in Africa, and international jazz tours, Japanese American baseball players in Japan played a critical role in portraying the qualities of democratic citizenship to the Japanese people. As mentioned earlier, Sammy Lee was used by the state to promote the message and ideals of the United States, while also attempting to discredit concerns about racial discrimination in the country, a mis-

ers’ representative to make sure that whoever came down first would go in the restaurant first. This was one way the Giants’ ballplayers became more Americanized.”96 The game, ideals, and culture changed with the addition of the Japanese American players following the American model of how the game should be played. Kashiwaeda saw this as the Americanization of Japanese players, in large part due to the influence of the American born players on the team. Yonamine, who would go on to coach in Japan and be inducted into their hall of fame, is largely credited for transforming the game into its current style, which is highly similar to the

sion that Lee did not engage in without personal conflict, as he had himself used his past experiences of discrimination as fuel to motivate his Olympic training.97 Stephen Crist also discusses US sponsors’ tours as propaganda for American democracy and influence. In his work on Dave Brubeck and international jazz tours, Crist argues that the US promoted democracy and itself through the musicians, including in Japan.98 Damion Thomas furthers this argument with his work on tours through Africa and African American athletes, as the state also promoted itself and its system to an international audience using both persons of perceived similar

94. Interview with Fibber Hirayama. By iBaseballChannel. https://vimeo.com/42582246

97. Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Citizens of Asian Amer-

95. Interview with Wally Yonamine. Robert

ica, 85-95.

Fitts, Remembering, 25.

98. Stephen Crist. “Jazz as Democracy? Dave

96. Interview with Dick Kashiwaeda. Robert

Brubeck and Cold War Politics,” The Journal of

Fitts, Remembering, 52.

Musicology 26, 2 (2009):133-174

98 | UNFOUND

backgrounds and leisure activities.99 Moreover, Japanese Americans had a particular position in this moment.

Eiichiro Azuma discusses the role of Japanese American military men in Occupied Japan as “brokers” between the Japanese people and their American occupiers, communicating the American way. Because of a perceived racial and cultural linkage, this particular group of serviceman, though marginalized in their home country, provided a pivotal service in the mission of articulating American democratic ideals to the Japanese people.100 The position of Japanese American baseball players was similar; however, “brokered” is an imperfect

of Sports Illustrated, “for the city in which he [Fibber Hirayama] has chosen to live his life so long as he can play baseball like baseball, Fibber has been an example working forcibly . . . it is much to have accomplished for a young man whom nature gave short supply in shaku (height) . . . ”101 Examining this, Dick Kashiwaeda’s account of Japanese American influence with discussion with management to benefit the players’ experience and exercise power against ownership, shows statements of the role of the citizen.102 Hirayama demonstrated to the Carp fan base, the biggest in the league, the importance of hard work and dedication

description of their role. Rather than serving as mediator or interpreter, these baseball players communicated their message through the sport. A more complete term to capture their position thus is model. Japanese Americans playing baseball in Japan following the war showed American democratic and capitalistic values through example and demonstration by modeling the proper ethic needed to thrive in the new world order.

Japanese American baseball players were a vital extension of transmission of American ideals in Occupation Japan. As proclaimed in a 1958 issue

of the citizen for individual prosperity, promoting the American ideology of meritocracy. On the other hand, the Kashiwaeda account demonstrates how the Japanese American ballplayers were the ones who gave the team a voice to management; thus, the Japanese baseball hierarchy was changed by Japanese Americans using the voice and knowledge of collective bargaining that the American players brought with them.

No one may have impacted this more than Wally Yonamine, the “man who changed Japanese Baseball.”103 Wally Yonamine was the baseball figure who not only touched the sport but changed the understanding of what the sport

99. Damion Thomas. Globetrotting: Afri-

can American Athletes and Cold War Politics.

(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012).

101. Mark Harris, Outfielder, 188-189.

100. Eiichiro Azuma. “Brokering Race, Cul-

102. Interview with Dick Kashiwaeda. Robert

ture, and Citizenship: Japanese Americans in

Fitts, Remembering, 52.

Occupied Japan and Postwar National Inclu-

103. Robert Fitts, Wally Yonamine: The Man

sion.” The Journal of American-East Asian

Who Changed Japanese Baseball. (Lincoln,

Relations 16, no. 3 (2009): 183-211.

University of Nebraska Press, 2008).

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 99

was presenting to the Japanese people, as well.

Though the American state did not explicitly use these individual Japanese Americans to further their global agenda of constructing democratic citizens and nations across the globe in order to combat the threat of communism, the US understood the importance of baseball. The Japanese love of baseball was actually used as propaganda by the United States as a way of convincing its people that if the Japanese could love American baseball, it was only natural that they would too love American democracy.104 What better way of communicating American de-

further extending beyond the school and into the general public.

The adoption of a new citizenship agenda also had greater ramifications for both the racialization of the Japanese and Japanese American baseball players. Prior to 1957, little mention was made of the ethnic/racial and national identity of the Japanese American players in American mainstream media. Wally Yonamine was mentioned in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times several times before 1957. Every story which he appeared in read in a similar manner: something particular happened in a baseball game in Japan in which these players were involved, and

mocracy to American baseball loving Japanese, but through the sport itself!

Guthrie-Shimizu further argues that “baseball occupied a central place in the reform of school physical education . . . clear from the preferential treatment the sport received in the ration of scarce goods [from SCAP].”105 Moreover Guthrie-Shimizu discusses how SCAP “used baseball to help the Japanese relearn American-style democracy, SCAP supported both actual play and spectatorship” as part of their mission in the Occupation of Japan.106 Japanese American involvement in the professional ranks of baseball in Japan transmitted to the Japanese what it meant to be a citizen within a democracy that would be modeled on the United States, even

Yonamine would be listed alongside the Japanese players with no mention of his American status thus portraying him first as Japanese by association.107 On July 21, 1956 the Associated Press ran a story that recounted how Yonamine yelled at an umpire in protest of a call during a game. This outburst was nearly unheard of in Japanese professional baseball, as the umpire was given utter respect by the players on the field.108 107. Al Wolf. “Tokyo Blanks Stars, 2 to 0: Visitors Erupt After 8 2/3 Hitless Innings.” Los

Angeles Times, March 9, 1953, C1. United Press.

“Umpire’s Decision Stirs Painful, Paneless Chase.” The New York Times, July 25, 1953, 15. Associated Press. “Honorable Umpire Gets Rare Protest in Japan.” The New York Times, July 21, 1956, 12. United Press. “Kill the Ump Means that to Japanese” The Washington Post,

104. Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, Transpacific,

July 25, 1953, 9. United Press. “Chisox Bees

201-202.

Trim Tokyo Team, 9-4.” Los Angeles Times,

105. Ibid., 202.

March 21, 1953, B3.

106. Ibid., 203.

108. Associated Press. “Honorable Umpire Gets

100 | UNFOUND

The episode was recorded by the American papers as another strange happening in Japanese baseball; Yonamine’s American citizenship and status was not mentioned as it was not part of the peculiar characteristics of the occurrence.

Yonamine’s outburst was depicted as a Japanese man’s outburst in a Japanese game, with the exception of his Western first name, and not the clash of an American player and a Japanese umpire.

The American audience saw Japanese baseball stories when something happened that was strange or unusual, or that fit the narrative of Japan as a different and distant place. For example, when a Japanese umpire was chased

racial identity and not his status as an American.

But following a Nisei convention in Japan in 1957, the discourse shifted.

After mentioning the opening address from General MacArthur (where MacArthur spoke of the importance of the Nisei for serving as a bridge between the two nations, coming nearly ten years after MacArthur had issued Cappy Harada to bring baseball and Nisei players to Japan), an article states: “Yesterday a Nisei here won one of Japan’s most publicized honors—the ‘most valuable player’ award in one of this country’s two professional baseball leagues [Japan has a two league system

off by an angry mob trying to kill him in 1953, this story was covered by several major United States newspapers as representing Japanese baseball, including Yonamine who was on the field for the game. There were tours where American teams and Japanese teams traveled to their respective nations that were reported by newspapers and sports journalists, but here too Yonamine was included with the Japanese players and not the Americans when the Tokyo Giants travels were written up. Only his name was used, leading the unknowing reader to assume he was Japanese, with no reference to the fact he was American and an American citizen.109 Yonamine status was defined by his

based on Major League Baseball and the American and National League.]”110 After this convention, all mentions of Japanese American baseball players were followed by the fact that these men were Nisei and Japanese American.

Important was not their Americanism, but the fact that they served as in-betweens, neither fully American nor fully Japanese, but as bridges between the two nations. This period promoted the rise of model minority rhetoric, which read that Asian Americans should be a model to other minority groups in how they were able to overcome discrimination by their personal effort and merit, not through challenging established systems.111 In 1955, Demaree Bess wrote

Rare Protest in Japan.” The New York Times,

110. Robert Trumbull. “Tokyo Plays Host to

July 21, 1956, 12.

Nisei Parley: Delegates Seek to Better U.S.-Jap-

109. Al Wolf. “Tokyo Blanks Stars, 2 to 0:

anese Relations Through Family Ties.” The

Visitors Erupt After 8 2/3 Hitless Innings.” Los

New York Times, October 24, 1957, 10.

111. Erika Lee, Making, 252-282.

Angeles Times, March 9, 1953, C1.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 101

an article for the Saturday Evening Post about the “Amazing Japanese,” calling California’s Japanese “the model minority” because of how they rose out of the war years.112 Though the model minority is usually attributed to “modeling” to African Americans, here the Nisei modeled how to be a minority or non-white individual to the Japanese world. This convention and shift in discourse regarding the Japanese American baseball players shows that the United States now wanted to shift the conversation to reshape the Japanese in the image of the Nisei, declaring the Nisei were beyond their past experiences with racial discrimination. The actual racial

American baseball players being essential extensions of this effort.

Much like Sammy Lee and his Asian tours, Nisei modeled how to be baseball players and citizens to the Japanese.113 In doing so, Japanese American baseball players participated in the re-racialization of persons of Japanese descent following the war. Like Japanese Americans attempted to do in the United States following the war, these baseball players helped create a new racial narrative. Thus, as Japanese American participation in baseball resulted in limited change to Japanese American racialization in the United States, their involvement in professional baseball

place and understanding of persons of Japanese descent was not important to the American state for their humanity, but for American and Western democracy power and influence over international communism. What was essential was not the Americanism of the Nisei as citizen, but their assimilability into the American way as persons of Japanese descent. There is a vital difference between Americanism and the American way in this context, the former being a set of “American” ethics and ideologies, while the latter encompasses hierarchal structural aspects of American society.

This shift in discourse about the Japanese American players is indicative of the new American mission to transform Japan and the Japanese along the image of the American way, with Japanese

laid the groundwork for a new discourse and rhetoric, transforming the transnational racial position of Japanese. It was not only a game but also the creation of a new citizen in an American inspired democracy. Furthermore, in the United States, the model minority was applied broadly to the pan-ethnic Asian, thus this American effort did not transmit what it meant to be a citizen in a democracy but to be a citizen in an Asian body in a democracy.114 The involvement of Japanese Americans in professional baseball in Japan resulted in the creation of an arena which was used to racialize the Japanese along the lines of what would become important characteristics of the model minority stereotype: hardworking and independent, but also submissive.

112. Demaree Bess. “California’s amazing Japanese.” Saturday Evening Post 227, 44 (1955):

113. Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Citizens, 85-95.

38-83.

114. Erika Lee, Making, 252-282.

102 | UNFOUND

Conclusion Baseball is America’s game. Timeless is the conception of the sport’s transcendent properties to capture the attention of all groups of people in the nation.

Declared America’s pastime, baseball enhanced the mind and imagination of the country while representing key American ideals such as work ethic, excellence, respect, and pride. Following the Second World War, baseball became more open than ever before, if only symbolically. This new chapter in the integration of baseball speaks to the changing movement in American race relations, heavily influenced by American international ambition and shaming rhetoric from foreign enemy states of American discrimination and oppression. Men like Jackie Robinson and Joe DiMaggio were able to wear the uniforms of professional clubs, though the broader reaction to this ranged from intense disapproval to ready acceptance.

Newfound inclusion in the American pastime was found for other racialized groups of immigrant lineage but not Japanese Americans. Loving the sport and interested in the prospect of professional play, top Japanese American baseball players were only able to rise above the status of amateur or semi-pro athletes by traveling across the Pacific to the island of their ancestors and the land of their nation’s recent enemy.

The exchange between the American and the Japanese players resulted in significant and lasting outcomes for transnational racialization of persons of Japanese descent, as well as comradery

between the recently hostile nations.

American involvement in Japanese baseball following the war created a new style of game, molded in the image of the game being played in the United States. Wally Yonamine, Fibber Hirayama, and the other Nisei ball players changed the baseball culture of their respective clubs from almost the moment they walked through the door, while also changing the consumption and expectations of the Japanese fans and the marketability of the sport. New attitudes of professionalism, individualism, work ethic, and success were taken up in Japanese baseball and were similar to the ideals proclaimed as being at the core of the American meritocracy.

An analysis of these Japanese American baseball players’ time in Japan discusses another interpretation of the model minority building off the work of Cheng and Azuma, providing examples of how to be in a Japanese or Asian body in a Americanized capitalist democracy, socializing the Japanese or Asian body on the transnational scale.115 Baseball allowed for these Japanese American players to simultaneously model the proper ideals for functioning in a capitalist system, as opposed to the Soviet Union’s brand of communism, and illustrate the fluidity, subjectivity, and situationally of race and the racialization process.

115. Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Citizens, 85-95.

Eiichiro Azuma. “Brokering Race, Culture, and Citizenship: Japanese Americans in Occupied Japan and Postwar National Inclusion.” 183211.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 103

Unable to break into the professional leagues of their homeland, young Japanese American men embraced opportunities to move to a new nation to keep playing America’s pastime, but this was not without state involvement. Through planning and collaboration of the Japanese state and the United States military, these men were recruited to raise the morale of the devastated and war-torn island nation.

The state-sponsored inclusion of American-born players of Japanese descent in Japanese baseball produced a model to be a ball player. In addition, through the American ideals of the athlete, this model included more transformative

relations within the United States so much as it functioned on an international scale to continue to build, create, and reshape what it meant to live within an Asian body. Japanese Americans were able to engage in competitive levels of baseball in the United States, but on the fringes and never at the professional level. Their exclusion led to their trek to Japan in order to play established professional baseball. Though Japanese American baseball players were highly skilled, respected, and were able to ease ethnic-specific tension through their ability in the sport, the potential for change was weakened by the lack of access to the professional

messages of societal ideals and expectations. Through their involvement and transformative influence, Japanese American professional baseball players in Japan following the Second World War helped reconstruct ideas of what it meant to be a citizen within the new democratic society—similar to what is suggested in previous studies on nonWhite athletes in Cheng’s discussion of Sammy Lee and his tours through Asia and Damion Thomas’s work on state-sponsored endeavors of Black Athletes in Africa; and Azuma’s analysis of Nisei soldier’s as “brokering” the relationship of American Occupation authority to the Japanese citizens—even if state involvement in race-making in Japan was passive or secondary.116 Japanese American involvement in baseball during this period was not a driving mechanism for shifts in race

leagues. Japanese American involvement in Japan helped manufacture a strong relationship between the two nations, demonstrate citizenship in a democratic society to the Japanese, and provided the foundation to the model minority groundwork and postwar racial position in the United States and across the sea in Japan.

Bibliography Azuma, Eiichiro. “Brokering Race, Culture, and Citizenship: Japanese Americans in Occupied Japan and Postwar National Inclusion.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 16, no. 3 (2009): 183-211.

Associated Press. “Honorable Umpire Gets Rare Protest in Japan.” New York Times, July 21, 1956, 12. ______ “Japanese Baseball in November Like Broadway New Year’s Eve: Nippon ‘WorldSeries’ Has Elements of Football, Plenty of Hoopla and the Equivalent of Chinese Homers

116. Ibid., 183-211.

104 | UNFOUND

Yonamine Aids Giants Yells Are Discreet.” New

York Times, October 31, 1957, 42.

Barzun, Jacques. God’s Country and Mine; a Dec-

namine/471210/.

Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri. Transpacific Field of

laration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words.

Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States

Boston: Little, Brown, 1954.

and Japan in Peace and War. Chapel Hill: The

Beschloss, Michael. “For Incarcerated Japanese-Americans, Baseball was ‘Wearing the

University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Harris, Mark. “An Outfielder for Hiroshima,

American Flag.’” The New York Times, June 20,

1958.” In Diamond: Baseball Writes of Mark Harris.

2014, D1.

New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1994.

Bess, Demaree. “California’s Amazing Japanese.”

Saturday Evening Post 227, no. 44 (1955): 38-83.

Collins, Sandra. “Sporting Japanese-ness in an

I-Fen Cheng, Cindy. Citizens of Asian America.

New York: New York University Press, 2013.

Kurashige, Scott, The Shifting Grounds of Race:

Americanised Japan.” International Journal of the

Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of

History of Sport, 28, no. 17 (2011): 2448-2473.

Multiethnic Low Angeles. Princeton and Oxford:

Crawford, Russ. The Use of Sports to Promote the American Way of Life During the Cold War: Cultural Propaganda, 1945-1963. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.

Crist, Stephen A. “Jazz as Democracy? Dave

Princeton University Press, 2008.

Lee, Erika. The Making of Asian America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Lee, Robert. “The Cold War Construction of the Model Minority Myth.” In Contemporary Asian

Brubeck and Cold War Politics”. The Journal of

America: A multidisciplinary Reader, Second

Musicology 26, 2 (2009): 133–74.

Edition, ed. Min Zhou and J.V. Gatewood. New

Dunn, Marion. “Mustangs, Bees Divide Pair; Shepard Shines.” Deseret News, July 20, 1950, A11.

Elias, Robert. Baseball and the American Dream:

York: New York University Press, 469-484.

Mochizuki, Ken. Baseball Saved Us, New York City: Lee & Low, 1993.

Mullan, Michael. “Ethnicity and Sport: The

Race, Class, Gender, and the NationalPastime.

Wapato Nippons and Pre-World War II Japa-

Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2001.

nese American Baseball.” Journal of Sport Histo-

Finch, Bob. “Just Before the Battle, Mother,” 1955, Box 38, Folder National Athletic Association, Social Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Franks, Joel. Asian Pacific Americans and Baseball: A History. Jefferson: McFarland andCompany, 2008. ______ Crossing Sidelines, Crossing Cultures, Second Edition. Lanham: University Press of America, 2010.

ry. 26, no. 1 (1999): 82-114.

Myer, Dillon S. “Towards the True Meaning of Democracy,” Resettlement Bulletin, April 1946, 2-3.

Nakagawa, Kerry. Japanese American Baseball in California: A History. Charleston: The History Press, 2014.

No Author. “Five Former Bulldogs Head For Pro Camps.” Daily Collegian: Fresno State University, January 18, 1955, 3.

Fitts, Robert. Remembering Japanese Baseball: An

______ “Joe DiMaggio Statistics and History

Oral History of the Game. Carbondale: Southern

| Baseball-Reference.com.” Baseball Reference.

Illinois University Press, 2005.

com. 2016.

______ Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed

______ “Jackie Robinson Statistics and History

Japanese Baseball. Lincoln: University of Ne-

| Baseball-Reference.com.” Baseball Reference.

braska Press, 2008.

com. 2016. http://www.baseball-reference.

Glanville, Doug. “Remembering Wally Yonamine.” The Atlantic, Febuary 28, 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/ archive/2016/02/remembering-wallyyo-

com/players/d/robinjan02.shtml. (Accessed April 12). ______ “Ted Williams Statistics and History | Baseball-Reference.com.” Baseball Reference.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 105

com. 2016. http://www.baseball-reference.

6-2: Carey and Bauer Belt 2-Run Homers as

com/players/d/willite01.shtml. (Accessed April

New YorkGains 11th Victory of Tour.” New York

12). ______ “A Statement of the Plans, Purposes, and Objectives of the Promotion of National Baseball Week- April 7-14, 1956,” Box 38,

Times, November 09, 1955, 44. ______ “Tokyo Series Game Halted By Darkness.” New York Times, November 1, 1957, 34.

Wolf, Al. “Stars Pitch ’50 Baseball Camp: Heavy

Folder National Athletic Association, Social

Overcast Greets Champs at San Fernando.” Los

Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota,

Angeles Times, February 21, 1950, C1.

Minneapolis. ______ “Fact Sheet: 1954 National Sports Festival,” 1954, Box 39, Folder National AthleticAssociation, Social Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Regalado, Samuel. “‘Play Ball!’ Baseball and Seattle’s Japanese-American Courier League, 1928-1941.” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 87, 1 (Winter 1995/1996): 29-37. ______ Nikkei Baseball: Japanese American Players from Immigration and Internment to theMajors Leagues. Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Takahashi, Jere. Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997.

Thomas, Damion. Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Thurston Gorham, Thelma. “Negroes and Japanese Evacuees.” The Crisis, November 1945, 314 316.

Trumbull, Robert. “Tokyo Plays Host to Nisei Parley: Delegates Seek to Better US-Japanese Relations Through Family Ties.” The New York Times, October 24, 1957, 10.

United Press. “Fresno State Tops Honolulu Stars.” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1946, A6. ______ “Japanese Nine Beats US Collegians, 2 to 1.” New York Times, August 17, 1952, S2. ______ “Chisox Bees Trim Tokyo Team, 9-4.” Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1953, B3. ______ “Umpire’s Decision Stirs Painful, Paneless Chase.” New York Times, July 25, 1953, 15. ______ “Kill the Ump Means that to Japanese.” The Washington Post, July 25, 1953, 9. ______ “Yankees Triumph at Hiroshima,

106 | UNFOUND

______ “Tokyo Blanks Stars, 2 to 0: Visitors Erupt After 8 2/3 Hitless Innings.” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1953, C1. ______ “Hollywood Clips Tokyo Nine, 4-3.”

Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1953, C1.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 107

Nuclear Reasoning from Bikini Atoll to Daiichi Fukushima: Necropolitics and Citizen-Building G. Pe Benito, Barnard College ’16 Abstract This paper investigates the American imperial encounter in the Pacific Rim through the aboveground nuclear testing held on the Marshall Islands (Operation Crossroads 1946-1958) and the accidental explosion at the Daiichi Nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan (2011).

Engaged with Mbembe’s “Necropolitics” and Rose’s and Petryna’s concept of the “biological citizen”, this essay aims to define what I call nuclear reasoning. My articulation of nuclear reasoning is guided by the following questions: How are the “costs” and “benefits” of nuclear fallout conceptualized by state and corporate agents? How are race, class, and gender at work in legitimations for nuclear technology? Who stands to benefit from the insertion of bodies into the infrastructure of nuclear fallout? What assumptions about the stratified values of life (accorded to certain bodies) must be upheld in order to sustain nuclear reasoning? This paper demonstrates nuclear reasoning as a particular form of hegemony that works to deplete and dominate the lives of others in order to enhance and condition the lives of some.

In the past decade, the world has witnessed some of the most striking consequences of environmental destruction. From the drought in California, to the warmest winter in New York’s history, to murderous heat waves in Pakistan and giant tsunamis in the Philippines, some instances of human-made disasters are visible and salient. How can we understand the state of environmental destruction today as a living testament to the history of colonialism? How can we care about people suffering from water contamination in American cities as much as the endangered habitats of arctic polar bears? This paper is working to collapse the artificial divide between the wellness of people and the longevity of the planet, because pursuing environmental justice is not incommensurate with honoring Native sovereignty. Achille Mbembe posits the notion of necropolitics in his critical commentary on the limitations in Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics. Mbembe centers his critique on the colonial state of exception as it exists in the slave plantation, and then draws continuities to the political deployment of terror in the colonial occupation of Palestine. Mbembe departs from and responds to the discourse on biopower by demonstrating the state’s exercise of sovereignty as parasitic to the populations pre-segregated to the category of “disposable” (Mbembe 2003; 27). As the overlord of a slave plantation extracts life from the slave in order to amass excessive power and wealth, the colonial state of Israel consumes Palestin-

108 | UNFOUND

ian life in order to fortify its polis. The modern colonial state, Mbembe argues, inherited technologies from the institution of slavery for extracting resources and consuming life. In the pursuits of strategic elimination, the colonial state forges the conditions for sovereignty— delimiting “the ultimate expression of sovereignty,” as Mbembe’s opening line states to, “the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die” (Mbembe 2003; 11). In addition, Mbembe’s argument also links necropolitics to the projects of citizen-making and conditioning. The colonial state designates its boundaries not simply geographically, but socio-politically and economically along the line of “the ones and the others” (Mbembe 2003; 17).

Mbembe’s text is foundational to the critical position this paper takes on the hegemonic underpinnings of nuclear weapons and technology focusing on nuclear fallout in the Pacific Rim. It is true, as Mbembe asserts, that “the colonies are the location par excellence” where life-extracting racist forces of necropolitics are made manifest (Mbembe 2003; 24). Yet, in the vein of current scholarship, we would be naïve and foolish to say that this means necropolitics has no implications outside of the two zones Mbembe makes his focus.

I take seriously Mbembe’s assertion that in order to speak of colonialism in any context, one must also speak of slavery and its tenacious hauntings in the functioning of the modern state.

Thus, while this paper does not focus on the African continent or slavery in its

classical sense, Mbembe’s model is central to the kinds of continuities I hope to illustrate. The Pacific Rim is a unique and compelling zone through which to trace the material and discursive deployment of necropower as it functions in what I will call nuclear reasoning.

Chapter 1 outlines my methodology and political commitments in the writing of this paper. Chapter 2 extends the theoretical implications of biological citizenship from its prior applications to my engagement with original material.

Chapter 3 investigates the implications of political and scientific discourse in maintaining hierarchical valuations of life. Chapter 4 sets up the schematics under which bio-value is extracted from Pacific Island communities so that it may be utilized for optimization of life and bio-citizenship on the mainland.

Chapter 5 details the contemporary mechanisms for deploying the operations of citizen building by interrogating several studies from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. This chapter deals with primary data regarding hypothetical risk assessments for nuclear fallout in addition to mandated screenings for genetic anomalies as a result of Fukushima fallout. I conclude with an articulation of the infrastructure through which necropolitical extraction of bare life in the Marshall Islands has made an experience of citizen-subjectivity available to those deemed valuable under the citizen-building project of nuclear reasoning. By the end of this article, I will posit nuclear reason-

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 109

ing as a collaborative basis from which exploitative technoscience derives its power for extracting life.

If the expression of sovereignty Mbembe proposes works in dynamic ways in a hyper-globalized, technologically-futuristic world, then the implications of necropolitics are as widely dispersed as they are nodally centered. In other words, if the software of imperial domination was coded through colonialism and slavery, subsequent programs will behave in recognizable formats. Making these applications legible is the

imations for nuclear technology?; who stands to benefit from the insertion of bodies into the infrastructure of nuclear fallout?; and what assumptions about the stratified values of life (accorded to certain bodies) must be upheld in order to sustain nuclear reasoning?

My method is to transcribe the material flows that escort consumable life to lives that consume and the discursive and material arrangements of power that coincide with these currents. For example, one body of material that I consider is the scientific research that is acquired from nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. Another is the US official documentation of the effects of

work of scholars, artists, workers, and activists. This paper interrogates the discursive format of nuclear weaponry and energy technologies. By studying currents of exchange and extraction, I examine nuclear fallout as a uniquely fluid dispersal of state violence. I call the vital artery that joins nuclear energy and nuclear weaponry, nuclear reasoning. The objective of this paper is to theorize the discursive legitimation of nuclear technologies as a particular form of hegemony that works to deplete and dominate the lives of others in order to enhance and condition the lives of some.

This investigation follows guiding questions such as: how are the “costs” and “benefits” of nuclear fallout theorized?; who does mainstream discourse articulate are the people bearing these “costs”?; how are race, class, and gender factored into or obfuscated by legit-

the Fukushima nuclear power plant’s meltdown. For the most part this documentation/research is inaccessible to the public and largely resides in the protected spheres of government and scientific officials. However, the official research narrative on fallout from the Fukushima meltdown requires information from the bodies of fallout survivors. This information is material as it is ideological. It is being transferred across the Pacific Ocean between Marshallese, Japanese, and American leaders. This ocean acts as a fluid barrier space across which this transference accumulates political and economic meanings. Those engaged in the transfer of bodily knowledge, observations of radionuclide dispersion, and the various impacts on local communities after fallout, are also responsible for how the meanings attached to such things are constructed and exchanged. These

Chapter 1: Methodology and Commitments

110 | UNFOUND

meanings, and the material knowledge they adhere to, have widespread implications for the future of international nuclear relations, wartime rhetoric, and securitization measures.

My research focuses on nuclear reasoning as a force of imperial domination as well as a colonial reverberation. By putting (post)colonial theory in conversation with science and technology studies, I engage in an intersectional critique of state power. Deepening this critique by attending to articulations of the lived experience of fallout, I analyze the weapons testing on the Marshall Islands alongside the meltdown at the Daiichi nuclear power plant through a

ican government for reparations, and California’s medico-scientific response to fallout, I must be clear about the coordinates of my points of departure.

By this, I mean to ground my analysis in a critical framework that illuminates exploitative power and attends to many different ways this is manifest in nuclear reasoning.

Being of Pacific Islander descent, but raised on the American mainland, I am writing from a place of privileged alienation—nonetheless implicated in a deep connection to the survival of Pacific Islander communities. I write this while striving to honor my commitment to solidarity in the face of capitalist and

necropolitical lens (Mbembe 2003) of biological citizenship (Petryna 2004; Rose 2007). In order to understand how nuclear reasoning upholds imperial relations of resource extraction, we must understand the ways in which the bodies of fallout survivors are figured into a capitalist agenda. This is made legible through a conversation on biological citizenship. My analysis relies on other theoretical concepts that nuance how I incorporate community engagements with death. This includes Neferti Tadiar’s notion of Fantasy Production (Tadiar 2004; 2011), Jeffrey Bishop’s reading of medical definitions of death and the dying body (Bishop 2011), and Joseph Masco’s analysis of Cold War operations to discipline the American public (Masco 2013). In order to delve into the scientific reports on fallout from Fukushima, the legal battle between the Marshallese and the Amer-

imperial exploitation. I am aiming to use other peoples’ stories not in order to bolster my own academic standing, but rather, to position my voice as an ally in the struggle against destruction of native and marginalized communities. This is not a comprehensive compilation of resistance narratives, nor an attempt to speak on behalf of affected communities. This is research for the purpose of leveling a multidimensional case against nuclear reasoning. My guiding motivation is the conviction that state policy and international affairs would be significantly transformed by the decolonial demands and contributions from those most affected by fallout, who are also the most excluded from the conversation.

I use the language of fluids to describe the trajectories of violence in order to aid a necessary visualization of colonial reverberations. The continu-

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 111

ities I draw behave like feedback loops traveling across the Pacific Ocean and crossing transnational borders. The nodes of analysis I focus on act like dense synapses at which capital converges and is then dispersed. These nodes are the American weapons testing conducted in the Marshall Islands (Operation Crossroads 1946-1958) and the accidental explosion of the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan (March 11, 2011). These incidents of nuclear fallout contain powerful connections to other instances such as British and French nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Cuban missile

the Pacific Rim or its political ties to the United States. Positioning nuclear fallout as a site to investigate political legacy lends itself to innovations in a radical restructuring of life and anti-violence resistance.

crisis, and nuclear waste repositories stationed on indigenous reservations in the US mainland. Of course, this paper cannot encompass all of the connections inherent in international nuclear endeavors. Rather, I choose Fukushima and the Marshall Islands region with a living memory of imperial/colonial violence as well as nuclear disaster in order to investigate the imperial encounter between the United States and the Asia Pacific Region. This research deals very closely with the specific historical space-time of the Pacific Rim (where the Marshall Islands testing was conducted, where Fukushima is situated) in which many island communities share experiences of exploitative resource extraction, gendered and racialized political/social/economic subjugation, and environmental degradation. I say this without attempting to ignore or diminish Japan’s role as an imperial force in

the term “to encompass all those citizenship projects that have linked their conceptions of citizens to beliefs about the biological existence of human beings, as individuals, as men and women, as families and lineages, as communities, as populations and races, and as species” (Rose 2007; 132). This definition is important to my work because it allows for us to understand nuclear reasoning as a mode of citizen-making as well as population control, or rather citizen-making as a formation of population control. Nuclear reasoning consists of collaboration among many different actors and also renders certain populations as more viable life than others. In this way, nuclear reasoning works to render certain populations as deserving of the rewards of nuclear energy and the securitization benefits promised by nuclear defense by displacing the burdens and costs to communi-

112 | UNFOUND

Chapter 2: Biological Citizenship To understand the way nuclear reasoning positions fallout in vulnerable communities, we must attend to the notion of biological citizenship posited by Adriana Petryna and Nikolas Rose. Rose first coined the term “biological citizen” in his discussion of contemporary biopolitical strategies and logics deployed in the US and the UK. Rose uses

ties deemed sacrificial to the project of nation-building. This is how the biopolitics of nuclear reasoning necessarily rely on the necropolitics. By controlling and coordinating certain communities’ proximity to death by nuclear contamination, it is possible to also manufacture an infrastructure of citizen-making on the US mainland. Rose describes “bare life” as the basic matter of humans made available for coordination, domination and categorization by the medical-industrial complex. He also argues that nationalist citizen-projects rely on their investments in bare life, “grounded in the hope that certain specific characteristics of the genes of

to imagine their lives and their futures as functions of their genetic output,. thus creating the need for citizens to be calculating and diligent stewards of their genomic existences for the purpose of supporting the apparatuses that maintain the citizen project itself. This causes a counter-intuitive shift in market relations of disease, death, and life.

As Rose puts it, “today, the genomic disease heritage of a population, far from being conceived of as a drain on national resources, is seen as a potential resource for the generation of wealth and health, and one that provides great economic opportunities for the novel alliances of state and commerce taking

groups of their citizens may potentially provide a valuable resource for the generation of intellectual property rights, for biotechnological innovation, and for the creation of biovalue” (Rose 2007; 133). His discussion details how cooperation from patients, medical professionals and scientific authorities generate the conditions under which this bare life becomes capital.

I would like to take Rose’s argument elsewhere and use it to analyze the ways in which life is politicized not only by its proliferation but also by the displacement of its negation. In other words, the life of a nation and its citizens comes to be defined along a rubric of death, specifically the death of those made surplus to the project of citizen-making (see Mbembe 2003; Wright 2006; and Rose 2007). Rose argues that biological citizenship is produced by making it commonplace for people

shape within contemporary circuits of biovalue” (Rose 2007; 151). I will revisit Rose’s assertions when I introduce the fallout from Fukushima’s impact on the medical/scientific communities’ responses in California.

Likewise, Adriana Petryna relies on the concept of bio-citizenship to analyze the social, economic, and political impacts of the Chernobyl meltdown.

Petryna exposes how the Soviet mismanagement of the crisis allowed for a “technogenic catastrophe” in which poor planning, reluctance to take responsibility, withholding of crucial information, lack of funding, and complex emerging power dynamics of a shifting “political economy of illness” exacerbate and contribute to the catastrophic health consequences of people living in affected areas (Petryna 2004; 254, 256).

Petryna analyzes the surreptitious consequences of nuclear fallout such

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 113

as how “The production of scientific know-how, markets, and state formations were mutually embedded, generating new inequalities and opportunities in the re- definitions of citizenship and ethics” (Petryna 2004; 256). In other words, the positioned vulnerability of sufferers functions within many intersecting pressures so that in the desire to counter the state’s negligence for human life, individuals find themselves circulating between contaminated areas that are the only zones they can find work in, clinics that hierarchize their suffering and illnesses in order to assign them to state-sponsored medical aid, and the terrified space of psychological

state control.

I will use Rose’s and Petryna’s discussions of the biological citizen to clarify connections between the United States’ nuclear testing on the Marshall Islands and the US government’s reaction to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Through this overlay of analyses, it will become apparent that nuclear reasoning functions by hierarchizing values of life. From Petryna’s and Rose’s deployments of the notion of biological citizenship we can understand this subjectivity on two planes. This subjectivity, as Petryna understands it in Chernobyl survivors, is the condition of negotiating everyday practices

uncertainty and displacement (Petryna 2004). The biological citizen is a test subject of the medical industrial complex, recreating itself as such because there is no other place to turn. Confined economically or geographically, those impacted by Chernobyl’s nuclear blast have lost autonomy by desperately needing the services provided by the Ukrainian government while also dealing with illness, trauma, and a shattered trust in government. The multi-dimensional suffering of the bio-citizen is furthermore increased, because information that would communicate the true nature and extent of contamination is controlled and manipulated in order to secure the power-elite’s grip on public opinion (Petryna 2004). In this way, the bio-citizen is an illegible vessel of state violence whose pain and experiences are not only silenced but are also used to confine sufferers to

of survival with inescapable radiation exposure. For Rose the bio-citizen can be read in Western bourgeois subjects whose health and wellness are available for optimization through everyday procedures of relating to the medical-industrial complex. The main difference between these two scholars is that for Petryna one is subjected to bio-citizenship through nuclear contamination, whereas for Rose, bio-citizenship is an accessible (even desirable) mode of being a subject in a modern nation state in which the institutions that coordinate around the subject in order to construct that identity can be assumed to be operating on behalf of the citizen.

In my analysis those subjected to fallout cannot be understood as bio-citizens in Petryna’s sense, for the nation state that transformed their subjectivities by exposure to fallout disavows them and will not afford any of the guarantees or

114 | UNFOUND

protections of the citizen. Additionally, the procedures for accessing resources and aid are spread out between Marshallese and American institutions.

Nuclear reasoning exceeds both Rose’s and Petryna’s investigations because it has created a system in which those exposed to devastating fallout are reservoirs of bio-value deployed to enhance the experience, technology, and procedures of biological citizenship in the American mainland. Fallout survivors in the Marshall Islands engage in similar re-structuring of their subjectivities as how Petryna describes, but they are figured in the American mainland as non-citizens.

Chapter 3: Playing God Tricks: Nuclear Reasoning’s Invisible Architects Medico-scientific research on nuclear fallout relies on normalizing rhetoric, visible, for example, in the utterances that assert national security as the aim of maintaining and controlling fallout.

Yet “National Security,” I contest, disproportionately affords certain liberties and safeties to some while denying them to others. Indeed, one example is the liberty to feel assured that those in power would never set off weapons of mass destruction in your neighborhood just to observe how it affects military equipment. One such safety is that from the life-long burden of radiation sickness, or safety from the trauma of exposure to weapons of mass destruction. Another liberty is to believe your life is safe from the fallout of weapons supremacy, imperial war, invasion and

occupation. The very farcical existence of these liberties and safeties relies on the narrative that declares their limits.

This narrative, whether we call it “History,” “Military Intelligence,” “The Prose of Counter-Sovereignty” (Goldstein 2014), or “Fantasy” (Tadiar 2004), enforces material realities. In discussing the official definition of death, or who is legally dead, as it has been determined in medical contexts, Jeffrey Bishop unearths useful “absurdities” (Bishop 2011; 171). Bishop contends that, “Subtle violences emerge from these practices, but the violences are hidden because they are couched in the language of the greater good” (Bishop 2011; 171).

This structure for devaluing bodies is the subtext in the U.S.-Japan Nuclear Working Group’s May 2013 published statement titled, “Shared Strategic Priorities in the Aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident.” It should come as no surprise that this working group consists almost entirely of individuals who have direct financial and professional interests in upholding nuclear reasoning. Members of the committee as individuals cannot take sole responsibility for nuclear reasoning, but can only make up the prosthetic limbs of this chimeric monster. Committee members’ backgrounds in naval nuclear weapons deployment and development, nuclear global trade and commerce, upper executive roles in big energy business, foreign policy consulting, and specializing in national security are merely reflections of the high power

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 115

zones from which nuclear reasoning enlists its agents. The working group was made possible in part by funding from Mitsubishi, Hitachi and Toshiba, three major nuclear power plant manufacturers engaged in decades-old licensing agreements with American corporations such as General Electric and Westinghouse (Akiyama et al. 2013 and Lester 1982). Japan has long been a massively growing economy severely threatened by energy insecurity, which has been exacerbated by its dependency on American fuel exports, power plant technologies, and strict non-proliferation policies. The working group, as a privately funded project, works to

completely in the hands of the Japanese people, the report is packed with admonishments discouraging decommission. The report claims that, “Japan’s decisions on its energy future will affect Japan’s ability to meet its international commitments to reduce CO2 emissions and its global leadership role in the environmental arena” (Akiyama et al. 2013; 7). This statement exposes the intersecting demands on Japan to save face on its promise to “go green.”

These statements give the impression that mainstream green politics isn’t compromised by the ethical dilemma of degrading entire communities with nuclear contamination. The authors’

represent the cost of nuclear reasoning as one in dollars that only affects those in power and the risks as ones coming from the outside (terrorists). Altogether, this collaboration is necessary for protecting corporate interests in addition to maintaining Japan’s reputation “as the leading example of a non-nuclear weapons state with advanced nuclear energy capabilities” (Akiyama et al. 2013).

The report blatantly states that the United States has an “inherent national interest in Japan’s energy security as an essential factor in its ability to contribute to the region’s economic, political, and physical security” (Akiyama et al.

2013; 7). The report continues to explain that the United States and Japan form a nuclear hegemonic partnership in international politics, and despite its affirmations that the decision to continue with nuclear power or not is

supposed environmental concerns astonishingly omit rageful Pacific Islander activism to prevent Japan and other major powers from dumping radioactive waste from nuclear power plants in the Marshall Islands, further contaminating the most irradiated ocean in the world (Maclellan 2014). Furthermore, the report goes on to forewarn that the “erosion of Japan’s global advantage in nuclear energy technology reduces the leverage with which Japan and the United States are able to affect global efforts to realize a world safer from risks of nuclear proliferation, terrorism and accidents” (Akiyama et al. 2013; 5). The language of global green politics coincides with the language of international security to transform the dialogue on “going green” into winning the war on terror, thus obfuscating Native experiences of nuclear crisis and contamination.1

116 | UNFOUND

Nuclear reasoning demands for and constitutes the production of official statements that determine for the public how the arguments are framed and disseminated, how the costs and risks are termed, and who is believed to be shouldering those costs. Those who participated in the conference that resulted in this working group statement want the public to believe it is people like themselves (who profit from nuclear proliferation) that pay for it rather than those suffering from contamination. They need the general public to believe that they are trustworthy resources of official knowledge on the topic. Because nuclear reasoning

this information to the people within its charge is culturally mobilized to define who the viable citizen can be imagined to be.

Karen Barad declaims scientific representationalism, such as that which participates in the production of political statements around nuclear energy and weaponry. Barad states, “representationalism marks a failure to take account of the practices through which representations are produced. Images or representations are not snapshots or depictions of what awaits us but rather condensations or traces of multiple practices of engagement” (Barad 2007; 53). Scientific representationalism thus

is not stable, it requires scaffolding by bureaucratic, political, scientific, and medical professionals who then set the terms for thinking about nuclear energy and weaponry. The authors and their positionalities do not appear to have much to do with the ways information about fallout is created and disseminated. It is because the authors of nuclear reasoning are capable of making themselves appear omniscient that they tend to disappear into what Donna Haraway calls, “the space of clarity and uncontaminated referentiality, the kingdom of rationality. That kind of clarity and that kind of referentiality are god tricks” (Haraway 1997; 136). The working group statement, and others like it that I will investigate in this paper are written in direct, authoritative, paternalistic language; the implicit assertion that the patriarchal body of the nation state has sole sovereign power to dictate

assumes the object of observation to be discrete and master-able (without any manipulation by the observer). This assumption thus extends to the representation, such that the original object appears to be like a particle of light that bounced off the surface of a mirror to be found in its almost-exact form in the representation. Barad insists that the object of observation and the representation are deeply and irremovably entangled with the individual or collective attempting to triangulate both, despite her/their attempts to appear as a perfectly smooth surface upon which information is simply reflected to the reader.

Barad asserts that the scientist is a sociocultural barrier transforming the object of observation and the representation simultaneously. The persistent reconstitution of nuclear reasoning, which relies on representationalism, is

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 117

fragile and flawed. It is defending itself against the voices of those rendered invisible (non-expert, sufferer, laymen etc.). Lijon Eknilang, who was living on Rongelap Atoll during nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, threatened the patriarchal, racist and colonial underpinnings of nuclear reasoning when she testified: Marshallese women suffer silently and differently from the men who were ex-posed [sic] to radiation. Our culture and religion teaches us that reproductive abnormalities are a sign that women have been unfaithful. For this reason, many of

harm caused by radiation exposure. The work of denaturalizing nuclear reasoning has long been pursued by Pacific Island activists and leaders who understand this reasoning to be as unnatural as colonialism. At the 1975 Nuclear Free Pacific conference in Fiji, a delegate from New Hebrides expressed a widely held understanding of nuclear reasoning’s colonial enactments by saying, “The main objective of this conference is to end nuclear tests in the Pacific, but the more we discuss it, it becomes obvious that the main cause is colonialism” (qtd. in Maclellan 2014; 10).

The historical legacy from which the US-Japan Nuclear Working Group

my friends keep quiet about the strange births they have had.

In privacy, they give birth, not to children as we like to think of them, but to things we could only describe as ‘octopuses,’ ‘apples,’ ‘turtles’ and other things in our experience. We do not have Marshallese words for these kinds of babies, because they were never born before the radiation came. (Eknilang 1996) Nuclear reasoning as a necropolitical logic is legible only when we denaturalize the disposability and exploitation of (de)valued lives.2 As I will demonstrate in chapter 5, Eknilang’s articulation of the particular vulnerability of the fetus and how this poses a significant trauma and burden to the community is excluded from mainland measures which seek to explicitly remedy and anticipate fetal

is born can be genealogically traced to many other instances of discursive scaffolding. Joseph Masco argues that one such instance is evident in the citizen project, as outlined in a report on The Human Effects of Nuclear Weapons Development (submitted to President Eisenhower 1956). Operation Cue (video footage mass-distributed in the US that included above-ground nuclear tests conducted in Nevada) was visually reproduced, Masco tells us, “to calibrate the image of atomic warfare for the American public through the mass circulation of certain images of the bomb, and the censorship of all others [namely, writes Masco, Hiroshima and Nagasaki]” (Masco 2013; 275). It disturbed me to read Masco’s powerful essay to find no mention of Castle Bravo, or any of the other 68 nuclear tests and 23 multi-megaton detonations of Operation Crossroads that occurred

118 | UNFOUND

between 1946 and 1958 (Subramanian 2013; 19 and Niedenthal 2001; 92) in the Marshall Islands. In addition, I find it worth noting that the outline for how political officials should enlist civilian involvement through emotional inoculation, the report titled The Human Effects . . . , was not submitted until 1956—one year after Operation Cue, two years after Castle Bravo, and two years before testing for Operation Crossroads would cease. This timing is significant because in the same years, the UK government was also conducting nuclear bomb tests in the Pacific and a significant Pacific Islands partnership was forming to cease all nuclear con-

Pacific nations who were subjected to nuclear reasoning. There is more to be said than that American mainlanders were engaged in a nationalistic rehearsal of annihilation; they were also being made forcefully ignorant of the extent to which the US government and other Western nations would go to succeed in the event of nuclear war and to purposefully expose people to fallout, in addition to why and where people were already crying out against the violence of nuclear testing.

By obsessing over the images of mannequins being vaporized, it became unthinkable to imagine that real people were being exposed to fallout at the

tamination in the Pacific on the grounds that it was colonial violence (Maclellan 2014; 10). In fact, the Fijian newspaper, Jagriti, published the following in 1957: “Nations engaged in testing these bombs in the Pacific should realise the value of the lives of the people settled in this part of the world. They too are human beings, not ‘guinea pigs’” (Maclellan 2014; 10). By leaving out Operation Crossroads, Masco’s analysis is gravely undermined. Those who drafted the report were aware of the testing in the Pacific. The social threat the report describes, that has the potential to undermine nuclear experimentation, could have been triggered had mainlanders been exposed to the experience of being “guinea pigs” the way many in the Pacific were. As it were, the mobilization to cease all nuclear contamination, armament, and experimentation had already been gaining momentum amongst

same time these images were absorbing the public gaze.3 The norm this project pursued was not simply to create abiding, devoted patriot-citizens, but also to define the life accorded to such individuals as deserving, indeed warranting, the sacrifice of other individuals. The necropolitical citizen-building project under nuclear reasoning is defining the life of the mainland citizen-subject as such by cultural mobilizations of anxiety and fear around nuclear defeat. We might ask how this notion could come about when most people in mainland US had no idea that indigenous Pacific Islanders were being exposed to fallout. The very boundaries of the citizen-subject of 1950s Cold War America were in part fashioned by the expulsion of Native mainlanders and Pacific Islanders, who in turn were rendered necessary fodder for the maintenance of “Freedom,” “Democracy,” “Securi-

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 119

ty,” etc. Masco asserts the Civil Defense program “sought to make mass death an intimate psychological experience” (Masco 2013; 260), but this point is not continuous with the obvious particularity of the individuals represented by mannequins in Operation Cue. Made to be models of the white-stream, middle-class American nuclear family, the test dummies elicit identification for only a select group. This social rehearsal was not as intimate as Masco portrays it.

The exposure of white and Mormon communities in Nevada and Utah is well documented and has received more recognition than the exposure of First

which the restored nation-state would have retained most of its features, functions, leaders, institutions, etc. As stated in the 1956 report, “While it will be essential that available military resources be used to assist the civil government, it will be equally important to a rapid recovery that the recognized civil leaders and the familiar civil institutions be restored to functioning to the maximum possible extent as rapidly as possible” (Fremont-Smith et al. 1956; 14). The authors of this report make plain that “recovery” would be achieved by re-instituting the same governance structures as before the hypothetical catastrophe. Under nuclear reasoning,

Peoples, Indigenous nations, and Pacific Islanders. The mannequins of Operation Cue rehearse the destruction of the bodies which would likely benefit from the fallout research being conducted in the Marshall Islands; nonetheless, those who could identify with this archetypal fantasy of heterosexual, capitalist, nuclear family units were encouraged to imagine themselves as the most plausible and vulnerable potential victims to fallout. This plausibly vulnerable narrative sustained the anxiety necessary for upholding nuclear reasoning and invisibilizing lived experiences of fallout.

I agree that familiarity was the desired effect throughout these attempts at disciplining and preparing white mainlanders for life before, during, and after fallout. Most significantly, Masco points out that recipients of the citizen-building projects were intended to invest in a post-nuclear imagination, in

the anxiety of being the most plausibly vulnerable that white mainlanders achieved is assuaged only by the promise of the restoration of the status quo.

In order to register the transit of biovalue as legible, we must denaturalize nuclear reasoning. The authors of the report on Human Effects of Nuclear Weapons Development deride an “awareness” of the bitter destruction that haunts nuclear reasoning as a misguided over-occupation with rumor and selfishness. This “awareness,” they report, poses a threat coterminous with violent, panic-driven riots due to an irrational disruption in unanimous support for nuclear war. This, they fear, would lead to “the avoidance of nuclear war, no matter what the cost” (Fremont-Smith et al. 1956; 17). The authors are clear in connecting this “’awareness’” to the threat of the people halting policies that “in-

120 | UNFOUND

volved any substantial risk of nuclear war, even though such policies were designed to defend our cherished concepts of human dignity and freedom” (Fremont-Smith et al. 1956; 17). I am still confounded as to why “awareness” is in scare quotes, but I take it to be a direct act of silencing those who would come forth to claim nuclear reasoning was responsible for Marshallese people bearing “the brunt of acute radiation sickness and direct organ radiation damage related to high radiation exposure, as well as long-term cancer risks including increased rates of thyroid cancer. As well as direct exposure to radioactive fallout, they confront

anticipation of the risks of nuclear terrorism and the radical disintegration of public support for the government and military. These anticipations, in unique ways, deploy cultural identifications with risk and exposure. Anticipatory risk assessment is a vital characteristic of the citizen-building project I investigate, and I will go in to deeper detail on contemporary examples of this practice in my critical reading of hypothetical simulations of nuclear meltdown conducted in California.

Neferti Tadiar’s notion of fantasy production can encompass nuclear reasoning’s ability to enforce a regime of imaginative situations which in turn

long-term contaminated environments and food sources” (Maclellan 2014; 13).

The posture taken in statements such as those I have discussed is one that understates or discounts the immensely damaging impacts on people and the environment from nuclear fallout and pollution. As for nuclear policy being able to “defend our cherished concepts of human dignity and freedom,” this is a blatant demonstration of a “New World Fantasy”—in which subjecting innocent non-combatants to nuclear experimentation translates, in some bizarre disfigurement, to service human dignity and freedom. Multiple anticipations of risk are at play in the US-Japan Nuclear Working Group statement as well as the Human Effects of Nuclear Weapons Development Report. In the former, there is an anticipation of the risks of nuclear proliferation and energy deficiency. In the latter, there is an

creates the physical space in which radioactive contamination in the Pacific generates capital. Tadiar describes the trajectory of administrative colonial capitalism in the Philippines through a framework of concrete exchanges of capital as they are escorted by forceful imaginaries, or “dreamwork” (Tadiar 2004; 6). “Fantasy-production,” the author writes, “denotes the imaginary of a regime of accumulation and representation of universal value, under the sway of which capitalist nations organize themselves individually and collectively in the ‘system’ of the Free World” (Tadiar 2004; 6). Although I will extend Tadiar’s discussion to look at the United States, Japan, and the Marshall Islands as engaging in discursive and capitalist struggles for sovereignty, Tadiar’s investigation into the Philippine socio-sexual political economy bears on my understanding of how these flows

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 121

behave.4 Tadiar calls us to understand the capitalist machinery that works, because of the work of imagination, as Fantasy Production. Fantasy production is not only intangible; it is also the literal flows of capital that make up the infrastructure/framework of reality as we understand it. For example, the narrative presented to white mainlanders as being the most plausibly vulnerable is acted upon by testing out weapons of nuclear warfare in the Pacific.

Then, the information on radiation exposure gathered in the treatment of Marshallese survivors is put to use in developing preemptive and preventative measures for protecting those encom-

actual biological material is extracted from survivors of nuclear bombs tests. As I will investigate further in the section, “Where Does Bio-Value Go,” a robust infrastructure has been developing for decades in order to allow for raw material gathered in nuclear experimentation to be made useful for those who experience the anxiety of the most plausibly vulnerable, yet who are shielded from the actual effects of fallout exploitation. Furthermore, nuclear reasoning is exemplified by the statement given in response to the second petition filed by the Marshallese in 1956 to cease all testing. As quoted in Narayan Subramanian’s article, “A US

passed in the aforementioned narrative.

The fantasies that circulate in the two official statements I reviewed in this section manufacture the conditions for material exchange of biovalue. Additionally, the imaginative investments in who can be legible as vulnerable to radioactive fallout and who can realistically achieve a future free of nuclear contamination are folding into the modern formation of the bourgeois citizen-subject.

government representative responded stating that as long as a threat of aggression existed, ‘elementary prudence require[d] the United States to continue its testing’ and future testing would be ‘absolutely necessary for the well-being of all the people of this world’” (Subramanian 2013, 20, italics mine). The threat of aggression referenced must continue in perpetuity as it feeds the cultural mobilization of anxiety that I have detailed and that disallows the realization that the United States is the threat of nuclear aggression in the Pacific. Expelling this realization allows for a culture of experiencing the risks of nuclear fallout to center around white mainlanders and disavow the lived experiences of nuclear fallout survivors.

It is compelling and grotesque that the language of securitization allows for the equivalent of “1.6 Hiroshimas per day” for twelve years to be dropped on a

Chapter 4: Extracting Bare Life: (Bio) citizenship Denied/Bio-Citizenship Optimized Thus far, I have demonstrated that nuclear reasoning maintains an ideology in which it appears to be “reasonable” that nuclear testing exposes Native Pacific Islanders to radioactive fallout. This logical formation lubricates the material channels along which

122 | UNFOUND

Pacific Islander community (Subramanian 2013; 19). Nuclear reasoning also empowers the mainland political elite in determining who should bear the brunt of nuclear fallout and for what purposes. By outsourcing nuclear testing to the Pacific, the US military asserted that the threat of nuclear terrorism is and was what American mainlanders ought to fear; simultaneously, American nuclear terror created a devastation such as Darlene Keju, Marshallese activist and educator, describes: “My island is contaminated. I have three tumours in me, and I’m frightened. I don’t know whether I should have children or not, because I don’t know if I will have a

Human Radiation Experiments (Faden et al.) to investigate government-conducted radiation experiments (conducted between 1944 and 1974) that involved human subjects, the possibility and extent of harm caused to subjects, and remedial actions necessary, and, in my reading, to officially deny many of the claims brought forth by those who have been wrongfully exposed to contamination.5 Nuclear investment makes for exploitative conditions of extraction from bodies suffering fallout: opportunities, possibilities, scientific knowhow, and raw material (bare-life) for experimentation. The ACHRE reported on the Marshall Islands that, “The Mar-

child that is like a jellyfish baby” (qtd. in Maclellan 2014; 20). This testing not only provided a wealth of knowledge on the effects of “‘atomic bombs on American warships’” (Niedenthal 2002; 1), but it also produced a host of exposed populations whose survival relies on the military and medical infrastructure of the nation that caused their suffering.

Their bodies, their genetics, and their futures are now deeply entangled in the entire framework of nuclear research and medical treatment (Subramanian 2013; Niedenthal 2002; Petryna 2004; Rose 2007). In addition, all these resources inherent in the bodies of Marshallese are resources that the American scientific community has great interest in harnessing and extracting in order to build the super-nation’s wealth of knowledge on the effects of fallout.

In 1994 President Bill Clinton commissioned the Advisory Committee on

shallese were exposed to highly penetrating gamma radiation, which resulted in whole-body exposure, external radiation from deposition of fission products on the skin, internal radiation from consumption of contaminated food and water and . . . from inhalation of fallout particles” (Faden et al. 1996; 369). The things sought after, that require the specific knowledge extracted from the suffering body, are cures for radiation exposure, weaponry and information technology resistant to nuclear radiation, and the maintenance of a devoted and docile body politic (Niedenthal 2001; Macso 2013). The report explicitly denies that the United States military was pursuing research on the human effects of radiation fallout despite knowing the wind was blowing over inhabited islands, despite having ignored recommendations to have an emergency evacuation vessel on stand-

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 123

by, and despite “an unexplained interval of many days before the fallout was announced to the public” (Faden et al.

1996; 369). In their report, the authors recognize that it was “almost immediately apparent to the AEC and the Joint Task Force running the Castle series that research on radiation effects could be done in conjunction with the medical treatment of the exposed populations” (Faden et al. 1996; 369); however, they insist that the main purpose of these studies was to improve medical therapy for fallout exposure. Whether or not the best treatment was given to affected people is still a disputed claim between the U.S and Marshallese.6 The report

(Faden et al. 1996; 374). This racialized perspective on genetic reservoirs of Marshallese people is swiftly excused by those charged by the President to investigate harm. All of this chapter is escorted by the report’s admission that consent was not obtained in ways that would be required if the subjects were viable citizens of the mainland (race: white/European, empowered, English-speaking, educated). And, of course, the report is not meant to invite investigations into how the committee obtained information, what was left out, who the committee members are, and how they were rewarded for this task. They, too, are playing god tricks.

makes no comment on the fact that in the case of the Marshall Islands, the information obtained was for remedial treatment; however, the information and research amasses in capital because it can be used for prevention and preemptive medical therapy in the colonial metropoles (the mainland) on behalf of those who can afford and have access to state-of-the-art treatment.

Crucially, the report admits to two specific studies in which there appeared to be no therapeutic benefit to the subjects. The purpose of one such study “was to determine whether the anemia that had been observed among Marshallese was an ethnic characteristic or due to their radiation exposures,” and the procedure “posed a very minimal risk [involving the injection of radioactive chromium 51 into the blood stream], but it was clearly not for the benefit of the ten subjects themselves”

We do not have to wait however many years, if ever, it takes for information to be declassified to be able to preempt the undercover investigations that aim to devise a way to use nuclear energy against enemies but achieve survival after nuclear blows are exchanged or catastrophic conditions trigger accidents beyond the state’s capacity to recover. It is only sound war business to be pursuing methods of annihilation alongside strategies for self-preservation/defense.

124 | UNFOUND

Chapter 5: Where Does Biovalue Go? Spatializing Disaster, Optimizing Treatment, Cartographic Narratives A study by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, entitled “Worldwide Health Effects of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident,” from researchers John Ten Hoeve and Mark Jacobson, pre-

sented simulations of the Fukushima meltdown and a hypothetical situation at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo, California. In order to analyze how geographic location plays a significant role in exposure to fallout, the researchers had to derive multiple sets of data that could then be used to extrapolate other sets of data on which the manufacturers could then present their analysis. First, they built “[s]imulations to assess the worldwide transport and removal of airborne radioactive plumes from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8746). These were made possibly by isolating I-131, Cs-

No-Threshold (LNT) model which is used to indicate exposure.

Once the researchers had a global-scale estimation of how the radioactive plume could travel, “[t]he LNT model assumes that each radionuclide disintegration has the same probability of causing cell transformation and that each transformed cell has the same probability of developing into cancer” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8744).

After simulating the world-wide concentration of radioactive materials for the month following the explosion at Fukushima, the researchers used the LNT model to estimate levels of exposure in “Asia, North America, Europe,

137, Cs-134 and Ba-137m as the radionuclides most important to evaluating risk coefficients for excess sicknesses and death.7 Because these radionuclides are subject to various atmospheric variables that transform their deposition, model simulations “were evaluated against observations [by CTBTO and EPA RadNet] and previous studies” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8746).8 With estimates based on observations and other models, the GATOR-GCMOM model is designed to perform the necessary simulations of “atmospheric and ocean circulation, clouds, precipitation, emissions, transport, deposition, chemistry, aerosol processes, radiation, and air-surface interactions” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8745).9 Many uncertainties occur with this model, especially in regards to how to treat radionuclides as particles or gas. Additional uncertainties arise with the Linear

Africa, Japan, South Korea, United States, Mexico, Canada, and Worldwide” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; Table 2; 8751). From estimated ranges of exposure to these cancer-causing radioactive materials, the researchers then sought to calculate the health effects according to geographic location in order to make a global assessment of excess mortality and excess morbidity. Lastly, by using the Environmental Protection Agency’s Dose and Risk Calculation (DCAL) software, which “performs biokinetic and dosimetric calculations for the case of acute intake of radionuclide by inhalation, ingestion, or injection” (DCAL User Manual), the authors made educated estimates of the range of possible excess sicknesses and deaths as a result of exposure through these multiple passage ways. The authors explain, “[t]he software provided organ-specific, age-specific, and gen-

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 125

Fig. 1 “Modeled near-surface atmospheric worldwide activity concentrations (mBq m3) of I-131 (a) 36 hours (1.5 days), (b) 180 hours (7.5 days), (c) 324 hours (13.5 days), and (d) 468 hours (19.5 days) into the hypothetical Diablo Canyon simulation beginning on 12 September 2006. Northern Hemisphere (NH) averages noted above each panel are weighted by population.” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8752).

der-specific relative risk coefficients for the inhalation pathways” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8747). For external exposure relative risk coefficients, the researchers referred to Federal Guidance Report No.13. The calculation of uncertainty is often described in this paper as a very rough estimate and a very educated guess. Some possibilities seem too uncertain to speculate on— for example, the authors did not calculate health effects from radionuclide ingestion pathways “due to the additional complexities and uncertainties relating to international trade and human consumption of food and water.

However, [the researchers] estimate the

126 | UNFOUND

health effect from this pathway based on a previous study of the Chernobyl accident” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8747).

Given their results, the team of scientists endeavored to project a model of fallout for a hypothetical nuclear accident. They chose to simulate an accident at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo County, California in order to “illustrate the effect of geographic location on the health impact of a nuclear accident” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8746). This is also a coastal plant that if collapsed, would contaminate the ocean and landmass of Califor-

nia. This simulation differed from the one of Fukushima because, “radiation was capped in a shallow layer near the surface and slowly advected over nearby populated areas whereas in the Fukushima incident, much of the radiation was quickly advected offshore where it was diluted and removed” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8755).

The researchers provide thermo-tone maps (fig. 1) that show how radioactive particles could spread from Diablo Canyon to other parts of California and then make its way around the entire Northern Hemisphere. Fukushima and Diablo Canyon are interestingly parallel in that they are both coastal plants that

California. The simulation provides hypothetical maps of radioactive particles releasing from Diablo Canyon and traveling around the northern hemisphere. These are unlike most maps people would view of California, the United States, the Pacific Ocean, the Northern Hemisphere, or the world.

They are topographical mechanisms for seeing fallout. Donna Haraway discusses spatialization “as a never-ending, power-laced process engaged by a motley array of beings [which] can be fetishized as a series of maps whose grids nontropically locate naturally bounded bodies (land, people, resources— and genes) inside ‘absolute’ dimensions

serve as optical poles of analysis. When Avila Beach and Fukushima Prefecture are the two simulations, the Pacific Ocean centers and serves to transfer and transform the advection of fallout.

The simulation at Diablo Canyon is an anticipatory risk assessment prompted also by the fact that the plant rests on a fault line in a state infamous for its earthquakes. I consider this research as a form of scientific cartography that paradoxically omits the presence of people in its calculations, but simultaneously is conducted for the purpose of assessing the impact on people.

The authors designed a computer program that could simulate and visualize the dispersal and concentration of radioactive particles traveling over air, water, and land. They then used this program, since it could correspond to manually taken measurements, to simulate a hypothetical explosion in

such as space and time” (Haraway 1997; 136). Flat images, composed of bounded cells in which articulated pixels correspond to a visual light spectrum, which in turn signify a range of concentrations of molecular depositions of toxins, these Cartesian images are posited as models for the real world. They aim for representationalism; the spatialization of nuclear fallout assumes the authority of computerized perspectives of global weather, population, and chemical interactions. The most politically salient aspect is their cultural mobilization as illustrations of populational proximity to harm; these images anticipate nuclear contamination. Instead of identifying with white mannequins, the citizen-subject is invited to identify with being in the red, meaning the center of radioactive concentration. Populations of people dissolve into populations of organs which coalesce and transfigure

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 127

as cellular compositions of response variables (risk coefficients). As the images are pixelated, the map controls a visualization of life forms across the globe as discrete, cellular clouds of dose-responses. We might imagine this as the pixelation of populations of cells; the human body and their sociopolitical entrapments appear dis(re)solved and life accorded is disembodied, vaporized.

I recall Jeffrey Bishop’s point in the case of organ-procurement: “The patient/ donor not only disappears but is merely a necessary ‘container’ to support the life of the organs, organs which autonomously contribute to life” (Bishop 2011; 178). If in Bishop’s investigation, the

which “self-invisibility . . . [a] specifically modern, European, masculine, scientific form of the virtue of modesty . . . guarantees that the modest witness is the legitimate and authorized ventriloquist for the object world” (Haraway 1997; 24-25). Haraway is describing the process by which the authors of scientific discourse attempt to allow their representations of the world to appear removed from cultural and social ideologies, thus assuming authority over not only the representation of the world, but the material of observation itself.

Barad’s discussion of scientific representationalism is in response to Haraway’s articulations of the “God Trick.”

politically-engaged surgeon is pre-occupied with the autonomous life-contributions of organs, under his dutiful utilitarianism, then the topographic doctoring of fallout might invoke a point of view finely focused on cellular populations as genetic reservoirs of information and life—if only under the dutiful stewarding of state and corporate agents.

As flat images, these maps are simply representations (snap-shots) of several time thresholds in a continuous simulation. As they coordinate the deposition of fallout, cell-grids cordon off zones for the purpose of scaling, or associating distance with the actual dimensions of the image. This topography of fallout trains the eye to see fallout and not people, and not plants, and not animals.10 The “world-making” process of map-making (Haraway 1997; Weber 2010) is also the means by

Furthermore, it is of particular importance to me that the mathematical calculation of risk coefficients is organ-specific. The illustration of risk that the researchers are attempting to provide is not as zoomed out as the maps they present. These flat images have deeply embedded meanings that cannot be understood by simply reading the pixels in the cell grid according to latitude and longitude. Instead, the calculable information is dispersed in the sky, in the clouds and rain, in the particles of atmosphere, in the cells of organ tissue, in the blood stream. The figures, the useful material derived for and from these maps is numerically associated with tiny components that make up the world we exist in— the very molecular structure of our organic bodies. From the interior of the body, a mathematical computation becomes the vehicle from which scientific communities make de-

128 | UNFOUND

finitive statements about populations’ proximities to disaster.

A nuclear accident at Diablo Canyon would be an incidence of fallout not only in the sense of nuclear contamination, but also in the sense of an unintended consequence of nuclear reasoning that might qualify as fallout in its own right. The impetus for this study was to respond to health and environmental concerns as a result of fallout from Fukushima. And so, the study is also a product of societal and scientific anxiety in response to the creation of an energy source that cannot be completely contained and dominated, and is subject to catastrophic malfunction.

scientific scrutiny. We have made them but we fail to understand their causal or nomological properties” (qtd. in Weber 2010; 29). Multiple instances in this paper suggest that these predictive simulations of a hypothetical disaster at Diablo Canyon and Fukushima would not be possible if not for research conducted in Chernobyl and on victims from Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the Marshall Islands. While such research is informative and useful to the very military that exposed the Marshallese to fallout, it is exactly so because the data has been extracted for the purpose of transference to a colonial metropole (dispersed across a scientific and mil-

In order to counteract this inability to dominate, nuclear reasoning affirms that security is maintained because the scientific community has an eye on the insides of its citizenry. It is true that geographic location is profoundly important to how victims experience fallout. This is demonstrated by the history of nuclear weapons testing. It is demonstrated by the actual location where such preemptive risk assessments originate and who they are intended to be useful to. The building of these power plants has necessitated the scientific research in a desperate race to come up with a solution before another catastrophe. Jutta Weber quotes philosopher of science Martin Carrier’s description of a phenomenon— intrinsic to “discourses and practices of science and technology”— in which “[t]echnologically produced entities or processes have become the objects of

itary cyber-net and secret file-sharing network). This research on the impact of fallout on an island community is furthermore invisible; however, we glean from a greater knowledge of nuclear reasoning that whatever protective measures have evolved from the knowledge derived from that ghastly experiment will be put to the benefit of American mainlanders. Yet, we might further ask which US mainlanders will amass the greatest benefit from such experimentation and which will be siphoned further to the devalued margins, which in these illustrations is in fact, nearer to the center of fallout.

In another study published under the title “Changes in confirmed plus borderline cases of congenital hyperthyroidism in California as a function of environmental fallout from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown,” authors Joseph Mangano, Janette Sherman,

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 129

and Christopher Busby investigate the spread of fallout in California, because as the authors state, “Fukushima fallout levels were greater in California than in most of the U.S., raising the question of whether health of humans, especially the fetus, was affected adversely” (Mangano et al. 2013; 372). By drawing on data from the mandatory California Newborn Screening Program, the researchers conclude that in the 9 months following the Fukushima meltdown, “Each of these births was exposed to elevated radioactivity levels in utero . . .

Fetal exposure to radioiodine may raise risk of not just confirmed, but borderline CH [congenital hyperthyroidism]”

es from the family. In another study published under the title, “Changes in Congenital Anomaly Incidence in West Coast and Pacific States (USA) after Arrival of Fukushima Fallout,” Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman conclude by emphasizing the need for detection and therapy, but equally for prevention because “Each affected child causes not just physical and behavioral ramifications to the child, but huge economic and social burdens to the family and society, which may be responsible for the affected person’s well-being for decades” (Mangano and Sherman 2015; 85). Together, the last two studies can be read as contributing

(Mangano et al. 2013; 370). This is a uniquely gendered process through which to research bioaccumulation.

From the California Newborn Screening Program’s website page on “How is the program administered,” the website states, “[t]his mandated statewide program is centrally managed by the Genetic Disease Screening Program (GDSP). Prenatal care providers, birth attendants, maternity hospitals, contract laboratories and follow-up coordinators, pediatric care providers, parents and State staff all play a role in the screening process.” This program enlists mothers to perform a civic responsibility by the fact that if a child’s TSH scores indicate they were exposed in utero to radionuclides, then all of these state and medical actors will play a role in the continuing care of the newborn patient. In turn, this will require adamant attention and ample resourc-

to a cultural experience of risk to which American mainlanders are invited to align themselves. This functions as a citizen-building project by simultaneously defining who the citizen is and is not. The “non-citizen” is someone who “society” is not responsible to, such as the Marshallese survivors. Citizens in the United States can better understand their civic responsibilities to the present and future make-up of the nation state because scientific discourse implicitly invokes who the body-politic does not have a responsibility to care for in decades to come. This is evidenced by the repeated denial of the Marshallese petitions for reparations and a full radiological clean-up. The United States military and government has forcefully denied their responsibility to indigenous victims of fallout, and have utilized the information gained from that suffering in order to protect and define the

130 | UNFOUND

American citizen— read: white, educated, patriot, deserving, documented. In short, Operations Crossroads exposed Marshallese to generations-long fallout and manufactured a captive research field in which to develop measures to protect the mainland from exactly the fate Marshallese people were exposed to.

Between 1946 and 1958 the United States military project entitled Operation Crossroads conducted 68 nuclear tests in and around the Marshall Islands. The stated purpose for this operation was to observe the effects of nu-

buildings, infrastructure, transportation and military instruments and weaponry.

Nuclear reasoning makes for exploitative conditions of resource extraction.

In the Marshall Islands, information gathered was used for remedial therapy or in a few cases out of pure scientific curiosity without potential for therapeutic effects. On the other hand, that information has been deployed on the US mainland for preemptive and preventative measures in order to protect and define the category of the viable/ valuable citizen-subject. Even Mangano and Sherman mention (only once) that their research is made possible by previous studies from “atomic bomb

clear radiation on American war ships.

Hours before the detonation of the largest nuclear explosion at the time, Castle Bravo, military weather instruments indicated that the wind was blowing over inhabited islands and would surely affect the people who had been evacuated from the test sites. Despite recommendations to have an evacuation vessel ready in the event that the fallout drifted over inhabited islands, there was none. Operation Crossroads has many resonances with other instances in which the US military has exposed people to radiation for scientific and military experimentation, radioactive waste, and contamination by accidental fallout from nuclear plant meltdown and by warfare. Medical treatment in conjunction with medico-scientific and populational research has contributed a wealth of knowledge on the effects of radiation on people, plants, animals,

survivors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those irradiated by atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, and those living near the Chernobyl reactor� (Mangano and Sherman 2015; 85). This colonial format demonstrates the necropolitical enactment of devaluing the lives of Native Pacific Islanders and First Peoples in order to sustain and fortify bio-citizenship for Western bourgeois subjects afforded the protections and privileges denied to contaminated communities.

In my paper I present several examples of preemptive and preventative measures made possible by research conducted on fallout survivors. These measures have been developed largely to respond to fallout from the March 11, 2011 nuclear meltdown at Daiichi Fukushima nuclear power plant. In response to environmental and health concerns in California to radioactive

Conclusion

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 131

pollution from Daiichi, researchers at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University conducted multiple studies. The studies that I investigate in my paper deploy highly sophisticated and novel technologies and systems to visualize and apprehend not only Fukushima’s fallout, but also hypothetical situations of anticipated fallout. In this article, I argue that the simulations of a hypothetical explosion at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant and the California Newborn Screening Program with statistical data on the changes in genetic anomalies as a result from Fukushima fallout are actors in Nuclear Reason-

versely affected by accidental nuclear fallout in Japan. Pregnant women who were exposed to fallout from Operation Crossroads were not afforded the same baseline right to information and health care. The military knowingly and purposefully exposed Marshallese people to immense fallout. And after years of legal proceedings in which representatives from the Marshallese communities and government have been struggling to acquire reparations and a full radiological clean-up, the American government has imposed sanctions on the “post”-colonial nation until it is “able to justify over $5.2 million in spending that is now under scrutiny from audits

ing’s citizen-building project— constructing a scientific and cultural visualization of risk, populational proximity to harm, in addition to making up the life-enhancing operations of remedial and therapeutic treatment of radioactive contamination.

As Jutta Weber states, “the individual subject is governed not only by duties, rights and expectations, but in addition the entrepreneurial self is supposed to self-optimize him- or herself as best as possible with the help of technoscientific strategies of enhancement” (Weber 2010; 27). In the instance of prenatal screening for congenital abnormalities, these duties, rights and expectations exist between mother, newborn, state and medical actors. Births in California are afforded the assumption that pregnant women have a right (and a civil duty) to know as soon as possible if their infant’s health has been ad-

dating back to 2008 (MIJ, 29 March 2013)” (Kupferman 2015).

Nuclear Reasoning makes it possible for those who are privileged enough to invest in a particular definition and fantasy of “citizenship” and “nationality” to have access to an imagination of survival beyond nuclear catastrophe.

The narrative of being the most plausibly vulnerable that has been injected into white mainlanders’ imaginations of nuclear catastrophe coincides with a forceful rubric disseminating how the costs and risks are framed and defended. This very experience of nuclear risk that is circulated in California and mainland US can both construct the experience of citizenship, define subjectivities, and exploit the sickness and suffering of those whose experiences of risk and actual harm are drastically more immediate. As Weber astutely describes, “[i]n the age of technoscience,

132 | UNFOUND

[t]he new flexibility of the living, with options for optimization and enhancement, are at the same time the basis for a new biopolitics of risk management, individual health engineering and the intimate coupling of technoscience and techno-economy” (Weber 2010; 27).

The experience of risk that is circulated in the mainland US renders certain bodies as legible and deserving of every possible medical, technological pursuit of health and wellness. The power to create this experience is derived by the obliteration of subaltern subjectivities and the legibility of their experiences of fallout.

And as Nikolas Rose tells us, “[a]

molecular surveillance; in turn, medical treatment also takes a role in the continuing surveillance of fallout. The zone of this surveillance begins as early as the womb. Screening of newborns for markers of nuclear fallout contributes to the securitization of biological populations and the surveillance of genetics.

In order to treat California babies as soon as possible, and take responsibility for the biological inheritance of the state, it is only “natural” that screening must be mandated. Nuclear reasoning holds both the hyper-visualization of the effects of fallout on Californian (read: First World bodies) in tandem with the exploitation of and denial of

ttempts to educate the public about science and technology are part of strategies for ‘making up’ the biological citizen. ‘Making up citizens’ has involved the reshaping of the way in which persons are understood by authorities” (Rose 2007; 140). Hypothetical maps of anticipated fallout figure populations and people as cellular dispersions of dose response, to be assigned geographic proximity and measured according to atmospheric models. If in the 1950s, American mainlanders were invited to identify with white, nuclear family units being vaporized on screen, then we can read these Stanford studies to indicate a transformation in the ways power makes up the citizen-body, comprehends populations. The boundaries of the body are vaporizing as people are reduced and expanded to pixels and organ-specific risk coefficients. State-ofthe-art medical treatment is enabled by

the effects of fallout on those who are made excess life to the aims of weapons supremacy and empire building.

Residents of Bikini Atoll were displaced several times over the course of Operation Crossroads, deprived of basic nutritional requirements, divested of their traditional livelihoods and occupations, and also exposed to Acute Radiation Sickness among many other devastating personal and community-based impacts. And while Californians celebrate the marvel of scientific progress to protect from nuclear radiation exposure, there has still not been a complete radiological decontamination of the testing grounds at Bikini, as promised.

When asked, “How will you react if the United States does not live up to their promises in the future?” Dretin Jokdru of Bikini Atoll responded saying, “We will remind them of our history together, we will remind them of how

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 133

we have sacrificed for them, then we will ask them to continue to take care of us. That was their promise and we will hold them to it” (Niedenthal 2002; 141).

Jack Niedenthal, Trust Liason for the People of Bikini, translates the articulated demands by Bikinians: “the islanders maintain that it is the obligation of the US government to provide for the cleanup of all 23 islands of the atoll rather than just Bikini and Eneu islands.

The estimated cost for this cleanup is in the hundreds of millions of dollars” (qtd. in Niedenthal 2002; 161).

The discursive legitimation for nuclear reasoning is protected by a necropolitical ideology within which it is “reasonable” to permeate the bodies of those most affected so that imperial actors can extract bio-value, scientific knowledge and settler-legitimacy; in fact, it is shrouded in the “language of the greater good.” The personhood of Indigenous fallout survivors is thus emptied of autonomy and sovereignty in order for the US nation-state to remain indignantly obsessed with evading responsibility for the mess it has made in the Pacific. At the same time, the value embodied by the suffering of fallout survivors holds great potential for the optimization of the life forces of those deemed viable/valuable citizen-subjects. Nuclear reasoning is the rationale that allows for the destruction of peoples in order to support scientific knowledge and weapons supremacy. A thriving, decontaminated and autonomous nuclear free Pacific future demands for decolonizing nuclear rea-

134 | UNFOUND

soning and a complete shutdown of any and all forces which empty personhood from people by poising them in the liminal time-space of perpetual warfare—a toxic ruination of generations, of home land, and of sovereignty.

Bibliography Akiyama et. al. The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. U.S.-Japan Nuclear Working Group Statement on Shared Strategic Priorities. The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation/ Federation of American Scientists/Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Apr.-May 2013. Web. Apr.-May 2013. <http://mansfieldfdn.org/blog/news-release-u-s-japan-nuclear-working-group-releases-statement-on-shared-strategic-priorities/> Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway:

Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007.

Bishop, Jeffrey P. The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying. Notre Dame Press, 2011.

Byrd, Jodi A. The Transit of Empire: Indigenous

Critiques of Colonialism. U of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples’

History of the United States. Beacon Press, 2014.

Eknilang, Lijon. “Horrors In The Marshall Islands.” Earth Island Journal 11.2 (1996): 27. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.

Fremont-Smith, Frank, et al. United States.

National Security Council. The Human Effects of Nuclear Weapons Development. Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1956. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.

Goldstein, Alyosha. Formations of United States

Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2014.

Haraway, Donna J. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. Routledge, 1997.

Kissinger, Henry A. United States. National Secu-

Rose, Nikolas. The Politics of Life Itself: Bio-

rity Council. National Security Study Memoran-

medicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century.

dum 200. Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1974. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.

Kupferman, D. W. “Marshall Islands.” The Con-

temporary Pacific 26.1 (2014): 177-184. Project

Princeton University Press, 2007.

Smith, Andrea. Conquest: Sexual Violence and

MUSE. Web. 4 May. 2016. <https://muse.jhu.

American Indian Genocide. Duke University

edu/>.

Lester, Richard K.. “U.S.-Japanese Nucle-

Press, 2015.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodol-

ar Relations: Structural Change and Political

ogies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed

Strain.” Asian Survey 22.5 (1982): 417–433.

Web.

Books, 1999.

State of California. California Department of Pub-

Maclellan, Nic. Banning Nuclear Weapons: A

lic Health. California Newborn Screening Program:

Pacific Islands Perspective. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, 2014. Web.

How is the program administered? n.p., n.d. Web. Masco, Joseph. “Engineering the future as nuclear

5 May 2016. < http://www.icanw.org/wp-con-

ruin.” Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination.

tent/uploads/2014/01/ICAN-PacificReport-FI-

Edited by Ann Laura Stoler, Duke University

NAL-email.pdf> Mbembé, J.-A., and Libby Meintjes. “Necropoli-

Press, 2013, pp. 252-286.

Subramanian, Narayan. “When the Sky Was

tics.” Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–40.

Red: America’s Nuclear Legacy in the Marshall

Mangano, Joseph, et al. “Changes in confirmed

Islands.” Columbia Political Review Mar.-Apr.

plus borderline cases of congenital hyperthyroidism in California as a function of environ-

2013: 19-22. Print.

Tadiar, Neferti X. M. Fantasy Production: Sexual

mental fallout from the Fukushima nuclear

Economies and Other Philippine Consequences

meltdown.” Open Journal of Pediatrics no. 3

for the New World Order. Hong Kong University

(2013): 370-376.

Mangano, Joseph, and Janette D. Sherman.

Press, 2004.

Ten Hoeve, John E., and Mark Z. Jacobson.

“Changes in Congenital Anomaly Incidence in

“Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima

West Coast and Pacific States (USA) after Arrival

Daiichi nuclear accident.” Energy & Environmen-

of Fukushima Fallout.” Open Journal of Pediatrics

tal Science 9, no. 5 (2012): 8743-8757.

no. 5 (2015): 76-89.

Faden, Ruth R., et al. United States. Advisory

Mcclintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race,

Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest.

Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Human

Routledge, 2013.

Radiation Experiments. New York: Oxford UP,

Neferti X. M. Tadiar. “Remaindered Life of Citi-

1996. Print.

zen-Man, Medium of Democracy.” Journal of

Weber, Jutta. “Making worlds: epistemological,

Southeast Asian Studies 49, no. 3 (December

ontological, and political dimensions of tech-

2011): 464–95.

noscience.” Poiesis & Praxis 7, no. 1 (June 2010):

Niedenthal, Jack. “Paradise Lost - ‘for the Good

17-36.

of Mankind.’” The Guardian, August 6, 2002,

Wright, Melissa. Disposable Women and Other

sec. Travel.http://www.theguardian.com/trav-

Myths of Global Capitalism. Routledge, 2013.

el/2002/aug/06/travelnews.nuclearindustry. environment.

Petryna, Adriana. “Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations.” Osiris 19 (2004): 250–65.

Endnotes 1.

From Toxic Wastes and Race, a study conducted by The United Church of Christ, we learn that, “Three out of every five African

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 135

Americans and Latino North Americans

West is no less an active and willing partici-

live in communities with toxic waste sites.

pant in the hegemonic modes of imaginary

Half of all Asians, Pacific Islanders, and

production that are predicated on these

American Indians live in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites” (Smith

2.

ing recommendations to, “the Human Ra-

that others will be compelled to deepen,

diation Interagency Working Group, whose

challenge, and amend my arguments.

members are the Secretaries of Defense,

Necropolitics works to suspend death

Energy, Health and Human Services, and

throughout a community, and to situate a

Veterans Affairs; the Attorney General; the

community’s proximity to death. No one

Administrator of the National Aeronautics

can objectively describe other peoples’

and Space Administration; the Director of

relationship to death, and if my discussion

Central Intelligence; and the Director of the

of death can avoid homogenizing the mul-

Office of Management and Budget” (Faden

tiplicitous community-based definitions

et al. 1996; xxi).

6.

The ACHRE reported that following irradia-

have achieved an analysis that responsibly

tion, American physicians provided medical

attends to the nature of difference. It is

treatment to Marshallese: “Primary care,

my personal belief that the dead do not up

however, remained inadequate. There were

and leave us, but work through and in-

serious epidemics of poliomyelitis, influen-

form the living. This is not to suggest that

za, chicken pox, and pertussis, all of which

those who resist genocidal forces are the

. . . were imported into the Marshalls by

hollow vessels of the vengeful dead. Such

the U.S. medical teams” (Faden et al. 1996;

an argument would rely on assumptions

373).

of suffering people as without agency, al-

7.

The radioactive half-lives of these radionu-

ready-dead, and/or not fully human. These

clides are approximately 8 days, 30 years,

are reproductions I hope to avoid and to

2 years and 2.55 minutes respectively.

uproot.

Ba-137m is one of the products of Cesium

This of course resonates with Masco’s point

nuclides undergoing radioactive decay and

that the citizen-building project entailed

due to its short half-life, Ba-137m rapidly

manufacturing docile bodies who would

decays to a stable ground state.

readily and willingly relinquish to the com-

4.

The committee was charged with present-

2005; 57-58). I open up the discussion so

of and practices toward death, then I will

3.

codes” (Tadiar 2004; 12).

5.

8.

CTBTO stands for Comprehensive Nucle-

mands of those who controlled the apoca-

ar-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, a group

lyptic weaponry.

that monitors radionuclide concentra-

I especially appreciate how Tadiar attends

tions around the world and works toward

to the nature of difference while affirming

non-proliferation. EPA RadNet is run by

the autonomy of the actors involved. For

the Environmental Protection Agency and

example, rather than rendering Filipin@s

also monitors radionuclide concentrations

who are struggling against imperial/sexual domination as merely reactionary, the

in the atmosphere.

9.

Examples of variables that acted on the

author attends to the ways Filipin@s are

deposition of radionuclides are the fol-

transfiguring the global flows of dream-

lowing: “radioactive decay, loss to clouds

work and capital through their modes of

and precipitation . . . loss to ocean . . . dry

living. Or, as the author states, “while the

deposition to land, snow, and ice surfaces,

West owns the codes of fantasy, the non-

advection, convection, molecular diffusion,

136 | UNFOUND

and turbulent diffusion . . . aerosol-aerosol coagulation, aerosol—hydrometeor coagulation, aerosol sedimentation, aerosol dry deposition, condensational and dissolutional growth/evaporation of gases on to aerosol particles, and internal aerosol chemistry and hydration of aerosol particles” (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012; 8746).

10. As the fallout plume spreads out from the Central Coast of California, we cannot see how existing socioeconomic, racial and gendered conditions vary across the topography and where communities in these areas might be differentially vulnerable to fallout for reasons other than their geographic proximity to the nucleus of the disaster. Thus, in order to read proximity to the nucleus of disaster, feminist topographer Cindi Katz’s method for counter-topographies suggests drawing contour lines along continuities and differences in surface elevation subject to the climate and local environment, transformations around communities with stratified access to safety, healthcare, education, and capital (Katz 2001). Although I could not deal more closely with Katz’s text in this paper, I suggest for further study a counter topography of California in which a different anticipatory risk assessment might challenge a normative identification with vulnerability and instead attend to how structural inequality exacerbates nuclear fallout.

Volume 3, Winter 2017 | 137