History paper

When Japan Was "Champion of the Darker Races": Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism

Author(s): Ernest Allen, Jr.

Source: The Black Scholar , Winter 1994, Vol. 24, No. 1, Black Cultural History - 1994 (Winter 1994), pp. 23-46

Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/41068457

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When Japan Was "Champion of the Darker Races":

Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black

Messianic Nationalism*

by Ernest Allen, Jr.

late September 1942, in a series of highly publicized raids, federal agents in Chicago

arrested eighty-five African Americans. Three women and nine men were charged with sedi- tion; the remainder were accused of draft eva- sion. Indicted on the former charge were Elijah Muhammad,1 Linn Karriem, and Paul- ine Bahar of the Allah Temple of Islam [ATOI] ; Mittie, Maud Lena Gordon, Seon Jones, William Gordon, and David J. Logan of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia [PME]; Charles Newby (aka Father Divine Haasan) of the Colored American National Organization [CANO]; Stokely Delmar Hart, James Graves, and Annabelle Moore of the Brotherhood of

Liberty for the Black People of America [BLBPA] , and Frederick H. Hammurabi Robb of the Century Service Exchange.2

Several days earlier, five members of the Ethiopian Pacific Movement [EPM] - Robert O. Jordan (aka Leonard Robert Jordan), James Thornhill, Lester Holness, the Rev. Ralph Green Best, and Joseph Hartrey, an Irishman - were indicted in New York City on the more serious charges.3 Less raucously, back in May, ministers David X (aka David Jones and David Duvon) and Sultan Muham- mad of the ATOI's Washington and Mil- waukee temples, respectively, were detained on charges of sedition as well.4 In October the head of the International Reassemble of the

Church of Freedom League, Inc. [IRCFL], the Rev. Ethelbert A. Broaster, was arrested in

New Orleans.' The following January, a second round of indictments occurred in East St.

Louis, where Bishop David D. Erwin and Gen- eral Lee Butler, two leaders of the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World [PMEW], were also charged with crimes against the State.6 In Newark, seven members of the House of Israel [HOI] - Brother Rueben Is- rael (aka Askew Thomas), Alfred Woods, Is- aiah Cald, Robert Moses, Oscar Rumlin, Dawsey Johnson, and Jeremiah Ardis - were seized as draft evaders.7

There had been earlier as well as subse-

quent arrests for draft evasion, too, including the roundup of 12 members of the Kansas City branch of the Moorish Science Temple of America [MSTA] in July 1942.8 These accusa- tions against outspoken African American op- ponents of World War II involved violations of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Selective Training and Service Act of 194Ô.9 More to the point: in the eyes of government, the pro- Japanese loyalties of the defendants in the above cases constituted a threat to national

security. Indeed, the reported remarks of an ATOI member appeared to give substance to such concerns:

the white devils desire the colored people to die with them in the Army and Navy; we don't want to be with him in the Army or out . . . the time has come when the white devils will be destroyed by dark mankind . . . the eagles seen on United States money and the uniforms of service men is the mark of the beast and if you have that mark the Japanese are going to shoot at it when they come here.1"

The best known today of all the above groups, the Allah Temple of Islam was an off-

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ABSTRACT

When japan Was "Champion of the Darker Races":

Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism

During World War II, some 125 African Americans were arrested for

resisting the draft or for exercising seditious behavior. The twenty orso

persons held on the more serious charges included Elijah Muhammad of

the Allah Temple of Islam, a religious association; Mittie Maud Lena

Gordon of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, an African repatriation

movement in the Garvey tradition; the Rev. EthelbertA. Broaster of the

International Reassemble of the Church of Freedom League, Inc., a biadi

Hebrew organization; and Bishop David D. Erwin and General Lee

Butler, leaders of the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, an emigra-

tionist group. The arrests brought to light the existence of strong, pro-

Japanese sentiments among African Americans that the authorities, not

to mention biadi middle-class spokespersons, quickly dismissed as the

uttering of a small number cf fanatics.

The reality, however, ivas that proJapan feelings among biadi

workers as well as the biadi middle class had been building since the

turn of the century, following Japan's celebrated victory over the Russian

fleet. This mood was given greater impetus during the xvorst years of the

Great Depression by the appearance in Detroit of a Japanese national

known as Major Satokata Takahashi, who took command of an associa-

tion known as The Development of Our Own.

Mr. TakahashVs initial organizing activities in Detroit, Chicago, and

St. Louis, and the "ripple effects" therefrom, led to the messianic expecta-

tion on the part of tens cf thousands cf African Americans throughout

the midwest, the upper and lower Mississippi Delta, east-central Okla-

homa and the New York-New Jersey region that Japan's imperial army

would free them from the ravages of American racism. Through the em-

ploy cf newspaper articles, FBI documents, military intelligence reports,

and court records the author has reconstructed a history which, up until

the present, had been almost completely forgotten.

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shoot of the Nation of Islam [NOI] , founded in Detroit in 1930 by the legendary W. D. Fard [pronounced Far-ad' ]. After Mr. Fard de- parted the midwest in 1934, the NOI became wracked by factional disputes bearing on 1) the propriety of human sacrifice; 2) NOI "dis- loyalty" to the United States; and 3) whether W. D. Fard should be considered a prophet of God, as he himself maintained, or God incar- nate. In the resulting turmoil, one of Fard's lieutenants, Elijah Muhammad, was forced to flee Detroit for Chicago, where a NOI branch - one ostensibly loyal to Mr. Muhammad - had been in operation since 1932. Mr. Muhammad christened his new association

the Allah Temple of Islam; his followers be- came known as the Temple People. The De- troit NOI was eventually folded into the ATOI, but it was not until the late 1950s that the

unified and greatly expanded organization re- established itself as the Nation of Islam.11

NOI worldview was dominated by an apocalyptic and prophetic vision which

held that the African American, the "origi- nal" or "Asiatic" black man, fell into a state of social domination that began with slavery.12 This situation was a direct result of the ma- chinations of an evil black scientist, Yakub,

who grafted white people, also known as "devils," from original black people a little more than 6,000 years ago. God had granted to whites the rule of the planet for six millen- nia, after which time a fiery battle was to take place in the sky where they would suffer per- manent defeat, and the original sense of or- der restored to earth. The "devil's" rule was

actually up in 1914, with an additional grace period granted by Allah in order to allow the Nation of Islam to save and convert as many African Americans as possible to their origi- nal religion.13 Within NOI eschatology there arrived a fusion of millenarian and African

American nationalist traditions, with Japan's acknowledged leadership role couched in messianic terms. But the NOI's now familiar

story of the Mother Ship, or Ezekiel's Wheel,14 was cast in a somewhat different light in the early 1940s. The Mother Ship, it seems, was in the possession of Japan, the blueprints for which had been drawn up "in the Holy City of

Mecca and sent to the Japanese government for development":15

Japan has had for many years a monster airplane, known to the Moslems as a "mother airplane". The "mother airplane" is said to carry 1,000 small airplanes, each of which carries bombs, which will be used against the white man. Each bomb is said to be such size to penetrate the earth's surface for a distance of of one mile, and tö destroy an area of fifty square miles when it explodes. The Moslems have also told their people that the Japanese have superior equipment of every kind and description.16

A Chicago-based organization begun in late 1932, the Peace Movement of Ethiopia essentially advocated "Garveyism without Gar- vey" - that is, embraced in its totality the doctrine of the Universal Negro Improvement Association [UNIA] but with neither desire nor need for Marcus Garvey's personal leader- ship. Ideologically speaking, the PME came to rely more upon the support of white racists for implementing its "Back-to-Africa" pro- gram than had the UNIA, but in truth, that was the very direction in which Mr. Garvey himself had been heading after 1921.17 PME head and former UNIA-member Mittie Maud

Lena Gordon sought support for African American repatriation to Africa from Presi- dent Roosevelt in 1933, and, towards the latter

part of the decade received initial legislative backing for such from the notoriously anti- black Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo.18 Intertwined with the PME's repatriation pro- gram was a commitment to Japanese war aims. Among numerous other charges, President Gordon was accused of having declared that "on December 7th, 1941, one billion black people struck for freedom," a rather unam- biguous reference to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.19

Much less is known of the Colored Ameri-

can National Organization, reportedly foun- ded in Chicago by Charles Newby and Stokely Delmar Hart in 1939.20 Newby, who once ma- triculated at Leavenworth following a convic- tion for auto theft, was credited with being the originator of the slogan, "Talk Black, See Black, Walk Black and Mind Your Own Black Business."21 It was said that at CANO gather- ings Japanese General Hideki Tojo "was praised as a coming saviour of the Negro from the American white," and that "virtually all Negro leaders, including Joe Louis, his wife

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and mother, were loudly condemned. The group went so far as to advocate violence against all white people seen on the South- side."22 Newby was deposed as president fol- lowing a split in August 1942, immediately after which he and Hart formed the Brother-

hood of Liberty for the Black People of Amer- ica. CANO and BLBPA were also said to be

synonymous with the Washington Park Forum (thus called because of its regular meetings held at the park).23

In the late 1920s Mr. Hammurabi (as F. H. Hammurabi Robb eventually came to be known on Chicago's South Side) had edited a small volume entitled The Negro in Chicago, From the 1930s onward he directed the World

Wide Friends of Africa (known also as the House of Knowledge), which some three de- cades later continued to sponsor weekly activ- ities encouraging African Americans "to know themselves, their nation and the world." In 1956 Mr. Hammurabi screened films on

Africa at ATOI's very first national convention; in 1942 he was charged with "speaking in be- half of a Japanese victory and showing motion pictures of the Pearl Harbor attack, obtained secretly from Jap sources, at meetings of the Brotherhood of Liberty."24

in New Orleans in 1936, with an additional chapter located at Chicago, the

International Reassemble of the Church of

Freedom League, Inc. professed belief in "One God, One King, One Race," an appar- ent take on Marcus Garvey's slogan, "One God, One Aim, One Destiny" (both probably drawn from the Christian theme of "One

Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism"). Appeal- ing to Old Testament "proof-texts" - princi- pally Deuteronomy 28 and Jeremiah 12 - the IRCFL held that African Americans were Jews, that the progeny of enslaved Africans carried to the western hemisphere were the direct de- scendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The group's leader, the Rev. E. A. Broaster, had emigrated to the U.S. from Belize, British Honduras in the early 1920s when he was bet- ter known as pugilist Frankie Anslem. During his 13 years in the ring, Anslem reportedly earned "a fair livelihood trading punches with the best boxers the nation had to offer at

his weight."25 Arrested on charges of advising

members of his group to refuse induction into the army, Rev. Broaster does not appear to have harbored particularly strong projapa- nese tendencies. Yet he was close to the

PMEW in East St. Louis as well as the Chicago- based Washington Park Forum, having ad- dressed both groups during 1941.

Perhaps the most important of all the pro- Japan groups due to its wide geographic influ- ence, the Pacific Movement of the Eastern

World was founded in Chicago in 1932 and transported to St. Louis in that same year. From there the PMEW extended its network

to Kansas City, the southeastern Missouri Boot Heel region, southern Illinois, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, and east-central Okla- homa. More so than any of the other associa- tions, the Pacific Movement expressed a fundamental dualism in its ideological per- spective. Torn between the demand for full citizenship rights in the U.S. and the desire for political self-determination through em- igration, the PMEW's line alternately vacil- lated between support for a Japanese military invasion of the U.S. with the aim of securing black equality at home, and emigration to Af- rica, Japan, or Brazil with the presumed help of the Japanese government. From 1934 to 1940 the group was headed by Rev. David D. Erwin, who simultaneously occupied a posi- tion of leadership in Triumph the Church of the New Age, a Holiness denomination. By 1939 PMEW membership in East St. Louis was said to be virtually indistinguishable from that of the Triumph Church.26

The House of Israel taught that African Americans were the real Hebrews, that Adam was black, and that the black race was once supreme on earth, having lost its exalted posi- tion out of disobedience to God. The group operated schools in which the Hebrew lan- guage was taught, and claimed that they were "enslaved by the white race because that lan- guage is excluded from the public schools."27 Like the IRCFL, the HOI appears to have been less pro-Japan than anti-American.

all the African American organizations^ charged with seditious activities during

the war, the Moorish Science Temple of America was the only one to have been in existence prior to the Great Depression, hav-

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ing been started by prophet Noble Drew Ali in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913.28 Although its early activities remain shrouded in mystery, the Chicago temple was established in 1925. And Chicago remained the organization's center of gravity throughout the depression, despite the occurrence of serious organiza- tional splits in the wake of Ali 's death from tuberculosis in July 1929.29 From 16 active tem- ples in 1928, based in cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Richmond, the MSTA (or, more precisely, the MSTA faction led by Charles Kirkman-Bey from mid-1929 onwards) had grown to some fifty branches by the early 1940s.30 Suspected of harboring strong, projapanese sentiments during World War II, the organization became the target of extensive efforts on the part of the FBI to un- earth criminal evidence to that effect. But it

was only in Kansas City that MSTA members were actually arrested, and then solely on charges of draft-evasion.

And, finally, in 1935 the Ethiopian Pacific Movement was founded in New York City by Robert O. Jordan and Ashima Takis. A Fili- pino national who represented himself as a Japanese, Takis earlier had played a leading role in the PMEW in St. Louis; he subse-

quently left the EPM as well. Born in King- ston, Jamaica around the turn of the century, Robert O. Jordan had earned quite a reputa- tion as a street-corner agitator in Harlem dur- ing the thirties and early forties. Visitors to EPM Sunday gatherings held at a meeting hall at Lenox and 113th could hear the "Harlem

Hitler," as he was called, regularly expound on his refusal to be drafted, give prayers for an Axis victory, declare his intention to fight on the side of Japan, and express the wish that after the defeat of the Allies, he would have

President Roosevelt pick his cotton!31

NATIONALISM AND MILLENNIAUSM

More than anything else, the flowering of pro-Japan tendencies among American blacks in the era of the Great Depression repre- sented a confluence and crystallization of two long-standing trends in African American thought: nationalism and millennialism. As an unassimilated national minority, African Americans from the late 18th century onward had manifested general tendencies towards

full inclusion into American society, on the one side, and an equal penchant towards group autonomy, on the other.32 At times this latter sentiment has blossomed into desires

for an autonomous, black nation-state. But

due to the demonstrated futility of securing black self-determination within the United

States, African American nationalist move-

ments have often tended to exhibit a strong emigrationist character. In the 20th century, of course, the most significant organization of this type was Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association.

An admixture of apocalyptic vision, messi- anic anticipation, and prophecy belief, millen- nialism derives from Jewish-Christian religious traditions. Strictly speaking, of course, the Millennium refers to that future time when

Christ, having returned to earth and smitten Satan and his minions, shall reign for a thou- sand years; and after which time Satan shall be released from the bottomless pit into which he had been cast, and defeated once again, forever.33 In more generalized terms, historian Eric Hobsbawm has characterized the princi- pal characteristics of millenarian social move- ments in the following way: "a profound and total rejection of the present, evil world, and a passionate longing for another and better one"; second, an ideology of the type embod- ied in Jewish and Christian messianic forms, where it is foretold that the coming of the Messiah shall bring all suffering to an end, and peace and justice reign forever; and third, "a fundamental vagueness about the ac- tual way in which the new society will be brought about."34

Perhaps one of the earliest recorded mani- festations of millenarian sentiment among African Americans can be found in Gabriel's

insurrection which took place in Virginia in 1800, and where the enslaved insurrectionists identified themselves with the Israelites of the

Old Testament.35 Along with the huge social displacements occasioned by the industrializ- ing of American society during the last quar- ter of the 19th century and into the next, came the flourishing of prophecy belief marked, in African American communities,

by the spread of Pentecostal and Holiness churches. During the Great Depres-

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sion, millenarian sentiments underwent a sec-

ond grand awakening among African Ameri- cans as well, as attested by the proliferation of prophetic religious denominations such as Daddy Grace's United House of Prayer for All People, Prophet Jones' Church of the Univer- sal Triumph, Father Divine's Peace Mission, and Prophet F. S. Cherry's Church of God.56

But the Depression Decade also witnessed the rise of what has been aptly characterized as messianic nationalism, a uniquely African American expression marked by the conflu- ence of secular nationalist and religious mille- narian traditions.37 To be sure, such forms had

been witnessed earlier with the appearance of Black Hebrew denominations around the

turn of the century, as well as within the Gar- vey movement, where Marcus Garvey himself was sometimes likened to a Negro Moses.™ Moreover, apocalyptic references not infre- quently colored Garvey's vision of a redeemed Africa.39 A millennial streak was seen to run

through MSTA doctrine as well. Equating Marcus Garvey's relation to Noble Drew Ali as that of forerunner John the Baptist to Christ, the MSTA's Holy Koran held Ali to be "the last Prophet in these days . . . who was prepared divinely in due time by Allah to redeem men from their sinful ways; and to warn them of the great wrath which is sure to come upon the earth."40

Messianic nationalism emerged full-blown, however, only during the period of sharp so- cial deterioration marked by the Great De- pression. It arrived in the form of Black Hebrew associations such as the International

Reassemble of the Church of Freedom

League and the House of Israel, and proto- Islamic organizations such as the Nation of Islam/Allah Temple of Islam. A more secular version could be seen in groups such as the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, and the Ethio- pian Pacific Movement. And out of thi^ mille- narian envelope, in a fascinating sort of way, Japan arose as the impersonal messiah - and General Tojo as a more intimate one - of tens of thousands of black Americans. The key to this last puzzle may be found by briefly trac- ing the origins of the proJapan movement among African Americans back to the turn of the century.

THE DAWN OF

PRO-JAPANESE SENTIMENT

Pro-Japanese sentiment among African Americans dates back to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, when the Russian navy suf- fered a disastrous defeat at the hands of Japa- nese warships.41 Throughout the Asian continent Japan's victory produced first aston- ishment, then euphoria. Sun Yat-sen probably put it best:

Since the rise of the Japanese, the Caucasians dare not look down upon other Asiatic peoples. Thus the power of Japan not only enables the Japanese to enjoy the privileges of a first class nation, but enhances the international position of other Asia- tic peoples. It used to be the general belief that the Asiatics could not do what the Europeans could do. Because the Japanese have learned so well from Europe, and because we know we Chi- nese can do as well as the Japanese, we see the possibility ot doing as well as the Europeans.42

Japan had "vindicated the honor of Asia and proved to the world that, given equal op- portunities, the Asiatics are inferior to none - in any sphere of life, military or civil," pro- claimed the Indian nationalist Lajpat Rai.43 Moreover, Japan's new-found prestige gave in- spiration to people of African descent as well. The arch-racist Lothrop Stoddard noted that the Russo-Japanese war "produced all over the Dark Continent intensely exciting ef- fects."44 From the columns of the New York Age, Archibald Grimke heaped praise upon the "little brown iconoclasts" in grand Biblical style:

Go ... ye little brown men, conquering and to conquer. Sheath not your terrible sword, lay not aside yet your bloody scourge. Ye shall overthrow ... Ye have thrown Russia down, ye are destined to throw down others than Russia in their pride, in their lust for power, to bring to the dust the mighty of the earth.4'

It was not without cause that the "defeat of

Russia by Japan," as Du Bois later noted, would give "rise to a fear of colored revolt against white exploitation" on the part of the western powers.46

Almost from the very beginning, Japan's attraction to African Americans was two- fold: as a model for political and economic development, and as a potential military ally

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against U.S. racism. An early example of the former came from Booker T. Washington in 1906: "The Japanese race is a convincing ex- ample of the respect which the world gives to a race that can put brains and commercial activity into the development of the resources of a country," proclaimed the Sage of Tus- kegee.47 Musings of Japanese military interven- tion could be found in an uncompleted short story begun by black journalist John Edward Bruce in 1912, where the President's earnest call for volunteers to repel an invasion of the U.S. by Japan resulted in a temporary drop- ping of the color bar.48 But here the erasure of the color line emerged as an indirect result of Japanese militarism; by the 1930s numerous African Americans were prepared to welcome a more direct route.

Remarkably, the African American em- brace of Japan, generally speaking, had devel- oped independent of any direct efforts on the part of the Japanese themselves.49 If, perchance, black folk had been apprised of the contempt with which many Japanese re- garded other people of color, their response might have been more equivocal. In any case, African Americans were duly impressed when Baron Makino, Japan's principal delegate to the 1919 Peace Conference, submitted an amendment (ultimately rejected) to the League of Nations Covenant supporting the principal of racial equality.50 Conversely, cir- cles close to the Japanese government were becoming favorably aware of African Ameri- can interest in Japan. At a meeting called in early December 1918 for the purpose of elect- ing delegate-observers to the peace conven- tion at Versailles, Marcus Garvey, an advocate of "Asia for the Asiatics" as well as "Africa for

the Africans," warned that "The next war will

be between the [N]egroes and the whites un- less our demands for justice are recognized. . . . With Japan to fight with us, we can win such a war."51 Coming from the interna- tionally recognized head of the Universal Ne- gro Improvement Association, the message was apparently well received in Japan. In his work of fiction, Nichi-Bei senso yume monogatari ¡Japanese-America War Fantasy] published in 1921, retired Japanese Army General Kojiro Sato gleefully portrayed Japan's destruction of the U. S. Pacific Fleet, the seizure of Hawaii, and the invasion of the United States main-

land. Playing a prominent role in the novel was none other than Marcus Garvey, who led a rebellion of ten million blacks in support of Japan's mission. Also evening up the score were numerous Jews and German-Americans seeking justice from Anglo-Americans.52 In 1925 Mr. Garvey himself was contacted by the Indian revolutionary Rash Behari Bose,53 then residing in Japan. Bose had forwarded to Gar- vey a copy of a book, The Negro Problem, au- thored by Kametaro Mitsuka^ya, in which the UNIA was prominently featured. Mitsukawa was a founder of Gyochisa (Society to Realize the Way of Heaven on Earth), a short-lived, ultra-nationalist group modeled along the lines of another, more prominent association known as Kokuryukai, which also advocated the emancipation of all colored races.54

of the more important of a number of right-wing patriotic associations in Japan,

the Kokuryukai, or so-called Black Dragon Society, was founded in February 1901 by Uchida Ryohei to promote "the mission of im- perial Japan" and to "check the expansion of the western powers."55 In 1901 this twin goal assumed the form of agitation for war with Russia. Imperialistic in nature, the society took its name from the Amur River that separated Chinese Manchuria from Russian Siberia.

(Called the Amur by the Manchus, the Chi- nese named the waterway Heilung-chiang, or Black Dragon River. Sharing the same ideo- graphs as the Chinese, but pronouncing them differently, the river was known to the Japa- nese as Kokuryu, or Black Dragon, and it was by the latter designation that the society be- came ominously known in the West.) However, the "implication of the title was always clear to every Japanese: Japan's frontier was to be ad- vanced to the Amur."56 Known for its political assassinations within and without Japanese ter- ritory, the society assumed as its mission the emancipation of the "colored races" from white, western domination - even if that also

meant their subjugation by a "colored" Japan. Carried to the United States by Japanese immi- grants, there the Black Dragon Society played a role that remains clouded. as much by World War II media sensationalism as by the racist paranoia of U.S. intelligence operations. If the society enjoyed a special relationship with Afri-

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can Americans, conclusive evidence has yet to surface on that score.57 But it is nonetheless

difficult to believe that the state-side organiza- tion, or a branch of one of the many other ultra-nationalist societies based in Japan, did not contribute in some way to Japan's pre-war intelligence and espionage operations in the U.S. Whatever the case, one will be content,

for the moment, with the knowledge that

In America, the Black Dragon Society was a patrio- tic, ultra-right wing extremist group. Their love for Japan created an ethnocentric frame of thought that Americans found radical and repulsive. Coun- terintelligence agents noted that the name of the Black Dragon often appeared under names of Japanese patriotic societies and good will institu- tions raising funds for the Japanese Army. Distinc- tive robes were part of their ceremonies: the FBI believed that members met covertly, elaborately adorned with black hakamas, or dress kimonos, ac- centuated with a circular white crest on the back.58

Save for a number of significant exceptions, the techniques utilized by Japan to positively influence African Americans were those

which it used in Formosa, Korea, and Man- churia. The following description of their ac- tivities in the Philippines is representative:

Delegations of Filipinos are entertained in Japan with the delightful hospitality of that country. Newspapermen, legislators, teachers, business men have fraternized with the members of their respec- tive professions in Tokyo, Yokahama, and Kyoto. Corresponding groups of Japanese have visited the Philippines. Prominent Filipino business men are associated with Japanese business ventures in the Philippines, or retained as lawyers by Japanese in- terests in the Islands. There has developed in the Islands a small but active "projapanese" group the members of which are aggressively campaign- ing to hasten the day when a Japanese orientation shall supplant the present connections with the United States. Numerous young Filipinos are learning Japanese and at least one of them has attended the Imperial Military Academy. . . .w

Lacking a genuine national bourgeoisie with substantive capital or industrial holdings, African Americans never engaged in eco- nomic ventures with Japanese businessmen at the level implied above. Nor is there any re- cord of African Americans' having learned Japanese in any similar capacity. But by the late 1930s a small but significant number of black American intellectuals and educators

such as T. Thomas Fortune, James Weldon Johnson, Robert Russa Motón, and George Schuyler had visited Japan and formed posi- tive impressions. Following his own trip to

Japan and Manchuria in early 1937, W. E. B. Du Bois waxed ebullient over the social

achievements of Japanese fascists in Man- chukuo: ". . . the amount already accom- plished in four years is nothing less than marvelous. The people appear happy, and there is no unemployment. There is public peace and order."60 Unimpressed by such co- ercive efficiency, however, was Langston Hughes, who was deported from Japan in 1933 as a result of his contact with Tokyo Left- ists, as well as open criticisms of that country's anti-democratic policies!61 On the other hand, the proposed marriage in 1934 of Prince Lij Araya Abebe of Ethiopia and Masako Kuroda, daughter of a Japanese viscount, was viewed by some African Americans as heralding the day of an Asian-African global unity.62 Nor was Af- rican American identification with Japan as "liberator of the darker peoples" harmed by the adoption of a fictive, "Asiatic" identity by members of small, mass-based, black organiza- tions such as the MSTA and the NOI/ATOI.

of war between the United States

and Japan had flourished intermittently from the period just prior to World War I through the 1920s.63 When they re-emerged following the latter's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Japanese government embarked upon greater efforts to ascertain as well as to influence African American opinion. Such ef- forts, according to black journalist Roi Ottley,

came to something of a blossom after the Depres- sion, when for the first time they made some in- roads with the rank-and-file. They sought out discouraged elements among the teeming thou- sands of the urban areas. Through the Ministry of Propaganda, they found a few radical nationalists, fiercely anti-white, who would lend an ear to talk of an all-colored utopia. Besides, a number of Japanese of attractive manners and sound knowl- edge of American affairs came to the United States and posed as menials, seeking social ties with Negro domestics and professing inviolable racial kinship ... By assiduously cultivating contacts, these people insinuated themselves into the Negro community, and, in time, some Negroes came to look upon the Japanese as belonging to a messianic race, which would lead black men out of bondage.*4

One of the most effective of these propa- gandists was a man known as "Major" Satok- ata Takahashi. (Although Takahashi's name suffered a number of variations in spelling by government agencies and the press, the above

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is how it appeared on his marriage certifi- cate.)65 Another was the scholarly Yasuichi Hikida, who arrived in the U.S. in 1920, worked long and effectively among New York City blacks, and was deported following Pearl Harbor.66 Of the leading pro-Japanese organi- zations among African Americans in the 1930s, Mr. Takahashi, at one time or another, had assumed the direct control of one, foun- ded two others, and maintained close ties with at least several more - including the NOI and the MSTA. When his "disciples" - direct or otherwise - were indicted on charges of sedition in late 1942 and early 1943, Takahashi had already served three years of what was to become a six-year-plus prison sentence.

Born Naka Nakane in Japan in 1875, Taka- hashi emigrated to Victoria, British Columbia around the turn of the century, where he married Annie Craddock, an Englishwoman. In 1921 the Nakane family moved from Can- ada to Tacoma, Washington, but after experi- encing severe, financial difficulties five years later, Mr. Nakane suddenly disappeared, ap- parently abandoning his wife and four chil- dren to their own resources. His activities

from 1926 through 1931 remain obscure.67 Adopting the name Satokata Takahashi and spuriously claiming to be a retired Japanese Army major, he resurfaced in the spring of 1932 at a Chicago meeting of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. By the fall the 5 ft.-5 in. "Little Major," or "Little God of the East," as he was variously known to his followers, had settled in Detroit. According to Detroit Police detective Lawrence Johnson, who testified before a hearing called by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in September 1933, Takahashi had resided in Detroit for about a year. His activities came to the attention of the INS in early 1933, and complaints from African Americans regard- ing the content of his speeches were report- edly made at FBI offices from the following October onward.68

Later questioned by the FBI, Takahashi claimed that his occupation was "special doc- toring, a kind of religion in which he acted as a preacher," and that after having received instruction in that field at an institution simi-

lar to a seminary in Japan, he had become a Shinto priest. FBI analysts surmised that his "special doctoring" activities had something

to do with one of the Shinto faith-healing sects of Japan. However, there was "no indica- tion that he was spreading the Shinto faith or was interested in the establishment of a

Shinto shrine or temple."69 But although Takahashi's real mission may have been the stimulating of pro-Japanese loyalties among the African American population, such a task was hardly antithetical to the teachings of Shinto.70 It was assumed by many that Japan and the United States would eventually go to war over the question of Pacific territories. In that context, Takahashi's attempts to organize African Americans along pro-Japanese lines appear to have stemmed from a desire to facil- itate the disruption of economic production and military conscription within the U.S.

of Takahashi's early associates aver- red that the former represented himself

as a Japanese official who "had been sent to the United States by the Japanese government to organize the colored people." Japanese Baron Tanaka, it was said, had prepared a me- morial outlining the policy of the Black Dragon Society in Japan. Among other meas- ures, the Tanaka memorial proposed the uni- fication of all the darker peoples of the world by pursuing a policy of "Asia for Asiatics." Japan would assist such people "to organize themselves and form their own government." The associate, whose testimony was frequently unreliable, said that Takahashi "claimed to be affiliated not only with the Black Dragon Soci- ety but the Japanese Consulate at San Fran- cisco, California." Japanese "situated in various communities in the United States"

were presently working among black Ameri- cans, Takahashi affirmed. The moment for or-

ganizing was ripe, for "the people of the United States were unsuspecting and would laugh at such propaganda but, in fact, the time was not far off when Japan would take action."71

THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR OWN

One of the "most publicized movements attempted in 1933," The Development of Our Own was initiated "by George Grimes, a city worker, as a legitimate political organization." "Through Organization, Education and Co-

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operation and otherwise," TDOO's official aim was "to advance the interest of its mem-

bers along the lines of Cultural, Intellectual, Social, Industrial and Commercial activities and otherwise as deemed necessary by the or- ganization."72 Takahashi, it was said, "became identified with the group and later succeeded in supplanting Grimes, and used the organi- zation to urge Negroes to join with all other colored people - yellow, brown, and black - against all white people."73 He collected fol- lowers from existing organizations as well. Af- ter Nation of Islam members participated in what was reported as a human sacrifice, NOI founder W. D. Fard was instructed by Detroit detectives to leave the city in December 1932. After clandestinely returning to his former residence at the Hotel Traymore, located at the intersection of Jefferson and Woodward near the waterfront, Fard was arrested once

again in late May 1933. Given a final warning, he left the Motor City for good. It was around this time, presumably, that a handful of NOI members followed Takahashi into The Devel-

opment of Our Own.74 Although Elijah Muhammad's principal loyalties lay with the NOI until his own abrupt departure from De- troit in 1934, he, too, seems to have had noth-

ing but kind words for Takahashi.

Internal changes seem to have preoccupied TDOO during its first several months of existence. Having filed as a non-profit organi- zation in October 1933, TDOO voted out its initial group of officers the following month.75 Despite the apparent turmoil, the organiza- tion quickly established "branches in Mt. Clemens, Roseville, River Rouge, Ecorse, in the 8-Mile road area and elsewhere." The ap- parent core of the movement was the Bird- hurst Center at Eight Mile Road, where - membership ranks quickly swelled to 500. One of the largest Detroit units met at the Arion Hall, located at 2131 Chene Street. An-

other convened regularly at 3404 St. Antoine.76 Although the principal organizing took

place in the Detroit area, there were also re- ports of a chapter in Indianapolis built on the organizational ruins of the Moorish Science Temple. By late 1933 TDOO was said to have 14 chapters and some 10,000 members.77 Apart from acknowledging its working-class

base, one can say little else about the organiza- tion's constituency at present - including the number of female members.78 Whether, as in the case of the Nation of Isiam, TDOO mem-

bership drew mainly from the most recently arrived, and the most impoverished, of De- troit's black southern migrants, or, like the PMEW in St. Louis and East St. Louis, from those who had established urban residency at a time more proximate to World War I, re- mains to be discovered.79

Under Takahashi's stewardship, "Five Guiding Principles" bound TDOO adherents to an overarching code of conduct:

1. To act in accordance with God's will.

Thus, there is nothing to fear but God. 2. To be true to ourselves.

Those who are not true to themselves can not be true to others.

3. To help ourselves instead of relying on others. God will only help those who help

themselves.

4. To be part of our community and our country. Less talk, more act and self-sacrifice are nec-

essary if a group is to act together. By giving in we gain, by surrender we win.

5. To beautify this world is our final goal. Hence we must first have the beauty of

heart within ourselves.80

Whether or not these principles were origi- nated by Mr. Takahashi is uncertain, but prece- dents for such guidelines certainly existed in the first Five Principles of Buddha, also known as the Pansil, the Five Relationships and suppl- ementary Five Norms of Confucian thought, as well as the Five Teachings of the Kurozumi Kyo faith-healing sect of Shinto.81 In the hands of one of its black minister-leaders, the organi- zation's millenarian appeal could also be readily observed:

The Development of Our Own is a friendly or- ganization for the darker peoples of America. Let us organize ourselves for one aim and one destiny under this organization. We must do this, because we are living in a critical time - a time for dark peoples to organize themselves for one common cause.

Why can't we as a people see the signs of the times? The Bible says, "You shall see the sign in the East, then you will know that the time of the Son of Man is near at hand." He will gather up his elect.

By organizing ourselves under the "five guid- ing principles," we shall be able and ready to meet Him.82

In contrast to the less-tempered public speeches for which he was often known, Mr.

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Takahashi's initial column in Detroit's pre- mier black newspaper, the Tribune-ïndepen- dent, fit well within existing, African Ameri- can, middle-class, "mainstream" thought. Calling for African American unity, Takahashi immodestly attributed a new-found advocacy among Detroit blacks for the "unification of the colored race," to his own organizing ef- forts over the previous eight months:

I am pleased to announce to you ladies and gentlemen, that my earnest [effort] in co-opera- tion with you loyal members, has given some effect to our principles, in such a way as to create a new tendency among your people toward racial unity. The greatest obstacles to our desire for unity of race are not so much external barriers, but inter- nal quarrels and discord, due to selfish ambitions, petty jealousies, narrow vision, and what not. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." We see many organizations wrecked by internal strife, and many nations weakened and held down, by inter- nal divisions and factionalism.85

to the question of internal, race unity was the need for harmonious rela-

tions between men and women. But gender unity could be achieved only on the basis of full political rights for women within the gen- eral movement for African American justice:

Men and women should respect each other, and strive to develop harmony with one another, al- though there [seem] to be peculiar ideas prevail- ing among a certain group of men, that the women should not hold any office in an organiza- tion, nor have voice at the meetings.

Permit me to say to you men, that our interna- tional supervisor is a woman, if you please, with whom some of the members of the board of con-

trol have already had an interview. She is now in Chicago doing wonderful work among the white people, though different from my work.84 *

This "work among the white people," for which the international supervisor had "dem- onstrated herself capable" of carrying out, was "to create a new tendency among the white race for racial equality, that is, to convince them of the fact that they have been creating many enemies for many years, not in the for- eign land, but right here [with] in this coun- try's national boundary." The population of the "suppressed colored race" was increasing rapidly: "Let colored citizens have their due place, before it is too late. This is our advice to the white race, in the solution of the racial problem."85 But Takahashi himself refused to address gatherings where whites were present.

For the most part, Takahashi's speeches be- fore meetings of organizations such as the Bethel A.M.E. Church, or his writings in the Detroit Tribune-Independent, remained cau- tionary. But a number of the "Little Major's" preferred lectures possessed a more flavorful character: for example, "The Sinking Ship and the Lifeboat," and "White Supremacy and the White Tyrant" - most likely deliv- ered before black, working-class audiences. In his "white supremacy" speech, Takahashi as- serted that, by following "Japan's five guiding principles," African Americans would suc- ceed in overthrowing white domination:

I come here to promote international unity between the dark people of Japan and the dark people of America to lead them to a better and fuller life.

What Japan has done in the past 70 years, the Negroes, too, can do by accepting Japan's five guiding principles. The white man will give you little. If you obtain anything it will be done through conquest. You must fight.

Japan has succeeded because everyone worked as a unit. You must work as a unit. Follow Japan's . guiding principles. Japan is a world power equal to Great Britain and the United States and fearing nothing but God.

And what of Japan's stake in this outpour- ing of Asian solidarity for Black Americans?:

Three-fourths of the world are black people and one-fourth is white, and it is not in accord- ance with God's will for one-fourth of the world to

rule the three-fourths, which are black. Now that Japan has gained rightful recognition in the world, she is willing to help other dark races. We know that the black people of the United States are citizens thereof, and can not help Japan di- rectly in case of war, but there are other things that can be done. If the white man knew that you sympathized with Japan, he would not allow you to shoulder arms or go near an ammunition plant in case of war. In some parts of this country you have been shot to death or lynched [while] wearing the uniform. . . .

Japan is making overtures to you. If she fails you fail. This is the last chance of the dark races of America to overcome white supremacy and to throw the white tyrants off your backs.™

In his lecture invoking western civilization as a "sinking ship," Takahashi assured his lis- teners that Japan was the "lifeboat," the hope of Black America:

You are clinging to an era of Caucasian civiliza- tion and psychology because you are afraid to leave the sinking ship. I say the sinking ship be- cause western prestige is doomed. It is pursuing its inevitable course to the graveyard of obscure history.

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Here is the Negro's chance to freedom in life. Leave the sinking ship. Civilization's march west- ward has reached its farthest western shore on the Pacific Coast of America.

West of America is what? Hawaii, the Philip- pines and your friend Japan, the lifeboat of racial love made radiant by the star of the East, Japan.87

On one occasion, probably around early 1934 when he was out on bail, Takahashi spoke at the Golden Leaf Baptist Church in Flint, Michigan. Describing the talk, Reverend Wilkerson Vaughn later recalled that Taka- hashi expressed a desire to organize African Americans so that if they needed Japan "they would come to our rescue. He didn't expect us to fight with them in case they went to war with the United States, but he did [want] it so that they could talk with us in an organization, said they had the second largest navy in the world ... He asked how many people (col- ored) were in Flint, he wanted at least 4,000 colored people in this organization, he wanted all of them, but at least 4,000.'>88 On yet another occasion, from a speech entitled "Japan's Divine Mission," Takahashi outlined three steps by which this mission "was to be fulfilled: namely to liberate Manchuria, then already accomplished; to unite Japan, Man- chukuo and China into one bloc; and to beau- tify the world by emancipating all the colored races from oppression."89

extending a Pan-Asiatic lifeline to black Detroiters was Muhammad A.

Kahn, an East Indian who warned TDOO au- diences that "the white man has been lying to you ever since Lincoln saved you," and that "you dark races had better wake up and orga- nize." At another meeting Kahn affirmed, in part, "that the dark races are tired of being fooled by the white race," and that for any- thing to be accomplished they must organize against the latter. India was now ready to join Japan in order to secure its independence from England.90

Not surprisingly, the proselytizing efforts of Takahashi and his lieutenants in Detroit and

surrounding communities quickly fell under the surveillance of the Detroit Police Depart- ment, the Wayne County Sheriffs Office, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and military

intelligence services as well. According to one observer, "The assignment to uncover Taka- hashi's local seditious activities was given to two colored members of the Detroit Police

Department, Officers Laurence [or Law- rence] Johnson and Alfred Perry. They worked on the case secretly for six months, and attended meetings of the Development of Our Own."91 The FBI, for its part, unveiled plans to prosecute Takahashi for having im- personated a foreign government official.

In early September 1933 the "Little Major" was taken into custody by the INS, which promptly scheduled a hearing to determine his eligibility for deportation.92 Three months later he was arrested with several other men at

the home of a supporter, Pearl Sherrod. "Sus- pected of Aiming at Overthrow of White Race," rang the caption of a news story de- voted to the affair, but government prosecu- tors eventually narrowed their focus to Takahashi's immigration violations: entering the United States without inspection, failure to possess a valid visa, and being an alien inel- igible to citizenship. The others - Emerson Sherrod, 20; William Johnson, 49, and Cho- suke Okhi, 45, also known as George - were released without charge the following day. One of Takahashi's close associates, Muham- mad A. Kahn, 35, a native of India, was subse- quently interrogated and set free, after being warned that he could no longer wear his mili- tary uniform in public.93 And Takahashi him- self was freed on bond shortly thereafter.

From a political perspective, the marriage of Pearl Sherrod and Satokata Takahashi the

following February provided The Develop- ment of Our Own with a sense of organiza- tional continuity as well as an event that could be used to mask news of the subsequent de- portation of the latter. Mr. Takahashi was forced out of the U.S. on April 20, 1934, but an announcement of the couple's marriage, which had actually taken place two months earlier in Toledo, Ohio, appeared the follow- ing day in the Detroit Tribune-Independent: "Mrs. Pearl B. Sherrod, a graduate of Tusk- egee Institute, Ala., and a member of a promi- nent colored family of Clarksburg, West Virginia," had become "the bride of Major Satokato [!] Takahashi, an influential citizen of Tokio, Japan."94 The article went on to note that "Major Takahashi, who is highly edu-

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cated and apparently possessed of means, left Detroit Friday night, April 13, enroute to San Francisco, California, where he will embark on a steamer for Japan. After transacting im- portant business in Tokio, Major Takahashi plans to return to the United States, within the next three months."95 For persons un- aware of Mr. Takahashi 's deportation pro- ceedings, no better "spin" could have been placed on his involuntary departure.

A curious aspect of this case concerns the supposed fact that Takahashi was a natu- ralized Canadian citizen, and therefore should have been returned to Canada. Taka-

hashi explained that he was instead deported to Japan because he was going by the name Takahashi although he had become a natu- ralized Canadian citizen under his birth

name, Naka Nakane. Almost true to his word, four months later Takahashi reappeared "at Vancouver, Canada, possessing about $2,000 although," according to the FBI, "he was without funds when deported four months earlier and without a visible source of in- come." Takahashi, however, explained that the funds came from the sale of property in Japan: a house in Oita and some Japanese bonds. Whatever the truth in all of this, from

late 1934 through early 1939 he "resided at Vancouver, Windsor and Toronto, Canada, di- recting the policies of the organization through his wife. . . .'>96

leadership of the organization following her husband's departure, Pearl

Takahashi took control of his weekly news- paper column as well.97 "I must say," advised Mrs. Takahashi,

our minds have been diseased, and we have tried "Mr. White's" medicine and failed; tried "Mr. Black's" medicine and failed. Now we must try "Mr. Brown's" medicine. No doubt he will cure us of the mental disease which was caused from a lack

of organization. Then, we can develop ourselves.98

But external as well as internal competition for the organization's members had already put a test to the medicine prescribed by "Mr. Brown," underscoring the reason as to why The Development of Our Own had wished to portray Mr. Takahashi's absence as a tempor- ary matter. Beginning in June, Mrs. Taka- hashi's weekly column warned that "a vast number of persons" were circulating "illegiti-

mate" copies of the organization's "Five Guid- ing Principles" in violation of the copyright act.99 That same month, someone claiming Ethiopian nationality and going by the im- probable name of Wyxzewixard S. J. Chal- louehliczilczese, sought unsuccessfully "to reorganize the movement as a means of send- ing financial support to Ethiopia."100 As a re- sult of a schism dating back several months previous, three TDOO officers filed for an in- junction against Mrs. Takahashi in July, charg- ing that she had "demanded a salary for being a member" and had "married a Japanese alien who represented himself as a friend and benefactor" of TDOO.

But the ideas Mr. Takahashi was attempt- ing to implant in the minds of Detroit's black citizens, they maintained, "would ultimately undermine the system of American Govern- ment." The injunction was sought by William Coleman, Samuel W. Grimes, and William J. Fitzpatrick. Following court challenges by the Takahashi's, the case was dismissed due to "lack of jurisdiction." Two months following Mr. Takahashi's departure, and apparently without his knowledge or consent, an amend- ment to TDOO's Articles of Incorporation was filed. The new officers listed were William

Coleman, president; Samuel W. Grimes, vice près.; William J. Fitzpatrick (one of the origi- nal directors in 1933), secretary; Dr. Wayne W. Williams, treas.; Charles C. Zampty, chair, speakers bureau; and George Wilson, agent.101 Unable to bear these and other such strains,

by 1935 the group reportedly split into three, separate factions; former NOI lieutenant Ab- dul Muhammad (aka F. D. Abdul) seems to have emerged as leader of one of them, a post he held until his death in late 1938.102 This also

may have been the point where Muhammad reportedly seceded from the NOI and "orga- nized a small Moslem group of his own in which the cardinal principal was loyalty to the Constitution of the United States and to its

flag."103 The TDOO core group nonetheless survived until the fall of 1938, when the orga- nization was rocked by a marital-political rift bearing upon the quality of Pearl Takahashi's leadership.

September a group of dissatisfied TDOO members reportedly called upon Mr. Tak-

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ahashi at Toronto. The principal charge, it seems, was that Mrs. Takahashi had been liv-

ing somewhat ostentatiously in her capacity as acting chief executive, and not properly for- warding to her husband funds earmarked by the organization for his support. A subse- quent communication from Mr. Takahashi to his wife indicates mutual accusations, of mari-

tal infidelity as well. Dismissing her from of- fice, Mr. Takahashi then addressed a letter to

organization members requesting that they choose between he, the founder, and his pre- sumably errant wife; the subsequent vote went overwhelmingly in his favor. The game was not yet over, however, for Mrs. Takahashi quickly filed suits against the newly designated execu- tive officer, Cash C. Bates, and others for rea-

sons of slander and fraud. Although her legal actions were eventually dropped, the effective result of challenges on both sides was the dis- integration of The Development of Our Own.104

Presumably "because of the strife occur- ring within the organization," reported the FBI, Satokata Takahashi "illegally reentered the United States at Buffalo on January 11, 1939, using the identification of another Ca- nadian Japanese, Hisazi Kubo . . ." Those who remained loyal to Takahashi were reorganized by him into another, similar association known as the Onward Movement of America.

The new group was, in fact, identical to TDOO except for the exclusion of Pearl Taka- hashi. Incorporated as a non-profit organiza- tion several weeks later, the Onward Movement - dubbed the "Downward Move-

ment" by Mrs. Takahashi - quickly estab- lished an economic cooperative organization.105 Incorporated the following May, the profit-oriented Producers and Con- sumers Market was located at 20546-50 Cher-

rylawn in Detroit, its precise, stated purpose being

To buy, sell, trade, and operate markets for the sale of both at wholesale and and retail merchan-

dise incidental to general grocery and mercantile business. To sell meats, poultry, fish, fruits, vege- tables, canned and bottled goods, cigars, cigarettes & tobaccos, provisions, drinks & drugs, dairy prod- ucts 8c notions; and also to purchase, lease or oth- erwise acquire real estate and interest in land for the purposes herein set forth. "Hi

Pearl Sherrod Takahashi was to have the

last word, however. Having returned to Detroit

in January, and fearing only God, Mr. Taka- hashi set up house with 26 year-old Cheaber (or Cheaver) Mclntyre, then separated from her husband, and who recently had become secretary of the Onward Movement. Appar- ently in retaliation, Mrs. Takahashi notified the Immigration and Naturalization Service of her husband's illegal presence in April, but the INS was unable to determine his where-

abouts. From further information supplied by his wife, Mr. Takahashi was finally appre- hended by two immigration inspectors in late June.107 After reportedly offering to bribe the inspectors in order to allow his escape, he was arrested on two counts: illegal entry into the United States as well as attempted bribery. Convicted in late September, Takahashi was sentenced to a maximum term of three years imprisonment and a $4,500 fine.

Subsequently "transferred from the Fed- eral Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, to the medical center for Federal Prisoners [at Springfield, Missouri] as a mental case," he was initially released in late February 1942. Immediately apprehended as a "dangerous enemy alien" during a period of wartime hos- tilities, Takahashi was re-interned shortly thereafter. While incarcerated, he had the distinction of being cited as one of the princi- pal causes of the 1943 Detroit "race riot." In late 1946, at the age of 71, he was once again released from confinement and allowed to re-

join his wife in Detroit. m But as to whether Mr. Takahashi ever became aware of the cir-

cumstances surrounding his 1939 arrest and imprisonment, the historical record offers not a "clew."

IN THE BALANCE

evidence pointing to Takahashi 's gov- ernment ties - at least that available until

now - remains circumstantial. Questioned by authorities, Takahashi himself fully admitted to membership in the Black Dragon Society, but claimed that neither he nor the organiza- tion possessed connections to the Japanese government. lw At one point a dentist, Dr. Isa- mu Tashiro, was said to have been sent by the Japanese Consul General of Chicago to ad- dress the Onward Movement of America

group in Detroit, implying close links but not necessarily official ties to "Little God of the

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East."110 However, a most provocative sugges- tion of the latter came when Japanese Major Itizi Sugitsa paid a visit to the U.S. in early 1941. Former Assistant Military Attaché to the U.S. and then current Chief of the American

Section of the Japanese General Staff ("charged with the management of Japanese Military Intelligence in the United States"), Major Sugitsa was said to have made inquiries concerning the condition of the incarcerated Mr. Takahashi.111

Evidence linking Satokata Takahashi to the flowering of pro-Japanese activities among a number of African American organizations during the 1930s is, mercifully, somewhat clearer. Following his later arrest by U.S. au- thorities, Mr. Takahashi claimed that while visiting Tacoma, Washington in 1930 he learned of one Abdul Muhammad, who had written a black minister of that city "request-

ing that a Japanese work among the Negroes in Detroit.""2 Whatever the merits of when and how Takahashi came into contact with

Muhammad, knowledge of their subsequent relationship remains equally problematic. One source claimed that "Takahashi resided with Muhammad but left because he consid- ered him a fraud." Another held Takahashi to

be the fraudulent party.113 Whatever the case, the initial friendship with Abdul Muhammad appears to have given Takahashi access to NOI members. While Elijah Muhammad does not appear to have followed Takahashi into TDOO, Takahashi assuredly left his mark on him as well. For example, in a speech report- edly given in 1933, Mr. Muhammad stated that "the Japanese had sent a teacher to the black people and that the Japanese were brothers and friends of the American Negroes" - a reference, no doubt, to Takahashi.114 Whether or not the "Little God of the East" ever con- sulted with W. D. Fard, Nation of Islam foun- der of equally diminutive physical stature (and affectionately known to his followers as the "Little God of Egypt"), is unknown. Mr. Fard, as noted earlier, once claimed to be the originator of TDOO.

By 1942 The Onward Movement of America had become affiliated with the Moorish Sci-

ence Temple, casting a pro-Japan imprint on the latter. Takahashi's earlier rooming to- gether with Cash C. Bates and Herschel Wash- ington, two men who later became prominent

in the MSTA, is what is believed by the FBI to have sparked the pro-Japan ideological ten- dencies that then flourished within the major-

ity of MSTA branches.115 In the early 1940s the practices of the

Gary, Indiana chapter of The Development of Our Own had evolved in such a way as to em- brace NOI symbolism. Led by Gentral Pope (aka Joseph Gibson), the group awaited the day that the "Five Guiding Principles," recast here as Freedom, Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Honor, would be theirs under Japanese rule. The organizational banner - bearing a red background with a white star and crescent positioned near the lower left-hand corner, and the letters F, J, L, and E (denoting the first four principles) inscribed at each of the corners beginning counter-clockwise at the upper right - was said to have been sent from Tokyo!116

By the late 1930s both the MSTA and the NOI were considered important institutional sources of pro-Japan sentiment in many Afri- can American communities. But although pro-Japan sentiment was apparently rife within the MSTA, no substantial case was able to be made by authorities - a situation no doubt aided by the organization's highly de- centralized character.

early 1932 Madame M. L. T, De Mena of the Universal Negro Improvement Associa-

tion enlisted the speaking services of a Fili- pino by the name of Policarpio Manansala. Posing as a Japanese and employing the name Ashima Takis, Manansala began speaking un- der UNIA auspices throughout the midwest. That spring, following a UNIA-sponsored meeting in Chicago, Mr. Takis and his part- ner, a Chinese by the name of Moy Liang, were approached by Takahashi, who indicated his intentions to found a pro-Japan organiza- tion to be known as the Pacific Movement of

the Eastern World.117 Promptly signing on, the organizing activities of the three took them to Indiana Harbor and then back to Chicago's south side.118 Some three months later they traveled to St. Louis, where the most signifi- cant, early center of PMEW activity was established.119

The affairs of the PMEW also became in- tertwined with those of Mittie Maud Lena

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Gordon, a staunch, former Garveyite who had become disillusioned with the policies of the UNIA. After having worked with the PMEW in Indiana Harbor, Gordon had a falling out with Takis. Withdrawing her supporters from the organization in late 1932, she formed the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, a proJapan, Af- rican repatriation movement. Finally, in 1935 Takis came into contact with West Indian-

born Robert Jordan. Prior to parting com- pany, the two formed the Ethiopian Pacific Movement in New York City.120

It was thus that Satokata Takahashi begat a handful of pro-Japan organizations among Af- rican Americans: The Development of Our Own, Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, and the Onward Movement of America. The

PMEW in turn begat other pro-Japan associa- tions such as the Original Independent Benev- olent Afro-Pacific Movement of the World, the

Peace Movement of Ethiopia, and the Ethio- pian Pacific Movement. TDOO and its spinoff, OMA, also greatly influenced the Nation of Islam, its direct successor the Allah Temple of Islam, as well as the Moorish Science Temple of America. Together these organizations in- fluenced, at the very least, tens of thousands of working-class blacks from the early 1930s through World War II, those South as well as North, rural as well as urban. They divided and multiplied until things came to a head in the fall of 1942, after which time most of the prin- cipal organizers of these groups were hustled off to prison. In 1942 five TDOO chapters, with no more than 170 members total, were said to be still in operation, including groups in Detroit and Gary, Indiana, and one headed by Harry Ito in Chicago.121

The actions of U.S. blacks favoring national liberation found echoes in the short-lived and

poorly conceived 1935 Sakdalista uprising in the Philippines, where adherents were told, and apparently believed, that their struggle against U.S. neo-colonialism would be joined by a Japanese invasion of the islands. One might cite as well the efforts in India of Subhas Chandra Bose and his supporters to assemble a liberation army against the British with the material assistance of Japan.122 It is thus important to understand that black iden- tification with a more powerful Japan none^ theless contained a rational kernel - however

politically misguided the overall vision.

the bombing of Pearl Harbor in late 1941, most black Americans, it seems,

continued to view Japan as a positive model for political and economic development, with a smaller number favoring that country's di- rect military intervention in the racial affairs of the United States. Following the attack on Hawaii, Japan's military campaigns against the West continued to be viewed by many African Americans - even staunch "patriots" - as "payback" for white underestimation of the capabilities of peoples of color. And as the U.S. plunged into the war, leading spokesper- sons for the black middle class sought to uti- lize the Japanese threat as a wedge to exact greater concessions in the realms of political and civil rights for African Americans, argu- ing persuasively that the full fighting potential of the black population could not be attained until African Americans were made to feel

like full-fledged citizens. (Shades of John Ed- ward Bruce!) Most African Americans were either "indifferent to or reacted negatively to- ward the outbreak of World War II in Septem- ber, 1939." Some were bitter because neither

the governments of the United States nor Great Britain had made any effort to forestall the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Others did not wish to see the United States become in-

volved in an imperialist war. Still others "viewed the fighting in Europe as a divine act of retribution" visited upon the un- righteous.123 And there were many who sup- ported Japan - at least until the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Pro-Japanese thoughts among African Americans during the war, then, were hardly confined to a mere handful of "crackpots," as the popular press, black as well as white, strove hard to maintain. In early 1942 the Office of War Information commissioned a private sur- vey among African American residents of New York City in order to gauge their attitudes to- wards Japan. The results indicated that eigh- teen percent of the respondents expressed the belief that, in the event of a successful

invasion of the United States by Japan, the conditions of African Americans would im-

prove; another 31 percent that things would remain the same; and a significant 26 percent were noncommittal.124 Whether an indication

of anti-American or pro-Japanese sentiment,

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these results could not have been reassuring to the Roosevelt administration.

Within the African American community, only the black Left fully and consistently per- ceived from the early 1930s onward the grow- ing danger of Japanese fascism, and the consequent folly of African American identi- fication with those who portrayed themselves as "liberators of the darker races." Although an unquestioning supporter of Japan's cause during the earlier days of the African Blood Brotherhood, Cyril V. Briggs was among the first to raise the alarm in 1932 in the pages of the Negro Worker. In the late 1930s Briggs and Harry Haywood collaborated in the writ- ing of a small pamphlet, Is Japan the Champion of the Colored Races?, a work which, as a matter of policy, was assigned a collective authorship that included other black CPUSA luminaries.

While the pamphlet's main purpose was to undermine the pro-Japanese influence among blacks fostered by the Pacific Move- ment of the Eastern World and other, like

organizations in the U.S., its authors deliber- ately limited their scope to the discrediting of Japanese foreign policy in Asia.125

It is time to revise the viewpoint long held by many activists and scholars (the author in- cluded) that the Depression Decade wit- nessed a strengthening of class consciousness within the African American national com-

munity virtually at the full expense of group consciousness and nationalist sentiment -

notwithstanding the existence of "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" movements that

sprung up in a number of cities. The older view recognizes the Great Depression primar- ily for the sharpening of class tendencies as well as the growth of millennial religious movements within black communities. Exam-

ples of the first can be found in the founding of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Ar-

kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma; the organiz- ing of the Sharecropper's Union in Alabama; struggles of the CIO in the auto, steel, min- ing, and packing-house industries; the Scot- tsboro and Angelo Herndon campaigns; the campaigns of local unemployed councils, and the like. But as time goes by, and evidence percolates upward from heretofore buried or obscure sources, a growing number of re- searchers are begining to view the decade as one where African American nationalism

flourished perhaps as much as in the Twenties - a perspective to which a recent study of black American movements for the defense of

Ethiopia eloquently contributes.126

Although a rather dismissive and superfi- cial account of the wartime arrests ap- pearing in Time magazine was misleading in many respects, its title, "Takahashi's Blacks," contained at least a semblance of truth.127 To

African Americans coming into direct contact with him in the 1930s, or who learned of his existence through others, Satokata Takahashi represented a personification of the notion, prevalent throughout Asian countries (with- out the first-hand experience of a Japanese occupation) as well as black America at the time, that Japan, as "champion of the darker races," would liberate them from the yoke of world-wide white supremacy. As it turned out, of course, and all for the better, our erstwhile

sepia samurai prepared in vain for a mainland invasion of the U.S. which never arrived. But

despite the messianic aura created around his person, those organizations which followed Mr. Takahashi or his ideas were, for the most

part, founded or run by African Americans themselves, fulfilling needs present in their own communities.

If there is a political lesson to be learned from pro-Japan movements among blacks dur- ing the Great Depression, it is perhaps that the waters of self-determination continue to

run deep within the African American na- tional community even during times of signifi- cant class conflict, and that progressive strategies for social change which ignore the existence of the former, remain as doomed as

those mired in extreme myth-making and ulti- mate mystification.

THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO. 1 PAGE39

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Acknowledgements *It was from Harry Hayxvood some twenty-five years

ago that I first learned of the existence ofprojapa- nese organizations among African Americans in the 1930s and early 40s, and hence it is to him that the

present essay owes its greatest debt. I am especially grateful for assistance provided by the following in- dividuals and institutions: firstly, the library staff at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst - Edla Holm and her indefatigable Interlibrary Loan crew, and librarians Paula Mark and Barbara Morgan in particular; archives technician Scott M. Forsythe of the National Archives - Great iMkes Region; John E. Taylor, archivist, National Archives

- Washington DC; and Linda Kloss of the FBI's FOIA /PA section, also in Washington. Robert

Chrisman, John E. Higginson, and Joy Ann James graciously suggested improvements to the original draft.

In addition to all of the foregoing, John H. Bracey, Jr. kindly recommended a number of addi- tional sources as well. David Wills provided a criti- cal reference to African American religious history.

A modest grant from the Five College Black Studies Executive Committee enabled me to obtain materials

that otherwise would have been beyond my reach. Sara Lennox of the University s STPEC Program also provided invaluable support. And, finally, a special thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, without which this essay would have been infinitely

more speculative.

NOTES

1 . By the 1950s the preferred English spelling of the surname Mohammed changed to Muhammad (and that of Moslem to Muslim). For the sake of consis- tency, the latter spelling has been adopted for rele- vant individuals mentioned in this study. For the same reason one will find here the traditional West-

ern order of given name/surname imposed upon Japanese individual names, since that is the form ordinarily present in cited newspaper reports and government documents.

2. "Sedition: Race Hate Used by Tokio to Lure 85 Nabbed by FBI," Chicago Defender (September 26, 1942): 1, 4; "U.S. Indicts 38 Cult Members," Chicago Defender (October 3, 1942): 1; "Federal Jury Indicts Cult Leaders Here," Chicago Defender (October 31, 1942): 1; 1 "12 Negro Chiefs Seized by FBI in Sedi- tion Raids," Chicago Tribune (September 22, 1942): 9; "Another Negro Fanatic Seized as Plot Leader," Chicago Tribune (September 23, 1942): 8.

3. "Five Who Urged Revolt in Harlem and Aid to Japa- nese Are Indicted," New York Times (September 15, 1942): 1.

4. "Survey of Racial Conditions in the United States" (Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1943) [NHyF], 209, 578. A 714-page report pre- sented by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the fall of 1943, the survey contains an indispensable summary of the black press, race relations programs, independent black organizations, as well as Socialist, Communist, and projapanese tendencies among African Ameri- cans. Based upon raw FBI field reports, but unlike similar materials obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the (indexed) copy located in the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park is free of redaction.

5. "FBI Arrests Cleric for Conspiracy to Sabotage Draft and Hinder War," Chicago Defender (October 31, 1942): 3.

6. "Pro-Japanese Unit Scrutinized," St. Louis Globe-Dem- ocrat (September 23, 1942): 7; "Indictment Names 'Black Dragon' Ilk," New York Times (January 28,

1943): 12; "3 Indicted On Sedition Charges," St. Ijouis Globe-Democrat (January 28, 1943): 4; "Charges Church Formed to Keep Its 'Ministers' Out of the Army," St. 1 muís Post-Dispatch (January 28, 1943): 1, 3; "Bishop Erwin Stands Trial for Sedition," St. Louis Argus (May 14, 1943): 1.

7. Seven m Cult Seized as Draft Evaders, New York Times (January 14, 1943): 23.

8. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 361, 574. Florence Murray, "The Negro and Civil Liberties During World War II," Social Forces, 24: 2 (December 1945): 211-12, reported that some 125 African Americans were convicted in such cases. See also American

Civil Liberties Union, Freedom in Wartime (New York: ACLU, 1943), 32-33; and American Civil Liberties Union, In Defense of Our Liberties (New York: ACLU, 1944), 32.

9. 50 U.S.C.A. §§ 33, 34 and 50 U.S.C.A. Appendix §§ 301, 302, 311. The first set of amended codes was based on the Espionage Act of 1917 (40 Stat. 217), which, under .conditions of wartime, applied to the issuing of false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces, willful obstruction of recruitment into the same, as well as conspiracy to commit such violations. The second, on the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (54 Stat. 885) which, among other measures, provided for the punishment of those who evaded draft registration or military service, or who coun- seled or aided others along such lines.

10. Report of [agent name deleted], Washington, DC, June 19, 1942, FBI file 100-6582- [37?]. Save for the document, "Survey of Racial Conditions in the United States," all Federal Bureau of Investigation records used in this study were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

11. Erdmann Doane Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit," American Jour- nal of Sociology, XLIII:6 (May 1938): 903, 904, 906-907; Hans j. Massaquoi, "Elijah Muhammad: Prophet and Architect of the Separate Nation of Islam," Fbony (August 1970): 88; Linda Jones, "Na- tions Apart," Michigan magazine, Detroit Nexus (July

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17, 1988): 8; "Intended Voodoo Victims' Number Still Mounting," Detroit Free Press (November 27, 1932): 1, 4; "Cultists Riot in Court; One Death, 41 Hurt," Chicago Tribune (March 6, 1935): 1; Ted Wat- son, "The Rise of Muhammad Temple of Islam," Pittsburgh Courier (April 7, 1956): 3 (magazine sec- tion) and "Beginning of Muhammad!," Pittsburgh Courier (February 22, 1958): 8. Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, Anyplace But Here (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966), 222, give the date of inception of the Chicago branch as "1933 or early 1934," which may have been true with regard to the ATÖI, but not the NOI, which Detroit police reported to be in exis- tence in Chicago as early as 1932. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism, 64, notes that the Allah Temple of Islam was organized in Chicago in latter 1934, but also fails to note the early formation. The question as to whether or not Mr. Muhammad converted the

early Chicago branch NOI to the ATOI seems imma- terial, since Essien-Udom reports that the latter was so small at its inception that it met at members' homes.

12. This vision remains unchanged for Minister Louis Farrakhan's NOI, founded around 1978.

13. For studies of NOI eschatology, see E. U. Essien- Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); and C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon, 1973, second ed.).

14. Elijah Muhammad, "Battle in the Sky Is Near," in Message to the Blackman in America (Chicago: Muham- mad's Temple No. 2, 1965), 290-91; "The Great De- cisive Battle in the Sky," Pittsburgh Courier (December 28, 1957): 10, rpt. in Message to the Black- man, 292-93; "The Battle in the Sky," Pittsburgh Cou- rier (December 14, 1957): 10, rpt. in Message to the Blackman, 293-94.

15. Report of [agent name deleted], Washington, DC, June 19, 1942, FBI file 100-6582- [37?].

16. Report of [agent name deleted], Chicago, October 8, 1943, FBI file 100-6582-139.

17. See Ernest Allen, Jr., "The New Negro: Explorations in Identity and Social Consciousness, 1910-1922," in Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick, eds., 1915: The Cul- tural Moment (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 48-68.

18. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: lhe Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1944), 813; Senator Theodore G. Bilbo, "An African Home for Our Negroes," The Living Age, 358:4485 (June 1940): 328, 330; Ethel Wolfskill He- dlin, "Earnest Cox and Colonization: A White Rac- ist's Response to Black Repatriation, 1923-1966," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Duke University, 1974), 112-70.

19. United States v. Gordon et al., 7 dr., 138 F.2d 174. 20. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 575. 21. "Five Face U.S. Sedition Charges in Court Monday,"

Chicago Defender (November 28, 1942): 1. 22. "Grand Jury Probes Cultists," The [Kansas City] Call

(October 2, 1942): 3. 23. "Prison Looms as U.S. Tightens Grip on Cult," Chi-

cago Defender (October 17, 1942): 1; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 575.

24. Frederick H. H. Robb, ed., The Negro in Chicago: 1779-1927 (Chicago: The Washington Intercollegi- ate Club, 1927), cited in Christopher Reed, "The Manifestations of Nationalism in the Black Belt of

Chicago, 1920-1929," unpublished M.A. thesis

(Roosevelt University, 1968), 21 [I am indebted to John H. Bracey, Jr. for calling my attention to the latter document] ; E. U. Essien-Udom, Black National- ism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1962), 50, 162; "Grand Jury Probes Cultists," The [Kansas City] Call (October 2, 1942): 3.

25. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 173; Vernon B. Will- iams, Jr. to NAACP, December 17, 1942, NAACP Pa- pers, Section II, Box 12 [DLC] [I am indebted to John H. Bracey, Jr. for providing me with a copy of this document]; "'Negro A Jew' Leader to Seek New Converts Here," Chicago Defender (March 14, 1942): 3; Chicago Defender (October 31, 1942): 3.

26. Triumph the Church of the New Age was an off- shoot of Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ, founded in Georgia by Elder E. D. Smith in the year variously given as 1897, 1902, or 1906. According to Gayraud Wilmore, "Smith led the de- nomination until 1920 when he moved to Addis Ababa and never returned." Around 1921 or 1922 the church underwent an ecclesiastical schism, and a branch known as Triumph the Church of the New Age came into being at Pittsburgh under the leader- ship of W. D. Barbour. Leadership passed to Bishop A. A. Shelton of Detroit following Barbour's death. The parent organization remained small until the mid-1930s, after which time a sizeable membership began to accrue. In 1938 a Birmingham native, the Rev. James Francis Marion Jones, was sent to Detroit by Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ with instructions to form a new branch. In- stead he founded a new denomination, Church of Universal Triumph, the. Dominion of God, and be- came known to the world as Prophet Jones. Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An In- terpretation of the Religious History of Afro-American Peo- ple (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991, 2nd ed.), 154; Miles Mark Fisher, "Organized Religion and the Cults," in Milton Sernett, ed., Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985), 391; Hans A. Baer, The Black Spiritual Movement: A Religious Response to Radsm (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 83, 147n; Charles Edwin Jones, Black Holiness: A Guide to the Study of Black Partidpation in Wesleyan Perfectionist and Glossolalie Pentecostal Movements (Metuchen, NJ: The American Theological Association and the Scare- crow Press, 1987), 181-82, 193-94; Trial Testimony, pp. 703-706, United States v. Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, Inc., No. 15840 (E.D. 111. June 15, 1943) [National Archives - Great Lakes Region].

27. Elmer T. Clark, The Small Sects in America (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1949), 164, confused HOI doctrine with that of the MSTA, the ideals of which he believed were identical. Furthermore, it

was not the "Abyssinian" language, as he claimed, but the use of the Hebrew tongue which the group championed. See also report of [agent name de- leted], St. Paul, March 2, 1943, FBI file 65-40879-286; and "Survey of Racial Conditions," 559.

28. For general but somewhat flawed information on the MSTA, see Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, Anyplace But Here (1945; rvsd. New York: Hill and Wang, 1966), 205-208. In their highly informative Mission to America: Five Islamic Sectarian Communities

in North America (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993), historians Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith tend to treat the MSTA primarily as an Islamic organization. Peter l^amborn

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Wilson's "Shoot-Out at the Circle Seven Koran: No-

ble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple," Gnosis, 12 (Summer 1989): 44-49, on the other hand, more convincingly traces the MSTA's Islamic roots to Masonic influences. See also an amplified version of Lamborn's argument in his recently pub- lished Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1993), 15-50. An in- sightful, c. 1940 sociological study of the MSTA Phil- adelphia temple appears in Arthur Huff Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults in the Urban North (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva- nia Press, 1944), 41-51. See also Ernest Allen, Jr., "Making the Strong Survive: The Contours and Contradictions of 'Message Rap'," in William Eric Perkins, ed., Droppin1 Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and HipHop Culture (forthcoming, Temple University Press, 1994).

29. Ali s official cause of death was Tuberculosis Bron- cho-Pneumonia." Standard Certificate of Death No.

22054, Timothy Drew, issued July 25, 1929, Cook County, Illinois (Office of Cook County Clerk).

30. Report of [agent name deleted], Chicago, Decem- ber 15, 1943, FBI file 62-25889-228.

31. John Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI to the Attorney General, February 19, 1942, FBI file 100-56894-44.

32. In certain fundamental respects, the historical situ- ation of African Americans has been little different

from that of other minority populations in the era of the nation-state. See, for example, Gérard Chaliand, ed., Minority Peoples in the Age of Nation- States (London: Pluto Press, 1989). For the most comprehensive documentation of African Ameri- can nationalism, see John H. Bracey, Jr., August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, eds., Black Nationalism in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).

33. See, especially, the Book of Revelation, but also those of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Mark; also Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/ Harv- ard University Press, 1992), 42.

34. E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Eorms of Sodai Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1959; rpt., New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), 57-58. As Shepperson has noted, the messiah need not be a personal one. George Shepperson, "The Compara- tive Study of Millenarian Movements," in Sylvia L. Thrupp, ed. Millennnial Dreams in Action (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), 47.

35. See especially the confessions of Ben (aka Ben Wool- folk) in Willie Lee Rose, ed., A Documentary History of Slavery in North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)„ 114; T. W. Higginson, "Gabriel's Defeat," Atlantic Monthly, 10:59 (September 1862), 338.

36. See, for example, Arthur Huff Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults in the Urban North (Phila- delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944); Ro- bert Wesibrot, Eather Divine (1983; rpt., Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); and Jill Watts, God, Harlem USA.: The Eather Divine Story (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

37. See Hans A. Baer and Merrill Singer, Ajrtcan-Amen- can Religion in the Twentieth Century: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation (Knoxville: University of Tennes- see Press. 1992). eso. chapt. 4.

38. Elias Fanayaye Jones, "Black Hebrews: The Quest for Authentic Identity," Journal of Religious Thought, 44:2 (Winter-Spring 1988): 35-49; Truman Hughes Tal- ley, "Marcus Garvey - The Negro Moses?," Worlds Work, 41:2 (December 1920): 153-66.

39. Randall K. Burkett, Garveyism as a Religious Move- ment: The Institutionalization of a Black Civil Religion (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press and The American Theological Library Association, 1978), 62-65.

40. The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America (Chicago: 1927), Chapter XLVIII:!.

41. The best overall analysis of pro-Japan sentiment among African Americans can be found in Reginald Kearney, "Afro-American Views of Japanese, 1900-1945," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Kent State University, 1992). But aside from the New York- based Ethiopian Pacific Movement, Kearney paid little attention to the pro-Japan activities of organized groups of trie 1930s and early 1940s, an omis- sion partly attributable to exorbitant processing costs for FOI/PA materials - charges subsequently rescinded - at the time he was pursuing his initial research. For brief examinations of such organiza- tions, see Ottley, 'New World A-Coming': Inside Black America (1943; rpt., New York: Arno Press, 1968), 327-42; Neil A. Wynn, "Black Attitudes Towards Par- ticipation in the American War Effort, 1941-45," Afro-American Studies, 3:1 (June 1972): 17-18; and Neil A. Wynn, The Afro-American and the Second World War (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975), 103-105. In the otherwise excellent, latter work Wynn errs in assum- ing that no contact had occurred between Japanese agents and black defendants charged with sedition.

42. Sun Yat-Sen: His Political and Sodai Ideals, compiled and translated by Leonard Shihlien Hsü (Los An- geles: University of Southern California Press, 1933), 170.

43. Lajpat Rai, "An Asiatic View of the Japanese Ques- tion," Outlook, 114 (18 October 1916): 386; see also D. Mackenzie Brown, The Nationalist Movement: In- dian Political Thought from Ranade to Bhave (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), 8-10.

44, Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (New York: Scribners, 1920), 97. In an oft-cited essay, Lord Hailey contrasted the role played by the Russojapanese War in the devel- opment of Asian nationalism, with the parallel effect upon African nationalism of Italy's invasion of Ethio- pia in 1935. While the contrast is an apt one, it may also understate the impact of the 1904-1905 war on Africa itself. See Lord Hailey, "Nationalism in Af- rica," Journal of the Royal African Society, 36:143 (April 1937): 134-37.

45. Cited in Kearney, "Afro-American Views of Japa- nese," 38.

46. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Daum: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940; rpt., Schocken, 1968), 232.

47. Booker T. Washington, Putting the Most into Life (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1906), 33.

48. "The Call of a Nation," in The Selected Writings of John Edward Bruce: Militant Black Journalist, comp. and ed. by Peter Gilbert (New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1971), 99-100.

49. The relationship of American blacks to Japanese im- migrants in the U.S. was an intertwined but autono- mous issue. See, for example, David J. Hellwig, "Afro- American Reactions to the Japanese and the Anti- Japanese Movement, 1906-1924," Phylon, 38:1 (March 1977): 93-104.

50. See Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page 8c Co., 1922), 234; and "Survey of Racial Conditions," 535.

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51. "Negro Editor Preaches War for Equality," New York Tribune (December 2, 1918): 4. See also Kearney, "Afro-American Views of Japanese," 100-102. Imme- diately following its successful 1894-1895 military campaign against China, Japan's slogan of "Asia for the Asiatics" burst forth with abounding vitality. Per- haps not uncoincidentally, the first recorded usage of the phrase, "Africa for the African," occurred in the title of a book written between 1895 and 1896 by a sympathetic Baptist missionary of European de- scent, Joseph Booth. Henry Dumolard, te Japon poli- tique, économique et sodai (Paris: Armand Colin, 1905, 4th ed.), 278-79; Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide (New York: Praeger, 1962), 22.

52. With an intent to reclaim territory seized by the U.S. in the early 19th century, Mexico promptly invaded Texas. Then following a final attack on New York City, Washington sued for peace, with Lothrop Stod- dard, author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, joining the surrender negotiations! See John J. Stephan, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japans Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor (Hon- olulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), 60.

53. Rash Behari Bose was an Indian government clerk who became a prominent, anti-British revolutionary in the period just prior to World War I. A member of the Chandernagore group of revolutionists, Bose went underground for several years after being im- plicated in several bombing incidents which took place in 1912 and 1913. Eventually he fled to Japan, where he married a Japanese woman. Bose later became a member of the Congress Socialist Party, formed in 1934. In 1942 he was elected chair of the

newly formed Indian Independence League, an organization of Indians residing outside India in projapanese Asia. R. C. Majumdar, History of the Free- dom Movement in India (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1963), 11:306, 454-59, 490; 111:704, 707-709; D. C. Gupta, Indian National Movement and Constitutional Development (Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, second ed., 1973), 174.

54. Robert A, Hill, ed., The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, (Berkeley, Uni- versity of California Press, 1989), VI:297; Amy Jac- ques Garvey, Garvey and Garveyism (Kingston: 1963), 159; rpt. (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 168; Richard Storry, The Double Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nation- alism (1957; rpt., Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), 40-42; Robert A. Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Pre-War Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 358-59.

55. W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism 1894-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 78; Masao Maru- yama, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics (London: Oxford, 1963), 350-51; Storry, The Double Patriots, 13-14; Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Pre-War Japan, 350-51; Hugh Byas, Gov- ernment by Assassination (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1942), 173-212; B. Nicolaevsky, "Russia, Japan, and the Pan-Asiatic Movement to 1925," The Far Eastern Quarterly, 8:3 (May 1949): 272-73; O. Tanin and E. Yohan, Militarism and Fascism in Japan (New York: International Publishers, 1934), esp. 44-48, 117-18, and 252.

56. Byas, Government by Assassination 195. 57. Historian Reginald Kearney, "Afro-American Views

of Japanese," 118n, seems to doubt any such connec- tion. On the other hand, as noted earlier, a similar ultra-patriotic society, Gyochisa, made indirect con- tact with Marcus Garvey in 1925.

58. Bob Kumamoto, "The Search for Spies: American Counter intelligence and the Japanese American Community, 1931-1942," Amerasia Journal, 6:2 (Fall 1979): 65-66.

59. Joseph Ralston Hayden, The Philippines: A Study in National Development (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1942), 722-23.

60. Herbert Aptheker, ed., The Correspondence ofW. E. B. Du Bois (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1976), II: 184; W. E. B. Du Bois, "Forum of Fact and Opinion," Pittsburgh Courier (February 13, 1937); rpt. in Herbert Aptheker, comp. and ed., Newspaper Col- umns by W E. B. Du Bois (White Plains, NY: Kraus Thompson, 1986), 167; "Survey of Racial Condi- tions," 148.

61. Emma Lou Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune: Mili- tant Journalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 236-37; James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way: rThe Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (1933; rpt., New York: Penguin, 1990), 393-405; Längsten Hughes, / Wander As I Wander (New York: Rinehart, 1956), 259-76; "Protest Mistreatment of Längsten Hughes," The [Kansas City] Call (September 22, 1933): 2B. I have not yet confirmed the visits of Messrs. Moton and Schuyler, reported in "Survey of Racial Conditions," 148.

62. However, the future bride was also quoted as saying that "Japan is over populated and I would like to lead a move for colonization of our race in Africa."

The marriage was later called off. "Daughter of Japanese Peer to Wed Negro," St. Ijouìs Argus (Janu- ary 26, 1934): 1; "Prince Advertises for Bride in Japan," New York Times (February 18, 1934): IV, 8; "Duce Forces African Prince to Jilt Jap Mail Order Bride," Detroit Free Press (April 3, 1934): 3; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 150-51. Intermarriages between upper-class Ethiopians and Japanese had been pro- posed in the early 1930s by a fraction of the Ethio- pian ruling strata known as the "Japan-izers," who sought to modernize Ethiopia along the lines taken by Japan since the Meiji Restoration. [I am grateful to John E. Higginson, who provided me with this historical context.] A nephew of Hailie Selassie, Ab- ebe attended a New York City meeting of the Ethio- pian World Federation [EWF] in 1943, and thereafter became involved in its internal politics; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 146. For general in- formation on the EWF see William R. Scott, The Sons of Shebas Race: African-Americans and the halo-Ethio- pian War, 1935-1941 (Bloomington: Indiana Univer- sity Press, 1993), 176-77.

63. See, for example, Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmer- man Telegram (1958; rpt. New York: Macmillan, 1967), chapter 2.

64. Roi Ottley, 'New World A-Coming': Inside Black America (1943; rpt., New York: Arno Press, 1968), 328-29.

65. Takahashi's newspaper articles carried the by-line, S. K. Takahashi, and a PMEW membership card signed by him c. 1932 reportedly bore the given name Sato Kata. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 15; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 553-54. Among the phonetic variations assigned Takahashi's given name were Satonata, Sat- okato, Satakata, Satonata, Satohato, and Satochasi. Karl Evanzz, The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1992), uniquely em- braces the spelling "Satahota."

66. Kearney, "Afro-American Views of Japanese," 123-25; Ottley, 'New World A-Coming' 329-30, 336;

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David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), 137, 302; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 145-46, 536-37.

67. Takahashi was reported to have worked as an agent for the New York Life Insurance Company at Tac- oma, Washington from January 1923 through De- cember 1927, "having disappeared some months prior to this discontinuance." It was charged that he had misappropriated loan and cash vendor checks

■ prior to his departure from the company. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 22, 33, FBI file 65-562-43.

68. Interrogated by the FBI, Takahashi claimed to have settled in Detroit in 1930. But in an article pub- lished in April 1934, he stated that his arrival in Detroit was 8 months previous, which would have placed the date as August 1933 - still a year later than that claimed by Detroit police. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 3, 12, 18, FBI file 65-562-43; report of [agent name deleted], St. Louis, April 3, 1942, FBI file 65-40879-66; S. K. Takahashi, "Development of Our Own," Detroit Tribune-Independent (April 21, 1934): 1.

69. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 542. 70. See Robert O. Bailou, Shinto: The Unconquered Enemy

(New York: Viking Press, 1945), 19-25; D. C. Holtom, Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1943), 28-66; and John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pa- cific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 262-90.

71. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 546-47; "Japanese Plotter Here Was Chosen by Black Dragons," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (August 1, 1942): 3; "Indictment Names 'Black Dragon' Ilk," Neiv York Times (January 28, 1943): 12. Takis, moreover, misstated the content of the Tanaka Memorial, itself considered a fraudu- lent document today by many historians. See Carl Crow, ed., Japans Dream of World Empire: The Tanaka Memorial (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942) and John J. Stephan, "The Tanaka Memorial (1927): Au- thentic or Spurious?," Modern Asian Studies, 7:4 (1973): 733-45.

72. Ulysses W. Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro (Detroit: The Minority Study Associates, 1943), 46 [I am indebted to Tyrone Tillery for calling my atten- tion to this publication]; Articles of Incorporation of The Development of Our Own, October 5, 1933, Michigan Department of Commerce.

73. Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro, 46. The name of George Grimes, however, is nowhere to be found in any TDOO corporate papers filed in Mich- igan. Although it is possible for Grimes to have been eased out of the leadership prior to TDOO's having been incorporated, it is perhaps worth noting that a Samuel W. Grimes became vice-president in 1934, following Takahashi's deportation.

74. "Leader of Cult Admits Slaying at Home 'Altar'," Detroit Eree Press (November 21, 1932): 1, 2; "Altar Scene of Human Sacrifice," Detroit Times (November 21, 1932): 1; "Voodoo's Reign Here Is Broken," De- troit Eree Press (December 7, 1932): 7; "Banished leader Of Cult Arrested," Detroit Eree Press (May 26, 1933): 10; "Voodoo Chief Back In Cell," Detroit Times (May 26, 1933): 8; Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 904.

75. TDOO's initial directors were George R. Wilson, William J. Fitzpatrick, Walker Williams, E. S. Stewart, Sam Williams, and Walter Warren. The following month, George C.Jones was elected president; Will- iam Pharr, secretary; Issiah TaBoard, trustee chair- man; Emanuell Pharr, advisory chairman; John

Cooke, treasury chairman; Ava M. Vance, recording secretary; and A. N. Scott, sergeant-at-arms. Articles of Incorporation of The Development of Our Own, October 5, 1933; Certificate of Amendment to the Articles of Incorporation, January 30, 1934, Michi- gan Department of Commerce; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 542.

76. Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro, 47; report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933, FBI file 65-562-15; report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 15, FBI file 65-562-43.

77. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 100; report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 18, FBI file 65-562-43; "Mysterious Japanese Held; No Mys- tery About Disposal," Detroit News (December 3, 1933): 5. In 1936 an organizational branch, with headquarters located at Springfield, was incorpo- rated in Illinois. The Board of Directors included

William Thompson, Ernest Fulton, Ethel Fulton, Goldie Merriweather, and Helen L. Miles. The chap- ter lasted a few years at most, and was legally dis- solved in 1939. Report of [agent name deleted], Springfield, IL, April 3, 1940, FBI file 65-562-49.

78. With the economy on a war footing in 1941, TDOO s direct successor, the Onward Movement of America, reportedly had a large number of its members work- ing at Ford's River Rouge plant. P. E. Foxworth to J. Edgar Hoover, December 2, 1941, FBI file 65-562-62.

79. A follow-up investigation that might have revealed such information was abruptly cancelled in April 1940 by the FBI Director, with indications that the order had come down from the Office of Secretary of State. A request by the Detroit Bureau's SAC (Spe- cial Agent in Charge) to reopen the investigation in December of that same year was subsequently de- nied. John Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI to SAC, De- troit, April 6, 1940, FBI file 65-562-43; John Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI to Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Assistant Secretary of State, April 6, 1940, FBI file 65-562-43; John Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI to SAC, Detroit, March 1, 1941, FBI file 65-562-58.

80. Report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December iy, W33, FBI file 65-562-15; enclosure in memorandum, F. G. Tillman to F. L. Welch, September 16, 1943, FBI file 65-562-[?]; Detroit News (December 3, 1933): 5.

81. See G. H. Jansen, Nonalignment and the Afro-Asian Slates (New York: Praeger, 1966), 128; Masaharu An- esaki, History of Japanese Religion (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., 1930), 261n; and D. C. Holtom, The National Eaith of Japan: A Study in Modern Shinto (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., 1938), 255.

82. Willie Jenkins, "Development of Our Own," Detroit Tribune-Independent (May 19, 1934): 1. "Do you know why Japan quit the League of Nations?," inquired this same official on another occasion. "It was be-

cause the league failed to measure up to racial jus- tice and racial equality, because God told them to do so and establish a league of nations among the dark peoples of the earth. Don't you know that

' Japan is acting in accordance with God's will?" De- troit Tribune-Independent (June 2, 1934): 2.

83. S. K. Takahashi, "Development of Our Own," Detroit Tribune-Independent (April 21, 1934): 2. .

84. Ibid.

85. Ibid. The "international supervisor" may have been Fay Watanabe, mentioned in several FBI intelligence reports. See report of [agent name deleted], De- troit, March 20, 1940, p. 81, FBI file 65-562-43.

86. The speech is reconstructed from the following

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sources: "Japanese 'Fifth Column' Work in Detroit Also," St. I jmis Post-Dispatch (March 7, 1942): 5; and report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933, FBI file 65-562-15.

87. St. Ijmis Post-Dispatch (March 7, 1942): 1, 5. 88. Statement of Reverend Wilkerson Vaughn, Flint,

Michigan, November 23, 1942; in Enclosure to FBI file 62-25889-136. It is unclear from the context

whether African Americans' fighting "with them" meant fighting against or on the side of Japan.

89. "Résumé of Japanese Influence on the Negroes in the United States," Office of the Chief of Naval Op- erations (1942), RG 38, ONI Security Classified Ad- ministrative Correspondence, 1942-1946, A8-5/ EF37/EG [DNA]; report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 9, FBI file 65-562-43.

90. Report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933, FBI file 65-562-15.

91. Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro, 46. 92. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20,

1940, p. 17, FBI file 65-562-43. Takahashi's INS re- cords, which fall under the purview of the Freedom of Information Act, have been reported missing from the agency; Cora L. Smith, FOI/PA Officer, INS to Ernest Allen, Jr., December 21, 1993.

93. Report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933, FBI file 65-562-15; report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 3-4, FBI file 65-562-43; "Jap Arrested in Raid on Club," Detroit Neius (De- cember 2, 1933): 2; Detroit Nexvs (December 3, 1933): 5; Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen, "The Washing- ton Merry-Go-Round," Wichita Eagle (December 14, 1933), enclosure in RG 165, MID 10218-261/91 [DNA].

94. "Local Woman Weds Japanese Officer," Detroit Tri- bune-Independent (April 21, 1934): 1; St. Louis Post- Dispatch (March 7, 1942): 1. Mrs. Takahashi, whose maiden name was Barnett, had three children from a previous marriage. Her brother was a Professor Barnett of Tuskegee Institute.

95. "Local Woman Weds Japanese Officer," Detroit Tri- bune-Independent (April 21, 1934): 5; Boykin, A Hand- book on the Detroit Negro, 46.

96. Report of [agent name deleted], St. Louis, April 3, 1942, FBI file 65-40879-66; "Survey of Racial Condi- tions," 543.

97. Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro, 46. 98. Mrs. P. T. Takahashi, "Development of Our Own,"

Detroit Tribune-Independent (June 16, 1934): 2. 99. Mrs. P. T. Takahashi, "Development of Our Own,"

Detroit Tribune-Independent (June 9, 1934): 2. Inter- estingly, a U.S. Fifth Army report noted that the head of the NOI, "W. D. Feraud" [W. D. Fard], claimed to be "the originator of the Development of Our Own and the Moslem Temple of Islam cult and cited as proof a book, which had been copy- righted by him, in the US Library of Congress, en- titled 'Five Guiding Principles'." Cited in Correlation Summary of Wallace Don [Dodd] Ford, January 15, 1958, p. 17, FBI file 105-63642-15. No date is cited for this remark; however, since Fard left De- troit involuntarily on May 26, 1933, it was presuma- bly made prior to that time.

100. Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult, 904. 101 . The Development of Our Own v. Pearl T. Takahashi,

No. 23023 civ. (Wayne County Circuit Court Chan- cery, filed July 3, 1934), cited in report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 49-50, FBI file 65-562-43; Articles of Incorporation of The Development of Our Own, October 5, 1933; Certifi-

cate of Amendment to the Articles of Incorpora- tion, June 8, 1934, Michigan Department of Com- merce; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 542. The FBI report listed the name of "William J. Fitzgerald," but this appears to be in error. Charles C. Zampty may have been the same person as the Detroit-based Garveyite, John Charles Zampty. For an interview of the latter, see Jeanette Smith Irvin, Footsoldiers of the UNIA (Their Oivn Words) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1989), 36-52.

102. Correlation Summary of Wallace Don [Dodd] Ford, January 15, 1958, p. 17, FBI file 105-63642-15; &'C, Detroit to Director, FBI, January 31, 1958, FBI file 105-63642-20.

103. Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 903; SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI file 105-63642-6.

104. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 40, 42, 43, 52-57, FBI file 65-562-43.

105. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 543. Officers of The Onward Movement of America included Cash C.

Bates, Alexander Long, Arthur Merritt, Rosa Wal- den, and Leila Fisher. Articles of Incorporation of The Onward Movement of America, January 30, 1939, Michigan Department of Commerce.

106. Its officers were Alexander Long, Bar tie Alsobrooks, and Gladys Long; Articles of Incorporation of Pro- ducers and Consumers Market Co., Inc., May 15, 1939, Michigan Department of Commerce. By 1942 the organization had relocated to a nearby spot in the vicinity of Eight Mile Road at Majestic Avenue in Ferndale; Report of [agent name deleted] , Detroit, November 12, 1942, FBI file 62-25889-30.

107. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 4-5, FBI file 65-562-43.

108. United States v. Naka Nakane, No. 25350 (E.D. Mich. September 28, 1939) [National Archives - Great Lakes Region]; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 544; "Klan, 5th Column Links Probed in Detroit Riot- ing," Washington Times-Herald (June 23, 1943), copy in FBI file 65-562-136. A newspaper report described Mrs. Takahashi as "a faithful visitor at Springfield during his imprisonment." St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 5, 1942): 8; St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 7, 1942): 1; SAC, Chicago to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI file 105-63642-6; SAC, Detroit to Direc- tor, FBI, October 10, 1946, FBI file 65-40879-341. In 1942 Takahashi was said to be "70 years of age, almost blind, and . . . hospitalized during the past three years because of stomach ulcers." SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI file 105-63642-8.

109. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 544; report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 60-61, FBI file 65-562-43.

1 IU. A contribution ot ftlUU was also reportedly made Dy OMA to the families of Japanese soldiers. SAC, San Francisco to SAC, Chicago, August 7, 1940, FBI file 65-562-53; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 543.

111. "Résumé of Japanese Influence on the Negroes in the United States," 3, 10.

1 12. SAC Chicago to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI file 105-63642-6; report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 58, FBI file 65-562-43.

113. Abdul Muhammad's wife reportedly confided in Ousha Appacanis, a member of The Development of Our Own, that "Muhammad had taken one Sa- takata Takahashi into his home when Takahashi was

ill at which time Takahashi learned the principles of Muhammad's organization and when he was well,

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approached Muhammad, with the thought in mind that the two of them could utilize the organization to make a great deal of money. Muhammad's wife related that Muhammad refused this approach." Presumably the break between Takahashi and Muhammad occurred prior to the formation of TDOO, and if that is so, Muhammad's organization at the time was most likely the NOI. SAC Chicago to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI file 105-63642-6; report of [agent name deleted], De- troit, March 20, 1940, p. 58, FBI file 65-562-43.

114. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 578. In his recent book, The Judas Factor, journalist Karl Evanzz ad- vances a number of claims regarding the relation- ship between Takahashi and Elijah Muhammad. While most of his specific assertions ring true, due to the fact that Evanzz 's work, overall, is plagued by sloppiness, abysmal documentation, and, in at least one instance, the creative presentation of evidence at variance with extant documentation, one cannot cite it with confidence.

115. Report of [agent name deleted] , Detroit, November 12, 1942, FBI file 62-25889-30, pp. 12, 24. Associated with Takahashi in the early 1930s, Herschel Wash- ington (-E1) later became Grand Sheik of the Mt. Clemens, Michigan MSTA. Cash C. Bates (-Bey), a "national liaison man" of the MSTA in the 1940s,

was incorporator-director of the Onward Movement of America in 1939 and became its Acting Chief Director when Takahashi was incarcerated that

same year. United States Naval Intelligence Service, Ninth Naval District, B-7-0, "Topical Study Mem- orandum on Moorish Science Temple of America," May 28, 1943, in FBI Indianapolis file 100-4094-58.

116. Report of [agent name deleted], Indianapolis, June 1, 1942, FBI file 65-562-105; report of [agent name deleted], Indianapolis, September 9, 1943, FBI file 65-562-139. Those familiar with the c. 1960s NOI flag will note the similarities: red background, white star and crescent in the center, and the corresponding letters F, J, E, and I [Islam].

117. Statement of Mimo De Guzman [Policarpio Manan- sala], August 3, 1942, in report of [agent name de- leted], New York City, August 12, 1942, FBI file 65-40879-165; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 546-47. See also Transcript of Testimony and Proceedings Before the Grand Jury (E.D. 111. completed Sept. 29, 1942), p. 777, copy filed with National Archives' holdings of United States v. Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, Inc.

118. Statement of Mimo De Guzman [Policarpio Manan- sala], August 3, 1942.

119. Transcript of Testimony and Proceedings Before the Grand Jury, pp. 789-90.

120. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 562.

121. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 545; Lt. Col. George W. Hinman, Jr., G.S.C., Headquarters, Second Ser- vice Command, Governors Island, New York to Di- rector, Intelligence Division, August 21, 1942, copy in FBI file 65-40879-241.

122. Hayden, The Philippines, 382-400 - especially 391-92; Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolu- tion, 1939-1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 345-46.

123. Gerald Robert Gill, "Afro-American Opposition to the United States' Wars of the Twentieth Century: Dissent, Discontent and Disinterest," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Howard University, 1985), 258.

124. Office of Facts and Figures, The Negro Looks at the War: Attitudes of New York Negroes Toward Discrimina-

tion Against Negroes and a Comparison of Negro and Poor White Attitudes Toward War-Related Issues, 1942; and Office of Facts and Figures, Survey of Intelligence Materials No. 25, "Negroes in a Democracy at War," 1942, RG 208, Records of the Office of Facts and Figures, Alphabetical Subject File, 1939-1942 [Wash- ington National Records Center - Suitland] . Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 1400n, distorted the findings, claiming in a curiously constructed sentence that the "highest proportion of Negroes, of all Negroes interviewed, who have admitted pro-Japanese incli- nations, in a confidential poll conducted by Negro interviewers, is 18 per cent."

125. Cyril Briggs, "Negro Workers, Fight Against Inter- vention," The Negro Worker [Hamburg], 2:5 (May 1932): 6-8; rpt. as "War in the East in Herbert Aptheker, ed., Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, 1910-1932 (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1973), 718-20; Is Japan the fhampion of the Colored Races? (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1938) [I am indebted to archivist Edward C. Weber, La- badie Collection, University of Michigan, for provid- ing me with a copy of this publication.] Excerpts from the pamphlet were reprinted as "Japanese Law and Order in Manchuria," in Herbert Aptheker, Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, 1933-1945 (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1974), 311-14. See also R. Doonping, "Is Japan the Protec- tor of the Coloured Races?," The Negro Worker [Ham- burg], 3:1 (January 1933): 14-18; the latter rpt. in the Harlem Liberators "Japanese Imperialism - 'Protec- tor' of the Oppressed Darker Peoples," part 1 (July 1, 1933): 4 and part 2 (July 8, 1933): 4; Harry Hay- wood, Negro Liberation (New York: International Pub- lishers, 1948), 203; and Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 428. The "so called Pacific (pro-Japanese) move- ment" was denounced by CPUSA national secretary Earl Browder at the Party's 8th national convention in 1934; Daily Worker (April 14, 1934): 7, rpt. in Philip S. Foner and Herbert Shapiro, eds., American Com- munism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1930-1934 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 121.

126. Scott, The Sons of Sheba's Race. See also Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New York: E. P. Dut- ton, 1940); and Bon temps and Conroy, Anyplace But Here.

127. Time (October 5, 1942): 25-26.

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