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The Problem of Biculturalism: Japanese American Identity and Festival before World War II Author(s): Lon Kurashige Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 86, No. 4 (Mar., 2000), pp. 1632-1654 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2567581 Accessed: 22-01-2020 05:46 UTC

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The Problem of Biculturalism: Japanese American Identity and Festival before World War II

Lon Kurashige

On May 23, 1934, Mihiko Shimizu persuaded the leading association of Japanese immigrants in Los Angeles to establish a celebration in honor of their American-

born children. Such a Nisei, or second-generation, festival, he asserted, was needed to reenergize the small businesses of Little Tokyo, which no longer enjoyed the rapid growth and prosperity they had in the 191 Os and 1920s.1 Shimizu saw the sluggish

market for his dry goods as an indication of a long-term trend that would prove more devastating to Japanese retailing than the current depression-era belt tighten- ing. With the immigrant generation (or Issei) getting older and new immigration from Japan prohibited, Little Tokyo soon enough would not be able to rely prima-

rily upon a Japanese-speaking clientele. The growth market was the Nisei. To attract second-generation customers, Shimizu advised Issei shop owners and managers to

cut prices, enlarge merchandise displays, and hire clerks who spoke English and could cater to the younger generation's tastes. The challenge of a Nisei festival, he maintained, was to disabuse Japanese American youth of the notion that "American

[department] stores" offer "better quality and less expensive goods of the same type found in Japanese stores."2

Lon Kurashige is assistant professor of history and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

For helpful criticism and advice, I want to thank Brian Hayashi, Philippa Levine, Tom Archdeacon, Paul Spickard, Art Hansen, John Modell, Sucheng Chan, Yuji Ichioka, Laura MacEnaney, David Thelen, David Nord, Susan Armeny, Robert Rubin, Mauricio Mazon, Steve Ross, Lois Banner, Anne Cherian Kurashige, Soo-Young Chin, Brian Niiya, and the Los Angeles social history research group. Welcome support for this research was granted by the Rockefeller Foundation through the Asian American Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles; the Department of Asian American Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara; John and Dora Randolf Haynes Foundation; National Endowment for the Humanities; Civil Liberties Public Educational Fund; and Japanese American National Museum. Translations were generously provided by Eiichiro Azuma.

Readers may contact Kurashige at [email protected].

i Kashu Mainichi (Jpn.), May 23, 1934. Kashu Mainichi and its rival Rafu Shimpo were the two leading news- papers within the southern California Japanese American community. Each was bilingual and maintained separate staffs to report in Japanese and English. See Togo Tanaka, "The Vernacular Newspapers," manuscript, n.d., folder W 1.95 Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records (Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley) (numbers in later references to this collection designate folders); and David Yoo, "'Read All About It': Race, Generation, and the Japanese American Ethnic Press, 1925-1941," Amerasia Journal, 19 (no. 1, 1993), 69- 92. Citations for vernacular periodicals, unless labeled as "Jpn.," are from English-language sections.

2Kashu Mainichi, May 23, 1934.

1632 The Journal of American History March 2000

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1633

But Shimizu faced a more immediate burden within his own generation. To his chagrin, a rival organization planned a festival in the same quest for Nisei purchasing power. The sponsorship of the much-touted celebration was plunged into contro- versy. The Nisei group chosen by both sides as their partner in running the festival stayed out of the fray. Yet the neutrality of that group, the Los Angeles Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), expressed its own belligerence. The

young JACLers railed against the "factionalism" and "selfishness" of the Issei elders, refusing to participate in an event that compromised their "pure" and "altruistic" attempt to unite and aid the ethnic community.3

Such a high-handed response was normally a hazardous proposition in a commu-

nity where age and claims to deference were so positively correlated. But the JAcLers were emboldened in their criticism of the Issei old guard by the specter of anti-Jap- anese prejudice. Certain "American factions," the ethnic press intimated, had warned the youngsters to keep away from the Issei leadership lest they be "painted with the tar-brush of Japan-ism." Larry Taiji, a columnist and JAcLer, advised the Nisei organization not to ally itself with "Japanese nationalistic groups" to avoid becoming a "target to the many anti-Japanese groups who are awaiting just such an opportunity" to question the Nisei's loyalty to the United States. Tarnishing the public image of the younger generation also was a serious proposition for the Issei leaders. They had counted on the Nisei's American citizenship as a bulwark against new developments of the antagonism that already prohibited Japanese immigrants from becoming American citizens and owning land in California. Faced with Nisei defiance and the renewed threat of racial hostility, the competing Issei associations had little choice but to settle their differences by handing over the proposed Nisei Week festival to an ostensibly independent JACL. Thus began southern California's preeminent and longest-running Japanese celebration.4

This essay addresses the practice and development of Nisei Week in the crucial decade before the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. It takes as a point of departure the revisionism advanced by Brian Masaru Hayashi, Jere Taka- hashi, and Yuji Ichioka, who view the 1930s as a critical context for understanding the choices, (in)actions, and conflicts among the internees as they wrestled with the contradictions of democracy and imprisonment. The story emerging complicates the master narrative of what I call the "Nisei coup d'etat," which holds that the American-born generation, epitomized by the JACL and aided and abetted by gov- ernmental authorities, seized leadership of the ethnic community from the Issei after the Pearl Harbor attack and steered it along a path to Anglo norms.5 The revi- sionists argue that most Nisei accepted assimilation only because the repression dur-

3For a chronology of the competition over Nisei Week's sponsorship, see Rafu Shimpo, June 26, 1934; and

Rafu Shimpo (Jpn.), June 25, 1934. Rafu Shimpo, July 1, 1934. 4Kashu Mainichi, June 24, 10, 1934; Rafu Shimpo (Jpn.), July 28, 1934; Kashu Mainichi (Jpn.), July 20,

1934.

5 Writings predicated on the master narrative include Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps, USA: JapaneseAmer- icans and World War II (New York, 1971); Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of Americas Concentra- tion Camps (New York, 1976); Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (Washington, 1982); and Paul R. Spickard, "Nisei Assume Power: The Japanese American

Citizens League, 1941-1942," Pacific Historical Review, 52 (May 1983), 147-74.

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1634 The Journal of American History March 2000

ing World War II made alternative identities untenable. In short, not all Nisei were assimilationists in the 1930s. Hayashi found a deep ambivalence among second- generation Protestants about choosing between American and Japanese culture and deciding whether to join their parents in supporting Japan's aggressions in East Asia. Takahashi connected this ambivalence to different political perspectives among the second generation. Assimilationists, notably the JACL, identified squarely with the United States and American culture, while other Nisei and Kibei, American citi- zens raised primarily in Japan, were less interested in blending into the American mainstream or placed labor politics above cultural orientation. Finally, Ichioka contends that the JAcLers' identity was more complex than their unquestioned allegiance to the United States suggested, for their assimilationism did not pre- clude support for Japanese imperialism.6

The rise of Nisei Week revealed the JACL's use of biculturalism to manufacture consent among different groups of Japanese Americans. By joining Japanese dance, music, and cultural and martial arts exhibits with a parade, beauty pageant, and other American traditions, the festival presented a harmonious blending of East and West. Through spectacles,' speeches, and essays the Nisei portrayed themselves as "Japanese" enough to support Little Tokyo, but entirely "American" in their dedica- tion to the United States and willingness to use their ethnic heritage to advance American relations with the increasingly important nation of Japan. In this way Nisei Week's biculturalism was not at odds with the acculturation to American ideals and standards of living that JAcLers epitomized (and anti-Japanese pundits demanded). Even after they abandoned the hope of bridging the Pacific Ocean, Nisei Week leaders remained committed to a seemingly contradictory mixture of ethnic retention and

Americanization. But how could the JACLers promote bonds of ethnicity, while embracing the values and culture of the larger society?7

6Brian Masaru Hayashi, "For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren": Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism

among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895- 1942 (Stanford, 1995), 119-26; Jere Takahashi, Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics (Philadelphia, 1998), 48-84; Yuji Ichioka, "A Study of Dualism: James Yoshinori Sakamoto and the Japanese American Courier, 1928-1942," Amerasia Journal, 13 (no. 2, 1986-1987), 49-81; other works that contradict the view of Japanese American assimilation before World War II include John J. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japans Plan for Conquest after Pearl Harbor (Honolulu, 1984); Yuji Ichioka, "Japanese Immigrant Nationalism: The Issei and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1941," California History, 69 (Fall 1990), 260-75, 310-11; Eiichiro Azuma, "Racial Struggle, Immigrant Nationalism, and Ethnic Iden- tity: Japanese and Filipinos in the California Delta," Pacific Historical Review, 67 (May 1998), 163-99; and David Yoo, Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924-1949 (Urbana, 2000). Brian Hayashi's latest book connects the biculturalism of the 1930s and the internment experi- ence: Brian Masaru Hayashi, Governing Japanese: Internees, Social Scientists, and Administrators in the Making of Americas Concentration Camps, 1942-1945 (Princeton, forthcoming).

7 For a broader study of Nisei Week and the formation of Japanese American identity throughout the twenti- eth century, see Lon Kurashige, The Contested Kimono: Ethnic Orthodoxy, Options, and Festival (Berkeley, forth- coming). Historical studies of American festivals have informed my investigation of ethnic identity formation. They include Robert Anthony Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880- 1950 (New Haven, 1985); April Schultz, "'The Pride of the Race Had Been Touched': The 1925 Norse-Ameri- can Immigration Centennial and Ethnic Identity," Journal ofAmerican History, 77 (March 1991), 1265-95; and Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1986). On festivals in American history, see also Matthew Frye Jacobson, Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish,

Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collec- tive Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis, 1990); and John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1992).

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1635

Here it is important to distinguish between the plodding process of cultural

change-be it assimilation or ethnic retention-and the politically sensitive rheto- ric of ethnicity.8 Ethnic identity is not a cultural artifact to possess or of which to be

dispossessed; it is a game of politics and ideology in which players, both members of a group and others, spin definitions of a group. The question is not whether the

Nisei wanted to have an identity, but how, and by whom, this construct was defined and deployed. Nowhere was the game of identity more obvious than within the competition of ethnic meanings indigenous to Little Tokyo. Why did some notions of identity carry more authority than others at Nisei Week? How were these ethnic orthodoxies enacted, enforced, and resisted during the festival?9

I argue that Nisei Week in the 1930s and early 1940s was a vehicle, not for self-

determination, but for deciding who among Japanese Americans determined the ethnic self. Initially, the festival was used by the JAcLers to stoke the vitality of the ethnic enclave. They relied on biculturalism to appeal to Japanese Americans and

whites to "buy in Little Tokio." When a United States-Japan war seemed imminent to them, the young leaders switched to Americanism in an attempt to shield the eth- nic community from a resurgent nativist assault. To them, Americanism was an

expedient means to stave off external attacks and thus to continue enforcing the eth- nic solidarity so essential to the future of the immigrant economy. Paramount for either an Americanist or bicultural identity was exceptional social control and uni- formity of opinion among Japanese Americans. Nisei Week's officials crafted notions of ethnic identity that authenticated their vision of the ethnic community by masking the group's heterogeneity of opinion and its inequality of social privilege-particularly along the lines of generation, class, ideology, and gender.

Because there were no official legislatures through which ethnic identity could be

8The distinction between "race" and "ethnicity" is the subject of much discussion but little agreement. By "race" or "racial identity," I refer to publicly recognized groups-black, white, red, brown, and yellow-that con- stitute what David Hollinger calls the ethno-racial pentagon. I use "ethnicity" or "ethnic identity" to denote the self-representations of persons who share an ancestral heritage, whether real or imagined. The word "identity" is a less-than-ideal way to characterize ethnicity because, as Hollinger suggests, it implies "fixity and givenness." On "race" and "ethnicity" in American social theories, see Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York, 1986), 14-24. The case for replacing "identity" with "affil- iation" is made in David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York, 1995), 6-7. For a historian's etymology of "identity," see Philip Gleason, "Identifying Identity: A Semantic History," Journal of American History, 69 (March 1983), 910-31.

9 My understanding of ethnic and racial identity is grounded in Omi and Winant's understanding of race as an "unstable and 'decentered' complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle": Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 68. Social and textual constructions of race are also dis- cussed in David Theo Goldberg, ed., The Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis, 1990); Dominick La Capra, ed., The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and Resistance (Ithaca, 1991); Dana Y. Takagi, The Retreat from Race: Asian-American Admissions and Racial Politics (New Brunswick, 1992); Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, Transforming the

Past: Tradition and Kinship among Japanese Americans (Stanford, 1985); and Yasuko I. Takezawa, Breaking the Silence: Redress andJapanese American Ethnicity (Ithaca, 1995). On the construction of ethnic and racial identities by insiders, see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, "African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race," Signs, 17 (Winter 1992), 251-74; Lisa Lowe, "Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences," Diaspora, 1 (Spring 1991), 24-44; Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cul-

tural Politics (Durham, 1996); Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1996); and Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston, 1993), 23-32. For a masterly explication of the relevance of rhetorical and linguistic analysis for American historiography, see Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).

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1636 The Journal of American History March 2000

created, nor any authorities who could enforce such a disposition, Nisei Week became an effective, if disguised, means to promote and police group boundaries.

Buy Cultural

A surge of advertising was the first sign that Nisei Week was about to begin. Little Tokyo merchants flooded the vernacular press with sales announcements and rede- signed display windows to appeal specifically to the second generation. In 1934 one retailer proclaimed that preparations were done "All for the Satisfaction of the

Nisei!" Such appeals masked a fear among Little Tokyo merchants that the second generation had developed consumption tastes that lured them outside the enclave, particularly to department stores whose economies of scale allowed them to under- cut small businesses. Some shop owners criticized Nisei who, they said, were embar- rassed to wear clothing made in Japan. Others simply bemoaned the loss of an

estimated half a million dollars a year that could be spent by Nisei shoppers. How

would the merchants stop the hemorrhaging of money from the ethnic enclave?'0 That was the question that pushed the Issei leadership to place unproven second-

generation businessmen in charge of Nisei Week. Never before had Little Tokyo been turned on its head, with the Nisei-albeit temporarily-in command. Sei

Fujii, an Issei leader and newspaper publisher, challenged the JAcLers "to show their old folks how much of an asset they are instead of being [a] burden as they used to be." The youngsters, for their part, welcomed the chance to run what they called the "greatest civic project undertaken by a second generation group." Nisei Week was a

rite of passage that continued the JACL'S initiation into community leadership. With solid Issei backing, the organization was founded in 1930 and mirrored the exten-

sive and tightly organized network of Japanese immigrant associations throughout the West Coast. By 1936 thirty-eight chapters, governed by a national headquarters

in San Francisco, supported the older generation's economic endeavors and efforts to fight anti-Japanese discrimination. "The early devices of the rising Nisei organiza- tion," one member observed, "were in many instances mild imitations of the Issei. "1I

While the JAcLers patterned themselves after the immigrant leadership, they dif- fered significantly from the bulk of their own generation. They were overwhelm- ingly male despite equal numbers of Nisei women in Los Angeles and were about a

decade older than the majority of their peers in the second generation. Moreover, they were almost twice as likely to have attended college and to be in management

positions than most of the Nisei men their age. Thus the organization was made up

of the second-generation elite-lawyers, dentists, medical doctors, and entrepre- neurs who relied upon the ethnic enclave for their businesses and practices and

10 On Nisei purchasing power, see Kashu Mainichi (Jpn.), May 23, 1934; Kashu Mainichi, July 12, 1935. For concerns about Nisei conspicuous consumption, see ibid., Aug. 4, 1934, Aug. 16, 1939.

II Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 4, July 20, 1934. Togo Tanaka, "History of the JACL," manuscript, n.d., chap. 2, p. 1, T 6.25, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records. For the early history of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) see chapters 2-4. A more celebratory account is Bill Hosokawa, JACL in Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American Citizens League (New York, 1982).

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1637

therefore had vested interests in enhancing and protecting Little Tokyo. 12 The excep-

tional status of the JAcLers was doubly true for the organization's leaders. Consider the success story of Keiichi "Kay" Sugahara, the first president of the Los Angeles

chapter. Born in 1909, Sugahara was thirteen when he and his younger siblings were

orphaned. To help provide for his brother and sister, he worked at a fruit stand from

junior high through his years at the University of California, Los Angeles (UcLA). In 1932, as a senior, the young Sugahara teamed with white partners to launch the first

customs brokerage firm in Little Tokyo. As someone who could bridge American

and Japanese cultures, he capitalized on the needs of businesses importing goods from Japan. The success of this venture, he claimed, made him a millionaire before

the age of thirty.'3

Under Sugahara's command, the theme of the first Nisei Week festival was "Buy in Lil' Tokyo." Sugahara's brother, Roku, promised his generation that Little Tokyo stores would have the lowest prices and the highest-quality Japanese and American merchandise. Just in case competitive prices and products were not enough, the JAcLers linked enclave purchases with Nisei Week participation. Admission to festival events required receipts from Little Tokyo stores, and by the late 1930s, purchasing merchandise enabled shoppers to cast votes for their favorite beauty contestants."

But even the most successful of such gimmicks ended with Nisei Week. In order

to secure year-round patronage, the organizers of Nisei Week strove to give the sec-

ond generation a stake in the future of the immigrant enclave. The logic was straightforward: If the Nisei benefited materially from Little Tokyo, they would have more reason to shop there. The most compelling incentive Issei merchants could offer the younger generation was employment. While free to patronize white- owned businesses, Nisei usually could not work for them. Most white employers refused to hire Japanese Americans, and major labor unions denied them member-

ship."5 One field open to the Nisei was higher education, but only a select few fol- lowed this route since even college graduates faced racial barriers that forced them back to the restricted world of the ethnic enclave. On the eve of World War II, most Nisei were working in the ethnic enclave's primary sectors: agricultural production,

"2Lon Kurashige derived this social profile of JACLers from a sample of 183 members of the organization in 1941. The sample was created by matching the JACL'S membership list, published in its newspaper, the Pacific Cit- izen, with records contained in "wRA Form 26," a machine-readable dataset containing censuslike records for the over 110,000 Japanese Americans interned in the Department of the Interior's concentration camps during World War II. Among JACLers, 28% had attended college and 14% were "retail managers," while only 16% of the Nisei in their age cohort (born before 1917) had gone to college and 7% worked in management. Pacific Citizen, May 1941; "wRA Form 26: Evacuee Summary Data ('Locator Index')," electronic dataset, 1942, U.S. Department of the Interior, War Relocation Authority, RG 210 (National Archives, Washington, D.C.).

13Kay Sugahara interview in Nisei Week souvenir booklet, 1983, official publication of the Nisei Week Japa- nese Festival, Los Angeles, California (in Lon Kurashige's possession); Kay Sugahara personal record, "wRA Form 26."

'4Rafu Shimpo, Aug. 10, 1934; Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 5, 1934, Aug. 18, 1939. '5John Modell claims that the low rate of unemployment for Japanese Americans in the retail and sales trade

reported by the 1940 census was deceptive. Only two-thirds of these workers were employed for the full year in 1939, and many unskilled Japanese Americans found no work at all. Yet the Japanese compared favorably to members of "other races" in the retail and sales trade, whose unemployment rate was more than twice theirs. See John Modell, The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles, 1900-1942 (Urbana, 1977), 138-39.

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1638 The Journal of American History March 2000

retail enterprise, and domestic service. While Issei leaders looked to them to calm

anti-Japanese antipathy in white America, the Nisei relied upon the older generation

for employment opportunities.16 Yet most Little Tokyo retailers refused to hire Nisei for sales positions because of

their inability to meet the needs of Japanese-speaking clients. To spur Nisei employ-

ment, Nisei Week organizers persuaded enclave merchants that Nisei salespersons would boost their businesses by attracting second-generation shoppers. In 1934 the festival's employment bureau placed thirty-five workers in just three days, and

although their jobs, like the sales and the beauty pageant, typically ended with Nisei

Week, the employment agency attained a permanent place in Little Tokyo. 17

The strongest appeals for Nisei patronage relied upon a sense of fictive kinship. According to Roku Sugahara, Little Tokyo offered a pleasanter shopping experience

than the stores outside its protective borders. There was, he suggested, "a better

understanding, a feeling of freedom and congeniality, and friendliness" because the "seller knows the background and characteristics of the buyer much better." The winner of the Nisei Week essay contest in 1938 also viewed Little Tokyo as an eth- nic sanctuary. Answering the question "Why I should buy in Little Tokyo," he listed the enclave's unique benefits for Nisei customers:

Japanese can serve Japanese people with good taste. They know what type of clothing or merchandise would be best suited, whereas an American firm naturally would not. And, too, they are inclined to be more personal and understanding, as there are no barriers of speech or race. This results in friendly, sociable business tactics, and not cold ruthless negotiations.'8

Festival leaders used ethnicity as both carrot and stick to attract Nisei shoppers. While they played up the "natural" affinities among Japanese Americans, they also stressed the obligations that such ties entailed. "If the Nisei expect to see Lil' Tokio

exist and rise out of its present depression," the Rafju Shimpo newspaper com- manded, "they must cooperate and help build Lil' Tokio by putting some funds into the businesses" and "buy all necessities at Japanese stores and only buy those things

which are not carried in Lil' Tokio at American stores." The result of "this extensive trading," explained the 1938 essay contest winner, "will be a closer union of our race-drawn together by the cohesive force of economic and social dependency."

Roku Sugahara's do-or-die scenario best characterized the invocation of group obli- gation: "It all depends on the nisei, whether they will aid in strengthening our eco- nomic foundation or will stand idly by while it crumbles into oblivion. "19

Despite these appeals, Nisei Week leaders were aware of the pitfalls of attempts to attract second-generation customers. The Kashu Mainichi newspaper cautioned against any business strategy that promoted ethnic insularity as not only unfeasible,

16The four most common occupations for Issei in 1941 were gardener, retail manager, truck farmer, and farm hand; for Nisei they were sales clerk, farm hand, retail manager, and gardener. "wRA Form 26."

17Not much is known about this employment bureau, except that it was informally connected to the JACL and was criticized for bias toward members of that organization. See Rafu Shimpo, Aug. 19, 1934, Aug. 7, 1938.

18 Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 5, 1934, Aug. 28, 1938. 19 Rafu Shimpo, Aug. 29, 1938; Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 28, 1938, Aug. 5, 1934.

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1639

but "un-American." During the depression, the paper insisted, hoarding money within Little Tokyo was "un-American," since the nation's recovery required pump-

ing money into the broader economy.20 Carl Kondo, the runner-up in the Nisei Week essay contest in 1935, criticized the futility of the "buy in Lil' Tokio" cam- paign. He warned that Japanese merchants should not rely on Nisei consumption

because their mom-and-pop establishments could not compete with the department stores in nearby downtown Los Angeles. Even if prices were slashed in Little Tokyo,

Kondo argued, the Nisei were too influenced by American culture to be interested in Japanese merchandise or to be swayed by invocations of racial responsibilities.21

Kondo maintained that Japanese businesses should cultivate external, rather than

internal, markets. He believed that the nation's increasing interest in Japan as a ris-

ing world power and United States trading partner created a favorable climate for purveying Japanese artifacts, services, and cultural displays to the exotic tastes of white America. The Kashu Mainichi also championed the benefits of the tourist market. It pointed with envy to Chinatown and the Mexican-inspired Olvera Street as two of Los Angeles's successful ethnic attractions and lamented that "one cannot immediately feel the foreign atmosphere or distinction upon entering Lil' Tokyo."22

Nisei Week proved the optimal occasion to dress up Little Tokyo for white con- sumption. Here the Oriental-styled street displays, decorations, music, dance, and

fashions assumed dual meanings: symbols of ethnic pride for Japanese Americans but also exotic enticements for outsiders. The kimono, in particular, attracted so much interest that Nisei Week leaders in 1936 added a second fashion show, where those Japanese garments were modeled exclusively for white Americans. The festival booklet billed the event as "an exhibition of Japanese pajamas and lounging clothes" with refreshments served by "petite Japanese maidens in picturesque kimonos." The JAcLers invited hundreds of "leading women in Los Angeles society" and selected kimono styles that would "appeal particularly to American women."23

Enclave merchants also proposed that Nisei women wear kimonos while serving as tour guides who provided a "night of adventure to Americans in Little Tokyo." The hostesses were to greet tourists as they entered the enclave, answer questions about Japanese culture, including flower arrangements and the tea ceremony, and assist them in purchasing merchandise. Nisei Week leaders in 1940 redesigned the festival booklet to increase the enclave's tourist appeal. A glossy full-page advertise- ment especially greeted white Americans. "WELCOME TO LITTLE TOKYO"

appeared in orientalized script inserted within a photograph of the community's main thoroughfare. The night scene featured a group of well-groomed, entertain- ment-seeking white Americans chaperoned by four smiling, kimono-clad women. Fluorescent Little Tokyo storefronts, particularly the Fuji-kan Theater's elaborate

20 Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 12, 1934. 21 Ibid., Aug. 12, 1935. For evidence of the Nisei's lack of interest in shopping in Little Tokyo, see the internee

newspaper at the Manzanar concentration camp for Japanese Americans: Manzanar Free Press, Nov. 30, 1942, Banc fD 769.8 A6 U567 (Bancroft Library).

22 Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 12, 1935, Aug. 15, 1937. 23 Nisei Week souvenir booklet, 1936, n.p. (in Kurashige's possession); Kashu Mainichi, July 24, 1937.

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1640 The Journal of American History March 2000

_ - _ . X . . .. . .. . ................ ; _ l | | _ . | .~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. .. .. .. . .. - .. . .. .. . . .

_ _ ~ . _ ..... .

Nisei Weeks tea ceremony in 1938 cultivated tourism in Little Tokyo by encouraging an appreciation for the refinements

of Japanese culture.

Courtesy Japanese American National Museum.

neon marquee, in front of which the group stood, radiated an energy and enthusi- asm that seemed to overwhelm the tourists. The smiling Japanese women reflected the enclave's warmth and hospitality, while the flood of bright lights and signs sym- bolized its entrepreneurial vigor-a shopper's paradise.24

Rite to Be Japanese

Nisei Week was more than an occasion to dress up Little Tokyo in order to drum up business. The festival was an indispensable piece of a larger endeavor to promote a greater understanding of Japanese history and culture. Nisei Week's leaders knew that they could not simply change Little Tokyo for the convenience of the Nisei: they had to change the Nisei for the sake of Little Tokyo's survival. Indeed, it was not just purchasing power that concerned the JAcLers. What was equally important to them was "that right steps are taken to create nisei 'community consciousness.' "25

24 Kashu Mainichi, July 11, 1940; Nisei Week souvenir booklet, 1941, n.p. (in Kurashige's possession). 25 Rafu Shimpo, Aug. 27, 1939.

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1641

Central to this consciousness was an appreciation for seemingly ancient Japanese traditions, especially the folk dancing of the ondo, which became the centerpiece of

Nisei Week. This style of communal line dancing emerged in medieval Japan, but it

was revived and altered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Japa- nese officials searching for cultural symbols to unify and modernize the nation. In

the United States, Nisei Week leaders appropriated the ondo as a tool for inventing

ethnic solidarity. They relied upon the talents of such increasingly rare Nisei as

Yoshiko Mori, who were more interested in Japanese traditions than Western enter- tainment. Born in Sacramento in 1920, Mori, in her early teens, convinced her par-

ents to move to Los Angeles where she would be better able to pursue Japanese

dance. She studied Kabuki dancing in Japan after graduating from high school and then returned to the ethnic community, where she taught many volunteers to per- form the ondo at the Nisei Week finale. Mori agreed to the task not only to share her love of Japanese dance but also to encourage her generation to learn about their

ancestral culture. She maintained that Japanese dancing counteracted the Nisei's Americanization by teaching them to be more graceful, considerate of others, and

respectful to their "higher-ups."26

In this way the ondo became a key symbol of Issei-Nisei solidarity. While outsid- ers may have seen it as a mirror of Japanese culture, ethnic leaders considered it an example of generational cooperation. The Issei leader Sei Fujii was struck by the

communal spirit exhibited at the ondo practice sessions. He loved "the atmosphere that existed there" because everyone felt "just like one family." He expressed these same sentiments a few weeks later at the conclusion of the ondo finale, when he gazed with delight at the young Nisei girls dancing with hoary Issei men. The ondo finale also moved a Nisei columnist to comment upon the bonds between the gener- ations. He noted that the Issei's enthusiasm for dancing enabled the Nisei to "see a very amusing side to this older generation." "It is no wonder that they try to keep a stiff upper lip with all the traditions of Japan to live up to.... But down deep they are apparently the same rhythm loving frivolous bunch of individuals that we much deplored second generation are."27

The Nisei Week leaders also sought to unite the generations in the knowledge of Japanese history. For example, the festival's parade in 1935 featured children in cos- tumes that characterized Japan's historical periods, from its mythic creation in 600 B.C. to the present era of the Taisho emperor. But Nisei Week's most pronounced construction of memory focused on the Issei as pioneers in the United States. The JAcLers initiated Pioneer Night in 1935 to commemorate the earliest Japanese immigrants "who came to this country and who toiled and went through many hardships." This event feted those Issei who had resided for over forty years on the mainland of the United States by celebrating their rugged spirit with an afternoon tea followed by a banquet at a local Japanese restaurant. The Nisei were urged to honor their parents because they had traveled so far "to create a future for their chil-

26 Yoshiko Mori (pseudonym) interview by Lon Kurashige, May 20, 1993, audiotape (in Kurashige's possession).

27 Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 4, 1934; Kashu Mainichi (Jpn.), Aug. 19, 1934; Rafu Shimpo, Aug. 19, 1934.

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1642 The Journal of American History March 2000

dren in the land of the free." The Rafu Shimpo expressed its gratitude to the Issei for remaining in the United States despite the "oppression from the hakujin [white per- sons] and the depression of the times." This ability to survive, the Nisei Week book- let noted in 1940, must not be lost on the second generation, for they too were

pioneers because they also faced "unkind prejudices." Thus the booklet maintained that only by uniting with their parents in "a spirit of mutual understanding and affection" could the Nisei hope to overcome the handicap of race.28

Nisei Week's leaders, however, said nothing about issues of class within the ethnic community. It was common among Japanese Americans to carry on the probusiness ideology of the Issei old guard and to portray labor organizers and other left-leaning activists as anathema to the group's social prestige and respectability. In his study of social groupings among Japanese Americans in the 1940s, James Sakoda reported that a slight interest in trade unionism was sufficient for a person to be branded an aka (red). According to him, these so-called radicals and Communists, who did not maintain the middle-class ideology, were considered "unacceptables" and hence "ostracized by the community." So too were the Issei migrant workers who "lived in hotels, boarding houses, and labor camps and usually did not participate in the activities of the community." Nisei Week hid these "unacceptables" behind a facade of entrepreneurial success. Its leaders totally ignored the suggestions of the leftist newspaper Doho, which thought that Pioneer Night should highlight the rampant exploitation of Japanese immigrants and that the festival leaders should squarely address troubling issues "of Nisei labor, of dual citizenship, of anti-alien legislation, of vocational problems, [and] of unity of nisei organizations." Calling itself the only progressive Nisei publication, Doho emerged in 1938 to challenge the "reac- tionary elements" in the local Japanese American community. It labeled Sei Fujii, the publisher of the Kashu Mainichi, a "jingoist" because of his support for Japan's military leadership and branded Fred Tayama, the 1940 JACL president, a "labor-

baiter." Tayama, one of the most successful Nisei entrepreneurs in Little Tokyo, who reportedly kept a standing golf date with the Japanese consul general, owned a chain of restaurants (U.S. Cafes) that Doho accused of subjecting workers to "sweat shop conditions." The newspaper backed labor organizers who set up picket lines in front of Tayama's businesses. But the JACL president prevailed in court by winning an injunction against the picketers; he opposed labor unions and dismissed Doho as a Communist rag: "Just the fact that it singles you out for attack," he said, "means you're all right. "29

Nisei Week's screen of success was best captured by the parade floats in 1936 that showcased the enclave's agricultural economy. A gargantuan celery stalk symbolized

28 Rafu Shimpo, Aug. 16, 1935; Kashu Mainichi, July 19, 9, 1935; Rafu Shimpo, June 17, 1934, Aug. 3, 1941; Nisei Week souvenir booklet, 1940, n.p. (in Kurashige's possession). See also Tsuyoshi Matsumoto, "History of the Resident Japanese in Southern California," manuscript (in English and Japanese), 1941, "Togo Tanaka Jour- nal," folder 3, A 17.06, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records.

29Doho, June 10, 1938; James Sakoda, "Personal Adjustment," manuscript, Jan. 12, 1943, pp. 11-12, 17-18, file 11, James Sakoda Reports on Tule Lake, R 20.86, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records; Doho, July 1, 1939. For other criticisms of Nisei Week, see Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 8, 1937; and Rafu Shimpo, Aug. 18, July 28, 1935. Doho, June 10, 1938; Togo Tanaka, "Report on the Manzanar Riot," 1-5, 0 10.12, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records.

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1643

__ ~~~~~~~~~~1

Participants in Nisei Week's parade educated the americanized second generation about the periods and dress of premodern Japan.

Courtesy Japanese American National Museum.

the bountiful harvests in Venice, California; horticulturists from the San Gabriel Valley adorned their float with bouquets of flowers; Orange County farmers deco- rated their tractors and other farm implements, while the wholesalers from the cen-

tral produce market in Los Angeles displayed a huge mural showing a thriving business environment. Yet, revealingly, the entrepreneurial spirit of the floats ignored the significance of labor to the ethnic enclave. There was no credit given to those who worked the celery fields in Venice or picked flowers in San Gabriel. Like- wise, there was no mention of those who loaded the produce at the central market or lost their jobs in Orange County to innovations in farm vehicles. The workers and their advocates in the ethnic enclave played no official role in Nisei Week.30

This could not be said for Japanese American women. While the Issei enforced a rigid sexual division of labor throughout the year, Nisei Week was a rare moment when women were encouraged to leave the domestic sphere to participate in the com- munity's public life.31 Festival leaders depended upon women to organize the ondo

30 Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 18, 1936. 31 Data from "wRA Form 26" show occupations other than homemaker for 63% of Japanese American women

age 16 and older. Yet employment outside the home did not diminish gender differences-in the workplace Issei women clustered in domestic service and agricultural labor, while the Nisei, because of their English-language skills, became typists, secretaries, and general office clerks. Managerial jobs were the almost exclusive domain of Japanese American men. "wRA Form 26." This sexual division of labor reflects Sylvia Yanagisako's findings in interviews with Issei in Seattle: women were responsible for "things inside the home" (uchi no koto); men tended to "things outdoors" (soto no koto). Yanagisako, Transforming the Past, 98.

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1644 The Journal of American History March 2000

r S I ! vs I _

..... ... __

A float in the Nisei Week parade displays the prominence of Japanese Americans in southern California's wholesale produce industry. Courtesy japanese American National Museum.

and fashion shows, and they relied upon the beauty pageant contestants not only to attract shoppers to Little Tokyo through merchandise voting but to represent the community at official receptions. The women greeted local politicians and the Japa- nese consul general and served as goodwill ambassadors among the organizations within the ethnic community. This opportunity to "bring the Japanese people together" was what motivated one admittedly shy nineteen-year-old to enter the beauty contest. She and her parents, who were merchants in Little Tokyo, saw the contest not as a beauty pageant, but as a way for young women to get involved in issues of great concern to the ethnic community.312 In truth, the significance of the beauty contestants was primarily symbolic. Their role was to epitomize a bicultural identity that instilled ethnic solidarity in Japanese Americans while communicating ethnic fantasies to the outside world. The JACL president in 1938 declared that the ideal candidate blended "the quiet charm of the Japanese wom [a] n with the more lively personality of the American girl." The Rafu Shimpo expounded: "She must be able to wear a kimono and walk with zori [slippers] on as well as look radiant in a white evening gown." The Nisei Week queen in 1940 reportedly epitomized the hybrid of East and West and, according to the Kashu Mainichi "represented the best of nisei womanhood." The newspaper reported that

32 May Sakurai response to questionnaire administered by Lon Kurashige, c. April 1993 (in Kurashige's possession).

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1645

she went to sewing school three nights a week, took lessons on Japanese musical instruments two nights, studied the Japanese language one night, and worked a full- time job as a secretary for a Japanese doctor. The queen "knows her Japanese man-

ners as well as American etiquette." Industrious, cultured, and community-minded,

she was, more important, humble. "Her winning modesty doesn't permit her to talk

very much about herself She would rather listen to you."33 If the festival queen had been encouraged to talk, she might have agreed with

others who criticized the role of women during Nisei Week. Sandra Sekai, Nisei

Week queen in 1938, wanted to be more than a pretty symbol. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and had attended UCLA briefly before her father decided that

college was unnecessary for women. Like many in her generation, she found job

opportunities only within the ethnic community and even there had to beat out hundreds of other applicants for a secretarial position. Sekai entered the beauty con- test with the encouragement of a JACL member and was enthusiastic about promot- ing "goodwill between different types of Japanese." Yet her surprise at being named "Queen of the Nisei" soon turned to frustration, as she resented taking orders from the festival leaders and regretted the lack of opportunity to voice her own opinions. "They ordered us," she remembered, "and we just followed." A Rafu Shimpo colum- nist was also uncomfortable with the position of women in the festival. She sug-

gested the introduction of a cake and pie baking contest to increase women's

involvement in the festival and also criticized the lack of leadership roles for women

in both Nisei Week and the concurrent JACL convention that took place in 1938. But well aware of the sexual division of labor within the Japanese American com-

munity, the writer predicted that women's participation in both Nisei Week and the JACL convention would "be overshadowed by male-domination." Her cynicism

was not unfounded. While women were crucial to Nisei Week as volunteers and

performers and were dangled as bait for consumers, they were excluded from the highest levels of decision making.34

The JACLers made this clear in one of the funnier moments at Nisei Week. The festival's talent revue in 1936 featured a routine in which the JACL'S leading men dressed as women. They appeared as "anvil-footed, muscle-bound Romeos in women's garb" in a skit, known as the "florodora sextet," which parodied a scene from an 1890s Broadway hit famous for its idealization of feminine beauty. Patrick Okura, one of the florodora members, explained that the JACLers initially recruited women for the routine but thought that an all-male cast would prove more enter- taining. A graduate of UCLA and one of the first Nisei successfully to challenge segre- gationist hiring practices by the city of Los Angeles, Okura was somewhat of a star

in his own right. The florodora act, he noted, was a "big hit" that the JACLers would

"For women's consumption and the feminization of public space in post-World War II suburbia, see Liza- beth Cohen, "From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Post- war America," American Historical Review, 101 (Oct. 1996), 1072-77. Raft Shimpo, June 26, 1938, Aug. 17, 194 1; Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 1 1, 1940.

34 The leftist newspaper Doho was one of the few voices in Little Tokyo to argue that gender roles were unfair to women, who were "relegated to the lowest and hardest work." Doho, March 15, 1941. Sandra Sekai (pseu-

donym) interview by Kurashige, Jan. 28, 1993, audiotape (in Kurashige's possession). Rafu Shimpo, Aug. 31, 1938.

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1646 The Journal of American History March 2000

remember as a trial by humiliation that bonded the Nisei leaders. But the cross-

dressing revealed more than the JACLers' sense of humor and status as the Nisei elite.

The success of the performance, Okura confirmed, was founded upon the commu- nity's understanding of gender difference: men in Little Tokyo were not supposed to

behave like women except in the realm of play. Thus the JACLers reproduced the spheres that separated men and women in Little Tokyo and once again ignored Doho's leftist perspective, which blamed these traditional gender distinctions for rel-

egating women to the "lowest and hardest work" in Little Tokyo.35

The Inverted World

While the gender inversion of the florodora routine reenacted patriarchal roles, Nisei Week was more than a filial commitment to Little Tokyo's social order. The anthropologist John J. MacAloon explains that at festivals we not only "reflect upon and define ourselves [and] dramatize our collective myths and history" but also "present ourselves with alternatives, and eventually change in some ways while

remaining the same in others."36 Indeed, the JACLers interpreted the premise of Nisei Week-children leading parents-as an opportunity to change the ethnic community by creating a vision of its Americanization. While they could appreciate the Issei experience and learn Japanese rituals, their cultural orientation remained decidedly American. Neither racial segregation nor the animosity that perpetuated it discouraged their attachment to Western norms of behavior.

The instability of United States-Japan relations only increased the JACL'S com- mitment to Americanization. Western nations became alarmed as Japan expanded

its empire into Korea and then northern China. The League of Nations, with the

support of the United States, condemned Japanese aggression in Manchuria in 1931, causing the Asian power to pull out of the international organization and to grow increasingly defensive about its territorial claims. The United States was partic-

ularly concerned about the threat Japanese colonialism posed to its markets and trade throughout Asia. This conflict between the two nations generated new anti- Japanese fears that had direct repercussions for Japanese Americans. The most ardent foe of the ethnic community in Los Angeles was Lail Thomas Kane, the self-

35 Nisei Week souvenir booklet, 1936, n.p. (in Kurashige's possession). For the history of the flora-dora (as it was properly spelled) number, see Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (New York, 1982), 181-82. Patrick Kiyoshi Okura phone interview by Kurashige, Sept. 3, 1997, notes (in Kurashige's possession). For biographical informa- tion on Okura, see JACL Reporter, 4 (Sept. 1948), fF 870 J3 J222 (Bancroft Library).

36John J. MacAloon, "Introduction: Cultural Performances, Cultural Theory," in Rite, Drama, Festival, Specta- cle: Rehearsals toward a Theory of Cultural Performance, ed. John J. MacAloon (Philadelphia, 1984), 1. The schol- arly literature on festivals is extensive, particularly in anthropology and folklore. On festivals (and rituals in general) as agents of cultural reproduction and transformation, see MacAloon, ed., Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle; Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), 112; Roger D. Abrahams, "Toward an Enactment-Centered Theory of Folklore," in Frontiers of Folklore, ed. William R. Bascom (Boulder, 1977), 79-120; and Roger D. Abrahams, "Shouting Match at the Border: The Folklore of Display Events," in

'And Other Neighborly Names" Social Process and Cultural Image in Texas Folklore, ed. Richard Bauman and Roger D. Abrahams (Austin, 1981), 319-20; Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York, 1992), 74, 197- 223; M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); and Victor Turner, ed., Celebration, Studies in Festivity and Ritual (Washington, 1982).

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1647

~~~ ~~o

I . |B.B.s_|_

Coronation of the 1938 Nisei Week queen, held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, revealed the second generation's bourgeois and americanized aspirations.

CourtesyJapanese American National Museum.

proclaimed leader of a crusade to exclude Japanese Americans from commercial fishing. Kane testified to the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities in 1934 that Japanese American fishermen were prepared to lay mines and torpedo American vessels should United States-Japan relations disintegrate into war. He gained support from the American Legion and drafted state legislation to advance his cause. Although his antifishing bills never left committee, Kane's campaign placed the ethnic community in the limelight of suspicion. To defuse these fears, the JAC~ers used Nisei Week to underscore the community's openness to white America. They especially were concerned about the second gener- ation's "clannishness." One leader complained that, despite its efforts to reach a broad audience, Nise i Week "may still appear to be a 'private affair' of the nisei in Lil' Tokio." Another urged the Nisei to recognize that not all white Americans at Nisei Week were anti-Japanese bigots. "Their good natured mingling and joshing with the crowds and their genuine admiration for the Japanese arts showed their capacity for

37 Modell, Economics and Politics of RacialAccommodation, 174; Togo Tanaka, "Pre-evacuation Pressure Group Activity in Southern California: Personality Sketches," May 30, 1943, pp. 6-8, A 16.260, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records.

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1648 The Journal of American History March 2000

tolerance and appreciation. Many came to see what they could see; some went back with a deeper understanding of the Japanese as human beings rather than as a 'peril."' The Rafu Shimpo was more direct in pushing the Nisei to socialize across the racial divide. The newspaper chided their tendency "to resign themselves within

their own group and peer out into the American community and say: 'It can't be done. They won't treat you right -they're prejudiced."'I38

Even more troubling to the JACLers than the Nisei's inability to get along with whites was their inability to get along with each other. As a space of play encourag- ing excessive and exaggerated behavior, Nisei Week "invited" unofficial spectacles by

delinquent youth known as "rowdies." James Sakoda described them as failing "to maintain the social codes of the Nisei group." They spurned work, marriage, and community responsibilities and identified with people of "lower social status" such as blacks and Filipinos. Yet the rowdies did not remain aloof from Japanese Ameri- cans; they came in gangs and often disrupted community events. What distin- guished them at Nisei Week was their penchant for "aggressive behavior," such as the brawl that erupted at the festival's street dance in 1938.39

Isami Arifuku Waugh, in her analysis of rowdies in Los Angeles, found that their behavior reflected the brutalities of daily life in Little Tokyo. One of her informants explained that he joined a Nisei gang as protection against the black and Mexican gangs who preyed upon unsuspecting Japanese Americans. But the more common reason for becoming a rowdy was the proliferation of Nisei social clubs and ath- letic teams. Waugh explained that the clubs and teams were established by a white schoolteacher who, in the tradition of Jane Addams and the settlement house movement, sought to bring Nisei youth off the streets and train them in the man-

ners, customs, and activities of mainstream America. Ironically, the clubs and teams that she created to mold good behavior became the basis for gang affilia- tion, with disagreements over sporting contests often erupting into violence. Another of Waugh's informants recalled that the teacher-cum-social reformer "would go into a deep depression" every time she heard about the trouble that "her boys" caused.40

The Nisei Week leaders acknowledged their inability to control "rowdyism." One publicly regretted the fact that "past Nisei Weeks have had the undeserved blotch of not being prepared to control those infantile groups whose malicious boisterousness have been of much annoyance." In 1940 the rowdies were instructed that the "girls will respect you for being gentlemanly," because Nisei Week "is the time to have FUN but not for hell-raising, picking fights and drunkenness." A year later in 1941 the Nisei Week leaders warned "rowdy individuals or purported gangs" that "twenty

38 Rafu Shimpo, July 25, 1940; Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 18, 1940; Raful Shimpo, Aug. 19, 1934. 39This permissiveness, the folklorist Roger Abrahams maintains, makes festivals potentially subversive: They

"bring us together in celebration but let each of us 'do our own thing,"' and they "write our script of progress within the events." Thus these "mad moments in the margins of time continue to provide us with models of rev- olution": Abrahams, "Shouting Match at the Border," 319-20. Sakoda, "Personal Adjustment." For a description of a street fight, see Isami Arifuku Waugh, "Hidden Crimes and Deviance in the Japanese-American Community" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1978), 134-35.

40Waugh, "Hidden Crimes and Deviance in the Japanese-American Community," 148, 135-43.

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1649

police officers accompanied by a squad of a hundred judo experts would be patrol- ling the festival" and anyone caught fighting "will be taken into custody and prose-

cuted." But the rowdies were not to be intimidated; that year the Kashu Mainichi

reported that Nisei Week claimed four fights, two visitors injured, six Nisei on

police suspects lists, and arrests of peace disturbers.4' While rowdies were a serious concern in Little Tokyo, youth delinquency was

never the problem there that it was in other ghetto communities. A study conducted

in the early 1930s found that the percentage of juvenile delinquents among Japa- nese and Chinese Americans in Los Angeles was considerably less than in any other

ethnic or racial population, including native-born whites. The most serious crime

committed by the rowdies was to jeopardize the JAcLers public relations campaign. In her criticism of "gate crashers" in Little Tokyo, Louise Suski, editor of Rafu Shimpo, warned that rowdies "have become so bold that they even attend without invitation a social held in a private home"; they cursed and yelled at a white Ameri-

can "who refused to admit them to a particular hall because their names weren't on the list." The idea of youngsters getting their way through threats and intimidation

was anathema to Suski's model of the self-made man. Her immigrant father had suf- fered devastating hardships, including losing the family possessions in the San Fran- cisco earthquake of 1906, to earn a medical degree and become a leading figure in Little Tokyo. Suski herself was no less an autodidact, having taught herself the craft of print journalism as the first editor of the ethnic community's newly established Nisei press. She was embarrassed by the rowdies' behavior, but her mentioning that the ticket taker was white exposed the racial stakes of community delin- quency. The main significance of the "gate crashers," Suski maintained, "was that they reflected poorly on all Japanese Americans," and so "any good that the other nisei have built up, these youths are knocking down and tearing away by their

actions and language."42 The JACLers' response to the rowdies was to disassociate them from the ethnic

community. The Nisei leaders described the disaffected youth not only as abomina- tions, but as aberrations in an otherwise upstanding community. The gang fight at the Nisei Week street dance in 1938 so upset the current JACL president that he warned those involved that "unless you boys change your ways" he would have them "blackballed" from jobs in the Japanese enclave. The ethnic press applied additional

pressure. After the street dance incident, the Rafu Shimpo did something it had rarely done: it named the individuals and groups involved in the fracas. The news- paper stood firmly behind its action, insisting that "the good name of the Japanese Americans must be preserved."43

41 Sangyo Nippo, July 18, 1940; Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 4, 1940, Aug. 24, 1941; Waugh, "Hidden Crimes and Deviance in the Japanese-American Community," 152.

42 H. K. Misaki, "Delinquency and Crime," in VocationalAttitudes of Second-Generation Japanese in the United

States, ed. Edward K. Strong Jr. (Stanford, 1933), 160-61. Rafu Shimpo, July 27, 1941; Louise Suski interview by Kurashige, Oct. 5, 1992, audiotape (in Kurashige's possession). On Suski's father, see Louise Suski, "Biography of Father," Aug. 25, 1945, T 1.8682, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records.

43 Waugh, "Hidden Crimes and Deviance in the Japanese-American Community," 135.

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1650 The Journal of American History March 2000

-~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nisei Week queen Margaret Nishikawa rides in the festival parade with Mayor Fletcher Bowron of Los Angeles, 1938. The pairing of young, attractive Nisei

women with political leaders was intended to symbolize trust and goodwill between the ethnic community's

male leadership and city hall. Courtesy Japanese American National Museum.

American Front

The economic motives that began Nisei Week and the concerns about Little Tokyo's Americanization were inexplicably tied to the demonstration of the second genera- tion's civic virtue and political allegiance. "Through the medium of this festival," John Maeno declared in 1936, "the JACL hopes to present, acquaint, and connect you directly with the young Japanese American citizen, his life and environment." Maeno, the organization's second president, was one of the few Nisei lawyers in Lit- tle Tokyo. A graduate of the University of Southern California, he used his college ties to make inroads into Los Angeles political circles. He explained that as a "new American," the Nisei was a "true and loyal citizen of the United States" who sought to take "part in civic development and community progress."44

44 Nisei Week souvenir booklet, 1936, n.p.; Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 10, 1936; John Maeno interview by Kura- shige, Sept. 2, 1991, audiotape (in Kurashige's possession).

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1651

The JAcLers used the Nisei's citizenship to gain advantages in the political arena. They, like the leaders of African Americans and many urban immigrant groups, attempted to gain electoral power by combining Japanese American votes into one large ethnic bloc. This way, as increasing numbers of Nisei came of age, they could expand their impact on local elections. A flock of white office seekers took the Nisei

vote seriously and showed up at the festival's inauguration in 1934, their large num- bers even raising concerns in Little Tokyo that the festivities would turn into a "political rally." Nisei Week was also an occasion to pay respects to the highest elected official in Los Angeles. In the opening ceremony in 1936 a colorful proces- sion moved through the streets of Little Tokyo on its way to Los Angeles's city hall two blocks away. The ethnic community's "leading citizens" accompanied the Nisei Week queen and "her pretty and charming attendants" as they were carried along in Japanese rickshaws. The ceremony concluded with these "kimono-clad, dark-eyed

beauties" presenting the mayor of Los Angeles "with an official invitation to attend this gala event in Lil' Tokyo."45

Such a visible display of goodwill toward the Los Angeles community illustrated the type of citizenship the JAcLers espoused. Being American, to them, meant not just possessing legal entitlements, but performing a wide range of civic duties. The winner of the JACL'S oratorical contest in 1938 placed the responsibility of resolving "our race problem" squarely on the Nisei's shoulders. He encouraged the Nisei to engage in "active citizenship" by voting and involving themselves in public affairs. Civic involvement, he asserted, would prove that the Nisei are a "racial group wor- thy of being accepted on an equal plane" because "it will show to the white citizenry that we are not a culturally or mentally inferior race . . ., that we are beneficial to America's social and economic welfare, and that we desire to cooperate with the white race in solving our community and national problems." The ultimate signif- icance of active citizenship, the orator explained, was that eventually it would compel "the white race, themselves, to take down the racial barriers that have been erected against us."46

But the JACLers did not equate proving loyalty to the United States with severing ties to Japan. Despite America's opposition to Japanese imperialism, they sided with their parents, who, like most expatriates, reveled in the military victories of their homeland. The formal declaration of the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937 height- ened ties to the motherland, as both generations sent money, supplies, and well-wishes

to Japanese soldiers. Issei leaders called upon the JACLers to counteract the American public's overwhelming support for the Chinese (President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in fact, disobeyed his own policy of neutrality in foreign wars by sending American arms to Chinese troops). The older generation, with assistance from the Japanese consulate, briefed the young leaders on the necessity and righteousness of Japan's foreign policies and helped to establish a Nisei "speakers bureau" to inform Ameri- cans about Japan's side of the story. Togo Tanaka, writing in the 1940s, confirmed that the English section of his newspaper, Rafu Shimpo, based its editorials and cov-

45 Raft Shimpo, Aug. 20, 1934. Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 11, 1936; Nisei Week souvenir booklet, 1936. 46KashuMainichi, Sept. 11, 1938.

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1652 The Journal of American History March 2000

erage of the Sino-Japanese war on information provided by Issei who blamed Japan's

negative image on Chinese propaganda. The staff of the paper's Japanese section prepared pamphlets for their Nisei colleagues about Japan's plight in the West-the

subtitle of one read, "How about Giving Japan a Break?" Thus Tanaka concluded that the JACLers, despite their strong commitment to American political institutions,

were mindful "not to disparage the cultural values of Japan, nor to antagonize Issei feelings in the latter's sympathies for Japan. JACL leaders even rationalized their Americanism as being rooted in Japanese culture."47

But opposition in the United States only grew when Japanese troops captured Beijing and pressed on to victory. In 1939 FDR abrogated the treaty that had safe-

guarded United States-Japan trade and, a year later, in response to Japan's Tripartite Alliance with Germany and Italy and its apparent movement into Southeast Asia, threatened to cut off the shipment of about 80 percent of the island nation's war supplies. The growing opposition to Japan buoyed antagonism to Japanese Ameri- cans. By 1938 Lail Thomas Kane was in the habit of sharing his opinions with Rafu Shimpo editor Togo Tanaka, who duly noted them as an alarming indication of pop- ular sentiment. "By this time," Tanaka later noted, "Kane's attitude toward the Nisei as 'Jap-stooges' appears to have crystallized." This was evident in Kane's telling Tanaka, "I'm rapidly being convinced that the JACL which represents the Nisei lead-

ership is nothing more than an instrument of the Issei. You really take your orders from Japan." Thus Kane, still backed by the American Legion, continued to lobby

for legislation against Japanese American fishermen. He told Tanaka that if the JACLers, whom he referred to as "jackals," were really loyal "you would support this fishing bill which is a national defense, patriotic proposal"-"you should know that the security of the United States is menaced by the presence of fishing boats

manned by naval reserve officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy." These fears reached a national audience through Kane's publications, including an article in the

Saturday Evening Post, and spread beyond the issue of Japanese American fishermen. The immediate problem for Little Tokyo was that increasing anti-Japanese senti- ment gave rise to boycotts against Japanese businesses that placed the depression- weary enclave in even further jeopardy.48

"A direct correlation exists," asserted Togo Tanaka in an analysis of JACL history he wrote in the 1940s, "between the growing intensity of America-Japan friction and the increasing frequency of Nisei and even Issei loyalty pledges." The Issei old guard responded to anti-Japanese affronts as they had done before: they had the Nisei reassure Americans that their support for Japan was in no way at odds with their commitment to living and raising their children in the United States. But mounting United States-Japan hostility forced Nisei Week's leaders to retreat from

47 Tanaka, "Vernacular Newspapers," 18-19, 38. On Japanese nationalism among Japanese Americans in Los Angeles at this time, see Hayashi, "For the Sake of OurJapanese Brethren", Ichioka, "Japanese Immigrant National- ism," 260-75, 310-11; and Sakoda, Reports on Tule Lake, 11. Tanaka, "History of the JACL," chap. 3, p. 5.

48Tanaka, "Pre-evacuation Pressure Group Activity in Southern California," 10-11; Richard S. Nishimoto, "Personal Service and Urban Trade," manuscript, n.d., 73-74, 38-39, W 1.90, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records; Tanaka, "History of the JACL," chap. 3, p. 12.

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Japanese American Identity before World War II 1653

the idea of biculturalism. The Rafu Shimpo's English-language staff, for example, veered away from Japanese nationalism. Togo Tanaka claimed that the decision was

based on both the fallout from the rescinding of the trade agreement and the results

of a survey that revealed the impressive Nisei commitment to the United States. The

English section split from the paper's Japanese staff to launch an editorial policy

encouraging the Nisei to drop biculturalism in favor of a "single American political loyalty." The Nisei were urged to support the JACL'S Americanism, buy United States

defense bonds, and forgo dual citizenship with Japan.49 Nisei Week now became a forum to ensure that Japanese Americans would not be

confused with their relatives overseas. The Kashu Mainichi in 1940 assured the people of southern California of the Nisei's eagerness to participate "in the building of this great country, to assume responsibility for its defense against all enemies and to safeguard its great institutions." A year later the Nisei Week crowd was steered away from dressing in Japanese garb. "From the American point of view," the lead- ing vernacular newspaper asked, "how can one be expected to be impressed by any profession of loyalty via a 'native Japanese kimono'? The two don't jibe." The call for patriotic expression was especially evident in the festival's parade. Old Glory replaced the "rising sun" flags so prevalent at earlier celebrations, while beauty contestants, draped in white evening gowns, floated through the streets of Little Tokyo perched beneath a replica of the Capitol dome. A sedan resplendent with red, white, and blue streamers carried a flowered marquee that left the Nisei's identity unambig- uous. Displayed beneath the facsimile of a spread-winged dove were the words "USA, Our Home."50

It was difficult to gauge the extent to which these patriotic activities paid off. No amount of flag-waving or swearing of loyalty oaths could convince Kane and other die-hard racists that the Nisei were trustworthy. But the JACL'S patriotism made such a favorable impression on Kenneth Ringle, the naval intelligence officer responsible

for assessing the loyalty of the ethnic community, that he concluded "the entire 'Jap- anese Problem' has been magnified out of its true proportion, largely because of the physical characteristics of the people." Japanese Americans also received support from the Los Angeles Times, which encouraged its readers to attend Nisei Week because its sponsors "had no part in and no responsibility for causing war clouds to gather in the Orient." Fletcher Bowron, the mayor of Los Angeles in 1941, echoed this sentiment. In the speech that opened what became the last Nisei Week before World War II, the mayor not only implored Japanese Americans to show their patri- otism but reassured them, "we know you are loyal."351

49Tanaka, "History of the JACL," chap. 3, p. 17. Togo Tanaka, "Political Organizations," manuscript, n.d., pp. 6-7, W 1.94, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records; Tanaka, "Vernacular Newspapers," 38-

39, 8, 9, 17; Minutes of Rafu Shimpo' Board of Editorial Counsellors Meeting, July 14, 1941, folder 2, Togo Tanaka "Journal," A 17.06, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records.

50 Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 4, 1940. Rafl Shimpo, Aug. 10, 1941. The "official attire" of the festival's parade in

1941 was made out of cotton, not the usual silk, to conform with concerns about national defense. Sangyo Nippo, July 30, 1941. Nisei Week souvenir booklet, 1990, p. 62 (in Kurashige's possession).

51 Lieutenant Commander Ringle's Confidential Intelligence Report to Chief of Naval Operations [c. Jan. 20- March 27, 1942], A 5.01, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records; Los Angeles Times as quoted

in Kashu Mainichi, Aug. 25, 194 1; Rafiu Shimpo, Aug. 25, 194 1.

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1654 The Journal of American History March 2000

Yet after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States' declaration of war on Japan, Bowron did not hesitate to call for the mass evacuation of 110,000 Japa- nese Americans from the West Coast. The mayor, along with most public officials in

California and other western states, confessed his utter distrust of Japanese Ameri- cans and did not think twice about denying them their constitutional rights. In

early February 1942, he warned a radio audience about the Japanese American

threat: "Right here in our own city are those who may spring into action at an appointed time in accordance with a prearranged plan wherein each of our little

brown brothers will know his part in the event of any possible attempted invasion or air raid." Two weeks later, despite intelligence reports that deemed the overwhelm-

ing majority of Japanese Americans loyal to the United States, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, sanctioning their removal to concentration camps. Not long after that, over 33,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from

southern California, and with their departure ended a chapter in Nisei Week history.52

During World War II the JACLers took control of the ethnic community precisely because they had failed to fulfill Nisei Weeks twin goals of ameliorating anti-Japanese racism and securing the future of the ethnic enclave. While neither biculturalism

nor the switch to Americanism could prevent the internment, the latter identity

proved more pragmatic amid the extreme anti-Japanese sentiment that gripped the nation during World War II. The JAcLers, pushed by government officials, adopted a new language of identity predicated on the eradication, not celebration, of ethnic

difference. To prove their loyalty to the nation, they, as an organization and individ- ually, cooperated with American intelligence agencies by informing on "suspicious" elements within the ethnic community. Their surveillance activities, which the eth- nic press highlighted often, generated deep animosities against the JACL (particularly

its most boisterously anti-Japanese leaders) that led to the intimidation, beating, and attempted murder of JACLers within the internment camps.53 While military author- ities saw the ethnic group as a monolithic (enemy) race, Japanese Americans experi- enced World War II more divided than ever.

52 Fletcher Bowron, radio address on KECA (Los Angeles), transcript, Feb. 5, 1942 (6:30 p.m.), Fletcher Bow- ron correspondence, A 15.14, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records. Ringle's Report to Chief of Naval Operations. For analysis of Ringle's and other intelligence reports, see Bob Kumamoto, "The Search for Spies: American Counterintelligence and the Japanese American Community, 1931-1942," Amerasia Journal, 6 (no. 2, 1979), 45-75; Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 33-53.

53 See Weglyn, Years of Infamy; Daniels, Concentration Camps usA; and Richard Drinnon, Keeper of Concentra- tion Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism (Berkeley, 1987). On conflicts and resistance inside specific internment camps, see Arthur A. Hansen and David A. Hacker, "The Manzanar Riot: An Ethnic Perspective," Amerasia Journal, 2 (no. 2, 1974), 112-57; and Richard S. Nishimoto, Inside an American Concentration Camp: Japanese American Resistance at Poston, Arizona, ed. Lane Ryo Hirabayashi (Tucson, 1995).

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