Japanese Americans

I

Introduction

Japanese Americans, residents of the United States who trace their ancestry to Japan. Although Japanese Americans live in areas throughout the country, the largest Japanese American communities are in Hawaii and along the Pacific Coast. The 2000 U.S. Census counted 808,250 Japanese Americans. They constitute the sixth largest group of Asian Americans, after Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Asian Indian Americans, Vietnamese Americans, and Korean Americans. Today, approximately 6,000 Japanese immigrants enter the United States annually.

Japanese Americans give each of their generations a unique name. Members of the first generation, composed of immigrants born in Japan, are called Issei. Members of the second generation, born in the United States, are called Nisei. Members of the third generation are called Sansei, and the fourth generation, Yonsei. Recently Japanese Americans have adopted a new term, Nikkei, to designate the entire Japanese American community.

II

Culture and Social Organization

When the Issei immigrants arrived in Hawaii and on the Pacific Coast, they brought with them the group-oriented culture of Meiji Japan. During the Meiji era, from 1867 to 1912, Japan modernized its culture and economy while preserving its traditional family-based order. This culture has tended to persist in the United States, partly because discrimination prevented most Japanese Americans from integrating into mainstream American society prior to the end of World War II in 1945.

As in many other ethnic groups, the church is a central cultural institution in the Japanese American community. The two major religious traditions are Protestantism and Buddhism. In major West Coast and Hawaiian communities, many churches have largely Japanese American congregations. In other areas Japanese Americans attend churches dominated by other ethnic groups.

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Japanese American culture combines values derived from Meiji-era Japan with new attitudes formed in the course of the community’s interaction with mainstream American culture over the last century. To a much lesser degree, modern Japanese culture also influences Japanese American values. Contemporary Japanese American festivals have discarded many of their original religious rituals in favor of new secular community-based observances. For example, the Obon festival, a traditional Buddhist commemoration of the spirits of the dead, is today a secular festival held in virtually all major Japanese American communities. Celebrated in July or August, typical Obon activities include Japanese folk dances, food booths, and carnival games. The festival provides an opportunity for community members to socialize and for children to play games with other Japanese Americans.

III

History

Significant Japanese immigration to the United States began about 1890. In response to the labor needs of Hawaii’s sugar plantations and the rapid expansion of intensive farming in California, most of the immigrants did agricultural work. Because farm wages did not yield the wealth they desired, Japanese immigrants quickly moved into more entrepreneurial forms of agriculture. Many began to lease land or sharecrop, exchanging a portion of the harvest for the right to use farmland. Because of the success of Japanese American farmers with vegetable and fruit crops, competitors soon called for restrictions on immigrant farmers. In 1913 California passed the Alien Land Law, which banned Japanese immigrants from purchasing land and allowed them only limited leasing rights.

Vibrant ethnic neighborhoods known as Nihonmachis, or Japantowns, developed in virtually all major West Coast cities. These neighborhoods typically contained stores, hotels, restaurants, services, and religious institutions catering to the Japanese community. In addition to providing life’s necessities, Japantowns offered recreation and opportunities to socialize with other Japanese Americans. Japanese immigrants frequently faced financial problems because banks discriminated against them. Japanese immigrant businessmen often raised capital through rotating credit associations. Each member of the association contributed a set amount of money to a fund. Members would then take turns borrowing from this substantial pot to finance large purchases, such as a store or a car.

Discriminatory laws prevented the Issei from becoming naturalized citizens of the United States. In 1907 and 1908 Japan and the United States negotiated the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement in which Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to laborers wishing to immigrate to the United States. However, a significant number of Japanese women came to the United States as picture brides, joining husbands they knew only through the exchange of letters and pictures by mail. The Immigration Act of 1924 totally barred emigration from Japan. By the 1930s, the Issei had generally managed to become economically stable and create a strong family-based ethnic community.

Soon after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan and formally entered World War II. In the first few weeks after the attack, the government arrested many leaders in the Japanese immigrant community. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed military leaders to exclude whomever they felt necessary from military areas. This order served as the basis for the removal of approximately 120,000 ethnic Japanese—two-thirds of them American citizens—from the Pacific Coast.

In the spring of 1942 the U.S. Army forcibly moved the Japanese American populations of California, western Oregon, western Washington, and southern Arizona to 16 temporary detention compounds—typically fairgrounds and racetracks. In the summer of 1942, the internees were transferred to 10 permanent concentration camps, euphemistically called relocation centers. These camps were generally located on uninhabitable federal lands in the nation’s interior, such as deserts or swamps. At the height of the incarceration, each camp held from 8,000 to 20,000 internees. The housing consisted of hastily constructed military-style barracks. The U.S. government justified the mass incarceration as a “military necessity.” Arguing that it could not distinguish loyal Japanese Americans from disloyal ones, the federal government approved the removal of anyone with at least one-sixteenth Japanese blood from the Pacific Coast. Ironically, there were no mass removals of Japanese Americans in the U.S. territory of Hawaii, which had been the direct target of attack by the Japanese and which had a much higher percentage of Japanese residents than the Pacific Coast.

Japanese Americans were initially barred from serving in the U.S. military during World War II. However, the 100th Battalion, composed almost entirely of Japanese Americans from Hawaii, joined American forces fighting in Europe in 1943. In 1944, the 100th Battalion became part of the all-volunteer Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The 442nd went on to become the most decorated unit of its size in American military history. Although the 442nd never had more than 3,000 soldiers at any one time, the unit earned 18,143 medals for valor and 9,486 Order of the Purple Heart decorations, awarded to soldiers wounded in the line of duty. A significant number of Japanese Americans also served in the U.S. Military Intelligence Service where they performed a variety of critical intelligence missions in the Pacific.

Many Japanese Americans lost their property and livelihood while confined in concentration camps during World War II. In 1980, the Congress of the United States created the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to reassess U.S. policies toward Japanese Americans during WWII. The commission's report, published in 1983, found that there was no 'military necessity' for the internment of Japanese Americans, and that the historical causes for it were 'race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” For more than two decades, Japanese American advocacy groups struggled for compensation and an acknowledgement of wrongdoing from the government. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed by President Ronald Reagan, provided an apology from the U.S. government and an individual payment of $20,000 to each surviving internee.

Today, Japanese Americans have generally reestablished their economic position lost during World War II. According to the 2000 census, Japanese Americans are better educated and have higher incomes than the general U.S. population. Japanese Americans are still underrepresented among elected officials and high-level corporate managers. Numerous Asian American organizations are working to increase the number of Japanese Americans in these areas. Many Japanese Americans express concern that economic tensions between Japan and the United States will lead to a revival of discrimination against them. Along with some other Asian American groups, Japanese Americans also worry that they will be misrepresented by the media as a uniformly successful “model minority.”

See also Japanese American Internment.