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Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States

Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United Stateshas existed since the late 19th century, especially during theYellow Peril,which had also extended to otherAsian immigrants.

Anti-Japanese sentimentagainst American citizens of Japanese descent in the United States would peak duringWorld War II,when theEmpire of Japanbecame involved in thePacific Wartheater. After the war, the rise of Japan asa major economic powerin the 1970s was seen as a widespread economic threat to the United States and also led to a renewal of anti-Japanese sentiment, known as Japan bashing.[1]

Origins

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Main article:Yellow Peril

In theUnited States,anti-Japanese sentiment had its beginnings well before World War II. Racial prejudice against Asian immigrants began building soon after Chinese workers started arriving in the country in the mid-19th century, and set the tone for the resistance Japanese would face in the decades to come. Although Chinese were heavily recruited in the mining and railroad industries initially, whites in Western states and territories came to view the immigrants as a source of economic competition and a threat to racial purity as their population increased. A network of anti-Chinese groups (many of which would reemerge in the anti-Japanese movement) worked to pass laws that limited Asian immigrants' access to legal and economic equality with whites. Most important of these discriminatory laws was the exclusion of Asians from citizenship rights. TheNaturalization Act of 1870revised the previous law, under which only white immigrants could become U.S. citizens, to extend eligibility to people of African descent. By designating Asians as permanent aliens, the law prohibited them from voting and serving on juries, which, combined with laws that prevented people of color fromtestifying against whitesin court, made it virtually impossible for Asian Americans to participate in the country's legal and political systems. Also significant werealien land laws,which relied on coded language barring "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning land or real estate, and in some cases from even entering into a temporary lease, to discourage Asian immigrants from establishing homes and businesses in over a dozen states.[2]These laws were greatly detrimental to the newly arrived immigrants, since many of them were farmers and had little choice but to become migrant workers.

After theChinese Exclusion Actof 1882 stopped immigration from China, American labor recruiters began targeting Japanese workers, triggering arapid increase in the country's Japanese population,which in turn triggered the movement to decrease their number and restrict their economic and political power.[3]Some cite the formation of theAsiatic Exclusion Leagueas the start of the anti-Japanese movement in California, where, along with the Japanese American population, the exclusion movement was centered.[4]Their efforts focused on ending Japanese immigration and, as with the previous anti-Chinese movement,nativistgroups like the Asiatic Exclusion League lobbied to limit and finally, with theImmigration Act of 1924,ban Japanese and other East Asians from entering the U.S. However, in the process they created an atmosphere of systematic hostility and discrimination that would later contribute to the push toincarcerate120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.[3]

Early 20th century

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Young China Club warning to American visitors against buying Japanese goods in San Francisco's Chinatown circa 1940

Anti-Japanese racismand fear of theYellow Perilhad become increasinglyxenophobicin California after the Japanese victory over theRussian Empirein theRusso-Japanese War.On October 11, 1906, the San Francisco, California Board of Education passed a regulation whereby children of Japanese descent would be required to attend racially segregated and separate schools. At the time, Japanese immigrants made up approximately 1% of the population of California; many of them had come under the treaty in 1894 which had assured free immigration from Japan.

In 1907, Californian nativists supporting exclusion of Japanese immigrants and maintenance of segregated schools for Caucasian and Japanese studentsrioted in San Francisco.

Anti-Japanese organizations

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  • California Farm Bureau
  • California Joint Immigration Committee
  • Committee of One Thousand
  • Japanese Exclusion League of California
  • Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West
  • Anti-Japanese League of Washington[5]

Alien land laws

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TheCalifornia Alien Land Law of 1913was specifically created to prevent land ownership among Japanese citizens who were residing in the state of California. InState of California v. Jukichi Harada(1918), Judge Hugh H. Craig[6]sided with the defendant and ruled that American children – who happened to be born to Japanese parents – had the right to own land. California proceeded to strengthen its Alien land law in 1920 and 1923.[7][8][9]

Other states passes similar laws including Washington in 1921[5]and Oregon in 1923.[10]

InState of California v. Oyama(1948),[11]the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California's Alien Land Law was anti-Japanese in concept, and deemed unfit to stand in America's law books. Justices Murphy and Rutledge wrote:

This measure, though limited to agricultural lands, represented the first official act of discrimination aimed at the Japanese... The immediate purpose, of course, was to restrict Japanese farm competition.

The more basic purpose of the statute was to irritate the Japanese, to make economic life in California as uncomfortable and unprofitable for them as legally possible.

Vigorous enforcement of the Alien Land Law has been but one of the cruel discriminatory actions which have marked this nation's treatment since 1941 of those residents who chanced to be of Japanese origin.

Can a state disregard in this manner the historic ideal that those within the borders of this nation are not to be denied rights and privileges because they are of a particular race? I say that it cannot.

It took four years for California's Supreme Court to concede that the law was unconstitutional, inState of California v. Fujii(1952). Finally, in 1956, California voters repealed the law.

Anti-Japanese immigration agreements and legislation

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In 1907, theGentlemen's Agreementwas an informal deal between the governments of Japan and the U.S. It ended the immigration of Japanese laborers, though it did allow the immigration of spouses and children of Japanese immigrants already in the United States.[12]

TheImmigration Act of 1924banned the immigration of all but a few token Japanese. Passage of the Immigration Act contributed to the growth of anti-Americanism and ending of a growing democratic movement in Japan during this time period, opening the door to Japanese militarist government control.[5]

Japanese military activity prior to American entry in World War II

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The Japaneseinvasion of China in 1931and the annexation ofManchuriawas roundly criticized in the US. In addition, efforts by citizens who were outraged byJapanese atrocities,such as theNanjing Massacre,led to calls for American economic intervention to encourage Japan to leave China; these calls played a role in shaping American foreign policy. As more and more unfavorable reports of Japanese actions came to the attention of the American government, embargoes on oil and other supplies were placed on Japan, out of concern for the safety of the Chinese populace and concern for the safety of American interests in the Pacific.

Furthermore, the European American population became strongly pro-Chinese and strongly anti-Japanese, an example of which was a grass-roots campaign to ask women to stop buying silk stockings, because the material was procured from Japan through its colonies. European traders sought access to Chinese markets and resources. Chinese Americans were again distressed when an estimated 150,000Taishaneselocals died from starvation inTaishan Countyby the Japanese blockade, as Taishan County was the homeland of most Chinese Americans at that time.[13]

When theSecond Sino-Japanese Warbroke out in 1937, Western public opinion was decidedly pro-China, with eyewitness reports by Western journalists on atrocities committed against Chinese civilians further strengthening anti-Japanese sentiments.African American sentiments at the timecould be quite different than the mainstream, with organizations like thePacific Movement of the Eastern World(PMEW) which promised equality and land distribution under Japanese rule. The PMEW had thousands of members hopefully preparing for liberation fromwhite supremacywith the arrival of theJapanese Imperial Army.

World War II

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See also:Allied war crimes during World War IIandAmerican mutilation of Japanese war dead
An American propaganda poster – "Death-trap for the Jap"
An American propaganda poster from World War II produced under theWorks Progress Administrationurging civilians to collect and recycle scrap metal in order to contribute to the war effort

The most profound cause of anti-Japanese sentiment outside of Asia had its beginning in theattack on Pearl Harbor,as it propelled the United States into World War II. The Americans were unified by the attack to fight against theEmpire of Japanandits allies,theGerman Reichand theKingdom of Italy.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan on theneutralUnited States without warning and the deaths of almost 2,500 people during ongoing U.S./Japanese peace negotiations was presented to the American populace as an act of treachery, barbarism, and cowardice. Following the attack, many non-governmental "Japhunting licenses "were circulated around the country.Lifemagazine published an article on how to distinguish a Japanese person from a Chinese person by the shape of the nose and the stature of the body.[14]TheGuadalacanal Diary,which was published in 1943, wrote about the accounts of American soldiers, collecting Japanese 'gold teeth' or body parts such as hands or ears, to keep as trophies.[15]The diary became extremely popular within the United States during the Second World war.

U.S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. POW compounds to two key factors: a Japanese reluctance to surrender and a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were 'animals' or 'subhuman' and unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to POWs."[16]The latter reasoning is supported byNiall Ferguson,who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians [sic] — asUntermenschen."[17]Weingartner believes this explains the fact that a mere 604 Japanese captives were alive in Allied POW camps by October 1944.[18]

Ulrich Straus,a U.S.Japanologist,believed that front line troops intensely hated Japanese military personnel and were "not easily persuaded" to take or protect prisoners. They believed that Allied personnel who surrendered got "no mercy" from the Japanese.[19]Allied soldiers believed that Japanese soldiers were inclined to feign surrender, in order to make surprise attacks.[19]Therefore, according to Straus, "[s]enior officers opposed the taking of prisoners[,] on the grounds that it needlessly exposed American troops to risks..."[19]

Jap hunts

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A Japanese American unfurled this banner the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Nonetheless, the man was later detained. This photograph was taken byDorothea Langein March 1942, just prior to theJapanese American internment.

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, plunged the United States into war and planted the notion that the Japanese were treacherous and barbaric in the minds of Americans. The hysteria which enveloped the West Coast during the early months of the war, combined with long standing anti-Asian prejudices, set the stage for what was to come.[20]

Executive Order 9066authorized the military to exclude any person from any area of the country where national security was considered threatened. It gave the military broad authority over the civilian population without the imposition ofmartial law.Although the order did not mention any specific group or recommend detention, its language implied that any citizen might be removed. In practice, the order was applied almost exclusively toJapanese Americansand Japanese nationals, with only few Italian and German Americans suffering similar fates. Ultimately, approximately 110,000Japanese nationalsand Japanese Americans were interned in housing facilities called "War Relocation Camps".[21][22]

After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, much anti-Japanese paraphernalia and propaganda surfaced in the United States. An example of this was the so-called "Jap hunting license", a faux-official document, button or medallion that purported to authorize "open season" on "hunting" the Japanese, despite the fact that over a quarter of a million Americans at that time were of Japanese origin. Some reminded holders that there was "no limit" on the number of "Japs"they could" hunt or trap ". These" licenses "often characterized Japanese people as sub-human. Many of the" Jap Hunting Licenses ", for example, depicted the Japanese in animalistic fashion.[23]

Edmund Russell writes that, whereas in Europe Americans perceived themselves to be struggling against "great individual monsters", such asAdolf Hitler,Benito Mussolini,andJoseph Goebbels,Americans often saw themselves fighting against a "nameless mass of vermin", in regards to Japan.[24]Russell attributes this to the outrage of Americans in regards to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, the torture and killing of American POWs in the hands of Imperial Japanese forces, and the perceived "inhuman tenacity" demonstrated in the refusal of Imperial forces to surrender. Kamikaze suicide bombings, according to John Morton Blum, were instrumental in confirming this stereotype of the "insane martial spirit" of Imperial Japan, and the bigoted picture it would engender of the Japanese people as a whole.[25]

Commonwealth troops also employed rhetoric of "hunting", in regards to their engagement with Imperial Japanese forces. According to T. R. Moreman, the demonization of the Japanese served "to improve morale, foster belief that the war in the Far East was worthwhile and build the moral component of fighting power". Training instruction issued by the headquarters of 5th Indian Division suggested, "The JAP is a fanatic and therefore a menace until he is dead!... It will be our fanatical aim to KILL JAPS. Hunt him and kill him like any other wild beast!"[26]

US Professor of Japanese History, John Dower, introduces his 'War Hates and War Crimes' by quoting American Historian, Allan Nevins, that 'no foe has been so detested as were the Japanese', in his essay about the Second World War.[27]Dower highlights how the Japanese were more despised than the Germans by the American public, and he claims that it was a result of racial hatred. This racial element separated Japanese and Germans, as Dower presents how Germans could be distinguished as "good" or "bad", whereas the 'savage' and 'brutal' traits associated with the Japanese military in the war, were just seen as being "Japanese". Magazines likeTimehammered this home even further by frequently referring to "the Jap" rather than "Japs", thereby denying the enemy even the merest semblance of pluralism.[28]

Strategic bombing of Japan

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Further information:Air raids on Japan

Author John M. Curatola wrote that the anti-Japanese sentiment probably played a role in thestrategic bombingof Japanese cities,[29]which began on March 9/10, 1945, with the destructiveOperation Meetinghousefirebombing of Tokyo to August 15, 1945, with thesurrender of Japan.[30]Sixty-nine cities in Japan lost significant areas and hundreds of thousands of civilian lives tofirebombingandnuclear attacksfromUnited States Army Air ForcesB-29 Superfortressbombers during this period.[31]

Internment of Japanese Americans

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An estimated 112,000 to 120,000 Japanese migrants andJapanese Americansfrom the West Coast wereinternedregardless of their attitude to the U.S. or Japan. They were held for the duration of the war in the inner U.S. The large Japanese population of Hawaii was not massively relocated in spite of their proximity to vital military areas.

In 1942, with the Japanese incarcerated in ten American concentration camps, California Attorney GeneralEarl Warrensaw his chance and approved the state takeover of twenty parcels of land held in the name of American children of Japanese parents,in absentia.In 1943, Governor Warren signed a bill that expanded the Alien Land Law by denying the Japanese the opportunity to farmas they had before World War II.In 1945, he followed up by signing two bills that facilitated the seizure of land owned by American descendants of the Japanese.

In a December 19, 1944opinion poll,it was found that 13% of the U.S. public were in favor of theexterminationof all Japanese, as well as 50% of American GI's.[32][33]Dower suggests the racial hatred of the front-lines in the war rubbed off onto the American public, through media representation of Japanese and propaganda.

Since World War II

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In the 1970s and 1980s, the waning fortunes of heavy industry in the United States prompted layoffs and hiring slowdowns just as counterpart businesses in Japan were making major inroads into U.S. markets. Nowhere was this more visible than in the automobile industry, where the then-lethargicBig Three automobile manufacturers(General Motors,Ford,andChrysler) watched as their former customers bought Japanese imports fromHonda,ToyotaandNissan,a consequence of the1973 oil crisis.The anti-Japanese sentiment manifested itself in occasional public destruction of Japanese cars, and in the 1982murder of Vincent Chin,aChinese Americanbeaten to death when he was mistaken to be Japanese. In 1987, after theToshiba–Kongsberg scandala group of Republican US congressmen smashed Toshiba products on Capitol Hill. Pictures of the event were replayed hundreds of times on Japanese television.[34][35]

Other highly symbolic deals—including the sale of famous American commercial and cultural symbols such asColumbia Records,Columbia Pictures,and theRockefeller Centerbuilding to Japanese firms—further fanned anti-Japanese sentiment. When theSeattle Marinerswere being sold to Nintendo of America, 71 percent of Americans opposed the sale of an American baseball team to a Japanese corporation.[36]

Popular culture of the period reflected American's growing distrust of Japan.[citation needed]Futuristic period pieces such asBack to the Future Part IIandRoboCop 3frequently showed Americans as working precariously under Japanese superiors. Criticism was also lobbied in many novels of the day. AuthorMichael Crichtontook a break from science fiction to writeRising Sun,amurder mystery(later made into afeature film) involving Japanese businessmen in the U.S. Likewise, inTom Clancy's bookDebt of Honor,Clancy implies that Japan's prosperity is due primarily to unequal trading terms, and portrays Japan's business leaders acting in a power hungry cabal.

As argued by Marie Thorsten, however, Japanophobia mixed with Japanophilia during Japan's peak moments of economic dominance during the 1980s. The fear of Japan became a rallying point for techno-nationalism,[clarification needed]the imperative to be first in the world in mathematics, science and other quantifiable measures of national strength necessary to boost technological and economic supremacy. Notorious "Japan bashing" took place alongside the image of Japan as superhuman, mimicking in some ways the image of theSoviet Unionafter it launched the firstSputniksatellite in 1957: both events turned the spotlight on American education. American bureaucrats purposely pushed this analogy. In 1982,Ernest Boyer,a former U.S. Commissioner of Education, publicly declared that, "What we need is another Sputnik" to re-boot American education, and that "maybe what we should do is get the Japanese to put a Toyota into orbit".[37]Japan was both a threat and a model for human resource development in education and the workforce, merging with the image of Asian-Americans as the "model minority".

Both the animosity and super-humanizing which peaked in the 1980s, when the term "Japan bashing" became popular, had largely faded by the late 1990s. Japan's waning economic fortunes in the 1990s, known today asthe Lost Decade,coupled with an upsurge in the U.S. economy as the Internet took off largely crowded anti-Japanese sentiment out of the popular media.

See also

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References

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  1. ^Walter, Russell Mead (4 June 1989)."Japan-Bashing, an Ugly American Tradition".Los Angeles Times.Retrieved4 January2022.
  2. ^Lyon, Cherstin M."Alien land laws,"Densho Encyclopedia.Retrieved 15 July 2014.
  3. ^abAnderson, Emily."Anti-Japanese exclusion movement,"Densho Encyclopedia.Retrieved 15 July 2014.
  4. ^Niiya, Brian (1993).Japanese American history: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present(illustrated ed.). Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG. pp. 37, 103–104.ISBN978-0-8160-2680-7..
  5. ^abcNeiwert, David(May 10, 2022),"The xenophobic career of Miller Freeman, founding father of modern Bellevue",International Examiner
  6. ^Harada House
  7. ^Ferguson, Edwin E. (1947)."The California Alien Land Law and the Fourteenth Amendment".California Law Review.35(1): 61–90.doi:10.2307/3477375.JSTOR3477375.
  8. ^Kurashige, Scott. (2008).The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles.Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  9. ^Bunje, Emil T. H. (1957).The Story of Japanese Farming in California.Saratoga, California: Robert D. Reed.
  10. ^Nakadate, Neil (2013).Looking After Minidoka: An American Memoir.Indiana University Press. pp. 18–19.ISBN978-0253011022.
  11. ^State of California v. Oyama,332 U.S. 633 (1948).
  12. ^Esthus, Raymond A. (1967)Theodore Roosevelt and Japan.University of Washington Press. pp. 146–166, 210–228.ISBN9780295740409
  13. ^Staff Reporter (1978)."Taishan, Home of Overseas Chinese"(PDF).China Reconstructs.27(7): 15.
  14. ^Luce, Henry,ed. (22 December 1941)."How to tell Japs from the Chinese".Life.Vol. 11, no. 25. Chicago: Time Inc. pp. 81–82.Retrieved19 February2010.
  15. ^Tregaskis, Richard (1943)Guadalacanal diary.Random House. pp. 15–16
  16. ^Weingartner 1992,p. 55
  17. ^Fergusson, Niall (2004). "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat".War in History.11(2): 182.doi:10.1191/0968344504wh291oa.JSTOR26061867.S2CID159610355.
  18. ^Weingartner 1992,p. 54
  19. ^abcStraus, Ulrich (2003)The Anguish Of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II(excerpts)Seattle: University of Washington Press. p. 116.ISBN978-0-295-98336-3
  20. ^A More Perfect Union. 1990–2001.Smithsonian Institution
  21. ^"Manzanar National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)".nps.gov.Retrieved10 April2015.
  22. ^Various primary and secondary sources list counts between 110,000 and 120,000 persons.
  23. ^Boggs, Jeremy. Open Season. 06 Mar. 2004. 15 Oct. 2007. <"Introduction".Archived fromthe originalon 2011-09-28.Retrieved2012-04-01.>
  24. ^Russell, E. (2001).War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring.Cambridge University Press. p. 98.ISBN9780521799379.
  25. ^Blum, John Morton (1976).V was for victory: politics and American culture during World War II.Harcourt. p. 46.ISBN0156936283
  26. ^Moreman, T. R. (2005)The jungle, the Japanese and the British Commonwealth armies at war, 1941–45.Routledge. p. 103.ISBN0714649708
  27. ^Nevins, Allan (1946)How we felt about the war.Simon and Schuster, p. 13.
  28. ^Dower, W. John (1993).War Without Mercy.New York: Pantheon Books. p. 34.ISBN0-394-75172-8
  29. ^Curatola, John M. (2012).No Quarter Given: The Change in Strategic Bombing Application in the Pacific Theater During World War II.BiblioScholar. p. 72.ISBN978-1-2492-8348-5.
  30. ^Craven, Wesley F.; Cates, James L. (1953)."THE PACIFIC: MATTERHORN TO NAGASAKI JUNE 1944 TO AUGUST 1945 – The Army Air Forces in World War II. Volume V."ibiblio.org.The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. p. 617.RetrievedFebruary 10,2019....the physical destruction and loss of life at Tokyo exceeded that at Rome (where ten out of fourteen wards of a much smaller city were consumed) or that of any of the great conflagrations of the western world—London, 1666 (436 acres, 13,200 buildings); Moscow, 1812 (38,000 buildings);Chicago, 1871 (2,124 acres, 17,450 buildings); San Francisco, 1906 (4 square miles, 21,188 buildings).39 Only Japan itself, with the earthquake and fire of 1923 at Tokyo and Yokohama, had suffered so terrible a disaster.No other air attack of the war, either in Japan or Europe, was so destructive of life and property.
  31. ^Pape, Robert (1996).Bombing to Win: Airpower and Coercion in War.Cornell University Press. p. 129.ISBN978-0-8014-8311-0.
  32. ^Bagby, Wesley Marvin (1999).America's International Relations Since World War I.Oxford University Press. p. 135.ISBN0-19-512389-1.
  33. ^Feraru, A. N. (1950). "Public Opinion Polls on Japan".Far Eastern Survey.19(10): 101–103.doi:10.2307/3023943.JSTOR3023943.
  34. ^Sanger, David E. (1988-08-04)."Japan Protests Trade Sanctions in the Bill".New York Times.Retrieved29 January2021.
  35. ^Novak, Matt (2016-05-09)."That Time Republicans Smashed a Boombox With Sledgehammers on Capitol Hill".Gizmodo.Retrieved29 January2021.
  36. ^Egan, Timothy (1992-02-04)."Wave of Japan-Bashing Stings Pacific Northwest".New York Times.Retrieved29 January2021.
  37. ^Thorsten, Marie (2012).Superhuman Japan.Routledge.ISBN978-0415414265.

Cited sources

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Further reading

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  • August, Jack. "The Anti-Japanese Crusade in Arizona's Salt River Valley: 1934-35."Arizona and the West21.2 (1979): 113-136.online
  • Buell, Raymond Leslie. "The development of the anti-Japanese agitation in the United States."Political Science Quarterly37.4 (1922): 605-638.online
  • Daniels, Roger.The politics of prejudice: The anti-Japanese movement in California and the struggle for Japanese exclusion(Univ of California Press, 1977).
  • MeGovney, Dudley O. "The anti-Japanese land laws of California and ten other states."California Law Review35 (1947): 7+ [MeGovney, Dudley O. "The anti-Japanese land laws of California and ten other states." Calif. L. Rev. 35 (1947): 7. online].
  • Okihiro, Gary.Cane fires: The anti-Japanese movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945(Temple UP, 1992).
  • Shim, Doobo. "From yellow peril through model minority to renewed yellow peril."Journal of Communication Inquiry22.4 (1998): 385-409.online
  • Tamura, Eileen H. "The English-only effort, the anti-Japanese campaign, and language acquisition in the education of Japanese Americans in Hawaii, 1915–40."History of Education Quarterly33.1 (1993): 37-58.
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