Mock Trial: Resolved that the Japanese American Youths have Initiative and Ambition

Tom Yamashita

UC Berkeley Japanese American Women's Club 1937. Kay Yamashita is second from right first row. Miya Oshima (future name is Kashiwase) is far left, front row. Asako Sakai is second from left, front row. Iyo is fourth from left in second row.

Two of Kay's Friends, circa 1938.

Sus and Chiz, graduation photo, 1929.

The Yamashita Nisei kids (second generation immigrants) had educational aspirations. Six of Kishiro and Tomi's seven children went to Cal Berkeley-- Sus, Chiz, John, Iyo, Kay and Tom.

The trajectories of the siblings show the aspirations of the Nisei (second generation) young people born in the U.S. Kishiro had put all the money towards their education. But college-educated Nisei did not find an easy time getting a foothold in professional fields they aspired to. Some of the Yamashita siblings got lucky with employment, and some had to rely on employment from family members established in produce, a field where Japanese Americans were dominant in California in the 1930s.

Iyo's graduation photo, 1938.

Kay, graduation photo, 1940.

Kay’s Graduation from Berkeley, 1940

John, graduation photo, 1935.

Putting the Nisei on Trial

Kay's Friends, circa 1940

Oct 22, 1932 Mock Debate, Japanese American Student Association, Cal Berkeley.
John, going by his first name, Hiroshi Yamashita, debates in the affirmative as a junior at Cal Berkeley, Class of 1934.

While at Cal Berkeley, John participated in a mock trial hosted by the University of California Japanese Students Club. A prototypical or imaginary second generation immigrant or first generation American of Japanese descent "Nisei" youth was being put on trial for whether or not he did or did not have initiative and ambition. This topic reveals an anxiety among Japanese Americans attending UC Berkeley on their position in American society and an underlying assumption that an important barrier is the amount of ambition. This trial could be a way to theorize or comment on the degree to which racial discrimination is a barrier that Japense Americans face in employment. And yet the framing of the debate in terms of ambition and initiative implies that these are the necessary or desirable qualities.

Many Nisei children of immigrants who made it through college found that they could not find jobs in their ideal professions.

Nisei Cal Students wanted to avoid the fate of being stuck in low wage labor jobs even after graduating with a college degree. Japanese American students hoped assimilation would allow them to escape such categories. In 1932, the Japanese American Student Association attending Cal Berkeley put on a mock debate examining the question “Is the Japanese American youth fulfilling his role?”

Nisei students were invested in theorizing the role of the Japanese American youth and in promoting the Nisei generation's success. John wrote in his position paper at the mock trial about the obstacles facing Nisei youth:

“It is true, ours is a hard row to hoe and ours is to be a struggle against oppression and suppression. No doubt to many of us the barriers that confront us seem insurmountable and the efforts bound to be futile. We are striving in vain says the heavy-hearted Second Generation Japanese. The place of the Japanese-American is meant to be servile….But let us take stock of ourselves! What are we made of?" (To See Full Essay)

To see a collection of all of John's undergraduate papers.

John and Chiz

Kay's Friend, Circa 1940.

Nisei College students were well aware racial prejudice in the job market as well as broader society.

The Nisei's particular relationship with Japan and their vision for how their generation could get ahead in a prejudiced society appear as themes in many of the essays John wrote in college at U.C. Berkeley. In one such essay, John compares the lot of college-educated Japanese and African Americans as they face racism in employment.

“Why does the negro boy say, ‘I don’t know why I’m going to college!’ And the deserving Japanese, culturally an American, hands in his application for a certain position in engineering. He is refused! The president of the concern may be a man of high noble character and personality, but he will give as a refusal, 'My colleagues will not tolerate working with a Jap!' The opportunities are practically all closed now and the Japanese in American must be a servile race. For him only position such as gardening, farming, window-washing and small shopkeeping are open. The reason for this condition lies solely in the fact that there is a racial consciousness and a superiority complex which stand in the way of the young Japanese obtaining better opportunities…”

To read the essay in full. Excerpt comes from the bottom of the second page.
To see a collection of all of John's undergraduate papers.

"Notes on How the East and West are Blending" John's college papers, 1930s.

Outline for essay on Japan in Manchuria, John, 1930s.

"The Role of Citizenship in a Changing World" essay by John. 1930s.

These essays, along with others that John saved from his college years, demonstrate how he conceived of his place within society- an othered and at times maligned existence. John saw his position as similar to Black Americans, but did not deeply interogate the differences or the similarities. In these papers racial consciousness is not a tool for the oppressed, but rather, something to be avoided for a future of racial harmony. Also at work in these essays is an orientalizing essentialism of the East and a romanticized view of militarizing Japan. With limited experience of Japanese culture as it existed in Japan, John may have had some romanticized notions of Japanese culture. Most Nisei children spoke Japanese less than fluently. In the Yamashita family, kids spoke English at the dinner table, leaving the parents to follow the conversation in English. The second generation's conceptions of their heritage may have had some gaps, as did their understanding of the political implications and social realities of a militarizing Japan.

John yearned for a society without consciousness of race, and proposes that the Nisei could become a bridge for racial divide.

"We must contribute towards the bringing about of brotherly goodwill among races...Let us strive all with one accord to hasten the day when men can meet in sincere brotherhood, then peace and true understanding will reign among nations."

In this thesis, racial harmony could lead to harmony between nation states, particularly, the U.S. and Japan. John was interested in combining the best of both cultures to show America that there was something to offer in the Orient. This college writing is a bit essentialist, and at times even defends Japan’s war crimes in Manchuria. In his essay, "The Role of Citizenship in a Changing World," John drafted multiple times for various audiences. In it, he writes of the challenges to democracy in Nazi Germany and in fascist Italy, and how the U.S. must stand as the beacon for rights of citizenship and freedom. "The very fronties of democracy have been pushed back in the last few years until today the United States seems to present the last stronghold of democracy."

After the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the Yamashita siblings would burn their college papers on Japan’s cultural strength for fear that these essays could be used against them. (Many families burned all their family photos taken in Japan, believing that any photo or letter written in Japanese could be used against them. (Documentary Film "Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story") The wartime incarceration ended this line of optimistic thinking. Japanese American Nisei would no longer strive to be the diplomatic bridge between the United States and their parents’ home country.

Kimi

Kimi with her maternal grandmother, Ko.

Unlike the rest of her siblings, Kimi never attended college. Tomi brought Kimi and her younger brother Sus to Japan to be raised and educated. Tomi and Kishiro may have been planning on returning to Japan after a short period. Kimi was eight years old and had just finished 3rd grade at Lincoln Elementary School in Oakland. Sus was 5 years old. Kimi was sent to be with her maternal grandmother in Tokyo, and attended Toyo Eiwa Girls Academy in Tokyo, a Canadian Methodist missionary boarding school. Kimi stayed with the Murakamis during vacations and breaks from Toyo Eiwa. (Sus stayed with the Murakamis during the Hijirizaka boys' grammar school years since Hijirizaka was not a boarding school. Azabu Middle School was a boarding school so he lived in Azabu during the school year. Sus most likely spent his vacations and breaks in Naegi with his father's family, the Yamashita's.)

To see images of Kimi's childhood in Oakland and Japan.

Sending an eldest child back to Japan was a relatively common practice among Japanese immigrants to the U.S. at that time. Those children who were born in the U.S. and sent to Japan to be raised were called Kibei. Tomi and Kishiro sent both Sus and Kimi to Japan for some of their childhood. They may have wanted their first children to be raised there in order to understand the Japanese culture and to be able to succeed when the family decided to move back to Japan. Like many immigrants, Tomi and Kishiro may have, at least in the beginning, had the idea of returning home to their country of origin.

After she finished her senior year of classes in 1920 and was about to graduate with the class in the end of March, her mother called her back to be married in the U.S. So, she left Japan without attending her graduation ceremony. Many years later, she would say that missing her graduation ceremony was something she felt regret for later in life. Tomi may have communicated this by letter or telegraph, and Kimi, an obedient daughter, took a steam ship trip from Yokohama to San Francisco, 19 to 21 days at sea, leaving her life in Japan to start a life she did not pick for herself.

To see images of Kimi and Bob's marriage.

Tomi arranged for Kimi to marry a man of her choosing, Bob Ono. Ono was a happy-go-lucky guy with a green thumb. Bob, born in Niigata, Japan, had graduated from Oregon State in 1916 in agricultural studies, and continued there at the graduate level. He worked as a farm manager and horticulturalist. Born in 1886, he was only four years younger than Tomi and sixteen years older than Kimi. She would say many years later that her father, Kishiro, walked her around the block the day before her wedding. He told her that she did not have to marry if she did not want to. She went through with it because she knew that it would be an embarrassement to call it off. Bob and Kimi married on April 14, 1920 when Kimi was about to turn eighteen. Kimi was the only child among her siblings to have her marriage arranged by her mother. Was this common among Kibei children? Evelyn Glenn writes in her book, Iseei, Nisei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service, that Kibei children would more often conform to their Issei parents’ wishes, unlike their Americanized Nisei siblings, and that this reverence for their elders extended to arranged marriages.

Getting married to Bob Ono, a Japanese immigrant to the U.S. who had come after schooling in Japan (when did he come to the US?), meant that Kimi lost her U.S. citizenship. [Source: Page 2 of Kimi's application Feb 22, 1943 for Leave Clearance for her and her 12 year old daughter Martha from Jerome, Arkansas. Full Application Document] This was because the Expatriation Act of 1908 made it so that women who married non U.S. citizens lost their citizenship. The Cable Act of 1922 overturned this act and allowed women who were married to immigrants eligible for naturalization able to regain their U.S. citizenship. While opening the path to regaining U.S. citizenship for some women, this new law still excluded women who married Asian immigrants who were all ineligible for naturalization at this time. With respect to Japanese, a Massachusetts circuit court ruling in 1894 declares that Japanese are ineligible for citizenship because they are Mongolians, neither white nor black. A Supreme Court ruling in 1910 interpreted the Naturalization Law of 1870 to exclude citizenship for Asians other than Chinese. Another Supreme Court ruling in 1922 (Takao Ozawa vs US) upholds the 1910 ruling and specifically declares Japanese immigrants ineligible for US citizenship. Source: University of Pennsyvlania Asian American Studies site. Kimi eventually regained in 1939 and vote in 1940, registered as a Republican.

Bob, Kimi, with baby Theodore (Ted), circa 1921.

Kimi had her first baby, Ted, in 1921, when Tomi was having her last baby, Tom. Kimi and Bob moved to Watsonville in 1926 and lived there for ten years running a truck farm, raising vegetables and selling out of the truck.[Conversation with Ted during Oshogatsu circa 2012] Kimi would cook, clean and help pick beans and tomatoes during the harvest. Kimi had her second child, Masako who died shortly after birth in 1928, and Martha in 1930. From 1936 up until 1942, the Onos moved to Fresno where Kimi began to work at the courthouse gift shop (which paid $50 a month) in addition to her substantial home-making duties[Source: Kimi's WRA file, filled out forms]. Kimi's life followed the trajectory of many Issei immigrants, who worked as farmers and farm laborers. Those who owned their farms, had the title in their kids' names since those born in Japan were unable to naturalize or own land. Kimi must have missed the refined life she had growing up. What was that life like? Unlike the rest of her siblings, she got to meet and know her maternal (Murakami) grandmother in Tokyo who hosted salons and kabuki artists at her house and was of samurai lineage.

Susumu

Sus Yamashita, photo likely taken in Japan.

Along with his older sister, Sus spent much of his childhood in Japan. Tomi took both Kimi and Sus (her first two children) to Japan to be raised by family there with Kimi staying with Tomi's parents in Tokyo and Sus staying with Kishiro's family in Naegi Gifu-ken. The family intended to return to Japan(Source: Iyo's Oral History Interview 1995). I wonder when they intended to return.

An album of Sus' childhood photos in Oakland and then in Naegi, Japan.

Tomi toted her third child, Chizu a toddler on the trip in June 1910. Kimi would have been 8 years old and Sus would have been five. Sus stayed in Naegi with Kishiro's family. (See photos of Kishiro's family here.) Susumu lived across the street from his grandparents. They both started school in March 1911 in Tokyo; Kimi at Toyo Eiwa Girls Academy and Sus at Hijirizaka Boys Grammar School.

Next, Sus attended Azabu Middle School, a boarding school, and lived in Azabu during the school year. Although it was started by a Christian as an off-shoot school of Toyo Eiwa, Azabu was not organized as a Christian school. Tomi likely wanted her children to get a Christian education in Japan if possible, since she had converted to Christianity. But Kishiro was decidedly not to convert, and may have liked this arrangement.

Susumu spent his vacations and breaks in Naegi with the Yamashita side of the family, although he may have been exposed to the Murakami household where Kimi grew up for much of her childhood. Tomi’s father, Tokichi, was a retired samurai whose family became sword makers. Ko, Tomi’s mother, was a patron of the arts and held "salons" in their Tokyo home to entertain artists.

There are far fewer photos of Sus as a child and young adult than Kimi. This may reflect how he was received differently by his father's family compared to how Kimi was treated and beloved by her mother Tomi's family in Tokyo. A common kibei (children born in the U.S. and raised in Japan) experience is one that includes some level of rejection or resentment from their extended family who are handed the resonsibility of taking care of kibei kids. Browse a collection of photographs of Sus from his years in Oakland High School after returning to Oakland from Japan to his wedding photos when he married Kiyo Kitano in 1940.

Kishiro and Tomi with kids-- Kimi, Sus and Chiz, with friends in Golden Gate Park, 1909.

Sus and Family in Japan (?) circa 1915-1920.

Sus came back to the U.S. to attend U.C. Berkeley, and went on to complete a one year Masters program at Harvard Business School. He travelled Europe to look for business opportunities, but eventually ended up back in the Bay Area, and found employment with Mitsubishi, a Japan-based company that had an office in San Francisco.

He married Kiyo Kitano in August of 1940 in San Francisco.

Kimi's daughter, Marty (Ono) Uyeki, remembers the 1940 wedding, when she was 10 years old. Sus and Kiyo's son Ken Yamashita received this email from Marty Uyeki in 2014.

I recall the formal wedding was in the evening in a big church in SF, but don't know the name of the church or where the reception was. Everyone in the family, including me!, had formal long dresses. Grandma made mine. Iyo and your Mom's sister Masako were bridesmaids. Maybe your aunts Chiz or Sudie would remember about the reception and church name.
[Email correspondence to Ken Yamashita, 2014]

See the group portrait here with Marty Ono Uyeki as a kid on the left. A full collection of the wedding photo album and other photographs of Sus as a child is here.

Sus and Chiz, graduation photo.

Sus and Kiyo's Wedding, 1940, San Francisco.

Chiz Yamashita, in Oakland.

Chiz Yamashita as a toddler, on the return trip from Japan in 1910.

From an album that Chiz made in the 1920s.

After getting a nursing degree, Chiz worked at Agnes Hospital in Sacramento from a year, where she was the director of nurses. She married Edwin Kikutaro Kitow. She continued to practice as a nurse in Los Angeles and El Centro, roughly twelve miles away from Calexico, California where her husband, Ed ran a large melon and vegetable farm just north of Mexican border. She would return to the Bay Area at various times to visit her siblings in Oakland. Her siblings, John and Iyo would work for Ed’s company and live with her in Calexico in the 1930s. The lease for the company’s land was in John’s name since Ed was born in Japan and therefore could not own land (based on Alien Land Laws in California).

Marty (Kimi's daughter) remembers "[I] recall Uncle John was the "owner" and Iyo was the accountant bookkeeper, necessitating a trip to Calexico in the summer. They stopped in Fresno where we lived and I looked forward to their visits en route south and back to Oakland"(2017 email).

Ed or Kikutaro had come over to the U.S. at the age of twelve, starting school at Adams Grammar School in San Francisco. The land laws in the California forbade non-U.S. citizens from owning land, leading many Japanese Issei farmers to register their leases in their American-born children’s names. In 1934, Chiz gave birth to her only son Kiku, called "Kix." Ed and Chiz brought him to Japan in 1937, staying there from August to November. During removal of all people of Japanese descent from the West Coast of the U.S., she drove up with her husband and kid, Kiku “Kix,” to stay with Kiyo and Sus and the rest of the family so that the family would not be separated during removal and detention.

From Chiz's graduation book, 1931.

Chiz and Ed Kitow's Wedding Photo

Kix with Tomi, visiting Calexico.

Photo from Chiz, Ed and Kix's trip to Japan in 1937. This is most likely Ed's family in Tokyo. Back row (left to right): Unknown, Ed, Chiz. Seated: Ed's mother (Tome Ishikawa Kitow) with Kix.