Nisei Role Playing: Mock Trial

John Yamashita' college papers reveal his generation's interest in advancing their social and economic standing in the U.S. This collection of 1930s ephemera provide insight into how similarly positioned college-educated Japanese Americans understood their place in American society pre-World War II.

While attending U.C. Berkeley, John participated in a mock trial organized 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." And a separate mock trial was organized on the question of whether or not “the Japanese American youth fulfilling his role.” These mock trial debate topics reveal an anxiety among Japanese Americans around the questions of how to succeed amidst barriers of racial discrimination. Many Nisei children of immigrants who made it through college found that they could not find jobs in their ideal professions. Among the seven Yamashita siblings, six attended University of California, Berkeley, but many were unable to pursue careers in their field of study. Some of the Yamashita siblings relied on employment from family members established in grocery produce. Nisei Cal Berkeley students wanted to avoid the fate of being stuck in low wage labor jobs even after graduating with a college degree. Japanese American students' debates reveal their understanding of how they could better be seen as 'true' Americans and advance their social position. College educated Japanese Americans were highly invested in promoting the Nisei generation's success. The mock trials were one platform in which to discuss this issue and in it they created a theory where they posited that entry into mainstream white American civic institutions would allow them to overcome racial barriers in employment. These documents also are colored by essentialist views of Japanese culture based in a glorification of the samurai code and also  reveal the unfortunate influence of pro-Japanese nationalist propaganda.

Photo from album that Chiz made in 1920s from her college years

Sus and Chiz

1932 Oct 22, Japanese Student Assoc. Debate on Status of the Nisei

In a position paper responding to the prompt of whther or not the Nisei had sufficient ambition, John discussed the challenge of racial discrimination in employment that Nisei faces and proposed overcoming this barrier by cultivating a sense of pride in Japanese cultural heritage of art and philiosophy.

“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…We must contribute to the bringing about of brotherly goodwill among races. We have a heritage that no people need to be ashamed of, a history that cannot be surpassed, culture and art developed through the ages, and a deep satisfying philosophy. These are some of the contributions we can make.”

 John accepted racial discrimination as the current state and emphasized hard work and individual efforts to push past adversity. The speech asked his generaton of Nisei to develop the qualities which they lack:

"The 2nd Generation Japanese are lacking initiative and individuality, qualities which are vital in the solution of this problem. We lack that courageous spirit and that enrgetic individualism, as exemplified by that rough-rider Theodore Roosevelt. We are too prone to sit back and say 'It can't be helped!'"

Mock trial documents argued that Japanese Americans should prove their worthiness for inclusion into American society by becoming leaders in civic insitutions like the YMCA, YWCA or church. The speaker notes even go so far as to chide Japanese Americans who are engaging in "general indifficerence and lethargic ways [by] Expending their energies and resources in group social activities among own kind, namely athletics and social affairs." (see page 20).

The theory developed in the mock trial could be an indication that Nisei thought the most likely way to access full citizenship was through social integration with the broader society (and particularly white society). Another list of notes which appear either as talking points for a debate states,

“If aware of rights of citizenship, must be contributing factor or element to American institutions or have not right to be citizens. As a foreign racial group enjoying citizenship privileges cannot take for granted citizenship, but must make clear allegiance and loyalty to land of adoption and become an asset and welcome element in that country.”

Even though the mock trial participants were themselves U.S. born citizens, these arguments respond to and recapitulate anti-Japanese sentiment building in California society at large by defining their own community as a “foreign racial group” and considering their birthright citizenship to be contingent on successful entry into civic institutions. Daily social practices were also considered part of a larger assimliationst project, with entreaties such as, “Must intermingle with Americans at every opportunity and occasion in order that said Americans will come to understand and know the Japanese as a loyal and distinctly Americanized people and group.”

While this could appear as creative arguments made for the sake of the mock trial exercise, these same positions and tendencies appear in John's sister's letters when she was incarcerated a decade later. At that time Kay was collaborating with both the War Relocation Authority incarceration camp administrators and American Quakers to get college-aged incarcerated young people leave clearance to attend colleges in the Midwest and East. Kay advised young people leaving incarceration and entering colleges against congregating with other Japanese Americans to project an ideal image of Japanese Americans as assimilable and approachable. Kay wrote in a letter to her brother John dated March 6, 1943,

 “I just got a letter from Mas Yamada from Washington U- who says-- sometimes I wonder myself just how the N. S. R. C [National Student Relocation Committee] went about picking as ambassadors of good will – I know I shouldn’t be one to judge characters but some of the fellows here are just plain drips. They just don’t realize they are so conspicuous when they bunch up into groups of four or five. Take for example yesterday noon at the Lee Hall Café I was eating lunch with an American friend of mind joined me that was all right, but what happened shouldn’t have happened. My friend and I were eating and along comes the first Nisei fellow, who I don’t even know, sits by us and then two more come and finally a fourth. I’m sure five Japanese at one table are far too much. Well this friend was so surprised, he didn’t know what to make of it hurriedly ate his lunch and left me. Gosh was I sore. Apparently the kids are lonesome and crave company—it’s a problem with every minority, but I wished they wouldn’t do it. St. Louis just won’t take anymore- one fellow was all set to leave and we received a wire from Wash. and a letter from the school- No More. I’m wondering with all the kids leaving for Chicago that we won’t be developing a Lil Tokyo all over again there. And yet, Gee I guess I wouldn’t mind settling in Chicago now, since I know I would have a few friends there."

Tomi in front

1930s, The Role of Citizenship in a Changing World

Chiz' album made in 1920s

1942 Letter from Frank Herron Smith to John

A Bridge to the East

For the mock trial on the question of if the Nisei are "fulfilling their role," John wrote, "We have been ostracized and detested. We have been referred to as the Yellow Peril." To address this challenge, he proposed that the Nisei act as a fuse or bridge between the East and West, finding the best in Japanese culture and giving it as a "golden gift" to the West. In this way, the cultural attributes of Nisei are framed as if they were operating on a platform for international relations. 

“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? We are Americans in manner and education, but we are by blood descendants of the Japanese. We claim our fatherland that staid yet progressive nation which is today leading the Eastern World into an era of productive activity. It is our country, Japan, that little island off the coast of Asia which has taken a place as the 'rudder of Asia'... Today the world's admiration for Japan lies in the wonder that such a little country with seemingly overwhelming handicaps can stand as a leading world power...Let it be ours to fuse the best in both cultures to make for something richer, and something nobler." (Full Essay)

John proposed that the ideal Nisei man combine the best traits of Japanese and "American" cultures but then quickly pivoted to talking about Japan's political endeavors in Asia, assuming that Japan is considered with admiration for becoming a 'rudder' in Asia. This trope of Japan as guiding and modernizing Asia conformed with Japan's vision for itself and one that it hoped to project in the wider world. Louise Young writes about this framing in her book "Japan's Total Empire" (1998).

"Following the model pioneered in Manchukuo, the autonomous phase of empire also denoted a new kind of colonial rule. First, Manchuria was 'liberated' from China by a movement for independent; later Japanese set up an adminstration in Southeast Asia under the slogan "Asian for the Asiatics." As vacuous and self-serving as these declarations seem in retrospect, at the time they were initially effective in mobilizing support both amon Jpanese at home and among the Asians who helped Japan create the new colonial institutions." (48).

 In preparation notes, John moves from themes of the ideal role of Japanese Americans as a cultural translator, Japan as a nation state and Japan's role in world politics, and essentialized notions of Japanese culture.  In one page, he writes, about the status of Japanese Americans as standing on a cultural and political fault line, "In ancestry and physical appearance, we are Japanese in birth, in education, in ideals, in ways of thinking we are American. We stand on the borderline that separates us from Occident and Orient." And in reference to the "present conditions," John described Japan with the phrases "Japan's influence in Asia have entitled them to be rightfully called the rudder of Asia" and "Japan is a second Prussia." These notes indicate the influence of pro-imperial Japan propaganda. John associated being accepted into American society with justifications of Japan's political and imperial endeavors "as the rudder of Asia" which would have neatly corresponded to the vision Japan was promoting as the rightful colonial power for Asia. The notes also include a romanticization of Japanese heritage in list format: "social heritage of centuries of stoical samurai tradition; loyalty and filial piety - cardinal virtues; artistic genius; venerable customs and ethical standards; bushido samuraiism".

John sums this up by writing "My mission to interpret east to west...We can be a potent element of peace and reconciliation, creating mutual regard, and so helping to hasten the coming days of world unity and international harmony." Japanese cultural essentialism is here employed to guide us to 'international harmony' and perhaps to soften the message of Japanese imperial conquests to an American audience.

This positioning of Nisei as a bridge to the East could have been influenced by a lecture speaker hosted by the Japanese Methodist Church Association in California which had been organizing lectures by evangelist Methodist Kanichi Niisato who wrote "For the Doho women in America... they have a great responsibility which is to foster U.S.-Japan friendship, prepare families, educate chidlre, encourage husbands, improve Doho society, and reform bad customs." (Hayashi 101-102).

Nisei students were invested in questions of democracy and concerned about rising fascism in other parts of the world, while striving to make sense of how to present and understand themselves as Americans of Japanese descent. In John's essay, "The Role of Citizenship in a Changing World," he wrote 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." However, John's essays for college coursework also include an outline of a paper in 1932 defending Japan's invasion and refused to acknowledge any war crimes in Manchuria (item page) by repeating pro-Japan propaganda including that the invasion was justified in order to protect Japan's investments. His arguments present their own contradictory thinking in which Japan's invastion was justified to "secure" an area that China had ceded control of whilst the area was also beset by Chinese "bandits" (which was a common trope used in wartime Japan to frame Chinese resistance as outlaws) that were trying to take back control. In the outline, the thesis claims the Japanese invastion and empire was best for the local population's industrial development as well as the Japanese settlers. And finally, Japan's imperial invasion  was also justified by simply citing the imperial histories of other great world powers. John's professor Thompson responded to John's outline essay by writing notes in the margin which indicate that he tried to push back against the fascist claims supporting the expansion of Japanese empire. Under the claim "Japan is taking military action to secure law and order," the professor respondws, "This is debatable. Evidence?" And under the outline statement "Russia with its Pacific part of Vladivostock naturally has designs on Manchuria," Prof. Thompson responded, "How do we know?"

Scholarship by Brian Hayashi contextualizes the pro-Japan currents that were shaping how Japanese Americans, particularly Japanese Methodists. Hayashi's book "For the Sake of Our Brethren: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism Among Japanese of Los Angeles 1895-1942" details the trend of Japanese nationalism amongst Japanese immigrant protestant Christian communities in California amidst the imperial conquests and colonialism. Hayashi writes,

"Japanese American Protestants were clearly not at the forefront of Japanese American cultural assimilation in the prewar period. The study contradicts this widely held misconception for the years following the 1924 National Immigration Act and finds that the Protestants were often highly nationalistic in their sentiments toward Japan and far less positive about American culture than had been assumed....In the 1930's, instead of joining white American Protestants in their condemnation of Japan's invation of Korea, Manchuria, and China, Issei male Protestants defended their homeland's foreign policy. Acceptance of Protestant evangelical theology did not determine one's political or cultural identity and as this study shows, Japanese nationalism and cultural identification with Japan were compatible with the new religion." (6,7).

John grew up in the West Tenth Methodist Church in Oakland after his mother converted to Christianity. He was active in the church and after college became a youth pastor, giving a sermon on Nov 10, 1940 at his Oakland church on the Dignity of Labor, Failure, Faith, Hope, and Love. While incarcerated in Utah in 1942, he also gave a sermon in September 1942 to Methodist internees there (sermon topics ephemera). While waiting incarcerated in Utah after having gotten accepted into Garrett Seminary, Kay reports that his sermons changed their tone in December 1942 Kay wrote that John's sermon at church "had a tone of real bitterness with I have never heard John to express and too it certainly wasn't up to his usual high standards."John's youngest sibling Tomi had converted to Christianity after immigrating to Oakland and had become active in the Methodist Church. Kay (Kiye), described her mother's conversion to Christianity after coming to the U.S. in an oral history interview conducted in 1991:

“But I should explain to you that my parents were not Christians when they came to the United States. A lady, Mrs. Harrison, was very kind to my mother and my mother became curious, and after she got to really know her asked her what made her the way she was. She explained to her that it was because she was a Christian. My mother became, therefore, very interested in Christianity in general. Then, I don’t know at what point, but the Methodist missions became active in Oakland and all the way up and down California, and my mother became a Christian. My father was not. He was, in fact, anti-Christian. It was not until about the time I was born that he became a Christian. By then, he did not smoke, he did not drink, but he did not go to church. Yet when he died, we, the children, discovered that he had worn out [two] Bibles, so that indicates something. My brother became a minister later.”

Most histories of Japanese Americans pre-1941 endeavor to position Japanese Americans as culturally-assimilated Americans to contextualize the tragedy and injustice of wartime incarceration. However, wartime internment and incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans is made no less unjust by recognizing the degree to which Japanese American could have been unwittingly (and unfortunately) subscribing to pro-Japan propaganda circulating in their community. Research by Hayashi and Louise Young indicate that Japan was engaging in a communication strategy domestically and abroad in every available cultural and political front to support is imperial expansion.

While Hayashi's research focuses on Los Angeles communities, the Methodist church was active in Oakland, San Francisco and across California planting Japanese churches first as associated with the main churches and then as separate Japanese churches. Hayashi's research details how that the California Japanese Methodist congregations were collecting donations for Japan's wartime campaign in Manchuria from Japanese American congregants across California. Hayashi writes that in San Francisco, the Japanese immigrant community gave over $100,000 an average donation of about $9 per person. And there are estimates that among all Japanese Americans in the U.S. west coast numbering around 40,000 people collectively raised $650,000 or about $16 per person for the war effort(p 37). This mirrors what was happening across rural and urban Japan. Methodist social groups "fujinkai" were actively raising money for Imperial Japanese Navy personnel in Los Angeles in connection and partnership with the Japanese Chaber of Commerce after the Japanese military forcibly took control of Manchuria in 1931. Reverends in Los Angeles churches announced their familial ties to family members in the imperial army and asked their congregants to donate to Japan's military to support imperial conquests abroad. Hayashi's review of church records shows: 

"Shiroko Yasaki, the fujinkai secretary also explained the support in terms of virtues of sincerity: 'Now with reference to the North China incident, we will collect imonbukuro for the Imperial officers and men sent out there. We will donate them to the Motherland's military authorities. I suppose that a part of our sincerity will be revealed'"(106).

 The Methodist fujinkai was so successful at raising money for the Japanese military that the Japanese government's Finance Minister visited the Los Angeles Methodist Church to thank the congregation in person and donations lasted until July 1941. Fundraising for war in Japan was very successful following the effectiveness of of pro-war propaganda in all newspaper and radio outlets and a society transformed by patriotic and pro-imperial fervor as described by Louise Young in "Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism". Young writes about the wartime fundraising campaigns which in one year raised 5.3 M yen in "soldier relief money," 3.5M yen in imom packets for soldiers, 20M donations of sake, postcards, charms to soldiers which was collected during a depression with unemployment rising to 29% in Tokyo and when many citizens earned just 1 yen for a day's work. The 20 million yen donated from the populace to the Army Ministry by September 1934 represented just .008% of the army's spending on the war but represented the degree of ideological control and affiliation that the state had achieved among the general population in support of war and empire (174-175).     

John's Article for the Arizona Japan Weekly Times on the Japanese American Citizens League

Sus, Kay, Tomi, Iyo, John, and Tom (left to right)

Tomi on picnic in early 1900s in California

Kishiro and Tomi with children  (Chiz and John?). circa 1914

Tomi with Chizu

One avenue of Japanese nationalist sentiment and tendency gaining entry into Japanese Methodist regional networks was through the Japanese Methodist language schools which had formed in the early part of the 20th century. By 1925, the language schools formed a formal partnership with the Southern California Christian Fujinkai Alliance which was led by Japanese nationalists and had led successfuly fundraising for the Japanese navy.  The Alliance's leader Sachiko Furusawa was designated as Imperial Forces Comfort Abassador by the Japanese government and given a tour of the war front and was recognized as a leader by many Issei women(104). While this was being organized in Southern California, there were associations and conferences and personnel that linked the entire Japanese and white Methodist Church across California. John would have been closely connected to that network since Frank Herron Smith who closely advised John before and after college and guided him to attend a Methodist seminary in Evanston, Illinois had been installed in the postion of Superintendant of the Japanese branch of the Methodist Church in 1925. Smith had advocating assimilation among Japanese American methodists and also understood that the Japanese church was interested in breaking off from the white church to form independent congregations and organizations. He wrote, "In the new world of the Pacific our relations with Japan are of the most vital importance. The United States does not know nor understand nor appreciate Japan. The interpretation of Japan to our people must be carried out unceasingly"(57). So it is unclear how closely the Oakland Methodist church would have circulated in these nationalist networks, but Hayahsi's research indicates a level of Japanese nationalism among Methodists that was distinct from Japanese American Buddhist and Baptists congregations and networks in his study. John's apparent ignorance or lacking critical viewpoint of Japan's growing empire might have been insulated by a Japansese nationalist contingents among Japanese American networks in which he was socialized. Taken together, these lecture or essay notes reveal how the Nisei saw themselves as having the role of interpreting Japanese culture and Japan's role in the world to a wider American audience and ultimately produce uncomfortable truths about Japanese Americans' suceptibilty to pro-Japan propaganda.

These narratives also entered the wider public as well. John submitted an article to the Arizona Japan Weekly Times as president of the Arizona Japanese American Citizens League. In the article he invited the community to join the Japanese American Citizens League, invited Japanese Americans to study their Japanese culture in order to become more honorable American citizens, and framed Japan's empire in a positive light without ever indicating or referencing how Japan became a world power. He wrote,

"The organization in its first step pledged one hundred percent loyalty to the country of their adoption and its ideals and traditions, setting up a program to foster the development of the finest citizenship. That citizenship meant a true representation of that great oriental culture in America and to the world which looks to the Pacific basin for a new culture and civilization. At a time when Europe is again experiencing a state of turmoil with the post-war ideals of international accord tottering, may the world look to this area to see two powers living in amity fostered by a sane and wholesome understanding, enjoying mutual trade and social relations, their activities and culture proving to a mutual complement towards the maintainence of peace and good-will in this hemisphere." 

This article invited people to join the Japanese American Citizens League on a project of assimilation and entry into American civic life while also was engaged in narrative-making about Japan as a world power that should remain an ally to the U.S. in favor of trade relations.This article again mixes the pride in essentialist Japanese cultural traits. John mentions how the local Japanese farming community in Arizona did face threats of harm three years ago which is referenced in the article. In response, the JACL took steps to "settle misunderstanding," while also relying on the support of the Japanese government which also was attentive to the issue. In terms of how to deal with this kind of threat, John wrote about self-improvement-- "We can only pledge ourselves to an earnest study of Japanese culture, to a sincere sense of civic duty, and to a wise and judicious exercise of our rights and privileges as citizens, so conducting ourselves always as the proud sons of Japan."

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 of famliy in Japan, believing that any photo or letter written in Japanese could be used against them. One oral history source: Documentary Film "Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story") The wartime incarceration would indeed end 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. As the United States entered World War II and months later enacted mass removal and indefinite detention, Japanese American would be forced to redefine their relationship with the U.S. and re-imagine the ideal Japanese American