Reading essay on Asian American studies
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Japanese American Women and the Student Relocation Movement, 1942-1945 Author(s): Leslie A. Ito Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, Identity and the Academy (2000), pp. 1-24 Published by: University of Nebraska Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3347107 Accessed: 20-10-2016 19:10 UTC
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Leslie A. Ito
Japanese American Women and the Student Relocation Movement, 1942-1945
Michi Nishiura Weglyn’ was fifteen when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in February of 1942. Nishiura’s high school educa- tion was interrupted and her family’s life of farming in rural Brentwood, Califor-
nia, was terminated when the United States government sent the Nishiura family and 120,000 other innocent Japanese Americans to concentration camps and stripped them of their civil liberties. The Nishiuras were incarcerated at Gila Relocation Camp, one of the ten concentration camps in the U.S. interior.2 While in camp for nearly four years, Nishiura’s father did stoop labor on a local farm,
earning sixteen dollars a month, and her mother worked in the camp mess hall.3 For Nishiura and other Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) students, makeshift high schools were established in the camps that provided minimal public schooling. However, once Nishiura graduated from high school, her fu- ture and the option of continuing her education became uncertain. Fortunately,
a group of concerned educators, along with religious organizations such as the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee, had formed the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council (NJASRC). In 1944, she was able to acquire government security clearance to leave the center and was admit- ted to Mount Holyoke College on a full scholarship.
Nishiura’s story caught my attention while I was attending Mount Holyoke College. At first, I was merely intrigued by the idea of Michi Nishiura Weglyn, author of Years oflnfamy and one of the most important contributors to Japanese
American history, having attended my college. I learned later that three Japanese Americans attended the small women’s college in western Massachusetts in the 1940s. As I began research on the history of Japanese American students like Nishiura, I discovered that an entire group of Nisei students left the camps to attend college in the Midwest and East Coast and that their stories were much
Copyright @ 2000 by Frontiers Editorial Collective
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Leslie A. Ito
deeper and more complex than the merely geographic and cultural contrasts and conflicts that they encountered. Further research also revealed that of the Nisei
students attending college, roughly 39 percent were women.4 These statistics astounded me and helped me realize that the Nisei students’ history could not be
examined solely within the confines of race or gender, but must be analyzed within the contexts of both. In this paper I will discuss how societal and parental
pressures urged the Nisei women students not only to earn a higher degree but also to become representatives of the Japanese American community behind the
barbed wire fences. I will also show how gender and race further defined the Nisei women’s multiple roles.
I begin by exploring the complex lives of these Nisei women students on the
basis of gender and sexism, race and racism, and citizenship and loyalty. During the war Japanese Americans faced scrutiny that went beyond racism as the United
States government challenged their national loyalty despite their U.S. citizen- ship. I will also examine how the women students struggled to address the di- chotomy between social agency and constraints within an institutional structure.
Outside Assistance
In response to the educational crisis that the Nisei college students faced within
the concentration camps, influential educators, religious leaders, and a small number of Japanese American community members formed the NJASRC, the nongovernmental committee that was the driving force behind the movement from camps to colleges. Between the spring of 1942 and 1945, a total of 5,522 Nisei were enrolled in over 529 colleges and universities in the Midwest and East Coast, most receiving some type of assistance from the NJASRC.5 As the War Relocation Authority (WRA) prepared to release Japanese Americans from the concentration camps, and particularly after the federal government revoked the mass exclusion orders in December of 1944, the WRA also set the agenda and defined the role that these students would play as representatives of the Japanese American community in anticipation of Japanese American resettlement.
The NJASRC strove to create a controlled environment that fostered stu-
dents’ success and insured that they would portray a positive image to the rest of
America. The NJASRC identified colleges and universities that would allow Japanese
American students to attend, practiced “building morale” and “sustaining faith”
in Nisei high school students in order to encourage them to continue their edu- cation, and helped them fill out applications. The NJASRC and the government’s ultimate agenda was to build the faith and morale of students so that their families
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would also regain optimism and eventually follow their children to the Midwest and East Coast-away from the West Coast where they had originally lived.’
Although the NJASRC had an agenda for these students that reached be- yond their academic success and focused more on rebuilding trust and optimism, most students were thankful to the organization for assisting them. Kay Oshiyama,
who attended college in Ohio, regarded the NJASRC as a “blessing” and wrote, “It was the Council’s diligence and patience in its effort to help us that brought back the fire and enthusiasm to continue where I left off.”7 Letters like Oshiyama’s
inundate the official files of the NJASRC and such appreciation is echoed in many of the Nisei students’ oral histories. It is true that without the NJASRC’s
help and the bravery of the pioneer students who ventured off to colleges in the
first group of two hundred many Nisei minds would have withered behind the barbed-wire fences. Yet further analysis of the methods employed by the NJASRC
to choose the students who went to college and its political agenda for dispersing them across the country reveals that the NJASRC’s objective was not only to aid in the Nisei’s education but to produce model representatives or ambassadors of
the incarcerated Japanese American community.
In order to form this model group, the NJASRC evaluated the students’ eligibility not only based on scholarship, personal records, recommendations, and financial aid status, but also on the questionnaire form completed by every
applicant.8 The NJASRC used the questionnaire to assess the students based on two criteria, dependability and adaptability. However, these two qualities were not evaluated solely within an academic environment, but more specifically with
the intention of forming a network of Japanese American representatives who would both assimilate into American college life and reverse the negative war- time image of Japanese Americans.
The NJASRC’s selection process intentionally constructed a controlled model
to be sent out to participating college campuses, and it is thus no surprise that these students had few problems adjusting to college life. As Robert O’Brien notes, according to a survey taken of the first four hundred Nisei students to relocate, they averaged a “B” grade-point average after their first year of college
and were also involved in a wide range of extracurricular activities.’ The idea of assimilation was key to forming this elite group because the NJASRC expected them to dispel the Japanese American’s negative wartime image.
Many of the colleges favored Japanese American female students over male
students because they believed that women attracted less suspicion of espionage and wartime paranoia.’0 This rationale essentially opened up greater opportuni- ties to those who might have been previously discriminated against because of
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Leslie A. Ito
gender; however, it is also evident that colleges could not make the distinction between Japan, the enemy, and the American-born Japanese. As unjustified fear
of espionage and distrust associated with people of Japanese ancestry continued to plague the nation, gender bias reinforced the patriarchal notion of women’s passivity.
The NJASRC and the WRA strongly influenced the Nisei students by en- couraging them to believe that the program was a civic duty to the United States. Nao Takasugi, a NJASRC placement counselor, explained students’ responsibili- ties as “returnees”:
This is just a means to an end and in this way it is hoped that their contacts
will be not only with students interested in going to college but also with the
community at-large and thus they would have greater opportunity for help- ing families make their decisions on relocation. Your sweat and labor will not
be rewarded in terms of money but rather by a lasting satisfaction in your heart that you will have had an integral part in helping them wisely resettle in outside American communities.”
As “ambassadors of goodwill,” students in the relocation movement satisfied the NJASRC’s goal to assimilate Japanese Americans through education and physical dispersal while dispelling negative myths about the Japanese Americans.
Parental Influences
Students had dual responsibilities to the NJASRC and to parents who expectated
them to attain a higher education and fulfill civic and community duties. De- spite the traditional Japanese American family structure based on a rigid patriar- chy adopted from Japan, many parents of the women interviewed for this study
had little gender bias regarding education and actually expected their daughters to attend college.12 However, this idea of sending a daughter to college was not the cultural norm. In fact, prior to the incarceration, Nisei women were well- educated and competitive with their male counterparts only up to the high school level. According to Thomas James, financial constraints and the patriarchal Japa- nese family system prohibited many Nisei daughters who would have been eli- gible from attending college. James points out that many women were working to put their brothers through college instead of pursuing their own education. 13 Yet some Japanese American parents thought that becoming a part of the edu- cated elite would provide what Eileen Tamura refers to as “an avenue to middle class” and the “American dream,” an essential means to climb the ladder of socio-
economic success in the United States for both men and women.’4 Not only did
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Leslie A. Ito
these parents have a new outlook on their daughters’ education, but many had themselves led extraordinary lives.
Nisei women students were particularly influenced by mothers who were both better educated and more independent than most Japanese immigrant women
of their generation. Parallel to Stacey Hirose’s observations in her study on Nisei Women’s Auxiliary Corps, the first-generation Japanese American Issei mothers of female students were independent and in many cases served as the family breadwinners.15 The Nisei women exposed to their free-thinking, well-educated mothers were apparently less likely to become stifled by the patriarchal family structure that hindered so many Japanese American women. For example, Rhoda
Nishimura Iyoya, who attended Vassar College, described her mother as “a woman ahead of her time.” Nishimura explained that her ideas “were not typically first-
generation Japanese.”” Contrary to many Issei women who worked in and around the home, Nishimura’s mother ventured beyond the domestic work and became
one of the first women hired by the Mitsubishi corporation at the age of twenty-
one. After immigrating to San Francisco, she continued to work outside the home as a Salvation Army officer, again leading an uncharacteristically public life for an
Issei woman. Another Nisei woman, Esther Torii Suzuki, acknowledges in her memoir that her mother was “the first feminist to cross my path.”17
Not only were the Issei women educated in many of these families, but several Nisei women attending college came from families in which both their mother and father balanced a life of work and civic and community duties. Such
Issei parents expected their sons and daughters to do likewise. For instance, Kei
Hiraoka Nagamori graduated from a six-year college in Japan and immigrated to America to help establish the Jane Couch Home, a shelter for abandoned and abused Japanese picture brides and their children in Los Angeles. In the mid- 1920s, she also fought to keep two Japanese schools in California open after legislation was passed in California requiring all teachers to pass a written En- glish exam.'” Because she was one of the few Issei women who could speak En- glish, she was able to pass the test and continue teaching. Yet it is clear that such women were expected to shoulder what Evelyn Nakano Glenn refers to as the “double burden” of having to participate in wage labor and the domestic sphere.19 While actively participating in the Japanese American community, Kei also raised her daughter Toshiko Nagamori Ito. In addition to caring for their families, many Issei mothers took part in civic and community life, and the legacy of balancing
three lives was passed down to the Nisei generation, as exemplified by Kei Nagamori.
Many fathers of Nisei women also influenced their decision to go to college. For example, Masuo Yasui acted as a liaison between European American orchardists
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in Hood River, Oregon, and Japanese farmworkers. He arranged contracts and loaned the Issei money for down payments on land.20 A few fathers, such as Michi Yasui’s, were able to read and write English. These men were more likely to be exposed to the dominant culture and found that educating their daughters as well as their sons was a social and economic necessity for moving beyond the ethnic enclaves and the agricultural fields for more financial stability and inde- pendence.
Wartime arrests and incarceration uprooted both patriarchal structure within
the family and the power held by the Japanese American community leaders. As
Roger Daniels notes, within the first week of the Pearl Harbor bombings, the FBI detained fifteen hundred Japanese community leaders on the West Coast from their list of allegedly dangerous aliens.21 Among this first group to be incar-
cerated was Mr. Kiro Nagano, the president of the Judo Federation in Los Ange- les and owner of a wholesale produce company. The FBI sweep marked a turning point in many Nisei lives, including that of Kiro’s daughter, Momo, who sud- denly inherited increased family responsibilities. At the age of sixteen, Momo became responsible for helping her mother settle their business and consolidate
all their belongings when they were incarcerated in April 1942.22 As both Valerie Matsumoto and Mei Nakano discuss, many Japanese American
families experienced fragmentation as opportunities of school, work, and mili-
tary service became alternatives to incarceration. The Nagano family provides a good example. Momo’s eldest brother received security clearance to leave Manzanar
and finish his architecture degree. Concurrently, Nagano’s younger brother vol- unteered for the army reserve training program to show his loyalty to America. Meanwhile, Nagano’s father was sent to several different concentration camps across the nation and remained separated from his family.23 When Nagano’s brothers
departed from camp to pursue life outside, they left her with the filial responsi-
bility of caring for their mother and keeping track of their father’s whereabouts.
Thus Nagano temporarily abandoned her own plans of a college education to fulfill her duties as a faithful daughter. As both James and Matsumoto state, for many Nisei women in the camps, relocating was a difficult process tied to family obligations.24 Nagano’s responsibility to her family was firmly rooted in the pa- triarchal structure of the Japanese American family, and while her brothers had
the liberty of pursuing their lives, her plans were deferred. Eventually she was able to reunite her mother and father after months of assembling documentary
affidavits in Mr. Nagano’s support and attending his hearing in Santa Fe, New Mexico.25 Momo was then able to free herself to pursue future goals and an education at Wheaton College. The circumstances that Nagano faced in reuniting
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her parents forced her to take a more active public and political role. Through this
process she became more independent and filled the leadership role left to her by
her father and brothers by navigating the family during this time of separation.
The Camps and Individual Determination The concentration camp experience often catalyzed a shift in the patriarchal family
structure, as was the case of the Nagano family. Nakano and Matsumoto both show that men were no longer the main breadwinners of the family after incar- ceration. And in some cases Issei men were separated completely from their fami-
lies in Department of Justice concentration camps. Some women were thus freed from many traditional domestic chores because of the communal setting in the camps and the separation of their families.26
Relations between parents and children also changed. The incarceration undermined parental authority thus allowing children more independence and freedom for young Nisei to develop their own interests and goals. Many young women continued to take the traditional path of getting married and becoming a wife, or in some cases felt obligated to take care of younger siblings or elderly parents inside the concentration camps. Nevertheless, the reconfiguration of the family structure in the concentration camps prompted a new social standing that
gave some young single Nisei women the confidence and courage to venture on
to college.27
The WRA, the NJASRC, families, and communities expected the chosen students to be goodwill ambassadors through their daily interactions with main- stream America and their more formal speaking engagements. In comparison to
the segregated male troops of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and even the Japanese Americans who left the camps to work in the wartime factories and fields, these students were able to have more daily contact and interaction with
European Americans and were able to participate on fairly equal ground com- pared to most Japanese Americans who were forced into segregation. Through this daily, more intimate contact, the Nisei women became ambassadors.
The first of these daily interactions began as soon as they stepped past the
barbed-wire fence to travel from the concentration camps to the college cam- puses. Like the soldiers of the 442nd Combat Team and the wartime workers who left the concentration camps, most of the students took the bus and train to
their destinations, receiving their first look at America from the “outside” since incarceration. For many, their first taste of freedom was made bitter by long, arduous, and uncomfortable trips. For example, Hiromi Matsumoto’s trip from
Gila Relocation Center in Arizona to Mount Holyoke College in western
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Massachusetts involved a four-day trip by train and bus.28 Often students trav-
eled alone and encountered uncomfortable situations when sharing a car with U.S. soldiers and other hostile passengers. For instance, in August 1942, while Masaye Nagao Nakamura traveled from Heart Mountain, Colorado, to Park University in Missouri, the train conductor spat on her as she handed him her ticket.29 The psychological impact of this event had been so traumatic and scarred Masaye so deeply that she buried this story for nearly fifty years. Nagao’s recollec-
tion of this incident is a reminder that although the Nisei students left the camps
and were able to obtain an education, racism still plagued the country and left deep psychological scars.
As Monica Sone recounts in her memoir Nisei Daughter, Japanese Ameri- cans leaving the camps were cautious and intimidated by the possibility of racism that lingered outside the camps. Sone recalls leaving for Wendell College in Indi- ana: “In the beginning I worried a great deal about people’s reactions to me. Before I left Camp Minidoka, I had been warned over and over again that once I was outside, I must behave as inconspicuously as possible so as not to offend the sensitive public eye.”30 However, for Sone and most Nisei students, their rela- tionships with European American peers and professors were, in contrast, friendly and casual.
Student Life
Although many Nisei women anticipated some hostility on the “outside,” for the
most part the colleges that they attended were liberal and sympathetic to the Nisei’s difficult position, embracing the students and helping them to feel a part of their community. Considering the NJASRC’s careful selection of colleges will-
ing to welcome Japanese American students during such wartime uncertainty and distrust, it is not surprising that the Nisei students were well received. Not only was this controlled situation for the benefit and well-being of the Nisei students, but it also proved to be beneficial for the Nisei’s mission as cultural representatives. At most schools the number of Nisei students never exceeded five, and so the Japanese Americans on campus never presented a significant physical presence. Furthermore, the Nisei women’s positive interactions with their
European American peers and faculty served dual functions: The Nisei were able
to dispel the anti-Japanese propaganda that stigmatized Japanese American com- munity, and European Americans were able to show the Nisei their commitment
and desire to help. Although the formation of these friendships was no doubt genuine, the Nisei students were nevertheless always reminded of their role as representatives of the Japanese American community.
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The women recalled many of their European American peers being quite accepting and helpful. For example, Shizuko Itagaki recalled being graciously received by European American students at Simpson College, a Methodist-affili- ated institution in Iowa. On the weekends, Itagaki did her laundry at a European American friend’s house in Des Moines, and on a few occasions she came home
with freshly baked cookies, too. Itagaki was so touched by this kindness that she wrote to her family in camp about this encounter. Unbeknownst to Itagaki, her
father sent the family a wood carving that he had made in camp to reciprocate
their kindness toward his daughter. This incident served as a symbol of hope to the Itagaki family that the outside world was not as hostile as some had expected. Furthermore, this hope is precisely what the NJASRC had wished to instill in order to help ease anxieties of resettlement once the camps were closed.31
Unlike other Nisei groups who left the camps for work or military service, many of the student’s white peers also invited them to their homes for the holi-
days and vacations, which provided for further opportunities to interact and spread goodwill to their European peers and their families. As Esther Torii Suzuki states in her memoir, “Survival would not have been possible without many thought- ful student friends.”32
Because the camps were distant from the colleges and visiting required a permit, many of the Nisei spent their vacations on campus or in the area where
they attended school. In such intimate settings the women students also acted as representatives of their incarcerated and “suspect” community. For example, Margaret
Yokota Matsunaga, while on vacation from Oberlin College, accompanied a Russian Jewish classmate home to New York City because she could not be with her own family in the Heart Mountain Relocation Center. To help keep Yokota’s spirits up, the Jewish friend bought Margaret a Christmas tree and made sure she at- tended church on Christmas.33 Yokota’s experience represents not only a friendly
gesture, but also a genuine attempt to be sensitive and respectful to ethnic and cultural differences during a time of heightened racism and xenophobia.
Although the stories above give evidence to the NJASRC’s success at finding welcoming colleges for the Nisei students to attend, the NJASRC had little con- trol over the hostile sentiment toward Japanese Americans in the local towns surrounding the colleges. For example, Park University President William Lind- say warned Masaye Nagao that the townspeople were not pleased with the Japa- nese American students’ arrival and that threats of lynching had even been made.
He demanded that she be accompanied into town by her roommate at all times.
Nagao recalled, “It was really like having an invisible fence around. If I can’t go wherever I want to go by myself, it is like camp.”34 Other students recall similar
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Leslie A. Ito
situations, including Mary Takao Yoshida. In her memoir, she remembers being assigned a senior student to be her “bodyguard” when she entered Texas Wesleyan
College, an experience she found extremely uncomfortable.35 Although the Nisei students did encounter some hostility in their local towns,
only two actual incidents have been recorded in the history of the Nisei student relocation movement. Both incidents, known as the “Battle of Parksville” and
the “Retreat from Moscow,” revolved around protest from the townspeople. The
Battle of Parksville was a conflict between a group of residents from Platte County,
Missouri, who tried to prevent seven Nisei students from attending Park College. The Retreat from Moscow occurred at the University of Idaho where six Nisei students were denied admission after arrangements had been made with the uni- versity and security clearance had been obtained. In both cases, the Nisei stu- dents were eventually allowed to attend the universities.36 As James discusses, most of the opposition that the Nisei students faced came from the townspeople
living near the colleges, or what he refers to as “local protest,” which promoted the government propaganda of Japanese Americans as the “enemy” committing acts of espionage.37
Ambassadors to the Community
The Nisei students were encouraged by NJASRC to make public appearances in their college towns to speak about the Japanese American concentration camp experience to local religious and community organizations. For Nisei women, these speeches offered an opportunity to participate in the public sphere, and more than half of the women interviewed for this project reported delivering such speeches. For example, Masaye Nagao recalled giving speeches to local church
groups in Kansas City. For many of the students, presenting these talks proved to be extremely difficult. Nagao believed that there was a real need for European Americans to be educated about Japanese Americans and the concentration camps.
She said: “These people didn’t look on us as Americans. They looked on us as Japanese, as the enemy. No matter how much you said ‘We’re Americans,’ they just didn’t accept that. You had to be blue-eyed, blonde, white to be American.””38
Although audiences were for the most part accepting and responsive, on a few occasions, students occasionally encountered ignorant and even hostile audi-
ence members. Nagao recalled one incident in which a church member from the audience announced, “You should feel fortunate that we put you in camps where
you were protected.” Although she was angered, Nagao disregarded the com- ment and dismissed the woman as being unable to distinguish Japanese Ameri- cans from the “enemy.” From then on, Nagao was diplomatic and careful “not to
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Leslie A. Ito
antagonize them too much.” Such negative comments put the Nisei students in compromising situations where they had to restrain themselves from showing their outrage in order to continue being goodwill ambassadors.
Some Nisei students, such as Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi, had been trained, award-winning orators in high school. Matsunaga suspects that her oratory skills
caught the attention of the NJASRC, helping her be chosen. Matsunaga spoke to various organizations from the Lions Club to churches and high schools, more than three hundred speeches in the two short years that she was at Washington
University.39 Matsunaga’s speeches at first prompted a visit from FBI agents who were investigating a complaint that “there was a Jap who’s making speeches and propagandizing.” Matsunaga reminded them that she had been released from the Santa Anita Assembly Center with clearance from four federal agencies and asked them to come hear her speeches to alleviate their concern over the content. This incident clearly reflects the irony of the Nisei women’s role on campus and in the
local community. Many colleges had expected that women would be unassum- ing and cause less suspicion, but Nisei women were leading much more public lives and being more civically active than colleges had anticipated.
Representing Japanese Americans in places where Asians had never been before was a heavy social responsibility for students like Matsunaga and Nagao. They knew that the Japanese American collective image depended on their suc-
cess in reaching out to the communities on and surrounding their campuses, but speaking took a great deal of time from their studies. Gladys Ishida Stone re- called that when leaving camp in Amache, Colorado, for Washington University
she was “glad to be released from camp, but felt a tremendous burden to do well, not only for myself, but to be a good representative of Japanese Americans.” She explained the pressure of her multiple responsibilities by saying, “It was a very
hectic period of my life; I did not have the luxury of getting homesick!””4 Many students had to carefully balance their responsibilities in order to remain dedi-
cated to their own studies while also educating others in order to fulfill their duties to both the Japanese American community and to mainstream society.
Because of the wartime hysteria and dominant society’s perception of the Japanese Americans as a “sneaky, dirty ” enemy, proving loyalty consumed many
Nisei. They wanted to distinguish themselves from their immigrant parents’ gen- eration and to prove their patriotism. Nisei men had the option of serving in the U.S. Army. Since few Nisei women entered military service, the incentive to prove their loyalty to America through their presence on a college campus was attractive.41 They also undertook various tasks to prove their loyalty, which fur- ther complicated their lives on college campuses. Many students viewed their
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Leslie A. Ito
role as ambassadors as a form of service to the nation’s war effort. Yasuko Takagi,42
a patriotic student attending school in Denver, Colorado, wrote:
I am indeed fortunate to be one of the first groups to leave the centers for the
purpose of education. I will not overlook my opportunity and responsibility which rests upon me. I am here for a purpose and I shall accomplish my task
and shall always endeavor to do my best. My high American ideals shall re- main with me and I shall do everything in my power to serve this country and
help in any way possible and re-prove my true loyalty to the Stars and Stripes.43
As evidenced in this excerpt, Takagi recognized her responsibility to the Japanese American community as she left the concentration camp for college. It is also clear, particularly in the last three lines, that she views her role as a Nisei college student no different than if she were a soldier in the 442nd. This super-patrio- tism is a direct result of incarceration and a response to the misperception of Japanese Americans as the enemy.
Although for women the student relocation movement was one way to es- cape the camps and prove their loyalty to America, there were inherent problems
with their role. Even the word “ambassador” connotes a sense of foreignness, an individual who represents one country to another. Being labeled an “ambassa- dor” negated the Nisei’s status as American citizens. Although many European Americans assumed the Nisei were foreigners, the second-generation Japanese American students worked to counter this misperception. Hattie Kawahara was chosen by Mademoiselle magazine to write an article on Japan for its August 1944
issue. Knowing nothing about her assigned writing topic, she wrote a piece en- titled “I am an American”:
We may look Japanese but in our hearts and thinking we belong to the coun- try of our birth. We know no other life except that which we have had here in
America. Thus after Pearl Harbor, the evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to inland relocation centers, regardless of citi- zenship, came as a great blow to our security and hopes; but we never lost faith in the country which is our home.44
Kawahara was critical of America’s decision to intern the Japanese Americans, yet she hesitated to completely denounce the government’s actions for fear of being labeled disloyal and un-American. Her writing reflects the Nisei dilemma of choos-
ing between loyalty to the U.S. government and the principles of democracy, the dilemma all Japanese Americans above the age of seventeen grappled with in answering questions 27 and 28 of the loyalty questionnaire.45
Kawahara’s article, Takagi’s response to her role as a student representative, and the numerous speeches that the Nisei students gave were all components of
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their mission to gain visibility and dispel the wartime propaganda about Japa- nese Americans. These women tenaciously sought not only to be seen, but also to be heard in order to secure a new place for themselves and their families. The ways in which the Nisei women students actively sought visibility was excep- tional for Asian American women of this time period.
Nisei Students as Domestic Workers
In addition to the Nisei student’s role as student and representative, they also faced economic responsibilities. Although the NJASRC helped to solicit finan- cial aid from both the participating colleges and religious organizations, most of the students still had to find an additional source of income to pay for their living
expenses. In most cases, their parents were no longer in the financial position to support their children’s education because of the economic loss they suffered at the time of evacuation and because of the low wages paid in the concentration camps, which ranged between eight and sixteen dollars a month.46 Unfortunately, work for women students was limited to the domestic sphere despite wartime shifts in the labor market.
American women during World War II were encouraged by the govern- ment and media to work in the factories, replacing the men who had gone off to war.47 By 1944, in many cities, more women worked in the factories than the total number of women that worked in the whole labor force in 1940.48 Yet while
Rosie the Rivetor was off earning good wages in defense work, someone had to tend to the domestic chores, and college students were hired as domestic workers to fill the void. Housecleaning and baby-sitting remained one of the few viable
jobs available to help earn room and board while attending school. For Nisei women, this type of work provided needed income and yet another venue the “spread the goodwill.”
Although some Nisei women had clerical jobs on campus, most opted to become “school girls” because of the flexible hours and the incentive of room and board. 49As Evelyn Nakano Glenn mentions, for many school girls, this was their
first experience working in a European American home.5″ Although they had helped their mothers with the household chores for years, they had to learn how to cook European American food and clean house to the satisfaction of their employers. For example, Ida Nakashima Schneck, having grown up with no elec- tricity in a farming community in Livingston, California, had to be taught by her
European American employer how to do domestic chores, including using the vacuum cleaner.”
For the Nisei students, domestic work as school girls restricted their spare time, confining them to a schedule that left barely any time for leisure. The
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experience of Katsumi Hirooka Kunitsugu, who was a journalism student at the University of Wisconsin, is typical. In exchange for room and board, Hirooka washed dishes and diapers and did light housework for Dr. Mowry, an allergy specialist, and his family. Hirooka recalled: “Being a school girl, the hours that I wasn’t at the university I was mainly working at this home. So I really didn’t have
much free time except on the weekends.”52 Like Hirooka’s experience, other women
found little time for themselves after their studies, work, and ambassadorial responsi-
bilities. Their college experience often did not extend beyond these three roles.
In some cases, the school girls were not only employees of these families but also became an important part of the family unit. In Tomoe Murata Arai’s case,
her employment as a school girl for a Coast Guard family before the war changed the course of her life and helped her move from Hawai’i to the mainland. How- ever, when the war broke out, she was placed under house arrest and was unable
to return home to Hawai’i, where Japanese Americans were not typically in- terned. With the help of her adopted mainland family, Murata secured admis- sion to Connecticut College to finish her degree.53 In Murata’s case, her work as a domestic led her to the East Coast and eventually to reenter college.
Although the school girls’ experiences differed depending upon their treat- ment by employers and also by the type of work they did in the home, the stu- dents did not report any ill treatment, nor did they complain about being over-
worked. Perhaps this difference can be attributed to the difference between full-time
and part-time domestic work. In most cases, my interviewees went to school during the day and did the household chores and cooking in the evenings.
The Nisei women accepted jobs as house girls in order to obtain a higher education and have a better future than their mothers, who were for the most
part domestic and field workers. However, as William Chafe concludes, the women’s
sphere grew dramatically during the war period, yet the traditional role of women
and domesticity remained the same.54 Glenn also echoes this statement in refer- ence to the Nisei women’s broadened horizon that subsequently shrank during the postwar period.55 Like many women in the wartime defense industries who were forced back into the home when the war ended, even though most of the women interviewed for this project finished their degrees and some went on for
graduate work, almost all of them interrupted their careers to become wives and mothers.56
After College Nisei women continued to face challenges-of balancing careers, raising fami- lies, and pursuing civic and community responsibilities-after graduation. Most
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of those college graduates interviewed became housewives until their children were grown and then pursued their careers. For example, Shizuko Itagaki re- turned to college to receive her teaching credentials after the youngest of her four
children started elementary school, becoming a special education teacher in Cali-
fornia. She recalled, “It took some time to realize, gee, this is my job and that I’m
something besides a mom and a wife.”57 Similarly, Michi Yasui Ando raised six children and then returned to the University of Denver for her degree in educa- tion. She spent three decades teaching in the Denver public school system, dedi-
cated to promoting cross-cultural understanding in the classroom.58 However, during the immediate postwar era, despite the fact that they were
well educated and highly qualified, many of the Nisei women faced both race and gender discrimination in the workforce. Not only did these Nisei women experience what Chafe describes as discrimination against woman in professional employment, but they also experienced postwar racism against Japanese Ameri-
cans. For example, after Katsumi Hirooka Kunitsugu graduated from the Uni- versity of Wisconsin with a degree in journalism, she had difficulties finding a job. Commenting on this problem she said: “I think because being a woman was
one thing and being Japanese American was another. I did send out all kinds of letters and all that but received no replies, no encouragement whatsoever. So I came back to Los Angeles.””59 Mainstream presses rejected Katsumi’s applications, but fortunately Crossroads Newspaper, a Japanese American press, hired her as a columnist.
Similarly, Masaye Nagao Nakamura had worked at Scott Foresman, a text- book publishing company in New York City, and received her M.A. degree from the Columbia Teachers College, yet the Berkeley School District would not even
grant her an interview for a teaching position because of her race. Eventually, in 1949, Nakamura found a teaching position in Oakland, where she became the first Japanese American to teach in that school district.60 These accounts are typi-
cal of the sexism and racism that these educated, experienced women encoun- tered in the job market.
Conclusion
Nisei women’s wartime experiences, their position as representatives of the Japa-
nese American community, and the knowledge gained through these interac- tions significantly outweighed what they acquired in the classrooms. As Rhoda Nishimura Iyoya wrote: “I have learned that loyalty to my country does not mean blind obedience to our leaders. Rather, it is my responsibility as a loyal citizen to question such actions. My experience has taught me to examine issues
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carefully, to define my stand, and then to speak out and be an active, relentless and ‘aggressive’ agent of reconciliation.”61
Like Iyoya, other Nisei women who were part of the student relocation movement continued to carry their civic and community responsibilities with them by becoming teachers, lecturers, and philanthropists to ensure that the atrocities of concentration camps in the United States would not reoccur. More than half of the interviewees became educators, perhaps due to the restrictions of
the job market for women, yet many of them used education as a means to further their work as representatives and to assist disadvantaged students in in- ner-city schools. Four of the interviewees also used academia and the college library as a way to disseminate information. A few have worked as “ambassadors”
on various levels of banking, research, and medicine. Others became involved in their local Japanese American communities, both in their careers and as vol- unteers working with issues of redress and reparations, cultural retention, and politics.
In the late 1980s, some of the former colleges established the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative (NSRC) Fund. The NSRC Fund, spearheaded by Nisei Nobu Hibino, who attended Boston University during wartime, creates annual scholarships for college-bound Southeast Asian American students across the nation.62 All of these women have followed in the footsteps of their parents as
leaders and free-thinking, independent women, and all have contributed to the
Japanese American collectivity as they have continued to be among the most visible group of Nisei women.
Yet the history of these women and their post-war achievements have been overshadowed by the well-documented history of the Nisei male soldiers who fought in World War II. Similar to the decorated 442nd RCT who fought the double battle for America and their community’s civil rights, the Nisei students were representing Japanese Americans at home, preparing the nation for the re- settlement of thousands of Japanese Americans who were being released. The Nisei women played a large part in this “ambassadorial” effort not only through their excellent progress in academics, but also through their public speeches and interactions with employers, faculty, classmates, and others they encountered.
These women were acting as representatives between the camps and colleges, much like the 442nd RCT, yet they were expected to lead the life of a typical American college student-studying, working for room and board, and partici- pating in campus activities.
As the history of the young Japanese American male soldiers has shown, the experience of Japanese Americans removal to concentration camps reaches far beyond the confines of the camps themselves and does not end with the closing
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of the camps. The resettlement period, in which Japanese American women took
a great lead, is a crucial part of this history that is often overlooked. Within this missing link of Japanese American history lie the stories of the Nisei student relocation movement. The Nisei women’s stories captured in this paper show that although these women were given freedom for their education, they were not freed from the psychological and historical effects of this mass incarceration.
Still bound by the wartime racism and the sexism of the times, these women worked with the limited freedom that they had acquired to successfully fill the
roles and responsibilities as working students and representatives of the Japanese American community.
Michi Yasui Ando was attending University of Oregon when her education was interrupted by the war. Her father was a merchant and farm owner in Hood River, Oregon, in the prewar period. Her mother was interned at the Tule Lake Relocation Center, and her father was in a maximum security camp in Missoula,
Montana. Instead of evacuating with her family, Ando went straight to Colorado and enrolled at the University of Denver in 1942. She later received a M.A. in education at the University of Denver. She is a retired teacher, living in Denver.
Tomoe Murata Arai was born and raised in Kona, Hawai’i. Her parents and grandmother worked on the coffee plantations. At the age of seventeen, Arai came to the mainland as a house girl/baby-sitter. When Pearl Harbor was at- tacked, Arai was living in Connecticut and she was put under house arrest be- cause of her Japanese ancestry. The family that she worked for then helped her get admitted to Connecticut College. Neither she nor her parents were incarcer- ated in the concentration camps; however, her experiences as a Japanese Ameri-
can women on a college campus during wartime are still important to this study. Arai has retired from her position as a librarian at the City University of New York.
Hiromi Matsumoto Dye attended the University of California, Berkeley, until the war broke out. She then enrolled at Mount Holyoke College in March of 1943 and majored in mathematics and zoology. She also did graduate work in physiological psychology at Cornell University and in mathematics and engi- neering at UCLA. Her family owned an orchard in Winters, California, before being interned at the Gila Relocation Center, Arizona. Dye, now retired in Los Angeles, dedicated thirty-three years to work at Planning Research Corporation, where she became vice-president, the highest ranking position on its professional staff.
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Shizuko Itagaki (pseudonym) attended Simpson College in Iowa and completed her degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. The Itagaki family was from the small Japanese farming community in Livingston, California. She and her family were interned at the Amache Relocation Center, Colorado. Shizuko, now retired in South Pasadena, California, spent twenty years of her life as a special education teacher.
Toshiko Nagamori Ito was raised in the Los Angeles area. Her mother worked in a Methodist home for battered and abandoned picture brides and their children.
Ito’s father tried to open the Kato Silk Company in Los Angeles and later sold insurance. After finishing high school by correspondence from the Santa Anita Assembly Center, Ito attended National College in Kansas City, Missouri. She finished her degree at Chapman College with a major in sociology and later attend Immaculate Heart College for a certificate in education. She is now a retired school teacher living in Laguna Hills, California.
Rhoda Nishimura Iyoya attended Vassar College. Rhoda’s father was a Method- ist minister in Berkeley, California. She and her family were incarcerated at the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. Now a retired school teacher, she travels na- tionwide to give leadership seminars to women of color in the National Method- ist Church. Iyoya lives in Pasadena, California.
Katsumi Hirooka Kunitsugu attended the University of Wisconsin. Hirooka’s father was in the wholesale produce business in Los Angles before the war. She and her family were interned at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyo- ming. Kunitsugu has held several jobs as a journalist. She is currently the execu- tive secretary of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los
Angeles, California.
Margaret Yokota Matsunaga was originally from Los Angeles, where both her mother and father taught at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Japanese School. She and her family were incarcerated in the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming. From there, she attended Oberlin College to study music education. She is a retired public school teacher, living in Littleton, Colorado.
Fumiko Mochizuki attended McFierson College in Kansas during the war. Fumiko’s parents were farmers in Central California before they were incarcer- ated at the Rohwer Relocation Center in Arkansas. She is a retired school teacher,
living in Los Angeles.
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June Suzuki Mochizuki attended Colorado State University, Greeley, and Colo- rado State University, Fort Collins. June’s parents were farmers in the San Joaquin
Valley, California, and were later interned at the Amache Camp in Granada, Colorado. She worked at Western University as a counselor for twenty years.
Momo Nagano attended Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. Momo’s father owned a produce company in Los Angeles. She and her mother and broth- ers were interned at the Manzanar Relocation Center in California. Her father
was moved from several Department of Justice concentration camps. She has recently retired from her position as an administrative assistant at the Japanese
American Cultural and Community Center; however, she regards herself prima-
rily as a weaver.
Masaye Nagao Nakamura was born in Hilo, Hawai’i, and moved to Seattle, Washington, as an infant. She was attending UCLA when World War II began. She was then incarcerated at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyo- ming. In August 1942, she began attending Park University in Parksville, Missouri. She is now a retired elementary school teacher, living in Orinda, California.
Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi grew up in Los Angeles where her father was a real estate broker. She attended the University of Southern California before the war,
hoping to major in music. However, she was required to transfer to Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri, in order to continue her education. Nishi and
her younger sister, who attend Rockford College, were among the first to be relocated from Santa Anita Assembly Center. Once at Washington University, Nishi changed her major and received a degree in sociology. Later, Nishi received
her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is a professor in sociology at Brooklyn College in the graduate school of the City University of New York. Nishi’s research focuses on American race relations.
Ida Nakashima Schneck was raised in a Japanese farming community in Livingston, California, before she and her family were interned in the Amache Relocation Center in Colorado. Before the war, Nakashima attended Modesto
Junior College. From Amache, she transferred to Parsons College in Fairfield, Iowa. She went on to get her medical degree from the Women’s Medical College
in Pennsylvania and is now a retired pediatrician and is actively involved with the
University of Colorado Medical School in Denver.
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Emi Sasaki (pseudonym) attended the University of California, Berkeley, until Executive Order 9066, when she was sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center. Her
mother owned a candy store in San Jose, California, prior to the evacuation. In
September 1942, Sasaki transferred to Washington University at St. Louis, Mis- souri. She is a retired librarian from Columbia University in New York City.
Takeko Wakiji attended Pasadena City College before World War II. She and her family were incarcerated at the Gila River Relocation Center. In October 1944 she moved to New York City and enrolled at Hunter College as a junior transfer, graduating in economics and accounting. Wakiji is first-vice-president at the Amalgamated Bank in New York City.
Notes
1. I use both the woman’s maiden and married name on first reference; thereafter I
refer to her by her maiden name because that was how she was identified during her
college years.
2. Japanese American World War II terminology is problematic. Although the U.S. government’s creation of euphemisms was common, I will use the government’s terms only when they are used as official names, for instance, Gila Relocation Camp
or Santa Anita Assembly Center. When I refer to the camps in general, I have chosen to call them concentration camps, which should not be confused with the Nazi death camps.
3. Sheryl McCarthy, “Exposed: America’s World War II Concentration Camps,” Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly (fall 1997): 22-23.
4. From 1942, when the first four hundred students left for college, to the end of the Nisei student relocation movement in 1945, the total percentage of Nisei women
attending college increased by 7.3 percent (Robert W. O’Brien, The College Nisei [Palo Alto, California: Pacific Books, 1949], 131). Robert O’Brien was a professor at the University of Washington during World War II and was influential in the student relocation movement. His generous investment of time and energy in the NJASRC, the nongovernmental agency that assisted the Nisei in their college ad- mission processes, influenced his narrative of the Council and the students’ experi-
ences. O’Brien paints a bright and hopeful picture of the student relocation and presents only the NJASRC’s successes and the students’ positive experiences. He uses his book, College Nisei, essentially to commend the Council for their outstand- ing service. The College Nisei is also problematic in that O’Brien wrote it in 1949, only four years after the end of the war. O’Brien’s historical survey of the student
relocation and the Council are accurate, but his sociological observations and ac- counts of the Nisei college experience are outdated and were clearly made before ethnic cultures were appreciated and accepted as a part of the American experience.
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Because O’Brien’s book was a public relations piece and published soon after the war, The College Nisei becomes a valuable primary rather than a secondary resource for this study.
5. O’Brien, The College Nisei, 111. 6. O’Brien, The College Nisei, 65. 7. Original name has been changed in compliance with the rules at the Hoover Library
and Archives, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford Univer-
sity, Palo Alto, California, Thomas Bodine Collection, file 7.14. The official files of the NJASRC are housed at the Hoover Library and Archives.
8. O’Brien, The College Nisei, 63-64. 9. O’Brien, The College Nisei, 90-91.
10. Thomas James, Exile Within: The Schooling ofJapaneseAmericans 1942-1945 (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 127-28.
11. Letter, June 5, 1945, Japanese American Student Relocation Council Collection, box 43, Esther Takei folder, Hoover Library.
12. See Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns ofJapanese Culture (Boston: Houghton Miffin Company, 1989), 48-49; Harry H. L. Kitano, Genera- tions and Identity: The Japanese American (Needham Heights, Mass.: Ginn Press, 1993), 118-21; and Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, Transforming the Past: Tradition and Kinship Among Japanese Americans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), 97- 102.
13. James, Exile Within, 72.
14. Eileen H. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 91-124. See also Shotaro Frank Miyamoto, Social Solidarity Among the Japanese in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1939), 104-10; and Koji Shimada, “Education, Assimilation and Acculturation: A Case Study of a Japanese-American Community in New Jersey” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1974), 68-92.
15. Stacey Hirose, “Japanese American Women and the Women’s Army Corps, 1935- 1950” (M.A. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994), 9.
16. Rhoda Nishimura Iyoya, interview by author, Pasadena, California, November 25, 1996.
17. Esther Torii Suzuki, “Esther Torii Suzuki,” in Reflections: Memoirs offapaneseAmeri- can Women in Minnesota, ed. John Nobuya Tsuchida (Covina, Calif.: Pacific Asia Press, 1994), 94-95.
18. See Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 207-9.
19. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “The Dialectics of Wage Work: Japanese American Women and Domestic Service, 1905-1940,” in Labor Immigration Under Capitalism: Asian Immigrant Workers in the United States Before World War II, ed. Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 470-514.
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20. Lauren Kessler, Stubborn Twig: Three Generations In the Life of a Japanese American Family (New York: Random House, 1993), 75-76, 298.
21. Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 26.
22. Momo Nagano, interview by author, Los Angeles, July 20, 1995. 23. Nagano was arrested and taken to the Jefferson Boulevard Police Department and
then moved to the Terminal Island Penitentiary. From there he was moved around
from several detention camps-Fort Missoula, Montana; Fort Sil, Oklahoma; Camp Robinson, Oklahoma; and Santa Fe Internment Camp, New Mexico. These intern- ment camps were administrated by the Department of Justice, not the War Reloca- tion Authority. From December 7, 1941, to March 9, 1941, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) held over four thousand Japanese Americans in cus- tody at Fort Missoula, Montana, and Fort Lincoln, North Dakota. Eventually the U.S. Department of Justice had nine permanent and eighteen temporary intern- ment camps. These camps were under wartime censorship, and even today little information is known about them (Michi Weglyn, Years oflnfamy: The Untold Story ofAmerica’s Concentration Camps [New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1976], 176). See also John J. Culley, “The Santa Fe Internment Camp and the Justice Department Program for Enemy Aliens,” in Japanese Americans, From Relo-
cation to Redress, ed. Roger Daniels et al. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), 57-71.
24. Valerie Matsumoto, “Japanese American Women During World War II,” in Un- equal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, ed. Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz (New York: Routledge, 1994), 443; and James, Exile Within, 72.
25. Nagano, interview. 26. Mei Nakano, Japanese American Women: Three Generations 1890-1990, (Berkeley:
Mina Press Publishing, 1990), 146-48; and Matsumoto, “Japanese American Women During World War II,” 438-42.
27. See Matsumoto, 447-48; Weglyn, Years oflnfamy, 81-83; and Paul Spickard, Japa- nese Americans: The Formation and Transformations ofan Ethnic Group (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), 110-12.
28. Hiromi Matsumoto Dye, interview by author, Brentwood, California, June 14,1995. 29. Masaye Nagao Nakamura, interview by author, Orinda, California, June 21, 1997. 30. Monica Itoi Sone, Nisei Daughter (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1953),
219-20.
31. Shizuko Itagaki, interview by author, South Pasadena, California, August 21, 1995. 32. Suzuki, “Esther Torii Suzuki,”106.
33. Margaret Yokota Matsunaga, interview by author, Littleton, Colorado, January 7, 1998.
34. Masaye Nagao Nakamura, interview. 35. Mary Takao Yoshida, “Mary Takao Yoshida,” in Tsuchida, Reflections, 201. 36. O’Brien, The College Nisei, 87.
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37. James, Exile Within, 122. 38. Nakamura, interview.
39. Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi, interview by author, New York, New York, September 9, 1997.
40. Gladys Ishida Stone, “Gladys Ishida Stone,” in Tsuchida, Reflections, 335. 41. Approximately eighty Nisei women participated in the WAC (Hirose, “Japanese
American Women and the Women’s Army Corps,” 17). 42. Name has been changed in compliance with the rules at the Hoover Library. 43. Thomas Bodine files, 7.8, no. 6681, Hoover Library. 44. Hattie Kawahara, “I Am An American,” Mademoiselle Magazine, August 1944, Mount
Holyoke College Archives, Hattie Kawahara file. 45. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, PersonalJustice
Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians
(Washington D.C.: Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, 1997; Seattle: Univer- sity of Washington Press, 1997), 136-40.
46. Commission on Wartime Relocation, PersonalJustice Denied, 117-33. 47. See William Henry Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic,
and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 135-50; and D’Ann Campbell, Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era,
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 103-37. 48. Chafe, The American Woman, 139.
49. According to Evelyn Nakano Glenn, the role of the school girl dates back to Japan,
where domestic work was thought to be an appropriate job for young, single women
to receive domestic training for marriage (Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of apanese American Women in Domestic Service [Philadel- phia: Temple University Press, 1986], 124-27). In the case of the Nisei school girls, it may have been seen as a way to assimilate women into “good American house- wives.” However, the Nisei school girl may also be associated with the Japanese school boy who provided domestic labor in exchange for room and board while attending school. This was prevalent in Japanese immigration history to the United States in the late 1880s (Ichioka, The Issei, 22-28).
50. Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride, 125-26.
51. Ida Nakashima Schneck, interview by author, Aurora, Colorado, January 7, 1998. 52. Katsumi Hirooka Kunitsugu, interview by author, Los Angeles, April 22, 1998. 53. Tomoe Murata Arai, interview by author, New York, New York, August 31, 1997.
Although Murata was not incarcerated, she faced situations similar to those of the other women in this study in terms of gender, race, and nationalism. Murata was the
only Japanese American at Connecticut College. She recalled being mistaken for a mulatto because many of the students had never seen an Asian face before. She did
have a few friends in the concentration camps; they sent her camp newsletters and printed materials when she wrote a paper on the camps for a composition class.
54. Chafe, The American Woman, 188.
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55. Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride, 128. 56. Chafe, The American Woman, 174-75.
57. Itagaki, interview. 58. Kessler, Stubborn Twig, 264. 59. Kunitsugu, interview. 60. Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride, 112.
61. Rhoda Iyoya, “Japanese American in Topaz Relocation Center,” in No Longer Silent: World Wide Memories of the Children of World War II, ed. C. Leroy Anderson and
Joanne Anderson (Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1995), 275.
62. See Leslie A. Ito’s prologue in Gary Okihiro, Against Racism: Japanese American Stu- dents and World War II (Seattle: University of Washington, 1999).
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Contents
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Issue Table of Contents
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, Identity and the Academy (2000), pp. i-vi+1-231
Volume Information [pp. 225-231]
Front Matter [pp. i-vi]
Introduction [pp. III-V]
Japanese American Women and the Student Relocation Movement, 1942-1945 [pp. 1-24]
Young Women and Success: The Most Persistent Barrier [pp. 25-37]
Feminist Reflections on University Activism through Women’s Studies at a State University: Narratives of Promise, Compromise, and Powerlessness [pp. 38-60]
98 Crows; Crows; Leaves [pp. 61-63]
Seen but Not Heard: The Racial Gap between Feminist Discourse and Practice [pp. 64-81]
Beyond Speaking as an “As A” and Stating the “Etc.”: Toward Engaging a Praxis of Difference [pp. 82-104]
Chicana Feminist Narratives and the Politics of the Self [pp. 105-123]
Emancipatory Pedagogy?: Women’s Bodies and the Creative Process in Dance [pp. 124-140]
Dancing the Yes; In the Swim of the Rose #2; Ariadne’s Thread [pp. 141-144]
…Thighs [pp. 145-157]
Walls and Bridges: Cultural Mediation and the Legacy of Ella Deloria [pp. 158-182]
Cradle Casket 1; Stygian Blanket; Earth and Sky Blanket [pp. 183-186]
Cultural Hybridity, Gender, and Identity: A Pacific Islander Woman in the Academy [pp. 187-196]
Weave and Mend [pp. 197-209]
Orange Branch with Gold; Tree Altar; Circle with Seven Hands; Great Coat [pp. 210-214]
Kneading; Tea with Anastasia; The Stitching Doll; Lavienna [pp. 215-220]
Back Matter [pp. 221-224]