Results by title

82 books match the query 'Japanese Americans' and 6 start with p

cover of Pacific Citizens: Larry and Guyo Tajiri and Japanese American Journalism in the World War II Era

Pacific Citizens

Larry and Guyo Tajiri and Japanese American Journalism in the World War II Era

Edited, with and Introduction and Notes, by Greg Robinson: Foreword by Harry Honda

University of Illinois Press, 2012

Offering a window into a critical era in Japanese American life, Pacific Citizens collects key writings of Larry S. Tajiri, a multitalented journalist, essayist, and popular culture maven. He and his wife, Guyo, who worked by his side, became leading figures in Nisei political life as the central purveyors of news for and about Japanese Americans during World War II, both those confined in government camps and others outside.
 
The Tajiris made the community newspaper the Pacific Citizen a forum for liberal and progressive views on politics, civil rights, and democracy, insightfully addressing issues of assimilation, multiracialism, and U.S. foreign relations. Through his editorship of the Pacific Citizen as well as in articles and columns in outside media, Larry Tajiri became the Japanese American community's most visible spokesperson, articulating a broad vision of Nisei identity to a varied audience.
 
In this thoughtfully framed and annotated volume, Greg Robinson interprets and examines the contributions of the Tajiris through a selection of writings, columns, editorials, and correspondence from before, during, and after the war. Pacific Citizens contextualizes the Tajiris' output, providing a telling portrait of these two dedicated journalists and serving as a reminder of the public value of the ethnic community press.
[more]
cover of Pacific Pioneers: Japanese Journeys to America and Hawaii, 1850-80

Pacific Pioneers

Japanese Journeys to America and Hawaii, 1850-80

John E. Van Sant

University of Illinois Press, 2019

Shipwrecked sailors, samurai seeking a material and sometimes spiritual education, and laborers seeking to better their economic situation: these early Japanese travelers to the West occupy a little-known corner of Asian American studies. Pacific Pioneers profiles the first Japanese who resided in the United States or the Kingdom of Hawaii for a substantial period of time and the Westerners who influenced their experiences.
 
Although Japanese immigrants did not start arriving in substantial numbers in the West until after 1880, in the previous thirty years a handful of key encounters helped shape relations between Japan and the United States. John E. Van Sant explores the motivations and accomplishments of these resourceful, sometimes visionary individuals who made important inroads into a culture quite different from their own and paved the way for the Issei and Nisei.
 
Pacific Pioneers  presents detailed biographical sketches of Japanese such as Joseph Heco, Niijima Jo, and the converts to the Brotherhood of the New Life and introduces the American benefactors, such as William Griffis, David Murray, and Thomas Lake Harris, who built relationships with their foreign visitors. Van Sant also examines the uneasy relations between Japanese laborers and sugar cane plantation magnates in Hawaii during this period and the shortlived Wakamatsu colony of Japanese tea and silk producers in California.
 
A valuable addition to the literature, Pacific Pioneers  brings to life a cast of colorful, long-forgotten characters while forging a critical link between Asian and Asian American studies.
 
[more]
cover of Picture Man: The Legacy of Southeast Alaska Photographer Shoki Kayamori

Picture Man

The Legacy of Southeast Alaska Photographer Shoki Kayamori

Margaret Thomas

University of Alaska Press, 2015

In 1912, Shoki Kayamori and his box camera arrived in a small Tlingit village in southeast Alaska. At a time when Asian immigrants were forbidden to own property and faced intense racial pressure, the Japanese-born Kayamori put down roots and became part of the Yakutat community. For three decades he photographed daily life in the village, turning his lens on locals and migrants alike, and gaining the nickname “Picture Man.” But as World War II drew near, his passion for photography turned dangerous, as government officials called out Kayamori as a potential spy. Despondent, Kayamori committed suicide, leaving behind an enigmatic photographic legacy.
In Picture Man, Margaret Thomas views Kayamori’s life through multiple lenses. Using Kayamori’s original photos, she explores the economic and political realities that sent Kayamori and thousands like him out of Japan toward opportunity and adventure in the United States, especially the Pacific Northwest. She reveals the tensions around Asian immigrants on the West Coast and the racism that sent many young men north to work in the canneries of Alaska. And she illuminates the intersecting—and at times conflicting—lives of villagers and migrants in a time of enormous change. Part history, part biography, part photographic showcase, Picture Man offers a fascinating new view of Alaska history.
[more]
cover of Portland's Audacious Champion: How Bill Naito Overcame Anti-Japanese Hate and Became an Intrepid Civic Leader

Portland's Audacious Champion

How Bill Naito Overcame Anti-Japanese Hate and Became an Intrepid Civic Leader

Erica Naito-Campbell

Oregon State University Press, 2024

William “Bill” Sumio Naito (1925–1996) was a remarkable and visionary individual—the Portland-born son of Japanese immigrants who became one of the city’s most significant business and civic leaders. Every day thousands of people drive on Naito Parkway alongside Portland’s Waterfront Park, yet little has been written about the man for whom it was named.

In this first biography, Erica Naito-Campbell, Bill’s granddaughter, shows how his story is also the story of Portland, the city he loved. Naito’s life, from the Great Depression and World War II through Portland’s rebirth in the 1970s and its profound growth, tracked most of the major events in the city and was the catalyst for many of them. Through hard-earned success in importing and real estate with his brother Sam, Naito came to wield considerable power in the city, and his leadership led to much of what we consider iconic Portland today: the “Portland Oregon” sign near the Burnside Bridge, the annual Christmas tree in Pioneer Courthouse Square, and Harbor Drive’s conversion to Waterfront Park.

Naito’s name became synonymous with civic leadership, whether it was growing Portland’s urban tree canopy, revitalizing its downtown, or preserving historic buildings. But less is known about his difficult childhood—with a father who worked twelve-hour days and a mother whose treatment of him was harsh at best—and the racism he endured during World War II. After the expulsion of Japanese Americans following Pearl Harbor and his military service in Occupied Japan, Naito overcame great emotional turmoil to return to Portland and become one of its greatest change-makers.

Erica Naito-Campbell uses anecdotes, rich details, and previously unknown stories about Bill Naito to bring Portland’s history to life—while acknowledging that the cost of his success was a family rife with resentments and envy. Her book reveals the emotional wounds that drove Naito to become one of Portland’s most inspiring civic leaders, a pivotal player in the city’s journey from a moribund downtown to a national model for livability, urban renewal, and historic preservation.  

[more]
cover of Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory

Prisons and Patriots

Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory

Cherstin Lyon

Temple University Press, 2011

Prisons and Patriots provides a detailed account of forty-one Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans), known as the Tucsonians, who were imprisoned for resisting the draft during WWII. Cherstin Lyon parallels their courage as resisters with that of civil rights hero Gordon Hirabayashi, well known for his legal battle against curfew and internment, who also resisted the draft. These dual stories highlight the intrinsic relationship between the rights and the obligations of citizenship, particularly salient in times of war.

Lyon considers how wartime civil disobedience has been remembered through history—how soldiers have been celebrated for their valor while resisters have been demonized as unpatriotic. Using archival research and interviews, she presents a complex picture of loyalty and conflict among first-generation Issei and Nisei. Lyon contends that the success of the redress movement has made room for a narrative that neither reduces the wartime confinement to a source of shame nor proffers an uncritical account of heroic individuals.

[more]
cover of Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants

Pure Beauty

Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants

Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain

University of Minnesota Press, 2006

With a low rate of immigration and a high rate of interracial marriage, Japanese Americans today compose the Asian ethnic group with the largest proportion of mixed-race members. Within Japanese American communities, increased participation by mixed-race members, along with concerns about overassimilation, has led to a search for cultural authenticity, giving new answers to the question, Who is Japanese American? In Pure Beauty, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain tackles this question by studying a cultural institution: Japanese American community beauty pageants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Honolulu. King-O’Riain employs rich ethnographic fieldwork to discover how these pageants seek to maintain racial and ethnic purity amid shifting notions of cultural identity. She uses revealing in-depth interviews with candidates, queens, and community members, her experiences as a pageant committee member, and archival research—including Japanese and English newspapers, museum collections, private photo albums, and mementos—to establish both the importance and impossibility of racial purity. King-O’Riain examines racial eligibility rules and tests, which encompass not only ancestry but also residency, community service, and culture, and traces the history of pageants throughout the United States. Pure Beauty shows how racial and gendered meanings are enacted through the pageants, and reveals their impact on Japanese American men, women, and children. King-O’Riain concludes that the mixed-race challenge to racial understandings of Japanese Americanness does not necessarily mean an end to race as we know it and asserts that race is work—created and re-created in a social context. Ultimately, she determines that the concept of race, fragile though it may be, is still one of the categories by which Japanese Americans are judged.Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain is lecturer in sociology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
[more]