Analysis: The Japanese American Creed
"Analysis: The Japanese American Creed" explores the historical context and challenges faced by Japanese Americans during the 1930s and early 1940s, especially amid growing tensions between Japan and the United States. As Japan pursued an aggressive foreign policy, Japanese Americans, who had been present in the U.S. since the late 19th century, faced increasing scrutiny and discrimination. The fear among some Americans that Japanese Americans might be disloyal led to significant societal challenges, exacerbated by economic hardships during the Great Depression. In this climate, Mike Masaoka, a prominent figure in the Japanese American Citizens League, crafted the Japanese American Creed to affirm the loyalty and patriotism of Japanese Americans during a time of distrust. He emphasized the importance of assimilation and cooperation with U.S. authorities, even in the face of potential internment. Masaoka's address aimed to demonstrate that Japanese Americans shared the same values and ideals as their fellow citizens, countering the narrative of disloyalty. This historical analysis highlights the complex interplay of identity, patriotism, and societal acceptance for Japanese Americans during a turbulent period in U.S. history.
Analysis: The Japanese American Creed
Date: May 9, 1941
Author: Mike Masaoka
Genre: address
Summary Overview
During the 1930s, relations between Japan and the United States deteriorated dramatically, as the military became an increasingly dominant force in shaping Japan's expansionist foreign policy. As Japan invaded Manchuria in China and expanded into the Pacific, the United States, along with the rest of the world, became increasingly concerned. In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations over international criticism of its actions. The militarism of the expanding Japanese Empire and the growing likelihood of war between Japan and the United States caused fear among some Americans that Japanese Americans, who had been a significant presence in both the Hawaiian Islands and California since the 1870s, might be more loyal to Japan than to their adopted nation. In an effort to demonstrate the loyalty of the Japanese American population, Mike Masaoka (1915–1991), a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and national secretary and field executive of the Japanese American Citizens League, wrote the Japanese American Creed, which was read before the US Senate on May 9, 1941.
Defining Moment
The 1930s were not the first time that Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans had faced discrimination in the United States. Japanese immigrants first arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1855 to work on American-owned sugar plantations, and they arrived in California in the late 1860s as agricultural workers. Almost immediately, discrimination began, as evidenced by the San Francisco Board of Education's move to segregate children of Japanese ancestry. By 1907, the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement between the United States and Japan halted the segregation of San Francisco's schools (which was regarded in Japan as an insult to national pride), in return for Japan all but halting the immigration of Japanese laborers to the United States. Six years later, California passed the Alien Land Law, which prohibited Japanese and Japanese Americans from owning land. The Immigration Act of 1924, which established quotas for immigration from European nations, then ended all immigration from Japan.
The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 only made things worse for Japanese Americans. With jobs in extraordinarily short supply, unemployment in the United States reached 23 percent in 1932. The numbers for minority groups were far worse, as many of them—including Japanese Americans—worked in industries, such as agriculture, that were not included in the official unemployment numbers. Many Japanese Americans who had established their own farms went bankrupt. Japanese Americans as a whole, along with many other minorities, became scapegoats and were seen as economic competitors by white Americans. It was in the face of this discrimination that the Japanese American Citizens League was established in 1929 by those seeking to resist discrimination and help their own community survive the Depression.
Magnifying the impact of the Depression on how Japanese Americans were viewed by white American society was the fact that Japan was engaged on a long-term war of conquest both in China and among the islands of the western Pacific. Over much of the first half of the 1930s, the Japanese military became instrumental in shaping Japan's foreign policy. Turning their back on Western-style democracy, Japanese military leaders favored unity in Japanese leadership, with the emperor and the military effectively governing the country. In 1937, Japan went to war with China, and the democratic reforms begun in the late nineteenth century came to an end, as the military gained control of both political and economic life in Japan.
Set between pressure to disavow Japanese expansionism and reactions against discrimination in the United States, Japanese Americans faced a difficult situation as the 1940s began. Anti-Japanese feelings among the white population on the West Coast were increasing yet again. Though a good number of the children of Japanese immigrants had earned college degrees at California's public universities, their occupational opportunities were still severely limited. Japanese Americans were caught between cultures, and a number of educated Japanese Americans, such as Masaoka, began to speak out and reinforce that they were just as American as anyone else whose ancestors had come from another part of the world.
Author Biography
After graduating from the University of Utah in 1937, Mike Masaru Masaoka quickly became a leading voice in the Japanese American community, especially when it came to relations with mainstream American society. After becoming national secretary of the Japanese American Citizens League, Masaoka did whatever he could to reinforce the idea that Japanese Americans were patriots, whose loyalties were with the nation to which their parents or grandparents had immigrated, not to Japan. Not all Japanese Americans agreed with all of Masaoka's political and social positions, however, as he unashamedly supported complete and total assimilation into American society. As the United States slid gradually toward involvement in the war that had been sweeping through Europe and the Pacific since the late 1930s, Masaoka encouraged Japanese Americans to cooperate fully with any measures that the United States might need to take in order to ensure the loyalty of its citizens—including following government directives to relocate to internment camps for the duration of the conflict. After the war, Masaoka continued his work advocating for the rights of Japanese Americans, and died in 1991.
Document Analysis
As national secretary of the Japanese American Citizens League, Mike Masaoka certainly saw his role as a voice to reinforce the loyalty of Japanese American citizens at a time when many white Americans were questioning their trustworthiness. As the Japanese Empire swept through Manchuria and then the islands of the western Pacific, the discrimination that had always been a part of the Japanese American experience reached new heights. Certainly, many in the Japanese American community had ambiguous feelings about assimilating into a society that had never fully accepted them, but Masaoka's faith in the benefits of Japanese adaptation into American culture remained unshaken.
Masaoka's address, read in the chamber of the US Senate on May 9, 1941, only seven months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was an affirmation of his own patriotism, which he hoped would demonstrate the fidelity of Japanese Americans to the United States. Despite the discrimination he no doubt faced, Masaoka begins his address by stating of the United States, “I believe in her institutions, ideals and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future.” Nothing in his opening statement identifies him as of Japanese heritage, because to him, heritage did not matter in the United States.
Though Masaoka does acknowledge the existence of discrimination, he clearly defines it as an individual rather than a societal trait. To him, the institutions of the United States—as well as the majority of its people—do not discriminate against people of any race. It would be easy to argue with this assessment during the 1930s and 1940s, but to Masaoka, the promise of America is much more important than its realities. He is resolute in his belief that if Japanese Americans only go along with whatever laws are passed, opportunity and eventual acceptance by the white American majority would be the result.
Although most Americans wanted nothing to do with the wars that were overwhelming both Europe and Asia, many, such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, were gradually realizing that American involvement was becoming inevitable. Because of this realization, the loyalty of Japanese Americans was key to their being accepted as partners in democracy, and Masaoka's address calls on all of the typical American themes to try to persuade Americans that the descendants of Japanese immigrants were just as American as the descendants of European immigrants.
Glossary
franchise: a privilege of public nature conferred on an individual, group, or company by a government
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Kurashige, Lon. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934–1990. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. Print.
Takahashi. Jerrold Haruo. Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1997. Print.
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Rev. ed. Boston: Back Bay, 1998. Print.
Wu, Ellen D. The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2013. Print.
Yoo, David K. Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1929–49. Champagne: U of Illinois P, 2000. Print.