Japanese America on the Eve of the Pacific War

Overview

The era sandwiched between the 1924 US Immigration Act and the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor marks an important yet largely buried period of Japanese American history. This book offers the first English translation of Yasuo Sakata’s seminal essay arguing that the 1930s constitutes a chronological and conceptual “missing link” between two predominant research interests: the pre-1924 immigration exclusion and the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The anthology pays tribute to Sakata’s role as a foremost historian of early Japanese America and transpacific migration while providing an opportunity for a younger generation of scholars to reflect on his contributions and carve out a new area of research in Japanese American history. Original and translated essays from scholars of varied backgrounds and generations explore topics from diplomacy, geopolitics, and trade to immigrant and ethnic nationalism, education, and citizenship. Together, they attempt to catalyze further research and writing based on the thorough and careful analysis of primary-source materials, an effort that Sakata spearheaded in both the United States and Japan.

Reviews

“Researching the 1930s is a challenge in Japanese American history. This anthology guides us through the complicated research terrain . . . and provides a roadmap for the future.”
—Yuma Totani, professor of history, University of Hawai‘i

“A noteworthy achievement deserving of wide readership.”
—David K. Yoo, vice provost and professor of Asian American studies and history, University of California–Los Angeles

“This landmark collection adds new dimensions to Japanese American history in Hawai‘i, California, and the East Coast.”
—Valerie J. Matsumoto, professor of history and Asian American studies, George and Sakaye Aratani Chair on the Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community, University of California–Los Angeles

Author Biography

Kaoru Ueda is a research fellow and the curator of the Japanese Diaspora Collection at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. She is the editor of Fanning the Flames: Propaganda in Modern Japan and On a Collision Course: The Dawn of Japanese Migration in the Nineteenth Century.

Eiichiro Azuma is professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America and In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan’s Borderless Empire.