16— Japanese American Women and the Creation of Urban Nisei Culture in the 1930s
A version of this paper was presented at the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and published in pamphlet form in Susan Ware, ed., New Viewpoints in Women's History: Working Papers from the Schlesinger Library 50th Anniversary Conference, March 4–5, 1994 (Cambridge: Schlesinger Library, 1994).
For their insightful comments on this paper I thank Blake Allmendinger, Estelle Freedman, Peggy Pascoe, Vicki Ruíz, and Judy Yung.
1. Vicki L. Ruiz, "The Flapper and the Chaperone: Historical Memory among Mexican-American Women," Seeking Common Ground: Multidisciplinary Studies of Immigrant Women in the United States, ed. Donna Gabaccia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 151; see also her article "'La Malinche Tortilla Factory': Negotiating the Iconography of Americanization, 1920-1950," Privileging Positions: The Sites of Asian American Studies, ed. Gary Y Okihiro et al. (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1995), pp. 201-15. See also Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Mei Nakano, Japanese American Women: Three Generations, 1890-1990 (Berkeley: Mina Press Publishing/San Francisco: National Japanese American Historical Society, 1990). Eileen Tamura's study Americanization, Acculturation and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994) provides a richly detailed examination of the Nisei's education, work, and cultural shifts in Hawaii. Dissertations by David K. Yoo and Lon Y Kurashige provide valuable windows into the history of second-generation Japanese Americans on the U.S. mainland: see Yoo, "Growing Up Nisei: Second Generation Japanese-Americans of California, 1921-1945," Yale University, Ph.D., 1994; and Kurashige, ''Made in Little Tokyo: Politics of Ethnic Identity and Festival in Southern California, 1934-1994," University of Wisconsin, Ph.D., 1994.
2. Kashu Mainichi, January 5, 1936.
3. Kashu Mainichi, October 2, 1932. This excerpt contains no deletions; the ellipses are Tanna's own punctuation.
4. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), p. 55.
5. Ruíz, "The Flapper and the Chaperone," p. 146.
6. Mei Nakano, p. 120.
7. Kashu Mainichi, May 20, 1934.
8. Kazuo Kawai, "Three Roads and None Easy," Survey Graphic 9, no. 2 (May 1926), p. 165.
9. Yung, p. 134.
10. Kashu Mainichi, June 23, 1935.
11. Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1953), p. 133.
12. Yoshiko Hosoi Sakurai interview, Los Angeles, California, August 28-29, 1996.
13. Gene Gohara, "Domestic Employment," Current Life (June 1941): 6.
14. Yung, p. 157.
15. Kawai, p. 165.
16. Kashu Mainichi, January 20, 1932.
17. Hisaye Yamamoto, "A Day in Little Tokyo," in Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories (Latham, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1988), p. 119.
18. Kashu Mainichi, September 16, 1934.
19. Kashu Mainichi, October 30, 1932.
20. Ibid.
21. Hokubei Asahi, October 12, 1934.
22. Wakako Yamauchi interview, Gardena, California, October 3, 1995.
23. Ruíz, "The Flapper and the Chaperone," pp. 141-58.
24. From "Three Thoughts," Kashu Mainichi, May 22, 1932.
25. From "heartache," Kashu Mainichi, August 26, 1933.
26. Kashu Mainichi, July 10, 1932.
27. From "Feminine Interest," Kashu Mainichi, October 6, 1935.
28. Nakano Glenn, p. 57.
29. I discuss Nisei women's views of love and marriage, and focus on the "I'm Telling You Deirdre" column, in "Redefining Expectations: Nisei Women in the" California History (Spring 1994): 44-53, 88. For more information on "Deirdre"—Mary Oyama Mittwer—see my article, "Desperately Seeking 'Deirdre': Gender Roles, Multicultural Relations, and Nisei Women Writers of the 1930s," Frontiers 12, no. 1 (1991): 19-32.
30. Kashu Mainichi, March 4, 1934.
31. Kashu Mainichi, January 8, 1932.
32. Kashu Mainichi, June 4, 1932.
33. Kashu Mainichi, December 2, 1931.
34. Peggy Pascoe's work on anti-miscegenation law is especially useful; see her articles: "Race, Gender, and the Privileges of Property: On the Significance of Miscegenation Law in the U.S. West," in this volume; "Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America," Journal of American History 83, no. 1 (June 1996): 44-69; and "Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: The Case of Interracial Marriage," Frontiers 12, no. 1 (1991): 5-18. For a detailed discussion of anti-miscegenation laws and their application to Asian Americans, see Megumi Dick Osumi, "Asians and California's Anti-Miscegenation Laws," in Asian and Pacific American Experiences: Women's Perspectives, ed. Nobuya Tsuchida (Minneapolis: Asian/Pacific American Learning Resource Center and General College, University of Minnesota, 1982), pp. 1-37.
35. Yoshiko Uchida, Picture Bride (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987), p. 134.
36. Yamamoto, p. 116.
37. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1974), p. 127.
38. The Japanese American community was highly conscious of outside scrutiny and responded, in Harry H. L. Kitano's words, with "appeals to all individuals to behave in a manner that would reflect to the benefit of all Japanese." Kitano, Japanese Americans: The Evolution of a Subculture, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1976), p. 36.
39. Dana Y Takagi, "Personality and History: Hostile Nisei Women," Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospectsfor Asian American Studies, ed. Gary Y Okihiro et al. (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988), p. 187.
40. Sone, p. 28.
41. Sone, p. 27.
42. Hokubei Asahi, October 11, 1934.
43. Ibid.
44. Hokubei Asahi, November 5, 1934.
45. Kitano, p. 60.
46. Nakano Glenn, p. 38.
47. Mei Nakano, p. 120.
48. Kashu Mainichi, May 22, 1932.
49. Kitano, Japanese Americans, p. 50.
50. Ruíz, "The Flapper and the Chaperone," p. 151.
51. Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile, The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), p. 44.
52. Kashu Mainichi, April 16, 1932.
53. Kashu Mainichi, June 9 and 17, 1932.
54. Kashu Mainichi, April 15 and May 22, 1932. The Junior Girl Reserves discussion of "It" was doubtless a legacy of Clara Bow, the "It Girl," and the promotion of "sex appeal" in the 1920s.
55. Kashu Mainichi, November 17, 1931.
56. Kashu Mainichi, January 5, 1932.
57. Kashu Mainichi, November 28, 1931.
58. Kashu Mainichi, November 19, 1931.
59. Kashu Mainichi, March 29, 1932.
60. Kashu Mainichi, May 6, 1932.
61. A good illustration of Nisei women's roles as community organizers can be found in the successful political movement to seek redress and reparations for World War II internment. See Alice Yang Murray's dissertation, "'Silence, No More': The Japanese American Redress Movement, 1942-1992," Stanford University, Ph.D., 1995.