Left or Right, Loyal or Disloyal

2025/01/01 by Vivian Yan-Gonzalez · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Asian American and Pacific Histories #Japanese History and Culture #American History and Culture

paper · doi:10.1525/phr.2025.94.3.299

Abstract

This article examines the first cohort of Japanese American voters in California in the interwar years, in order to explore the construction of racialized parameters on Japanese American political agency. Inter-imperial competition between the United States and Japan over the future of the Pacific, along with the popular and legal linkage of race and citizenship, produced a persistent distrust of Japanese American voters. Although Japanese Americans shaped their political strategies to appease these suspicions, militarized state demands for loyalty after the attack on Pearl Harbor sharply contracted their options from a range of diverse ideologies and partisanship to a narrow political spectrum based on loyalty. The specific racialization of Asians as “perpetual foreigners” in the context of military conflict produced unique political constraints for Japanese Americans.

Discussions

• My article on the 1st gen of Japanese Am voters is finally out! It explores how young JAs responded to anti-Asian racism as they proudly asserted their voting rights as citizens, & shows how the WW2 i [bsky, 7 points, 2 comments]

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