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Article Excerpt
YURI KOCHIYAMA, RICHARD AOKI, AND MO NISHIDA LIVED IN DIFFERENT GEOGRAPHIC locations, belonged to different generations, and traveled different political pathways. But Black oppression and Black resistance strongly shaped their activism as it emerged in the early to mid-1960s. I refer to them as "pre-Movement" activists--those who gained political consciousness and practice in the years preceding the advent of the Asian American Movement (AAM) and then provided leadership to that nascent movement. (1) Yuri Kochiyama is one of the most prominent Asian-American activists, famous for her connections with Malcolm X and support for political prisoners. Though little known outside activist circles, Richard Aoki became a leader in the Black Panther Party and the struggle for ethnic studies at U.C. Berkeley, and Mo Nishida worked with some of the earliest Japanese/Asian-American radical organizations in Los Angeles. Significantly, it was from their roots in the Black Liberation Movement that Kochiyama and Aoki emerged as early leaders of the AAM.
This article examines the significance of space and place, combined with the 1960s historic moment, for the development of oppositional consciousness and activism in pre-Movement Japanese-American activists. In particular, their connectedness with Black communities and Black protest was more important than any genealogical linkage to the Japanese immigrant Left, primarily because the latter linkage was severed through state repression and internal contradictions within the Left. By the early 1900s, a vigorous but small Japanese immigrant Left existed, influenced by Sen Katayama, the "father" of the Japanese labor movement and co-founder of the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA). But the politics of World War II, particularly the concentration camps and the errors of the CPUSA, including suspending Japanese American members and failing to oppose incarceration, resulted in the virtual collapse of Japanese-American radicalism by the early 1940s (Ichioka, 1971; Fowler, 2003). Issei and Sansei radicalism is thus marked by what I call "intergenerational discontinuity" (Fujino, 2007a). (2)
The AAM remains one of the most invisible social movements. Asian American Studies scholars have barely begun a systematic study, while other social movement scholars have all but ignored the subject (Fujino, 2007b). Not surprisingly, then, virtually no scholarly attention has been paid to Asian-American organizing in the pre-Movement period of the early to mid-1960s. Yet, it was a period of vibrant political protest throughout the nation and internationally, animating full-blown civil rights, budding Black power, and provocative New Left movements.
Why didn't an Asian (or Japanese) American civil rights movement emerge by the early 1960s? After all, widespread legal discrimination and racism dating back to the 1800s (McWilliams, 1944; Sandmeyer, 1973; Daniels, 1977), combined with their fairly assimilationist politics (Levine and Rhodes, 1981; Takahashi, 1997; Maeda, 2001; Kurashige, 2002), might have fostered protests demanding inclusion into the American dream. (3) Indeed, Japanese Americans were engaged in civil rights activism in this period. (4) But no large-scale social movement formed until the late 1960s, a period characterized by decline in the Civil Rights Movement and the emergence of Black Power. Some refer to this period as the "bad 60s" given the shift to self-determination, self-defense, nationalism, and militancy, and away from the integrationism, nonviolence, and the beloved community of the early or "good 60s" (Gitlin, 1987; 1995). Others, however, critique the "good sixties/bad sixties" dichotomy for disparaging the contributions of Third World and radical movements (Breines, 1988; Elbaum, 2002; Pulido, 2006).
At least two major reasons help to explain why the AAM emerged during the late 1960s and not earlier. First, Espiritu (1992) argues that key to the development of the AAM was the coming together of previously disidentified ethnic groups. Moreover, "underlying social and demographic factors ... allowed pan-Asianism to take root in the 1960s but not earlier." After World War II, economic barriers and residential segregation began to ease for Japanese and Chinese Americans. In addition, the children and grandchildren of immigrants met on college campuses and shared a common language, culture, and schooling. Though these changes may set the stage, demographics alone do not explain political transformations. Second, the nationalism emerging from the post-World War II anti-colonial movements globally and the post-1965 Black Liberation Movement domestically fostered the desire for, and creation of, racially autonomous spaces, as opposed to integrated spaces. Black Power promoted the critical concept of self-determination, or the ability to control one's destiny. These ideas were instrumental to the development of autonomous, self-controlled spaces of oppressed nationalities in the late 1960s; Morris and Braine (2001) view this as pivotal to the development of oppositional consciousness--and help to explain the emergence of not just the Asian-American, but also other "Third World" movements (e.g., Chicano, Puerto Rican) in the same period. It is in this context that I examine Japanese American radicalism in the pre-Movement period.
Geographic and Racial Segregation I: Concentration Camps
The development of an oppositional culture and consciousness resulted from generalized oppression and a particular geographically based form of domination, that of physical segregation. Morris and Braine (2001) theorize that "the higher the degree of physical segregation, the greater the likelihood of a widespread mature oppositional consciousness." In particular, oppositional consciousness is more likely to develop when group members control segregated spaces. (5) I contend that two significant segregated spaces shaped the oppositional consciousness and practice of pre-Movement Japanese Americans. First, during World War II, they were among the 1:20,000 Japanese Americans removed to U.S. concentration camps. Second, in the postwar years, residential segregation helped propel them into neighborhoods in or near Black communities.
For Yuri Kochiyama, born in Los Angeles in 1921, the incarceration thrust her, for the first time, into an all-Japanese environment. This was a dramatic change from her previously idyllic life, where she was so popular that she became the first female student government officer at San Pedro High School and so well-assimilated that she dated white boys in a period when interracial romances with whites were off limits, even for the most popular Nisei (Nakano, 1990). After five months of confinement inside the former horse stables at the Santa Anita "assembly center," Kochiyama (1942) wrote in her diary:
After listening to Maruyama, just had to write of the many things that are now racing through my mind.... I still believe in my own way.... Yet her statements were the feeling of perhaps a good three-fourths of the people here and not just statements made from bitterness, but from summarizing actuality. Yes, it's true that the Japanese people from the time they came ... tried to fight for equality in chances for good positions, but lost out because of racial prejudice.... [The Nisei] made good grades in school.... Yet what happened when they got into the outside world? Racial prejudice and discrimination told them that the school world and the work world were two different hemispheres; that what Caucasian teachers tried to instill in every student was only meant for the Caucasians; that the black and orientals would be looked down upon; that obstacles would be many.
Perhaps most striking is Kochiyama's observation that Asians and Blacks face similar conditions. She was allying herself, at some level, with one of the most oppressed and despised groups, at a time when many Japanese Americans held anti-Black prejudices. Also perceptible is the way in which the conversations of older internees like Maruyama challenged Kochiyama's colorblind philosophy. Kochiyama was beginning to recognize anti-Japanese racism, both current and past. Still, the process of replacing her colorblind worldview with a race-conscious one was precarious and uneven. She acknowledged "clinging to the faith I once had," but also wrote, almost unbelievably: "But not until I myself actually come up against prejudice and discrimination will I really understand the problems of the Nisei" (Ibid.). It was easier, it seems, to acknowledge discrimination against others than to see oneself as part of a targeted group.
For Kochiyama, this newfound awareness led to action. Not surprisingly given her whirlwind of community service activities, she wanted to help others, "even if it's just writing letters.... I'm sure something gripped me and touched me in such a way that I feel I want to fight, shoulder to shoulder with every Nisei for the right to the same opportunity as the Caucasian" (Ibid.). These words are the earliest signs of Kochiyama's later development into a civil rights activist. Yet, they contain a far different analysis of U.S. racism than she would later develop. As she wrote in 1942, referring to the Nisei, "deep within, below the bitterness and hurt, lies hope and faith in the America that is theirs." At this point, she viewed race discrimination as an aberrant event in a society committed to the "liberty and justice for all" promised in the Pledge of Allegiance. Such irregularities could be eradicated by reforming the system. By the mid-1960s, however, Kochiyama would adopt the belief that racism was deeply embedded in the development of the United States and remained a widespread structural feature of this society.
The lives of Richard Aoki and Mo Nishida, born in 1938 and 1936, respectively, further illustrate the role of geographic segregation in the emergence of racial awareness and an oppositional consciousness. A common assumption is that children experienced little trauma inside the concentration camps. But psychologists have found that the emotional impact of the incarceration continues into adulthood and even into the next generation (Nagata, 1993; Ina, 1999).
Aoki was three years old when he entered...
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