Nikkei Baseball: Japanese American Players from Immigration and Internment to the Major Leagues

3. Transplanted Cherries

3 Transplanted Cherries Transplanted cherry, set in alien soil . . . Who brought you, and when? Rooted now, your pale flowers, Grace the American spring. —Yoneko Noji1 . . . the little fellows are wonderful fielders, fast, and good base runners. —assessment of Issei baseball team, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 23, 19102 Tobesure,thearrivalofIsseitravelersfromJapanwasaslowprocess.Moreover, contrarytothenativist“yellowperil”theory,theJapanesewhocametothecontinentalUnitedStateslargelyhopedtoreturntotheirhomeland .Thosewhoarrivedwithintentionstoremainwere ,infact,aminorityamongthemigrants.By 1890,censusagentsfortheUnitedStatescounted2,039onthemainland,withthe majorityhavingsettledontheWestCoast.3 Duringthenexttwentyyears,others trekked across the vast Pacific. Among these first-generation pioneers, forever known as Issei, came Chiura Obata, Frank Fukuda, and Kenichi Zenimura. At theoutsetofthetwentiethcentury,these,alongwithotheryoungmen,traveled to the United States with optimism on their minds and baseball in their hearts. But all of their optimism could not overshadow the depths of resentment Asians faced upon their arrival to North America. “The western United States in general and California in particular had learned to despise Orientals before this Japanese migration began,” stated historian Roger Daniels.4 Indeed, the anti-Asian feelings had festered some fifty years prior to the appearance of the Japanese. Since 1849, when Chinese migrants, drawn to California during the goldrush,cametoseektheirfortunes,resistancetotheirpresencewasapparent. Regalado_Text.indd 24 10/24/12 4:54 PM 25 Transplanted Cherries As early as 1852, California Governor John Bigler announced, “Measures must be adopted to check this tide of Asiatic immigration.”5 Ten years later, Leland Stanford, while governor of California, also trumpeted the call to repress the Chinese, who he considered a “degraded” people.6 By the mid-1870s, economicallydepressedconditionsstimulatedfurtherharassmentandoutrightviolence against the Chinese. Among the most horrifying accounts occurred in Los Angeles , where, in 1871, an urban anti-Chinese riot led to the brutal murders of twenty-one. But the Los Angeles incident was not an isolated one. Even in the far reaches of Idaho, the Chinese encountered criminal assault. Between 1866 and 1867, a little more than one hundred died at the hands of mobs.7 Throughout this difficult period, local and state mandates were quickly adopted to curb Asianinfluence.8 Ironically,in1869,ayearthatsawthecompletionoftheUnited States’ first transcontinental railroad—an achievement attained with considerable Chinese labor—mainstream nativists, thanks to the writings of Henry George, adopted the “yellow peril” slogan as symbolic of their concerns that an AsianinvasionoftheWestwasimminent.9 By1882,therisingwesternparanoia over the perceived “yellow peril” culminated with the passage of the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act. Botheconomicandracialelementsstoodatthecoreoftheanti-Chinesesentiment . The California white working class, many led by Denis Kearney and his Workingman’sParty—werethreatenedbytheincomingChinese,whocompeted for jobs. Hence, “The Chinese Must Go!” declarations in California comfortably augmented the “Yellow Peril” theme rampant across the West. Indeed, by the mid-1880s, changing demographics also contributed to a racially driven xenophobicatmosphere.HistorianRonaldTakakinotesthatCalifornia’swhite population,whichmadeup99percentofthestatein1850,decreasedto87percent by1880.Hesurmisedthatwhites“felttheneedtoprotecttheirwhitesocietyand saw the entry of Chinese women and families as a threat to racial homogeneity and their view of America as a ‘white man’s country.’”10 Thus, on the eve of significantJapanesemigrationintotheUnitedStates,thephrase“yellowperil” was already part of the western lexicon. ◆ ◆ ◆ Though a sprinkle of Japanese first appeared on the United States mainland in the mid-nineteenth century, the initial wave took place in the 1890s. By 1900, 24,057 had moved into America, 10,008 in California alone.11 Driven to cross the Pacific largely for economic reasons, like others who ventured to America Regalado_Text.indd 25 10/24/12 4:54 PM 26 chapter 3 inthenineteenthcentury,Isseisojournersusedtheiridealstofueltheirjourney. “AmericawasthefirstchoiceofplacestogoforalmosteverybodyinJapanatthat time,” recalled Riichi Satow, a farmer who came with the early migrants. “We thought lots of jobs were available and the wages were double. . . . Our minds were filled with such dreams.”12 While California received the lion’s share of Japanese, another eight thousand landed in Oregon and Washington.13 “The intersections were clogged with crowded trolleys going in all directions and horsedrawncarriagesthreadingtheirwaybetweenthem.Myeyesweredazzled,” recalled one newcomer from Japan as he wandered for the first time through downtown Seattle in 1903.14 The majority settled into the Seattle and Portland metropolitan areas, while others moved inland to such outposts as the Yakima region in Washington and the Hood River valley in Oregon. As Issei communities grew throughout the West, so too did there emerge civicorganizationsdesignedtolookoutfortheinterestsofthenewcomers.The Greater Japanese Association was among the earliest of these agencies. Chinda Sutemi,theJapaneseconsulhousedinSanFrancisco,in1891createdtheagency “to increase friendly intercourse among Japanese residents, to promote mutual aid in times of need, and to safeguard the Japanese national image.”15 For all of its noble appearances, however, the Japanese associations, which eventually established offices largely in the western metropolitan areas, leaned far more heavily on...