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1 The Early Years Th is sec t ion inc l udes La r r y Ta jir i’s writings during the decade preceding the bombing of Pearl Harbor and allows the reader to trace his developing social and political views. Tajiri, like the Nisei press itself, came of age during this period, serving first as English editor (1931–1 934) of Kashu Mainichi, an upstart challenger to the established Los Angeles Japanese vernacular Rafu Shimpo, and later as English editor (1934–1940) of the San Francisco Nichi Bei. As previously noted, in mid-1940 Tajiri left for a job with Asahi news service. These articles have disappeared. However, included here are a handful of the articles and features he contributed to the West Coast press after leaving for New York. Most of the selections are drawn from Tajiri’s columns, reportage, and features for the West Coast Japanese American press. The sole exception is the striking article “As American Born Japanese View Their Role in the USA,” which he sold to King Features Syndicate and which was then distributed to dozens of newspapers nationally—virtually the only mainstream feature by a prewar West Coast Nisei to see print. Its emphasis on the Americanism of the Nisei was meant to counter repeated charges of subversion by racist tabloids. Although the pieces are diverse in their content, a few important subjects and themes can be discerned—themes that will recur with frequency in Tajiri’s later work. One is his broad knowledge of literature and film, long before he became a full-time critic, and his concern for the relation of the arts to the social status of Japanese Americans. In his essay “Klieg Lights,” for example, Tajiri eagerly reports the appearance of Japanese American performers, as well as backstage workers, in Hollywood films. The essay hints at another continuing subject in Tajiri’s writing: the vital nature of mainstream media images in forming public opinion of Japanese Americans. Conversely, “Inter-Marriage” shows how various writers have started to demystify an increasingly common social phenomenon. In “A Nisei Writer, ’41” Tajiri not only lists a panoply of Japanese American writers but also urges his Nisei readers to gain a better sense of themselves by looking at the work of other second-generation and ethnic writers. He demonstrates in the process an impressive familiarity with such now-classic but then little-known figures as Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Carlos Bulosan. Another major theme in Tajiri’s prewar articles is the link between antiAsian prejudice at home and international relations. In the 1934 “Discriminatory Bugaboos,” Tajiri likens West Coast racial bias to Nazi oppression of Jews, although he discourages aggrieved Japanese Americans from court action against discrimination, and in the 1935“World Court” he explores the racist roots of isolationism. “Japanese Spies” exposes the scaremongering of the yellow press, whose repeated transmission of false stories of Japanese spies and agents, even after they had been discredited, helped set public opinion against Issei and Nisei and thereby prepared the ground for mass removal. In later years, as war engulfed Europe and cast a shadow over America, he drew the connection between fascism and racial bigotry even more closely. In “Nisei Writers and Fascism,” “Lindy’s New Role,” and “Race Prejudice,” Tajiri reminds his readers that they should join forces with other minorities to effectively preserve democracy. Perhaps the two most striking aspects of Tajiri’s early writings are his evolving attitude toward Japan and his efforts to define Japanese American identity in order to lead the Nisei (whom he dubs “these bilingual, sometimes bicultural, bipeds”) in new directions. In early pieces such as “Sincerity/El Monte” and “New Year’s Day–1934,” Tajiri lauds Japan’s “sincere” quest for peace, adopting a solidly pro-Tokyo line and language (notably in his references to “Manchukuo,” the puppet regime established by Japan in occupied Manchuria, which the United States and most other nations refused to recognize ). Even after his news dispatch on Japanese militarism, “Martial Law,” he continued for a time to justify Japan’s occupation of China, as in his 1938 piece “Major Fighting Is Over,” and he never took a public position against Japan. Rather, as his piece “Chinese Americans” reveals, Tajiri insisted that the Nisei as a group should remain neutral on the Sino-Japanese conflict, though individuals should follow their conscience (a doctrine that implicitly validated Nisei dissent). Even as he carefully distanced himself from Japan, Tajiri took an increasingly...

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