Looking Like the Enemy: Japanese Mexicans, the Mexican State, and US Hegemony, 1897–1945

Introduction: The Japanese Experiment in Mexico

3 Introduction The Japanese Experiment in Mexico Hemos nacido en México, trabajamos en México, vivimos en México. (We were born in Mexico, we work in Mexico, we live in Mexico.) —Ernesto González Gálvez, “Mexico-Japón: a un siglo del primer encuentro” (1997) On the morning of August 18, 1897, Mexican police awakened the Japanese consul general in Mexico City, Murota Toshibumi. Murota was informed that eight Japanese from the Enomoto Colony in Chiapas journeyed nearly thirty days through mountains and were in the capital waiting to see him. Five of the Japanese staggered into the capital together, and over the course of several days three additional Japanese appeared. What barely resembled clothing clung raggedly on the disheveled and malnourished bodies, with their faces so sunburned and swollen that the immigrants were unrecognizable as they stood there before Murota. Consul Murota immediately sent a telegram to the foreign minister, Shigenobu Okuma, saying: The police took five emigrants from Chiapas who had walked a great distance into custody. They are seeking the cancellation of the contract with the company and wish to return to Japan. I was able to reason with them and convinced them to return to the colony. I urgently request that funds be sent for their maintenance immediately.1 The eight Japanese immigrants that appeared in Mexico City at the doorsteps of the Japanese legation, along with the other Enomoto colonists, represented the ambitious endeavor to create the first Japanese colony in Mexico, which was intertwined with the expansionist platform of the Japanese government of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and Porfirio Díaz’s attempt to modernize Mexico with immigrant labor and Figure 0.1. Japanese population and movement from ports of entry, 1897–1940. Although the beginning of Japanese immigration to Mexico began in Chiapas, by the early twentieth century the majority of Japanese migrated to the northern region of Mexico, with the largest enclave in Baja, California. Introduction • 5 entrepreneurs. Over the next five decades the ebb and flow of Japanese immigration to Mexico mirrored the turbulent and vacillating trilateral relations between Mexico, Japan, and the United States. Although World War II exacerbated Mexican relations with Japanese immigrants, ambivalent attitudes toward the Japanese had existed since they had arrived during the late nineteenth century. To understand wartime relations, it is necessary to trace the experience of Japanese Mexicans back over the fifty years before their persecution, which is the aim of this book. The treatment of Japanese in Mexico during these periods was predicated on several intersecting positions, which are traced through important historical periods that coincided with profound change in Mexico and Japan. The advent of Japanese emigration to Mexico developed during the late Porfiriato and coincided with the Mexican Revolution, the postrevolutionary period and reconstruction of the 1920s, and the tumultuous 1930s that included the rise of Mexican nationalism. Consequently, Japanese immigration is placed along the contours of Mexican history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is discussed within the broader context of Mexican modernity, revolution, and reconstruction. At the same time, Japanese emigration occurred during rapid change in Japanese society that began with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japanese industrialization , militarization, and the rise of an expansionist empire that utilized conquest, occupation, and emigration as a means to colonize and settle outside of its national domain. However, in such places as Mexico, Japan deployed a settlement process, rather than forced occupation. The history of the Japanese in Mexico would not be complete without a discussion on United States, Japanese, and Mexican relations. The challenging relationships that developed between these nations placed Mexico in a diplomatic quandary as it enjoyed cordial relations with both countries. Simultaneously, during the first half of the twentieth century, US-Japanese relations spiraled in a downward trajectory, with Mexico constantly maneuvering to deflect US imposition on its sovereignty that often challenged its relationship with Japan. The 2,000-mile border the United States and Mexico shared meant that US domestic and foreign policy initiatives impacted Mexico, especially regarding the Japanese diaspora. The rise of US imperialism and hegemony in Latin America affected the Japanese diaspora throughout the Western hemisphere. Finally, the entrance of the United States and Mexico into World War II terminated Japanese emigration to Mexico until the postwar period. Mexico received immigrants at a much lower rate than other countries in the Americas, and...