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Chapter Twelve "AMERICA IS IN THE HEART" Asian Sojourners No Longer To MAKE the point that the Japanese should not be expected to assimilate to American ways and to become loyal Americans, one of the most powerful men in Hawaii, Walter Dillingham, asked a u.s. congressional committee in 1921: Supposing, for the sake of an example, that the Japanese on one of our mandated islands in the Pacific should develop the island by bringing in a great number of American citizens, and finally they had a situation where 110,000 red blooded American citizens were on the island where there were 18,000 pure-blooded Japanese. How would I feel having a college classmate visit me, to usher him from the boat to the house, kick off sandals and toss a kimona and say, ''This is my home. My wife and I came here from America fifteen years ago, and we have made our home here and have entered into the spirit ofthe life. I want you to meet my boy." In comes a fine, upstanding boy, fifteen years of age. I say, "He is going to the University of Japan. He reads, writes and speaks Japanese better than he does English, and ifwe ever have a rumpus with Uncle Sam, that boy is true blue; he is going to fight for the Empire." Now just imagine pointing with pride to your son and you realize what you're asking of the Japanese in HawaiLl Like many leaders of his generation, Dillingham assumed that racial and cultural homogeneity were prerequisites for American unity just as they were in Japan. If he had taken the trouble to visit McKinley High School in Honolulu (often called ''Tokyo High"), he might have seen the children of the issei reciting the Gettysburg Address by heart. JapaneseAmerican youngsters spoke of "our Pilgrim forefathers" just as easily as Mary Antin and her Jewish-American classmates did in New York.2 He also would have seen youngsters practicing democracy through their extensive student government and learning about it in a required full year ofAmerican history and government and one semester in American politics .3 Twenty years later, the imperial government of Japan discovered through a secret agent in Hawaii that the graduates of McKinley had become thoroughgoing Americans. When the agent tried to ascertain the political sympathies of the nisei in the islands in August 19+1, "he discovered they were fanatically loyal to the United States."4 Only a few 225 226 TRIUMPH OF THE CIVIC CULTURE months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese-American Citizens ' League endorsed a special pledge of allegiance to the United States: "I believe in her institutions, ideas and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future. She has granted me liberties and opportunities such as no individual enjoys in this world today. She has given me an education befitting kings. She has entrusted me with the responsibilities of the franchise. She has permitted me to build a home, to earn a livelihood, to worship, think, speak and act as I please-as a free man equal to every other man."s When the attack on Pearl Harbor came, one of the first reactions of the president of the JACL was to send a telegram to President Roosevelt pledging, "we are ready and prepared to expend every effort to repel this invasion together with our fellow Americans."6 But the American government , public opinion, and, as it turned out, the U.S. Supreme Court, were not ready to accept that pledge of loyalty at face value. Loyalty and Fear: Japanese-Americans in the Second World War The system of sojourner pluralism for Asian immigrants was based on the premise that they were not fit to become members of the American polity. Rationalized by racism, the system had accustomed whites to think ofAsians, including Asian-American children ofimmigrants, as outsiders. Although many nisei, citizens because they were born in the U.S., were ready to fight, and hundreds were already serving in the armed forces, the American selective service system classified all nisei as aliens not subject to military service. American Legion Post 97 in Portland, Oregon, calling for removal of all Japanese origin persons to relocation camps, expressed the feeling ofmany Caucasians when it asserted that "this is no time for namby-pamby pussyfooting ... not the time for consideration of minute Constitutional rights."7 Issei especially were terrified. Many burned...

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