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13: The Press
- University Press of Colorado
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T H E P R E S S P A G E 124 Early Japanese immigrants knew almost no English, but most of them despite their humble origins were literate in Japanese thanks to compulsory grade school education at home. Thus it is understandable that Japanese-language newspapers were among their first enterprises. Colorado’s first Japanese language publication—or, more accurately , printing endeavor—was probably Naoichi Hokasono’s 1908 pamphlet outlining a code of behavior for immigrants to avoid drawing unfavorable attention to themselves (see Chapter 4). Eiichi Imada’s research has found that Hokasono then began a small daily called Denba Shimpo (“Denver News”) publishing mostly local news items. Imada has written, “Two years later a group of students from Japan attending Colorado schools founded Kororado Shimbun (“Colorado Newspaper”). Among the editors was Toichiro Ichikawa, brother of Fusae Ichikawa who was a member of the Lower c h a p t e r t h i r t e e n T H E P R E S S T H E P R E S S P A G E 125 House of the Japanese Parliament and women’s rights activist. Ichikawa urged his readers to fight efforts to pass an anti-alien land law in Colorado. Whether this did any good is doubtful because his readers spoke little English, could not vote, and wielded little influence , but Ichikawa’s stories made the Japanese aware of the problem . After graduation from the University of Denver, Ichikawa returned to Japan and became a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. As was common among early U.S. newspapers of any language, both Denba Shimpo and Kororado Shimbun had a hard time surviving. They merged as the Santo Jiji with Hokasono’s support but he pulled out in 1917, selling the paper to a well-to-do farmer, Kakutaro Nakagawa, who renamed it Kakushu Jiji (“Colorado Times”). Put in charge of the paper were Minejiro Nakasugi and a young immigrant named Sojiro Yoritomo who had served with the U.S. Army in Europe in World War I. But faced with a dwindling Japanese population the paper failed to prosper. In 1929 the Colorado Times was sold for $4,500 to Nakasugi and Ichiro (Fred) Kaihara who became editor and later its owner. The following year a young Buddhist priest named Yoshitaka Tamai came to Denver (see Chapter 8). He and the head priest, Rev. Yoshinao Ouchi, founded a weekly publication they called Rokki (“Rocky”) Nippon, which was devoted largely to morality lessons and advice about family relations rather than to news. During this period Japanese language newspapers that were devoted to local community news and news from Japan (with modest English sections for the Nisei) were being published in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle. With the outbreak of war in 1941 all were shut down. Abruptly, the only Japanese language newspapers in the United States, outside of New York, were [3.89.163.156] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:56 GMT) T H E P R E S S P A G E 126 the Utah Nippo in Salt Lake City, which changed its name to Utah Times; Kakushu Jiji in Denver, which became Colorado Times; and Rokki Nippon, which was renamed Rocky Shimpo (“Rocky News”) and converted from a Buddhist newsletter into a tri-weekly under the ownership of Shiro Toda. These newspapers found an avid readership among the West Coast Japanese who had been moved into the camps and were starved for news. The surviving papers, which were not openly censored (although no doubt closely watched), enjoyed an unprecedented circulation boom that leveled off at around 10,000 copies for the Colorado Times and 8,000 for the Rocky Shimpo, but these figures may be suspect. The Rocky Shimpo carried a box on page one of the English section that boasted it was the “Largest Circulated Nisei Vernacular in Continental U.S.A.” The only other “Japanese” newspaper in the West was Pacific Citizen , which before the war was a sporadically published all-English house organ of the Japanese American Citizens League. When Japanese Americans were forced out of the West Coast, Pacific Citizen of necessity was moved to Salt Lake City and converted almost overnight into a tabloid-size eight-page weekly printed in a commercial shop. The entire staff was made up of Larry Tajiri and his wife, Marion, who in view of JACL’s difficult financial straits worked for a...