This paper explores the issue of reparation and how institutionalized racism in the United States has influenced the outcome for the following ethnic groups - Japanese Americans, Black Americans and Native Americans.

This study examines the return of Japanese Americans to Portland, Oregon, following their mass incarceration by the United States Federal government between 1942 and 1945. This essay examines the motivations of both returning Japanese Americans and various groups within the white community with equal focus in the hopes of writing a history that provides agency to both groups. The return of Japanese Americans to Portland was an event with broader implications than a mere chapter in the history of Japanese Americans. The rise of the Japanese Exclusion League and other groups interested in preventing the return of Japanese Americans to Oregon had their roots partly in the Oregon progressive coalition of the 1930s known as the Oregon Commonwealth Federation (OCF). Unified behind the cause of public ownership of electricity distribution, racially exclusive progressives such as Oregon Governor Walter M. Pierce and civil rights progressives such as American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Gus J. Solomon sought to protect Oregon's producer class of farmers and workers from exploitation by Portland business interests. After the dissolution of the OCF in 1940 and the attack on Pearl Harbor, the two progressive factions took opposite sides on the issues of the rights of Japanese Americans. In 1945, anti-Japanese organizers across the state, including Pierce, American Legion officials, and Portland politicians called for the permanent exclusion of Japanese Americans. The racist rhetoric of these organizers drew the ire of the Portland Council of Churches, civic leaders, and War Relocation Authority officials, who formed the Portland Citizens Committee to Aid Relocation, the main white group to help returners find housing and employment. Their arguments for tolerance depended heavily on the story of Japanese American military service during World War II. Responding to the shape of debates within the white community, returning Japanese Americans community leaders, especially Toshi Kuge and George Azumano of the Portland Japanese American Citizen's League (JACL), used the rhetoric of military service to demonstrate their Americanness after World War II. The rhetoric of valorous military service provided the ideological center of both remerging Japanese American leadership organizations and connections between the Nikkei community and white civic leaders. After the reestablishment of Japanese American community organizations in Portland, Issei leaders lead a successful fundraising campaign to support a legal challenge to overturn the Oregon Alien Land Law and fund the Portland JACL. Subsequently, between 1946 and 1948, the Portland JACL served as liaisons between the Japanese American community and the white Portlanders interested in overturning laws that challenged Issei social and economic rights. Despite their efforts, Japanese Americans in the early postwar period, along with other Portland minority groups,faced significant discrimination in housing options, employment, and even blood supply. Their experience demonstrates both the power and limitations of arguments for racial tolerance in the early postwar period.

<p>The governor collections at the Colorado State Archives are a rich source for research and information about social science and the history of the state, but they are not always easy to research due to their differences in taxonomy through different eras. In my work with creating an archival research handbook for a governor collection I chose governor Ralph Carr to both illustrate the challenges as well as the thrills with historical research in a collection from the office of the governor.</p><p>Ralph Carr's collection takes patience to research. Some series will have inconsistent taxonomy and other series lack sub-series, and if a researcher is not familiar with the terminology of state affairs, many documents can pose a challenge. It is my hope that this handbook will be of use for both amateur researchers as well as provide a few short-cuts for more seasoned scholars. Governor Carr's collection covers some of the most dramatic years in Colorado history, the first part of WWII, and it is frequently requested for research, but many researchers get stuck between the vast amount of documents only sorted by dates, for instance in the series marked "Council of Defense", which contains many interesting documents about the Japanese-Americans who were to be deported to the Granada Relocation camp, or Camp Amache, as it was popularly called. It is my hope that the guide will not only provide such researchers some relief, but also to get the reader a sense for Colorado History, The Colorado State Archives and for the Governor collections in general.</p>

The governor collections at the Colorado State Archives are a rich source for research and information about social science and the history of the state, but they are not always easy to research due to their differences in taxonomy through different eras. In my work with creating an archival research handbook for a governor collection I chose governor Ralph Carr to both illustrate the challenges as well as the thrills with historical research in a collection from the office of the governor. Ralph Carr's collection takes patience to research. Some series will have inconsistent taxonomy and other series lack sub-series, and if a researcher is not familiar with the terminology of state affairs, many documents can pose a challenge. It is my hope that this handbook will be of use for both amateur researchers as well as provide a few short-cuts for more seasoned scholars. Governor Carr's collection covers some of the most dramatic years in Colorado history, the first part of WWII, and it is frequently requested for research, but many researchers get stuck between the vast amount of documents only sorted by dates, for instance in the series marked "Council of Defense", which contains many interesting documents about the Japanese-Americans who were to be deported to the Granada Relocation camp, or Camp Amache, as it was popularly called. It is my hope that the guide will not only provide such researchers some relief, but also to get the reader a sense for Colorado History, The Colorado State Archives and for the Governor collections in general.

Taiko is a highly physical and theatrical form of ensemble drumming that was popularized in 1950s Japan and has been widely practiced in Japanese American and other Asian American communities since the late 1960s. Taiko’s visual and sonic largesse—outstretched limbs and thundering drums—contrasted with pervasive stereotypes of Asians as silent and passive. This dissertation uses ethnographic participant-observation, archival research, and performance analysis to examine how North American taiko performance produces and is produced by the shifting contours of racial, gender, and sexual identity and community. Taiko groups create, re-shape, and challenge familiar notions of Asia, America, and Asian America through their public performances and in their rehearsal processes. While sometimes implicated in Orientalist performance contexts, taiko players use performance strategically to commemorate Asian American history, to convey feelings of empowerment, and to invite feminist, anti-racist, and queer forms of spectatorship. This dissertation explores taiko’s roots in the Asian American Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, its implications for 1990s multiculturalism, as well as its intersections with contemporary queer communities. My analysis focuses on three case study groups whose origins, philosophies, and geographic locations offer a diverse view of North American taiko and the Asian American/Canadian communities with which they are associated. Chapter One considers how San Jose Taiko’s early articulation of their identity as an Asian American taiko group continues to influence its practices and performances, particularly their taiko-dance piece, “Ei Ja Nai Ka?” and their national tours. Chapter Two examines how Minneapolis-based Mu Daiko negotiates its members’ diverse racial, ethnic, and gender identities within a Midwestern context that values multiculturalism. Chapter Three considers how the all-women’s group Jodaiko conveys Asian American lesbian identity and invites queer spectatorship through theatrical performance choices and its members’ everyday gender performances. My analysis extends from my ethnographic participant-observation, which includes personal interviews, attendance at workshops and performances, and spending time with performers; archival research in formal collections, groups’ internal documents, and my personal archive of taiko programs, posters, photographs, DVDs, and other ephemera; and performance analysis that is informed by my twelve years of experience as a taiko performer. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-264). Also available on the Internet.

This study examines the discrimination against Japanese immigrants in U.S. naturalization law up to 1952 and how it was covered in the Oregonian newspaper, one of the oldest and most widely read newspapers on the West Coast. The anti-Japanese movement was much larger in California, but this paper focuses on the attitudes in Oregon, which at times echoed sentiments in California but at other times conveyed support for Japanese naturalization. Naturalization laws at the turn of the century were vague, leaving the task of defining who was white, and thus eligible for naturalization, to the courts. Japanese applicants were often denied, but until the federal government clarified which immigrants could or could not become citizens, the subject remained open to debate. "Ineligibility to naturalization" was often used as a code for "Japanese" in discriminatory land use laws and similar legislation at the state level in California and in other western states. This study highlights several factors which influenced Oregonian editorials on the subject. First, the fear of offending Japan and provoking war with that empire was a foremost concern of Oregonian editors. California's moves to use naturalization law to prevent Japanese immigrants from owning land were seen as dangerous because they damaged relations with Japan and could lead to war. The Oregonian went so far as to recommend Japanese naturalization during the First World War. However, war and foreign relations were federal issues, thus the second theme seen throughout Oregonian editorials was deference to federal authority on questions related to naturalization. While suggesting that naturalization for existing immigrants might be good policy, the Oregonian urged the federal government to settle the matter. Once the Supreme Court ruled against Asian naturalization in 1922 and 1923, the Oregonian dropped its push for such rights. Nativism was another theme that influenced opinions at this time, and before 1923 the Oregonian generally opposed extreme nativist positions, while at the same time advocating for limits to Japanese immigration and against mixed marriages. This paper does not deal with the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II because naturalization was not the issue for the anti-exclusion movement at the time. Citizenship did not give the Nisei, second generation Japanese American citizens, any protection against their wartime removal from the West Coast. This study returns to the issue of naturalization for Japanese immigrants after the war, as a number of Issei, first generation Japanese immigrants, still lived in the United States but were denied citizenship, even though most had been in the country for decades at that point. There was less opposition to Japanese naturalization after the war due to the noted loyalty of the Japanese during the war, the focus on human rights as an issue promoted by the new United Nations, and Cold War politics which demanded better relations with Japan and thus fairer treatment of Japanese living in the United States. The Oregonian editorials reflected the shift in public opinion throughout the country in favor of lifting the racial bar to citizenship. Japanese Americans in Oregon were active in the campaign to change U.S. naturalization law. The issue was more important to the Japanese American community than it was to the Oregonian editorial board by then, as other Cold War events took precedence on the front and op-ed pages of the newspaper.

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This thesis studies the Supreme Court decision, Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) and its historical context, using a narrative perspective and reviewing aspects of narrative viewpoints with reference to legal studies in order to introduce the present study as a method of assessing narratives in legal settings. The study reviews the Supreme Court decision to reveal its arguments and focuses on the context of the case through the presentation of the public story, the institutional story, and the ethnic Japanese story, which are analyzed using Walter Fisher's narrative perspective. The study concludes that the narrative paradigm is useful for assessing stories in the law because it enables the critic to examine both the emotional and logical reasoning that determine the outcomes of the cases.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis concentrates on how nativism, through a series of discriminatory policies over the span of fifty years, influenced the creation of the Japanese American internment camps during the Second World War. By using the experiences of the first—and second—generations of Japanese immigrants, my thesis explores how nativism supported the creation of laws meant to preserve racial homogeneity, cultural superiority, economic segregation, and national security from the Japanese immigrants living in California during the end of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century