Japanese Agricultural Labor Program
Temporary Worker Immigration, US-Japan Cultural Diplomacy, and Ethnic Community Making among Japanese Americans
In September 1956 the “Japanese agricultural worker program” (Nōgyō rōmusha habei jigyō) was launched with the arrival of nearly four hundred temporary workers (known as tannō) from Japan who were sent to rural farm districts in California. Operating across several phases, this scheme brought a total of forty-one hundred Japanese to the Golden State before the program came to an end in October 1966. Unlike other guest farmworker programs, the Japanese labor importation scheme has largely escaped scholarly attention.1 Nonetheless, the Japanese agricultural worker program is highly noteworthy in its implications for three interrelated themes: ethnic and class politics of second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei), Cold War US diplomacy and Japanese/Japanese American collaborations, and postwar manifestations of Japan’s colonial expansionism. The intersections between immigration and labor fostered these developments while advancing the varied interests of diverse historical agents, including Japanese American farmers and community leaders, California’s agribusiness elite, government officials, and social elites of the United States and Japan, alongside the young men who came to California as guest workers.
This chapter explains the diverse origins of and varied meanings attached to the immigration of temporary farmworkers from Japan, and particularly middle-class Nisei’s attempts to present themselves as assimilated Americans vis-à-vis alien Japanese laborers. To reveal these developments, I employ two interpretive frameworks. First, an inter-imperial framework illuminates colonial collusions between the United States and Japan, albeit under the former’s definitive dominance, in the Cold War context. Instead of a familiar narrative of US global hegemony and economic imperialism through guest worker importation, this chapter considers how the remnants of Japanese expansionism dovetailed with American Cold War diplomacy by implementing a scheme of supplementary-farm-labor immigration disguised first as “refugee” migration and then as an educational/training program. The second frame of analysis presents an intraracial perspective that elucidates how Japanese Americans deployed the Japanese agricultural worker program to serve the interests of Nisei farmers and community leaders. They gained access to easily controllable alien labor while Nisei also enjoyed the opportunity to publicly distinguish themselves as good ethnic Americans separate from the foreignized co-ethnic others. In combination, these two perspectives reflect the entanglements of varied interests, agendas, and ideas that met and meshed in the Japanese temporary-worker programs of the mid-1950s and the complicated state of postwar US-Japan diplomacy and race relations in California.
Multiple Origins of Japanese Agricultural Labor Immigration
Before World War II, Japanese immigration to the United States was terminated under the 1924 Immigration Act, and not until 1952 did Japan gain a national immigration quota. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 provided a token annual quota of 185, but Japanese could already enter from the late 1940s by a few other ways, including hundreds of so-called war brides, and after 1953, with more than twenty-two hundred entering under the Refugee Relief Act.2
Another, lesser-known avenue for Japanese immigration opened up by way of an agriculturally oriented education-abroad program for selected rural youths under the joint sponsorship of the California state government and the Association for International Collaboration of Farmers (AICF: Kokusai Nōyūkai). Established in Tokyo, AICF was a brainchild of Shiroshi Nasu and Tadaatsu Ishiguro, Japan’s well-known agricultural scientist and influential bureaucrat, respectively, whose careers went back to the prewar years. Hoping to produce the next generation of pro-American grassroots leaders who would “encourage democracy in [post-occupation] Japan,” US diplomats cooperated with Nasu and Ishiguro in getting California governor Earl Warren on board for this program.3 In the summer of 1952 the first contingent of forty-six left for California to experience US agriculture firsthand by engaging in common fieldwork at Japanese American–owned farms. Coupled with later refugee migrations, this “education” abroad initiative provided a precedent for the formal guest-worker program of 1956.
During the 1930s Nasu and Ishiguro had been among the central architects of migration and colonization policies in Japan’s key puppet “Manchukuo” in Manchuria. Nasu served as an academic expert for scientific agricultural colonization schemes that Ishiguro was a driving force in implementing as vice minister of agriculture and forestry in the military-dominated bureaucracy of the time.4 Both had been deeply committed to the cause of Japan’s global expansion and conquest of new “frontiers.” They looked to the Americas as a model of agricultural settler colonialism and were especially interested in the “success” of Japanese immigrant agriculture in the American West.5 To Nasu, Ishiguro, and other members of AICF, an agricultural education-abroad program in California represented the possibility of recuperating their original “ideal” in Manchuria—one that was meant for “the development of co-prosperous civilization … through the advance of Japanese agricultural techniques.”6 The only difference was that this colonialist ideal would now be practiced under the aegis of Pax Americana, not under the banner of Japanese imperialism. Nasu indeed predicted that after mastering American-style farming methods, young Japanese would again be able to assist agricultural and social “development” in Southeast Asia and Brazil.7
In September 1954 Nasu, Ishiguro, and their American supporters sought to expand the AICF program to include not only small numbers of rural “elite” but also ordinary farm youth. Citing the “mutually satisfactory” results of the AICF program, Nasu produced a proposal for the US State Department, detailing political and economic reasons for “sending [farm youths] as transient, migratory farm workers to earn wages while cultivating a political outlook in consonance with the interests of the United States and Japan, and those of the Free World in general.” Whereas “more than one million youths … ha[d] scarcely any prospect of getting farm land” or “urban employment” in Japan, Nasu argued, “there [was] a great shortage of farm labor in California.” The economic difficulties Japanese farm youths faced would likely make many of them susceptible to “anti-American (communist) propaganda [that was] trying to penetrate into the rural districts.” The opportunities for them to live and work in the United States would enable them to “have the right understanding of what America is and stands for,” while enriching their home villages financially and contributing to the greater prosperity of California agriculture. Characterizing Japanese farm youths as “reliable, honest, diligent, and intelligent,” Nasu emphasized that there would be “less danger of their going underground” than Mexican bracero workers.8 After the US Ambassador forwarded the proposal to Washington with his endorsement, Nasu traveled to the United States and met with Japanese American farmers and white agribusiness leaders of California, who gave his guest-worker proposal enthusiastic support.9 Encouraged, he submitted more detailed proposals to the Japanese foreign ministry and the State Department in 1955.10
Based on his earlier AICF work, Nasu had cultivated close partnerships with some of the most influential Japanese American farmers in the Golden State. They included Keisaburo Koda, Tameji Eto, and Yaemon Minami. In California, Koda and Minami were known as the “rice king” and “lettuce king,” respectively, and Eto was a leading pea grower.11 These immigrant community leaders were eager to sponsor a large number of Japanese guest workers.12 Coupled with his access to political heavyweights in Japan, Nasu’s alliance with these Japanese-speaking California farm leaders gave his blueprint for labor importation considerable credibility and local backing—something that younger Nisei leaders and US and Japanese officials could not easily ignore.
Concurrently, inspired by the first contingent of AICF agricultural trainees in 1952, some Japanese American farmers and other ethnic leaders took it upon themselves to recruit a larger number of Japanese field hands. In particular, Frank Tsunekusu Kawasaki of Delano and Henry Seiichi Mikami of Fresno coordinated a group of interested employers stateside and a pool of prospective migrant workers in Japan in order to spearhead transpacific labor importation. A Japan-born foreman for a six-thousand-acre farm owned by the DiGiorgio Fruit Company, Kawasaki persuaded a white executive to support the recruitment of supplementary Japanese field hands, and, as president of the California Farm Production Association, the executive then got other white agribusiness groups involved in the scheme.13 The Nisei proprietor of a travel and insurance agency and a local Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) leader, Mikami was supposed to manage the transportation of migratory workers from Japan.14
Lacking direct access to political insiders and policymakers in Washington or Tokyo, Kawasaki and Mikami used their personal connections in rural California and with specific regions of Japan to make arrangements. As early as 1952, Kawasaki already discussed with the governor of Wakayama—his prefectural origin—an ambitious plan to recruit several thousand Japanese for work on a two-year contract.15 Even though this initial attempt had to be scrapped over objections from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 led Kawasaki to revive the idea and visit Wakayama repeatedly hoping to bring over new immigrants under the law. After this scheme was reported in ethnic newspapers in California, local Japanese American farmers flocked to Mikami’s Fresno office eager to employ young workers from their ancestral land.16
Based in southern Japan, another individual named Zen’ichiro Uchida joined Kawasaki and Mikami, aggressively recruiting prospective emigrants from Kagoshima Prefecture. A member of the first AICF contingent, Uchida embraced Nasu’s idea of farming as a peaceful means of extending Japanese national influence, and upon his return to Kagoshima from California, he encouraged his neighbors and friends to cross the Pacific for farm work. Through his contacts in Fresno, Uchida got in touch with Kawasaki and learned about the possibility of Japanese immigrating to the United States as “refugees.” During their trips to Japan, Kawasaki and Mikami visited Uchida’s home region to recruit refugee applicants. Soon, letter-writing campaigns began in Kagoshima and Wakayama to convince the US embassy and the State Department to conduct interviews with self-proclaimed Japanese refugees.17
The 1953 law “defined ‘refugee’ as any person who was out of his usual place of abode and unable to return thereto because of persecution, fear of persecution, natural calamity, or military operations.”18 Uchida and Kawasaki advised recruits to exaggerate their stories of hardships when interviewed by US consular inspectors to appear eligible under the refugee act. Some were even encouraged to lie about their property and crop damages resulting from typhoon flooding and landslides. Uchida himself claimed that his house had been set on fire by communists who allegedly detested his positive discussions of America. Nasu offered to visit the US embassy with Uchida to warn diplomats that escalating communist intimidations and the unresponsiveness of the United States to refugee petitions had made Uchida’s village neighbors quickly lose faith in America. In the context of the Korean War and perceived communist threats inside and outside the Japanese archipelago, this rhetorical spin worked well, prompting a formal interview process to commence.19 Between May 1955 and May 1956, a total of 2,268 Japanese “refugees,” many from Kagoshima and Wakayama, entered the United States, where they immediately started to work on Japanese-owned California farms, including Kawasaki’s. Nasu’s AICF processed their emigration paperwork.20 The arrival of Japanese “refugees” not only served as another precedent for the formal agricultural guest worker program of 1956–1966, but it also constituted an integral part of the larger flow of postwar labor migration from Japan that had begun with agricultural “trainees” in 1952.
Mike Masaoka as Intergovernmental Political Broker
While architects of AICF and its participants collaborated to transform refugee migration into farm-labor importation, Mike Masaoka, the most influential JACL leader, was responsible for yet a third scheme. According to historian Go Oyagi, Masaoka’s project, especially his close cooperation with Japanese diplomats, demonstrates the Nisei leader’s “diasporic internationalism,” which motivated him to act as a transpacific political broker from 1953.21 Based in Washington, DC, Masaoka was well connected with US government insiders and the Japanese diplomatic corps—an advantage that the other brokers of Japanese labor importation lacked. During the trying years of wartime incarceration, Masaoka had sought to represent the entire Japanese American community through his leadership in JACL, the only surviving ethnic organization of the time. He was the first volunteer for the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and as its public relations officer he collaborated with the War Relocation Authority and the US military to impose a skewed image of Japanese Americans as superpatriotic, assimilated Americans.22 Serving as the JACL national legislative director after the war, Masaoka worked closely with immigrant leaders, like Koda and Eto, in the successful repeal of the alien land laws and the federal ban on Japanese naturalization.23 Yet, regarding the question of labor importation, Masaoka and the immigrant leaders were not on the same page. When he approached Japanese diplomats with his own proposal for a guest-worker scheme, the JACL leader lacked influence over the alliance between Nasu/AICF and leading Japanese farmers of California and collided with their blueprint.
Because he wanted to avoid the appearance of race-based cooperation, if not conspiracy, between alien Japanese and Japanese Americans, Masaoka was initially unenthusiastic about the idea of bringing a large number of working-class immigrants from his ancestral land. In January 1952, Masaoka offered State Department officials his views of “Japanese Migratory Labor” in response to Kawasaki’s failed first attempt at migrant recruitment. “Any large scale importation of Japanese labor would perhaps again raise all the last troubles connected with the ‘yellow menace,’” the Nisei leader cautioned, “and [it would] revive persecution suffered by Japanese residents of California in periods in the past.”24 By 1953, however, Masaoka shifted his position in favor of a Japanese guest-worker program. One key development that led to this change was the ongoing political debate in Washington that appeared to be signaling the end of Public Law 78, the legal basis of the bracero Mexican-labor program. Although the law was eventually renewed, the prospect for the suspension of the Mexican program led Masaoka to view supplementary Japanese labor as beneficial to California agribusiness and Nisei farm interests.25
At the same time, his highly publicized, triumphant visit to Japan in late 1952 made him reconsider the benefits of working as a political broker in US-Japan bilateral relations—an opportunity that had been inconceivable a few years prior. His racial ancestry, albeit always secondary to his primary American identity, now looked like an asset for a career and the ethnic community he claimed to represent.26 Believing that his “contacts” and “talents” in Washington would be deemed desirable, he tried his hand at working as a lobbyist for the Japanese government and corporate interests after returning to the United States. Masaoka soon learned “a very discouraging fact; the big Japanese business interests (and diplomats) just don’t have confidence in the Nisei.” As “bitter” as he was, he thought he should “hold off for a while and hope that something will come up to prove to these guys that we can also cut the mustard in business.” That “something” arose with the project of Japanese labor importation. Indeed, by 1953, Masaoka had been contacted by “some California farmers” who “want[ed] us to work out a program to bring in several thousand Japanese farm laborers a year on work contracts.”27
While Masaoka was briefly involved in Kawasaki’s refugee-recruitment scheme, his gaze was primarily directed at a larger endeavor to establish a full-fledged guest-worker program between the United States and Japan, thus overlapping with other similar ideas and proposals, especially Nasu’s. In February 1954 Masaoka approached not only US policymakers, like Rep. Walter Judd, but also the Japanese diplomatic corps in Washington, presenting an outline of his ideas about a contract-labor system.28 In promoting the importance of Japanese labor, the JACL leader employed rhetoric that reinforced prevailing racist discourse that vilified Mexican workers as illegal and influenced by dangerous communist militancy, and he also stressed the “abuses that have plagued the Mexican labor project” because of the “wetbacks.”29 In contrast, Japanese would form “an effective and reliable labor force,” for their “efficiency and loyalty … on the farms of California, as indeed throughout the Far West [we]re legendary.” Masaoka called for a migrant labor agreement with Japan, which would be “of mutual advantage to both countries.” He predicted that returning contract workers would be “champions of continued friendship with this country [and its democracy in Japan].”30
As Oyagi documents, Masaoka’s ability as a lobbyist and access to US government officials had impressed the Japanese diplomatic corps, compelling an embassy member to advise Tokyo to “heed to Mike Masaoka’s opinions.”31 Masaoka seized upon this increasing confidence in him. He told the Japanese ambassador that he would be an ideal “unofficial liaison between the governments of the United States and Japan” because he was a private citizen “with no special interests to serve.”32 As they correctly anticipated formidable opposition from various interest groups, including labor unions and the US Department of Labor, Japanese diplomats also regarded highly Masaoka’s personal connections to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner Joseph M. Swing, a close friend to President Eisenhower, who oversaw the existing guest-workers programs.33 Swing’s support was absolutely indispensable for the large-scale importation of Japanese field hands. Fortunately for Masaoka, Swing was already predisposed to support supplementary Japanese labor in the context of his leadership in Operation Wetback, which entailed the mass deportation of “illegal” Mexican farmworkers from California. Swing held more favorable views of Japanese and Japanese Americans, partially through his involvement in the military occupation of Japan as a US army commander. His interactions with “loyal” Nisei translators and cooperative natives in occupied Japan rendered Swing a strong supporter of postwar US-Japan “friendship” and a defender of Japanese Americans in domestic race politics.34
In March 1955, with Masaoka as a de facto lobbyist, the Japanese foreign ministry set the ball rolling for the establishment of a formal guest-worker program. At a March 2 meeting the JACL leader confided to top embassy staff that Swing had embraced the program idea, requesting formal submission of a concrete plan. Separately, Swing also notified the Japanese that the US attorney general had approved INS consideration of supplementary labor importation from Japan. Moreover, having already assessed Nasu’s proposal, as Masaoka observed, the State Department also appeared to be on their side. He told Japanese diplomats that the deputy undersecretary of state expressed a strong interest, asking the JACL leader to start working with INS. As the Japanese authorities wanted to keep a low profile, Masaoka was charged with the responsibility of “produc[ing] a concrete blueprint to make it happen.”35 The resulting “working draft” on supplementary Japanese labor importation fundamentally dovetailed with Nasu’s proposals and emphasized similar economic and geopolitical benefits, albeit with some significant differences.36 After the Japanese found Masaoka’s recommendation “a way to go” and approved the working draft, an extended version was formally submitted to the INS and State Department in May 1955.37
Two elements of Masaoka’s proposal particularly impressed Japanese diplomats, especially in comparison with Nasu’s versions. First, the Nisei withdrew his previous support for the bracero model and instead explained the advantage of the British West Indies (BWI) precedent as a “more satisfactory” alternative for the Japanese. Whereas Nasu anticipated the predominant role of Japan’s national government in negotiating guest-worker importation as in the Mexican program, Masaoka’s suggested method rejected a formal intergovernmental agreement and the potential diplomatic complications that might arise by emulating the BWI program. Unlike its bracero counterpart, the BWI scheme required no consistent government overseers on either the sending or the receiving side. Instead, because it made US-based growers’ organizations responsible for legally contracting and procuring workers through the agency of nonstate entities in the sending country, the BWI method would only involve initial scrutiny by the INS. This arrangement relieved Tokyo from formal involvement and minimized the meddling of the US Department of Labor—which would likely disrupt rather than facilitate labor importation due to its connections to organized-labor interests. Furthermore, while the Mexican bracero program only provided for six months of work, its BWI counterpart allowed low-skilled “supplementary workers” to remain for the maximum of three years under an H-2 provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.38
Masaoka’s proposal also differed from Nasu’s with regard to the question of who would primarily employ Japanese workers. Nasu had not explicitly identified preferred/prospective employers; however, repeated mention of Japanese American farmers’ support hinted that he hoped they would play a central role once the program materialized.39 Masaoka’s version was the polar opposite. Mindful of the need to secure white American backing, the JACL leader insisted that “only the large growers and employers of agricultural labor should be solicited” to serve as sponsors of Japanese guest workers, and that those newcomers should “constitute only a small portion of an employer’s labor pool to avoid charges that Japanese workers are replacing American labor.”40 When he submitted this document to the Japanese embassy, Masaoka then verbally explained what he really meant— a sensitive but important point he refrained from putting in writing. He wanted only white agribusiness leaders to serve as employers, since “Japanese Americans in California were politically rather powerless so that they would not be able to manage this delicate matter that organized labor would surely criticize.”41
Due to his longstanding struggle against racial discrimination, Masaoka’s concerns were understandable, but they clashed with the wishes of many California Japanese farmers, especially those who had backed Nasu’s AICF work and Kawasaki’s refugee scheme. For their part, Japanese consuls in California also felt that a main source of employment for temporary workers should come from the landed white farming class, but they were keenly aware of the divide between Masaoka, a white-collar Nisei in the East Coast, and leading Japanese immigrant (Issei) farmers of the western state. These Issei retained enormous influence over younger Nisei growers. In cooperation with Nasu, this group of California Japanese might sabotage the joint lobbying effort by Japanese diplomats and Masaoka. While foreign ministry officials made every effort, although in vain, to restrain Nasu, they thus eventually decided to allow “qualified” Japanese American farmers to petition for temporary workers when a BWI-modeled program was implemented.42 Once the recruitment of Japanese workers officially commenced in the summer of 1956, Nisei and Issei farmers participated in the bidding process “on equal terms” with white agribusiness employers.43 During the first year of the program, Japanese American growers already constituted almost 60 percent of the ninety-eight employers in California.44
As Masaoka’s influence in California was limited even within his own co-ethnic population, the JACL leader sought to put together a grassroots public-relations machine there after May 1955, which would not only check Nasu’s activities among local Japanese American farmers but also counter a revival of racist Yellow Peril fear mongering. In his “working draft,” Masaoka had indeed already warned: “Care must be exercised that these dormant prejudices are not fanned into a white heat of hysteria and jingoism, for … the public acceptance of the resident Japanese … which was dearly purchased in World War II.”45 The Nisei leader knew the importance of collaborating with sympathetic white Americans in anti-racist counter-propaganda through his wartime experience as the chief JACL spokesperson and a publicist for the all-Nisei 442nd RTC. Instead of issuing publicity for Japanese labor importation in his own name, Masaoka opted to work discreetly on—and through—white journalists, political officials, and social and business leaders in California.46
The Japanese American lobbyist relied on a small circle of well-connected JACL insiders for his grassroots public-relations activities. Henry Mikami, a leader of the Fresno JACL chapter, was recruited to work with potential employers among local white and Japanese American farm interests. He was a recognized figure in local politics as a member of the Democratic Party Central Committee of Fresno County and a close friend to State Assemblyman Wallace Henderson, who not surprisingly emerged as a major voice of support for growers’ demand for Japanese workers.47 Joe Grant Masaoka, Mike’s older brother, strove to curry favor with state government officials and union bosses, drawing on his role as chief legislative director of the northern California JACL office, a position that held strong connections to the state’s political establishment. By November 1955, Mikami and Joe Grant Masaoka boasted of their successful public-relations effort on major state agribusiness interests and politicians associated with them, as well as “many other responsible and influential farmers and civil associations too numerous to list.” The latter groups would be instrumental in producing a formal petition to INS for labor certificates for one thousand Japanese. Organized labor remained unsupportive, however, and California Governor Goodwin Knight did not issue the official statement of farm labor conditions in the state that was needed to accompany the petition.48
Negotiations and Compromises between Government Bureaucracies
At national levels, the varying labor recruitment schemes shuttled between competing departments and intergovernment negotiations between Washington and Tokyo from May 1955 through June 1956. On the one hand, a tight alliance between Masaoka and Swing, who maintained close contact with Japanese embassy staff, worked on the Departments of State and Labor.49 Having been exposed to Nasu’s plan, American diplomats had anticipated that the Japanese temporary worker program would benefit geopolitical priorities—a perspective shared by a number of government insiders, including California-elected Republican senators and Vice President Richard Nixon. Thus, it did not take much effort to persuade State Department officials to partner with the Japanese foreign ministry. It was actually the deputy undersecretary who urged “a next step,” that is, “consultation with the Department of Labor should be undertaken.”50
The Masaoka-Tokyo lobby nonetheless had little sway over the Department of Labor, which was closely linked to organized labor. Both the AFL and CIO strongly objected to the idea of a new guest-worker program, which they predicted would “bring in cheap oriental labor”—the very racial rhetoric that Masaoka feared.51 Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell and his staff were generally on the same page. Yet, because Mitchell had to take into account increasing support for Masaoka’s plan within high-level inner political circles, especially in his own Republican Party, he left room for negotiations with amendments to the program structure and procedural arrangements. In particular, the Labor Department sought greater authority to regulate standards and supervise worker-employee relations. These were provisions absent from the BWI model, in which wage and labor conditions were dictated by private agreements between foreign workers and American employers.52 In order to ensure the inclusion of these provisions, the Labor Department “was anxious to have an intergovernmental agreement with Tokyo somewhat along the lines of that now in effect in relation to Mexico.” This point put the Labor and State Departments in direct conflict, for American diplomats disliked the idea of an intergovernmental agreement.53 With these points of contention unresolved, negotiations came to a standstill within the US government until June 1956.
In Tokyo, serious rifts formed between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Agriculture, which caused their part of political preparations to stagnate. After Japanese diplomats embraced Masaoka’s blueprint and his lobbyist role, Nasu and Ishiguro fought back along with their powerful agri-bureaucracy allies in Japan. The Nasu constituency wanted the labor-recruitment enterprise placed under AICF management, with the support of the agricultural ministry, which was eager to maintain control of all farming matters through Nasu’s leadership.54 With this backing, Nasu traveled to Washington in late 1955 and again in May 1956 to meet with State Department officials despite the foreign ministry’s disfavor. He advocated for his plan by characterizing its primary goal as “acquaint[ing] Japanese farmers with democracy through living and working in the United States.” He downplayed its guest worker aspects and predicted “no opposition” from US organized labor as long as the newcomers were portrayed as “farm trainees.”55
Nasu’s resistance to the Japanese foreign ministry’s blueprint suspended the formation of a recruitment agency in Tokyo. Such an organization was a precondition for the operation of this guest-worker scheme, since it would not only act as the sole signatory to a labor-supply contract with California growers’ organizations but also coordinate the Japanese domestic effort to recruit and ship out emigrants. Not until June 1956 was a compromise finally brokered between diplomats and the Nasu group under the arbitration of the Japanese prime minister for the establishment of such a semi-governmental agency. With an equal share of authority by the foreign and agricultural ministries, the Council for Supplementary Agricultural Workers (CSAW: Nōgyō Rōmusha Habei Kyōgikai) was established in Tokyo on June 12, 1956.56 Representing the AICF and agriculture ministry faction, Ishiguro and Nasu nonetheless managed to reign over the CSAW Tokyo headquarters as the president and vice president, respectively, positioned to project their old dream of imperial settler colonialism onto a Japanese farm-labor migration scheme to the United States. CSAW adopted an internal policy in the selection process to give preference to applicants with the intention of immigrating to South America as “agricultural settlers” after returning from California.57
In late June 1956, news reports about CSAW generated a political crisis across the Pacific in the United States. Labor Secretary Mitchell was compelled to issue a public statement, articulating his department’s concerns about a Japanese temporary-worker program. Formal letters were dispatched to California agri-business leaders and their congressional backers, insisting that the Labor Department be “given administration over … all labor programs” to enforce “adequate safeguards” against labor abuse and wage depreciation. Mitchell also explicitly sought an intergovernmental agreement with Japan.58 Not only organized labor but also other interest groups lent their voices to opposing “a program of importing cheap labor,” or “yellow dogs.”59
Mitchell’s public articulations of “domestic” labor perspectives clashed with the State Department’s “foreign relations” concerns. At that juncture, Japan was engulfed in a national election, and sharp divides between pro-US and anti-US factions had emerged in the form of the recently formed Liberal Democratic Party and the reunified Japanese Socialist Party. In the aftermath of the Korean War, American diplomats were extremely wary that a US rejection of Japanese “immigrants” would engender “murmurs of ‘oriental exclusion,’ propelling many Japanese to accuse Americans of racism.60 As diplomats knew Japanese immigration exclusion of the 1920s had contributed to Japan’s race-based hostilities and its wartime propaganda against the United States, they anticipated “a great deal of adverse publicity against [the US] government in the papers of Japan.”61 In light of the US geopolitical need to keep Japan a faithful junior ally in Cold War East Asia, any material for criticism of US policies—already seen in plenty during the 1956 election campaign—was “what we needed to look out for and seek to avoid,” according to the deputy undersecretary.62 Thus, in response to Mitchell’s statement, State Department officials swiftly undertook to resolve the matter once and for all with their Labor and INS (Justice) counterparts.
It took two interdepartmental meetings with high-level representatives of the three agencies, including Mitchell, before a compromise was made. At the July 6 meeting, officials reiterated the basic positions of their home departments. INS and Labor did not see eye to eye on the issue of jurisdiction relative to the supervision of work conditions and wage scale, therefore leading them to diverge on preferences for the BWI or bracero versions. Labor and State clashed about intergovernmental agreement and State’s disapproval of the bracero model.63
The second meeting, held on July 13, paved the way to an ultimate compromise, which allowed for the fusion of significant elements from the bracero program into the BWI model. Specifically, Labor gained authority to set the “prevailing” wage of Japanese workers “on a basis similar to the US-Mexican agreement.”64 Other terms from the bracero program shaped the final version of Japanese employment contracts with growers. The maximum work shift was, for example, reduced from ten hours to eight hours a day. The definition of “agriculture” now conformed to the Fair Labor Standards Act, so that the employer or the worker would not be able to take the contractual relationship outside the farming sector.65 Despite these changes, Mike Masaoka’s contributions to the basic arrangement of the Japanese temporary worker program were apparent, for the BWI model remained the prototype. Its basic procedures preserved the functions of the INS as the chief US government authority to evaluate growers’ petitions and pre-inspect Japanese workers before their departure. This arrangement rendered Japan’s CSAW the sole contracting agency for California growers in Japanese worker recruitment and transportation, displacing any need for a formal agreement between the United States and Japanese governments.66 Two months after this interdepartmental compromise was reached in Washington, the Japanese agricultural worker program officially commenced.
Guest Worker Immigration and Cold War Soft-Power Cultural Diplomacy
On the US foreign policy end, the State Department played an important but less pronounced role in the redefinition of the Japanese guest-worker program. Under the influence of Nasu’s longstanding lobbying, American diplomats viewed the program differently than government officials—particularly Labor Department brass—who deemed it a simple attempt to import cheaper foreign labor.67 The State Department focused more on its diplomatic and geopolitical benefits, having for some time desired to “use our influence to guide the program if one is to be developed, along lines which will provide for specific training and educational activities.”68 During the Cold War, international educational endeavors to disseminate advanced American technologies and scientific knowledge, its modern civilization, lifestyle, and capitalistic material wealth, and the political values of freedom and democracy constituted a significant aspect of ongoing US soft-power diplomacy. The State Department embraced the propaganda value of the Japanese labor program, as its efforts at cultural diplomacy relied heavily on foreign student education and immigration in the United States.69 Japanese temporary workers, ages twenty to thirty-five, would comprise a captive audience for a parallel form of education that would produce pro-US advocates in the country to which they were required to return after the three-year contracts ended. Of course, State Department officials knew all too well that the Japanese worker program could not be presented as “a trainee program” domestically in the US since newcomers from Japan were legally nothing more than supplemental agricultural field hands under the H-2 temporary-work scheme. American diplomats nonetheless felt that the plan still could and did form a “farm worker program with special educational and training aspects included,” that would “teach them English, democratic government, etc.”70
Whereas the US side was tightly bound by the basic legal arrangement of this “temporary worker” program, it was Japan’s CSAW and foreign ministry that governed and operated the effort in the manner of an agricultural trainee and educational program, albeit without naming it as such. According to an official CSAW announcement, the recruitment process from the beginning included an intensive pre-departure educational program, mandating successful applicants to go through a series of academic lectures and practical training in Tokyo before leaving.71 The foreign ministry also made it a point to collaborate closely with ongoing US cultural propaganda carried out by the American embassy and the US Information Service (USIS), because the ministry believed doing so would entice Washington to continue to support Japanese labor immigration regardless of union accusations of “bound labor.” For instance, a number of USIS films were shown during the one-week orientation in Tokyo, and American representatives offered additional lectures on the importance of democracy, freedom, and US global dominance in the Cold War context.72 During orientation, Japanese authorities especially emphasized the role of emigrant farm workers as “future linchpins of US-Japan friendship,” telling them “not to disgrace the name of Japanese people anywhere and anytime.” Having been selected from politically moderate youths with farming backgrounds, the emigrants were supposed to play the role of “agents of public diplomacy” by fostering a real firsthand grasp of “American people, the American way of life, and the American spirit.” Presented by Japanese officials, didactic lectures suggested that the young men were also entrusted with a special task to shape pro-American sentiments at a grassroots level as new leaders of rural Japan upon their mandatory return.73 A large portion of the applicant pool, which turned out to be more than ten times the annual limit of one thousand, included sons of leading families in rural Japan.74 Wishing to “study American democracy” and “American-style farming,” many of the applicants shared a similar outlook on the agricultural labor program, mistaking it for a technical training or education abroad scheme.75
In California, educational activities of a far more limited scope were available due to the program’s legal identity as an H-2 temporary-worker program. However, from the outset, a special provision allowed Japanese newcomers to attend night school three times a week as long as they finished the day’s work. On the matter of English-language instruction, an inspector noted: “In almost all cases facilities or opportunities have been made available for the boys to study English either through organized adult education classes, special tutoring, or private lessons given by the employer himself.”76
In 1957 the collaborative efforts by US and Japanese diplomats successfully convinced the Labor Department to begin distinguishing between the Japanese temporary worker program and its Mexican and BWI counterparts. In the summer of 1957, when a joint team of State, Labor, Justice (INS) Department officials was slated for an investigative field survey in California, the Deputy Undersecretary of State and Japanese Ambassador held a special conference to reaffirm the centrality of the “public relations” aspect of the ongoing program instead of treating it simply as an “immigration” or “economic” matter.77 Perhaps, under the initiative of a State Department representative, the joint interdepartmental team then decided to measure the program’s success primarily in terms of “whether or not [this program] would make them leading pro-American voices of rural villages in Japan.” In the end, all members, including Labor Department representatives, came to the conclusion that the enterprise “clearly differ[ed] from the Mexican program.”78 Although this does not mean that the Labor Department dropped its insistence on protecting US domestic workers’ interests, the agency did become more attentive to the educational and foreign-policy benefits of the Japanese program. Thus, four years later, the assistant secretary of labor even encouraged Japanese authorities to “put more weight on educational matters [of Japanese workers] because they were unlike Mexican workers.”79
Tacitly endorsed by the Labor Department, this unofficial but widely accepted attribute of the Japanese agricultural worker program came into sharp conflict with the original expectations and self-interests of agribusiness leaders and growers in California. To them, newcomers from Japan were supposed to be nothing more than productive, profitable, and expendable farmhands. But if they were required to bear the burden of workers’ educational needs or spare extra time for nonwork matters, employers would end up incurring a financial loss. For this reason, growers had categorically rejected the idea of setting up a special committee to promote workers’ education and recreation when Japanese authorities had proposed it back in 1956.80 After the State-Labor-INS joint investigation of 1957 recommended providing Japanese workers with four hours of educational opportunity each week at no cost to them, growers doggedly resisted again. Only when Washington officials agreed to drop objectionable binding terms like “at no cost to [workers]” and “four hours” of nonfarm activities did growers grudgingly accept the new draft employment contract endorsed by the Labor Department.81
Contentious Relations between Japanese American Farmers and Japanese Workers
Although both Washington and Tokyo managed to maintain an equilibrium between the labor and propaganda aspects of the Japanese temporary-worker program, the contradictions between those varying mandates and identities generated not only confusion among Japanese workers but also acrimonious relations between them and their employers, especially Japanese American farmers. The first groups of California-bound workers consisted primarily of youths of “well-off families” in Japan’s rural village communities who viewed themselves as “students on scholarships.” The kinds of menial “stoop” labor they were subjected to in California baffled these bright-eyed youths, turning them into habitual complainers and shirkers—“shiftless, arrogant, and lazy” as one Nisei farmer bitterly criticized.82 To alleviate this problem, Japanese authorities decided after 1957 to “select only the young men willing to work harder than any American or Mexican.”83 Nonetheless, negative remarks about living and work conditions continued to appear in public discourse. Even if Japanese youths conceded to being simple farmhands, many were still discontent with the daily routine of ten- to fourteen-hour labor and lower wages than expected. The problem of exploitation—real or perceived—resulted in a widely publicized desertion of twenty-four workers in September 1957.84 By December 1958, more than eighty workers were “deported” to Japan for allegedly defying their employers.85
Whereas Japanese workers were misled to imagine overly rosy images of working and learning in California, Japanese American growers and farm foremen, as well as white agribusiness leaders, appreciated the value of the workers primarily for their economic benefit, utility, and manageability. First, the Japanese agricultural worker program enabled growers to avoid the revolving door of inexperienced farmhands every six months as stipulated by Public Law 78 for Mexican braceros. Japanese temporary workers could stay as long as three years in California, which made them less costly to employ even though initial outlays for transpacific travel were higher. The need for less frequent training also meant greater efficiency and dependability, saving employers both money and time.86 Because most Nisei-owned farms were small-sized enterprises, the economic advantage of Japanese temporary workers was not insignificant.87 The absence of direct supervision and consistent scrutiny by the Labor Department also gave unscrupulous employers more leeway to take advantage of them as well.
Second, racist ideas about Mexicans had permeated the thinking of growers to give rise to common beliefs in Japanese labor superiority. Since before the official beginning of the program, Mike Masaoka had profusely depicted braceros as “troublemakers,” juxtaposing them with “reliable” Japanese whose “efficiency and loyalty” were “legendary.”88 During his public-relations activities in California, Mikami had also propagated the idea that “Japanese workers we[re] superior to … Mexicans” because they were “not only diligent workers but workers who will cause the minimum of problems through runaways, etc.”89 Similar arguments appeared often in public discourse thereafter. At a congressional subcommittee hearing, representatives of employer groups and individual growers from California “unanimously expressed the opinion that the Japanese workers are intelligent, easily learn how to satisfactorily perform work assigned to them … with considerably more willingness and aptitude than other foreign workers employed in the area.”90 According to a Los Angeles Japanese newspaper, 70 percent of the Japanese American farmers preferred to employ “more responsible and efficient Japanese.”91
Japanese American farmers measured the utility of Japanese guest workers on the basis of racial/cultural ties and citizenship status. It was usually unarticulated but taken for granted that Japanese Americans enjoyed a special bond with people of Japan through their shared racial and cultural heritage; and yet, Nisei always insisted on the critical difference between the two groups in terms of citizenship status and psychological dispositions. Despite the racial commonality, these legal and psychic divides made Issei and Nisei thoroughly American/Americanized vis-à -vis Japanese temporary workers who were rendered alien and foreign.92 A Nisei grower/shipper of Fresno represented many other Japanese Americans when he voiced this concern about the potential co-ethnic others at the advent of Japanese labor migration in 1956:
We talk of integration—the absorption of ourselves and our children into the stream of American life and culture. We wish to suggest that this process will not be aided by the presence of large numbers of non-American-acting, non-English-speaking Japanese nationals at a time when other Americans are just getting used to the idea that Americans with Japanese faces can think and talk like other Americans.93
This manner of differentiation characterized a central strategy of public representation that most Japanese Americans had embraced when they had desperately sought acceptance in American society during and after the trying years of their wartime incarceration.94
The economic utility of foreign Japanese nonetheless did generally take precedence over the perennial ethnic concern of Japanese Americans about national belonging. The basic orientation of the temporary worker program relieved Nisei from the possibility of admitting the kind of “non-American-acting” members into the ethnic community, since there was no path toward permanent residency under the H-2 system. As long as Nisei vigilantly took on the “extra burden” to “police” the situation, Japanese workers would leave California after three years without becoming a permanent part of Japanese America.95 The legally predetermined expendability of alien Japanese labor served as a key safeguard against the tarnishing of Nisei’s self-made reputation as the full-fledged assimilated Americans with birthright citizenship. Moreover, it afforded Japanese American farmers with a workforce that was easy to manipulate because of racial bonds and shared cultural heritage. Expendable and highly manageable, Japanese supplemental workers were, as a Nisei journalist quoted from growers, “the best thing that happened to California in a long time.”96
Even though many Japanese American farmers felt as if they held special chaperoning duties for temporary workers and actually treated them as members of their own families, others were not so kind, sympathetic, or respectful in the eyes of Japanese workers.97 Indeed, negative remarks about Nisei growers frequently filled newspaper headlines and popular magazine articles in Japan within one year of the program’s inception. Published in a major Japanese weekly, a sensationalized story of virtual “enslavement” at a Japanese American farm shocked the authorities and Nisei alike.98 An Associated Press (AP) dispatch from Yokohama featured testimonies of disgruntled returnees from California, who singled out Nisei employers as worse than anyone else when they recalled their experiences across the Pacific. They remembered that white Americans were “known for their discrimination,” but they were “nicer to us.” On the contrary, Nisei farmers treated them “like trash,” offered “poor medical care,” and bombarded them with “don’t, don’t, don’t everywhere.” This dispatch made it into mainstream US media reports, not only incensing Japanese Americans but also throwing them into a panic.99 Their collective image as model citizens was at stake, thereby propelling Nisei farmers and a local JACL chapter to hold an emergency “protest meeting” and issue a formal refutation.100
As many Japanese Americans had feared, some Japanese workers seemed to have been spoiling “the absorption of ourselves and our children into the stream of American life and culture” through not only their unassimilated behaviors but also their anti-Nisei statements. As in other cases, the rhetoric of racial kinship and good will was invoked in Japanese Americans’ refutation against “an insult to the [ethnic] community” by the ungrateful foreign(ized) Japanese. “We built them a little house and installed all modern facilities and treated them as members of the family,” a wife of a Nisei farmer contended in another AP report.101 Not only did the dialectics of economic benefit and racial family rhetoric dovetail with the duality of guest-worker importation and cultural diplomacy in official state discourses, but at the heart of this dialectical narrative also lay the intricacies of Nisei’s thinking and practices vis-à-vis postwar newcomers from Japan. There was room in Japanese America for idiosyncratic racial brethren to be posed as pseudo family insofar as they could engender advantages without disturbing the hard-won image of Nisei as exemplary American citizens, or a “model minority.” When this image was threatened, however, the newcomers had to be distanced or disowned as the co-ethnic others in public representations. Whereas this rejection reveals the fundamental nature of conditional minority inclusion in postwar America through the display of undivided allegiance to US citizenship and democracy, it offers a glimpse into the complex broader relations between Japanese Americans and postwar immigrants from their ancestral land that was also a former national enemy.102
Despite the challenge of maintaining a delicate equilibrium between benefits to the ethnic farm economy and threats to collective group identity, Nisei farmers and Japanese America at large continued to support the Japanese agricultural worker program. By its demise in 1966, independent Nisei growers composed the vast majority of employers, who appreciated Japanese workers even more when contrasted against unionized Mexicans. Periodic opposition persisted as the AFLCIO strove to paint the program as just another scheme to import cheap labor. Yet the INS, State Department, and Japan’s foreign ministry continued to emphasize its contributions to the goal of Cold War diplomacy and US-Japan friendship. Along with agribusiness interests, Mike Masaoka acted as a chief voice in that campaign, representing not only Japanese diplomats but also Nisei growers and the larger Japanese American community.103 When the end of the bracero program sounded the death knell for supplementary Japanese labor immigration, Nisei growers and the JACL took the lead in a last-ditch effort to have the US government “reappraise the program for employing Japanese” and allow “the [existing] labor contract … to continue without harassment.”104 This extension was granted by the Labor Department as a result of intergovernmental negotiations with Tokyo, but the Japanese agricultural worker program formally came to an end with the return of eighty-three workers from California in October 1966.105
Conclusion
This chapter has unveiled the multifaceted identities of the Japanese agricultural worker program that operated between 1956 and 1966. Very few scholars of US labor and immigration history or Asian American history have taken this subject seriously, for it looks like a simple side note to the much larger Mexican bracero program. Despite its small size and official legal designation as a guest-worker program, the systematic migration of Japanese farmworkers during the Cold War period actually bears broad implications. The Japanese agricultural labor program constituted an important site for contestation, negotiation, and collusion among diverse groups of Americans and Japanese that cut across racial, class, and national boundaries. It also elucidated the inner workings of government bureaucracies, as well as the activities of interest groups that collaborated with them, in the United States and Japan over the intersections of migration and education with the realignment of inter-imperial relations between the two Pacific powers. In these complex processes, Japanese Americans, as political brokers and employers of farmworkers, played indispensable roles in facilitating transpacific mobility and intergovernmental and interdepartmental compromises. Through the process of intraracial differentiation from “Japanese nationals,” these “Americans with Japanese faces” also pursued the further “absorption of [them]selves and [their] children into the stream of American life and culture.” Against the background of the complex politics of migration, labor, and cultural imperialism, that slanted manner of national inclusion paved the way to public celebrations of the Nisei “success story”—and the model minority myth based on it—in 1966, the same year when the last batch of “non-American-acting, non-English-speaking” Japanese field hands left California and Japanese America.106
Notes
1. A recent article in Japanese by Ōyagi Gō offers the most sophisticated transnational analysis of the subject. See Ōyagi Gō, “Maiku Masaoka to Nihonjin tanki nōgyōrōdōsha dōnyū puroguramu,” Amerikashi Kenkyū 38 (2015): 73–93 (cited hereafter as Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka.”); and Go Oyagi, “Over the Pacific: Post–World War II Asian American Internationalism,” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2013), 32–72 (cited hereafter as Oyagi, “Over the Pacific.”). On the Mexican bracero and British West Indies guest-worker programs, consult Deborah Cohen, Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), and Cindy Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011).
2. See Minami Kashū Kagoshima Kenjinshi Henshū Iinkai, ed., Minami Kashū Kagoshima kenjinshi (Los Angeles: Nanka Kagoshima Kenjinkai, 1976), 165–73 (hereafter Henshū Iinkai, Minami Kashū Kagoshima).
3. Kokusai Nōgyōsha Kōryū Kyōkai, ed., Nōgyō seinen kaigai haken jigyō gojyūnenshi (Tokyo: Kokusai Nōgyōsha Kōryū Kyōkai, 2002), 6–8 (cited hereafter as Kokusai, Nōgyō seinen); Nihon Nōgyō Kenkyūjo, ed., Ishiguro Tadaatsu-den (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1969), 442–46; Michael Conlon, “A Brief History of the Japan Agricultural Exchange Council,” GAIN Report Number JA0501, February 1, 2010; and Itō Atsushi, “Nōgyō rōmusha habei jigyō no seiritsu katei,” Nōgyō keizai kenkyū 83, no. 4 (2012), 224–25. On this program as a form of US cultural diplomacy, see also Mary Ting Yi Lui, “Nōson seinen no Kariforunia hōmon” (trans. Tsuchiya Yuka and Nakamura Nobuyuki) in Senryō suru me, Senryō suru koe, ed. Tsuchiya Yuka and Yoshimi Shunya (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2012), 157–81.
4. Asada Kyōji, “Takumushō no Manshū nōgyō imin keikaku,” Komazawa Daigaku Keizai Gakubu kenkyū kiyō 32 (1974): 90; Nasu Shiroshi, Nasu Shiroshi-sensei: Ibun to tsuisō (Tokyo: Nōson Kōsei Kyōkai, 1985), 90–96.
5. Yoshizaki Chiaki, Kokusai Nōyūkai ni tsuite (Tokyo: Kokusai Nōyūkai, 1987), 3–4.
6. Ibid., 8; Sugino Tadao, Kaigai takushoku hishi (Tokyo: Bunkyō Shoin, 1959), 124–25; and Yoshizaki Chiaki, “Kokusai Nōyūkai ga umareru made,” Kokusai nōson 1 (September 1952): 6–7.
7. Nasu Shiroshi, “Kokusai Nōyūkai no risō,” Kokusai nōson 1 (September 1952): 4; Nasu, Nasu Shiroshi-sensei, 99.
8. American Embassy, Tokyo, “Admission of Japanese Farm Workers to the United States,” September 29, 1954, in folder 1, box 375, Central Office Subject Files, 1949–1958, Records of Immigration and Naturalization Service, RG 85 (hereafter COSF-INS), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) I, Washington, DC.
9. Takeuchi, “Taibei kisetsu nōgyō imin ni kansuru Nasu Hakase no dan,” December 6, 1954, in Nōgyō rōmusha habei kankei: Habei jisshi made no keii, v. 1, Diplomatic Records Office, Tokyo, Japan (hereafter NRHK-HJK).
10. See Nasu Shiroshi, “Kisetsuteki idō nōgyō rōmusha o Beikoku e sōshutsu suru anken,” (ca. March 5, 1955), in NRHK-HJK, v. 1 (cited hereafter as Nasu, “Kisetsuteki”); and “Training of Japanese Farmers in United States,” December 21, 1955, in box 7, Japan Subject Files, 1947–1956, Records of the Office of Northwest Asian Affairs, RG 59 (hereafter JSF-RONAA), NARA II, College Park, Md.
11. Kokusai, Nōgyō seinen, 13; Sugino, Kaigai takushoku hishi, 102–13; and Maruyama Manabu and Uchida Mamoru, Etō Tameji-ou den (Kumamoto: Kumamoto Kokusai Nōyūkai, 1977), 31–32.
12. Nasu, “Kisetsuteki.”
13. Alton R. Storslee to Assistant [INS] Commissioner, September 5, 1956; State Department, “Proposal to Bring in Philippine and Japanese Workers for Temporary Agricultural Employment in California,” January 16, 1956; Robert L. Kinney, “Meeting with Mr. Bruce Sanborn, Jr.,” May 23, 1956; Sanborn to Bruce Barber, June 29, 1956; Barber to [INS] Commissioner, July 5, 1956, all in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS; and “Rinji rōdō imin no keii,” March 1, 1955, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1.
14. Kanbara to Tanetani, March 25, 1955, and Mike M. Masaoka to Iguchi, May 9, 1955, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1; and American Embassy, Tokyo, to State Department, January 4, 1957, in folder 2, box 375, COSF-INS.
15. “Rinji rōdō imin no keii,” in NRHK-HJK, v. 1.
16. Henshū Iinkai, Minami Kashū Kagoshima, 165–68.
17. Ibid., 165–67; and Uchida Zen’ichiro, Kuwa de Tairiku o tori (Gilroy, Calif.: Privately printed, 1991), 35–53.
18. Yukiko Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms and the US Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 210.
19. Henshū Iinkai, Minami Kashū Kagoshima, 168–72; and Uchida, Kuwa de Tairiku o tori, 52–62.
20. Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms, 210; Henshū Iinkai, Minami Kashū Kagoshima, 173–74; and Katsuno to Shigemitsu, “Tanki nōgyō rōdō imin keikaku ni kansuru ken,” May 23, 1955, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1.
21. Oyagi, “Over the Pacific,” 57.
22. See T. Fujitani, “Go for Broke, the Movie: Japanese American Soldiers in US National, Military, and Racial Discourses,” in Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), ed. T. Fujitani, et al. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 239–66.
23. Little has been documented on the Nisei’s collaboration with Issei leaders in their fight against institutionalized discrimination. On the role of JACL, see Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1969), 443–55; and Ellen D. Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), 97–100.
24. “Problems of Interest to Japanese-Americans,” January 15, 1952, in box 15, General Records, 1950–1952, Office of the US Political Advisor for Japan, Tokyo, Department of State, RG 84, NARA II, College Park, Md.
25. Takeuchi to Okumura, February 18, 1954, and Mike M. Masaoka to Takeuchi, February 11, 1954, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1.
26. “Nikkei Beijin no chichi,” Mainichi Shinbun, October 5, 1952.
27. All quotes from: Mike M. Masaoka to Ike Masaoka, October 20, 1953, in folder 9, box 6, Mike M. Masaoka Papers (hereafter Masaoka Papers), Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
28. Takeuchi to Okumura, February 18, 1954; Masaoka to Takeuchi, February 11, 1954; and Mike M. Masaoka to Seichi [sic] Mikami, January 27, 1955, in folder 19, box 6, Masaoka Papers.
29. Mike M. Masaoka to Walter H. Judd, February 11, 1954, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1.
30. See Mike Masaoka, “Memorandum: Japanese Farm Laborers,” in Masaoka to Takeuchi, February 11, 1954.
31. Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka,” 75.
32. Masaoka to Iguchi, May 9, 1955.
33. Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka,” 75–76.
34. Takeuchi Ryūji, “Kisetsu nōgyō imin no ken,” ca. Nov. 1954, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1; and Mike Masaoka, They Call Me Moses Masaoka: An American Saga (New York: Morrow, 1987), 251, 271.
35. Nakajima, “Honpōjin nōgyō rōdōsha no taibei tanki imin keikaku no ken,” March 4, 1955, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1.
36. See Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka,” 76.
37. Katsuno to Shima, March 24, 1955; Mike M. Masaoka, “Working Draft: Temporary Japanese Agricultural Workers,” 2, ca. March 1955, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1; and Mike M. Masaoka, “Confidential Memorandum: Use of temporary, supplemental farm labor from Japan,” in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS.
38. See Masaoka, “Working Draft”; and “Japanese Temporary Worker Program,” March 19, 1957, in folder 2, box 375, COSF-INS.
39. See Nasu, “Kisetsuteki.”
40. Masaoka, “Working Draft,” 8.
41. Nakajima, “Honpōjin nōgyō rōdōsha no taibei tanki imin keikaku no ken”; and Masaoka, “Working Draft,” 7.
42. Katsuno to Shigemitsu, “Tanki nōgyō rōdō imin keikaku ni kansuru ken,” May 23, 1955; and “Tanki rōdō imin ni kansuru ken (3),” August 30, 1955, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1. On negative publicity on Nasu, see Itō, “Nōgyō rōmusha habei jigyō no seiritsu katei,” 227.
43. Ban, “Shoken,” August 22, 1956; Nakamura to Takasaki, “Tanki nōgyō rōmusha habei ni kansuru ken,” August 23, 1956; and Takasaki to Nakamura, “Tanki nōgyō rōmusha habei ni kansuru ken,” August 25, 1956, all in Nōgyō rōmusha habei kankei: Jisshi kankei (hereafter NRHK-JK), v. 1, Diplomatic Records Office, Tokyo.
44. See “Directory of Japanese Agricultural Workers,” undated, in Pacific Citizen File, Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. Tally by the author.
45. Masaoka, “Working Draft,” 7.
46. See Wu, Color of Success, 77–80, 83, 89–95.
47. Masaoka to Iguchi, May 9, 1955; and “Tanki rōdō imin ni kansuru ken (3),” August 30, 1955.
48. Masaoka to Iguchi, May 9, 1955; “Tanki rōdō imin ni kansuru ken (3),” August 30, 1955; Henry Mikami and Joe Grant Masaoka to Mike Masaoka, November 12, 1955; and Iguchi to Shigemitsu, December 5, 1955, in NRHK-HJK, v. 1. See also Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka,” 78.
49. Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka,” 77–79.
50. Robert Murphy to Joseph M. Swing, July 19, 1955; Albert Del Guercio, “Japanese Agricultural Laborers,” October 24, 1955; and Department of State Instruction, “Proposed Japanese Farm Labor Program,” June 1, 1956, all in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS. The quote is from the first source.
51. Guercio, “Japanese Agricultural Laborers,” October 24, 1955. See also “Memorandum of Conversation,” 2, ca. February 1956; and “Memorandum of Conversation,” 1, March 21, 1956, in box 7, JSF-RONAA.
52. Daniel Goott to Phillip B. Sullivan, “Temporary Importation of Japanese and Philippine Agricultural Workers,” February 14, 1956, in box 7, JSF-RONAA.
53. A. C. Devaney, “Importation of Japanese and Philippine Agricultural Workers,” July 6, 1956, in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS (hereafter Devaney, “Importation.”)
54. On the dispute between the two ministries in the context of policymaking process in Tokyo, see Itō, “Nōgyō rōmusha habei jigyō no seiritsu katei,” 225–33; and Wakatsuki Yasuo, Gaimushō ga keshita Nihonjin (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2001), 16–17, 63.
55. Department of State, “Training of Japanese Farmers in United States,” December 21, 1955; and Department of State, “Plan for Bringing Young Japanese Farmers to the United States,” ca. January 18, 1956, in box 7, JSF-RONAA. See also Ito, “Nōgyō rōmusha habei jigyō no seiritsu katei,” 225–29.
56. Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka,” 79; American Embassy, Tokyo, “Memorandum of Conversation,” May 29, 1956, and “Proposed Japanese Farm Labor Program,” June 6, 1956, in reel 37, Confidential US State Department Special Files: Japan, 1947–1956 (hereafter CUSSD-SFJ), RG 59, NARA II, College Park.
57. Kokusai, Nōgyō seinen, 68, 72.
58. “Memorandum: Japanese Agricultural Laborers,” June 25, 1956, in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS; Secretary of Labor to Secretary of State, undated, in box 183, Records of Secretary James P. Mitchell, Records of the Department of Labor (hereafter RSJPM-RDL), RG 174, NARAII, College Park, Md.; Robert Murphy, “United States Employer Proposals to Bring in Japanese and Philippine Workers for Temporary Agricultural Employment in California,” July 10, 1956, and “Developments in Connection with US Employers’ Proposal to Bring Japanese and Filipino Workers for Temporary Agricultural Employment in California,” July 12, 1956 (hereafter “Developments”), in reel 37, CUSSD-SFJ; and Devaney, “Importation.”
59. Joint United States-Mexico Trade Union Committee, “Press Release No. 8,” July 15, 1956; Philip B. Sullivan to American Embassy, Tokyo, August 1, 1956; and Fay Bennett to Joseph M. Swing, August 6, 1956, all in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS. The quotes are from the second source.
60. Walter S. Robertson to Robert Murphy, “Importation of Foreign Agricultural Workers,” July 6, 1956, in box 7, JSF-RONAA.
61. Devaney, “Importation.”
62. “Developments.”
63. Devaney, “Importation”; and Devaney, “Japanese and Philippine Labor,” July 13, 1956, in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS.
64. Alton R. Storslee to Assistant Commissioner, “Japanese Agricultural Workers,” August 3 and 7, 1956, in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS. The quote is from August 7.
65. Devaney, “Japanese and Philippine Labor”; and Devaney, “Japanese Agricultural Workers” (attachment), July 30, 1956, in folder 1, box 375, COSF-INS. See also Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka,” 79–80.
66. Storslee to Assistant Commissioner, “Japanese Agricultural Workers” (esp. attachment), August 7, 1956. In this program, three sets of contracts were signed and executed: the first one between a worker and CSAW in Japan; the second between CSAW and California growers’ organizations; and the third between a worker and a grower in California.
67. Devaney, “Importation.”
68. Goott to Sullivan, “Temporary Importation.”
69. Madeline Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015). On the place of education in US soft-power diplomacy and cultural imperialism, see Mire Koikari, Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa: Women, Militarized Domesticity, and Transnationalism in East Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Paul A. Kramer, “Is the World Our Campus? International Students and US Global Power in the Long Twentieth Century,” Diplomatic History 33 (November 2009), 775–806.
70. Sullivan to American Embassy, August 1, 1956; and “Memorandum of Conversation,” 2, March 21, 1956.
71. See “Shōwa 31-nendo habei nōgyō rōmusha boshū yōryō,” ca. July 1956, in Nōgyō rōmusha habei kankei: Nōgyō Rōmusha Habei Kyōgikai (hereafter NRHK-NRHK), Diplomatic Records Office, Tokyo; and Ishiguro, “Habei nōgyō rōmusha no kyōiku kōshū ni tsuite,” August 17, 1956, in Nōgyō rōmusha habei kankei: Boshū, senkō, kōshū, kunren, sōshutsu (hereafter NRHK-BSKKS), Diplomatic Records Office, Tokyo.
72. Ban, “Tanki nōgyō rōmusha habei keikaku no suishin ni kansuru ken,” August 12, 1956, in NRHK-JK, v. 1; Imin-kyoku, “Tanki nōgyō rōmusha kyōyō kunren keikaku,” August 17, 1956, in NRHK-BSKKS; Takasaki to Katsuno, August 30, 1956, NRHK-JK, v. 1; “Shōwa sanju ichinendo habei nōgyō rōmusha boshū yōryō,” ca. July 1956; Tani to Kishi, March 21, 1957, in NRHK-JK, v. 4; Tani to Kishi, March 25, 1957, in NRHK-JK, v. 4; Nishiyama to Fujiyama, September 3, 1957, in NRHK-JK, v. 4; and Kokusai, Nōgyō seinen, 71.
73. “Aisatsu,” August 28, 1956, and “Daiichijin kaikōshiki aisatsu,” September 7, 1956, in NRHK-JK, v. 1.
74. Kokusai, Nōgyō seinen, 71.
75. Nishiyama to Fujiyama, September 3, 1957, in NRHK-JK, v. 4; and Tani to Takasaki, August 7, 1956, in NRHK-JK, v. 1.
76. Tani to Takasaki, August 7, 1956; “Shōwa 31-nendo habei nōgyō rōmusha boshū yōryō,” ca. July 1956; and Consul General of Japan, San Francisco, “Interim Report: The Supplementary Japanese Agricultural Workers’ Program,” 5, February 15, 1957, in folder 2, box 375, COSF-INS. The quote is from the last source.
77. Asami to Fujiyama, August 15, 1957, in NRHK-JK, v. 4.
78. Nishiyama to Fujiyama, September 3, 1957.
79. “Nōgyō rōmusha habei jigyō keizoku-kata hanashiai keii,” October 29, 1956, in NRHK-NRHK. US Congress also publicly accepted the notion of “certain imponderable, incidental benefits derived from the program to broader aspects of international cooperation and the further improvement of American-Japanese relations.” See US House Subcommittee No. 1 of the Committee on the Judiciary, Japanese Agricultural Workers: Report (85th Congress, 1st Session: House Report 780) (Washington DC: GPO, 1957), 16.
80. Nishiyama to Fujiyama, September 13, 1957, in NRHK-JK, v. 4.
81. Asami to Fujiyama, September 11, 1957; Nishiyama to Kishi, October 1, 1957; Nishiyama to Fujiyama, October 9, 1957; and Nishiyama to Fujiyama, December 5, 1957, all sources in NRHK-JK, v. 4; and “Future of Japanese Farm Labor Program Unsettled,” Nichi Bei Times, October 16, 1957.
82. “Japan Government Officials Report Cal. Farm Findings,” Hokubei Mainichi, November 7, 1959; Mike Masaoka, “Washington Newsletter,” Pacific Citizen, December 18, 1959; Nakamura to Fujiyama, September 3, 1957, in NRHK-JK, v. 4; Nishiyama to Fujiyama, September 3, 1957, NRHK-JK, v. 4; Nishiyama to Shigemitsu, October 26, 1956, in NRHK-JK, v. 2.
83. “Japan Government Officials Report Cal. Farm Findings.”
84. Rafu Shimpo, September 27, 1957, October 1, 1957, and December 21, 1957 (all in Japanese section).
85. Ibid., December 24, 1958 (Japanese section).
86. Nishiyama to Fujiyama, September 13, 1957; and Rafu Shimpo, December 21, 1957 (Japanese section).
87. See “Directory of Japanese Agricultural Workers.” Tally by the author.
88. Masaoka, “Memorandum: Japanese Farm Laborers,” in Masaoka to Takeuchi, February 11, 1954.
89. S. H. Mikami to Takashi Suzuki, October 3, 1956, in NRHK-JK, v. 2.
90. US House Subcommittee No. 1, Japanese Agricultural Workers: Report, 7.
91. Rafu Shimpo, August 3, 1957 (Japanese section).
92. On contentious relations between postwar Nisei and foreignized Japanese, see Eiichiro Azuma, “Brokering Race, Culture, and Citizenship: Japanese Americans in Occupied Japan and Postwar National Inclusion,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 16 (Fall 2009): 183–211; and Eiichiro Azuma, “Race, Citizenship, and the ‘Science of Chick Sexing,’” Pacific Historical Review 78 (May 2009), esp. 259–75.
93. Oyagi, “Over the Pacific,” 57.
94. See, for example, Masaoka’s statement in US House Subcommittee No. 1, Japanese Agricultural Workers: Report, 13; and Ōyagi, “Maiku Masaoka,” 81.
95. See Saburo Kido, “Observation,” Pacific Citizen, October 20, 1956.
96. Henry Mori, “County Farmers Heartily Support Importation of Japanese Laborers,” Rafu Shimpo, May 1, 1957.
97. See, for example, a statement on CSAW, “Impressions of the Three-Year Agricultural Worker,” November 5, 1959, in Pacific Citizen File, JANM; Rafu Shimpo, November 22, 1957 (Japanese section); and Consul General of Japan, San Francisco, “Interim Report,” 6.
98. “Kyōsei sōkan no shinsō,” Shūkan Shinchō 3 (February 1, 1958), 74–80; and Tamotsu Murayama, “Deportation of Seasonal Workers,” Pacific Citizen, February 2, 1958.
99. See “Japan Workers Bitter After Staying in State,” Los Angeles Times, October 21, 1959; and “Issei-Nisei in Marysville Area Incensed over Recent Attacks,” undated, in Pacific Citizen file, JANM.
100. See “Issei-Nisei in Marysville Area”; and “Employers Dispute Stories of Serfdom,” Los Angeles Times, October 21, 1959.
101. “Employers Dispute Stories of Serfdom.”
102. See Azuma, “Brokering Race,” 194–208; and Azuma, “Race, Citizenship,” 259–70.
103. See his statement in US House Subcommittee No. 1, Japanese Agricultural Workers: Report, 11–14; Takamura, “Tanki habei rōmusha mondai to ni kansuru Maiku Masaoka tono kondan ni kansuru ken,” November 25, 1959, and Asami to Kosaka, February 9, 1961, in NRHK-JK, v. 6.
104. “Nisei Growers Ask Contracts with ‘Tanno’ Be Completed,” Pacific Citizen, February 19, 1965.
105. Kokusai, Nōgyō seinen, 105.
106. Amid the radicalization of the black movement in 1966, University of California sociologist William Petersen published an article titled “Success Story: Japanese American Style” in the January 9 issue of the New York Times Magazine, leading off US public discourse on Asian Americans as the well-assimilated, trouble-free model minority.