Why do some groups retain their ethnicity as they become assimilated into mainstream American life while others do not? This study employs both historical sources and contemporary survey data to explain the seeming paradox of why Japanese Americans have maintained high levels of ethnic community involvement while becoming structurally assimilated. Most traditional approaches to the study of ethnicity in the United States are based on the European immigrant experience and conclude that a zero-sum relationship exists between assimilation and retention of ethnicity: community solidarity weakens as structural assimilation grows stronger. Japanese Americans, however, like American Jews, do not fit this pattern. The basic thesis of this book is that the maintenance of ethnic community solidarity, the process of assimilation, and the reactions of an ethnic group to outside forces must be understood in light of the internal social organization of the ethnic group, which can be traced to core cultural orientations that predate immigration. Though frequently excluded from mainstream economic opportunities, Japanese Americans were able to form quasi-kin relationships of trust, upon which enduring group economic relations could be based. The resultant ethnic economy and petit bourgeois family experience fostered the values of hard work, deferred gratification, and other perspectives conductive to success in mainstream society. This book will be of interest to sociologist and psychologist studying ethnicity, community organization, and intergenerational change; and to anyone interested in the Japanese American experience from an economic or political perspective, Asian American studies, or social history of the United States.

Since 1855, nearly half a million Japanese immigrants have settled in the United States, and today more than twice that number claim Japanese ancestry. While these immigrants worked hard, established networks, and repeatedly distinguished themselves as entrepreneurs, they also encountered harsh discrimination. Nowhere was this more evident than on the West Coast during World War II, when virtually the entire population of Japanese Americans was forced into internment camps solely on the basis of ethnicity.

This is the first book in more than thirty years to discuss critically both the historical and contemporary experiences of Hawaii’s Japanese Americans. Given that race was the foremost organizing principle of social relations in Hawai‘i and was followed by ethnicity beginning in the 1970s, the book interprets these experiences from racial and ethnic perspectives. The transition from race to ethnicity is cogently demonstrated in the transformation of Japanese Americans from a highly racialized minority of immigrant laborers to one of the most politically and socioeconomically powerful ethnic groups in the islands. To illuminate this process, the author has produced a racial history of Japanese Americans from their early struggles against oppressive working and living conditions on the sugar plantations to labor organizing and the rise to power of the Democratic Party following World War II. He goes on to analyze how Japanese Americans have maintained their political power into the twenty-first century and discusses the recent advocacy and activism of individual yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese Americans) working on behalf of ethnic communities other than their own. From Race to Ethnicity resonates with scholars currently debating the relative analytical significance of race and ethnicity. Its novel analysis convincingly elucidates the differential functioning of race and ethnicity over time insofar as race worked against Japanese Americans and other non-Haoles (Whites) by restricting them from full and equal participation in society, but by the 1970s ethnicity would work fully in their favor as they gained greater political and economic power. The author reminds readers, however, that ethnicity has continued to work against Native Hawaiians, Filipino Americans, and other minorities—although not to the same extent as race previously—and thus is responsible for maintaining ethnic inequality in Hawai‘i.

Confinement and Ethnicity documents in unprecedented detail the various facilities in which persons of Japanese descent living in the western United States were confined during World War II: the fifteen “assembly centers” run by the U.S. Army’s Wartime Civil Control Administration, the ten “relocation centers” created by the War Relocation Authority, and the internment camps, penitentiaries, and other sites under the jurisdiction of the Justice and War Departments. Originally published as a report of the Western Archeological and Conservation Center of the National Park Service, it is now reissued in a corrected edition, with a new Foreword by Tetsuden Kashima, associate professor of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington. Based on archival research, field visits, and interviews with former residents, Confinement and Ethnicity provides an overview of the architectural remnants, archeological features, and artifacts remaining at the various sites. Included are numerous maps, diagrams, charts, and photographs. Historic images of the sites and their inhabitants -- including several by Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams -- are combined with photographs of present-day settings, showing concrete foundations, fence posts, inmate-constructed drainage ditches, and foundations and parts of buildings, as well as inscriptions in Japanese and English written or scratched on walls and rocks. The result is a unique and poignant treasure house of information for former residents and their descendants, for Asian American and World War II historians, and for anyone interested in the facts about what the authors call these “sites of shame.”

A unique interpretation of how wartime internment and the movement for redress affected Japanese Americans.

This book examines Asian American ethnicity and communication, looking at: immigration patterns, ethnic institutions, family patterns, and ethnic and cultural identities. William Gudykunst focuses on how communication is similar and different among Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, and Vietnamese Americans. Where applicable, similarities and differences in communication between Asian Americans and European Americans are also examined. Gudykunst concludes with a discussion of the role of communication in Asian immigrants' acculturation to the United States.

In 2012, the Pew Research Center issued a report that named Asian Americans as the “highest-income, best-educated, and fastest-growing racial group in the United States.” Despite this seemingly optimistic conclusion, over thirty Asian American advocacy groups challenged the findings. As many pointed out, the term “Asian American” itself is complicated. It currently denotes a wide range of ethnicities, national origins, and languages, and encompasses a number of significant economic and social disparities. In Redefining Race, sociologist Dina G. Okamoto traces the complex evolution of this racial designation to show how the use of “Asian American” as a panethnic label and identity has been a deliberate social achievement negotiated by members of this group themselves, rather than an organic and inevitable process. Drawing on original research and a series of interviews, Okamoto investigates how different Asian ethnic groups in the U.S. were able to create a collective identity in the wake of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Okamoto argues that a variety of broad social forces created the conditions for this developing panethnic identity. Racial segregation, for example, shaped how Asian immigrants of different national origins were distributed in similar occupations and industries. This segregation of Asians within local labor markets produced a shared experience of racial discrimination, which encouraged Asian ethnic groups to develop shared interests and identities. By constructing a panethnic label and identity, ethnic group members took part in creating their own collective histories, and in the process challenged and redefined current notions of race. The emergence of a panethnic racial identity also depended, somewhat paradoxically, on different groups organizing along distinct ethnic lines in order to gain recognition and rights from the larger society. According to Okamoto, these ethnic organizations provided the foundation necessary to build solidarity within different Asian-origin communities. Leaders and community members who created inclusive narratives and advocated policies that benefited groups beyond their own were then able to move these discrete ethnic organizations toward a panethnic model. For example, a number of ethnic-specific organizations in San Francisco expanded their services and programs to include other ethnic group members after their original constituencies dwindled. A Laotian organization included refugees from different parts of Asia, a Japanese organization began to advocate for South Asian populations, and a Chinese organization opened its doors to Filipinos and Vietnamese. As Okamoto argues, the process of building ties between ethnic communities while also recognizing ethnic diversity is the hallmark of panethnicity. Redefining Race is a groundbreaking analysis of the processes through which group boundaries are drawn and contested. In mapping the genesis of a panethnic Asian American identity, Okamoto illustrates the ways in which concepts of race continue to shape how ethnic and immigrant groups view themselves and organize for representation in the public arena.