Category: Graduate Work

Essays, papers and reading responses done during MA History studies

Reactionary Historiography: Post 9/11 Muslim Communities and Immigrants

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment
العربية: الجمعية الاسلامية الامريكية - مسجد ديربورن, 9945 West Vernor Highway, Dearborn, Michigan English: American Moslem Society Dearborn Mosque, 9945 West Vernor Highway, Dearborn, Michigan

(Featured image of American Moslem Society Dearborn Mosque by Dwight Burdette)

The following is a historiography that reviews literature covering Muslim immigration and communities in the United States after the events of September 11th, 2001 in New York City, NY, USA. Because of how cut & paste into WordPress from a Word file works, you’ll find all the footnotes at the end of the page.

Books Reviewed

Abdo, Geneive Abdo. 2006. Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bilici, Mucahit. 2012. How Islam Is Becoming an American Religion: Finding Mecca in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Curtis IV, Edward E. 2009. Muslims in America: A Short History. New York: Oxford University Press.

Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. 2011. Becoming American? The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity in Pluralist America. Waco: Baylor University Press.

Hussain, Amir. 2016. Muslims and the Making of America. Waco: Baylor University Press.

McCloud, Aminah Beverly. 2006. Transnational Muslims in American Society. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

When the World Trade Center (the “Twin Towers”) in New York City was attacked on September 11th, 2001, many Americans were understandably shocked and angry, but they also found themselves asking, what is a Muslim? Why would they want to attack us?[1] Setting aside the problem of conflating all Muslims with terrorists, these questions revealed a vacuum of knowledge about Muslims and Islam in the United States. Further, there was a lack of understanding that Muslims were and had been a part of American society since before the United States was founded. The rhetoric that flooded popular media painted a picture of Islam vs the West[2] and reinforced the idea that there was a hard dichotomy between the two.[3] One could not be American and be Muslim, one could only be Muslim in America. Scholars from multiple disciplines saw this as an opportunity to produce literature on Muslim immigration and Muslim communities living within the United States to correct the narrative being constructed around Muslims and Islam. Because of this, much of the recent scholarship on Islam has been defensive and apologetic in nature, presenting Muslims in a way that normalizes them and introduces them as typical Americans to the rest of society. Recent scholarship has focused primarily on establishing a Muslim American identity, rather than on placing Muslim immigrants and immigration in a historical context.

According to Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, a scholar on the history of Islam in America, this type of scholarship is not new. Writing in 2010, he indicates that both before and after September 11th, 2001, scholarship on Muslims in the United States has been primarily anthropological and sociological, dealing with questions of assimilation and identity formation.[4] He goes on to say that the historical studies that do exist focus primarily on African American Muslims and on how non-Muslim Americans perceive Islam.[5] Further, because of the positioning of Islam as being opposed to the West, most scholarship on Muslims in the United States has focused on how they are faring in a “foreign” society rather than on how they are actively participating in American history.[6] Much scholarship on Muslims in the US also aims to teach non-Muslim Americans about Islam to counter xenophobia and to reposition Muslims as being a part of “us”.[7] However, this focus on Muslim voices excludes the voices of other groups that have interacted with them. What I mean by this is that ethnic identity formation is both an external and internal process.[8] Muslim American identity formation occurred and continues to occur within a wider American social context. Without adding the voices of non-Muslims to the narrative, as GhaneaBassiri writes, scholars “[dim] the signifiance of the larger American Islamic socio-historical context [in] which American Muslims have [acted] for nearly four centuries.”[9] Many of the books reviewed in this paper, including Hussain’s Muslims and the Making of America, which was published in 2016, fit GhaneaBassiri’s analysis of recent scholarship as being primarily focused on identity formation and assimilation. The two exceptions are McCloud and Curtis’s books.

Continue reading “Reactionary Historiography: Post 9/11 Muslim Communities and Immigrants” →

Refuting the Culture of War Amnesia or Denial in Japan

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment
Barbara Brooks Award 2017 City College of New York

This historiography on “war denial” or “war amnesia” in post-World War II Japan was recognized as an Outstanding Paper on East Asian History in May 2017 by the City College of New York History Department and received the Barbara Brooks Award.

Countries that suffered under the Japanese during World War II, like China and South Korea, have repeatedly called on the Japanese government to issue apologies for long-standing issues, like the Nanjing Massacre and the “comfort women” system.[1] These apologies have been forthcoming. For example, the Japanese government apologized to former comfort women in the 1993 Kono Statement. In 1995, Prime Minister Murayama expressed a general apology for Japanese war atrocities. In 2005, Prime Minister Koizumi reaffirmed the apology offered by Murayama in 1995. In 2010, Prime Minister Hatoyama visited Nanjing, China, and apologized for the atrocities committed there. Despite these consistent acknowledgments of and apologies for actions taken by the Japanese government during World War II, accusations that Japan has a “history problem” persist.

Does Japan have a problem with acknowledging its war history? This paper will examine the ways that scholars have addressed the issue of war memory in Japanese postwar culture. “War memory,” as a term, is somewhat vague and is applied to a variety of topics and ideas by the authors surveyed. It is sometimes used to refer to any situation, conflict or issue that stems from events or actions that occurred during the Asia-Pacific war. It may also imply a sense of guilt or responsibility, as well as the proper allocation of that guilt and responsibility to the deserving party or parties. It is in many ways a catch-all phrase, a broad term meant to associate a current problem with Japan’s actions during World War II, with the implication that Japan or a Japanese individual is acting in an improper way. Scholars have approached the topic of war memory from a variety of perspectives, but there is a clear thread linking their arguments: Japan does not, as China and South Korea claim, have a problem remembering their role in the war. Instead, the problem is how Japan’s role in the war has been remembered, why particular narratives have historically dominated the national consciousness, and how the Japanese people continue to choose to incorporate those memories into a national narrative.

In Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s) (2001), edited by Takashi Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White, and Lisa Yoneyama, the introduction (written by the above authors) looks at the way that memories of the war were constructed and how those memories were continually refigured to address contemporary issues. They believe that marginalized memories are in danger of being lost because they do not fit into existing narratives. They also feel that an examination of marginalized voices creates the possibility of a “positive” recovery and reinterpretation of events, experiences, and sentiments.[2] This statement comes across as rather vague, but most of their introduction deals with general outlines and larger ideas rather than specifics, which is reasonable considering they are introducing a volume of collected works.

The authors believe that the role of the U.S. in the postwar period had a major impact on the development of a national war memory narrative in Japan. First, the authors of the introduction are critical of the way that the Asia-Pacific War has been covered in previous scholarship as a binary clash between the U.S. and Japan. Framing the conflict in those terms ignores the longer wars in the region prior to December 7, 1941, as well as local perspectives. By moving the boundaries of the conversation beyond conventional binary diplomatic and military histories, they hope to illuminate the reasons why Asian nations, like China and South Korea, claim that Japan has a “history problem.” Specifically, the authors mention the legacy of the Cold War in dividing the world “along a single axis formed by the incommensurability of two utopian, ideological visions.”[3] They use Okinawa as an example, mentioning that the United States military presented itself as not only a conquering force but as a defender of freedom and democracy for Okinawa, Japan, and the entire world. Furthermore, the idea that the U.S. had saved Japan from Japanese military rule was emphasized throughout the occupation period, lasting from 1945-1952, and was included in the San Francisco Peace Treaty and U.S.-Japan Security Treaty that went into effect in 1952.[4] The authors do not present any conclusions about why the U.S. decided to commit to this course of action, but by placing blame for the war on the military, the U.S. allowed the Japanese public to deny personal responsibility.

Without going into details, the authors state that they believe the ongoing collapse of the Cold War order in East Asia has allowed for the development of new narratives and conflicts at the domestic and international level. This point could have been made more clearly if they had discussed the role the Cold War played in preventing the U.S.’s historical narrative in Japan from being challenged by China. The lack of details is a continuing issue with the introduction. It is written in an extremely general way that often does not include dates or other necessary information that would allow someone unfamiliar with the issues to easily understand their arguments. To their credit, they do mention that the development of new post-Cold War narratives is a process that results from the competition of multiple, competing voices within and across national boundaries, which acknowledges that there are scholars within Japan challenging the dominant narrative.[5]

The authors also examine counternarratives that attempt to romanticize or downplay the events of the past in order to create a Japanese historical narrative that is not “masochistic.” They note that there are “what if” novels and video games with simulated outcomes that aggrandize Japan’s role in the war and displace what they believe are actual memories of the events. They also note that manga artists, like Kobayashi Yoshinori, use manga as a medium to promote the view that the Japanese have been brainwashed into believing a critical history that deprives the Japanese of their national pride. Popular culture references that change or gloss over aspects of the war are discussed by the authors as though there is a clear, unified intent to misrepresent history. In some instances, that may be true, but “what if” novels may also be written wholly for entertainment value, or to be thought-provoking. The examples they choose to present in the introduction only support their point of view.

As an example, The Man in the High Castle, written by Philip K. Dick in 1963 is set in a fictional 1962 North America that is occupied by Japan and Germany. The book poses the question: “What if Japan and Germany won the war and divided the United States?” Granted, this is an American work of fiction, but it illustrates the question of whether only negative portrayals of Japan in World War II should be allowed in entertainment venues. The tone of the editors’ introduction leads one to believe that they feel no accurate detail (in their point of view) should be spared and that Japan should be seen in as negative a light as possible. Does Japanese history have to be masochistic? Is there no room to have a positive view of history that allows one to move forward without continuing to carry all of the baggage of World War II? Is there no room for entertainment?

Addressing the historiography on war memory, the editors discuss the role of the Liberal History Study Group, founded in 1995 by historian Fujioka Nobukatsu, in promoting a revisionist view of history. The authors feel that this revisionist trend is gaining ground, putting the marginalized memories represented in their volume at risk of being imperiled, or forgotten, which was the impetus for the title of the book. This does introduce a possibility of viewpoint bias. If they’re focused on not letting these imperiled memories disappear, the perspective presented in this volume will not be representative. Their goal is to promote specific agendas rather than balanced viewpoints. This same criticism was leveled against them when requesting funding for a conference that would have addressed the topics covered in this volume. Many of the authors included in the volume are activists rather than traditional historians. Ishihara Masaie was very active in protests against the Japanese and American domination of Okinawa. Chen Yingzhen was imprisoned for his critiques of the government in Taiwan. Utsumi Aiko collected oral histories of colonial experiences but was not trained as a historian. Lastly, Toyonaga Keisaburo was a high school teacher and principal who retired and engaged in grassroots political activism. So, it would be difficult to approach this volume without a fair degree of skepticism.

James J. Orr approaches war memory in Japan through the idea of victimhood and the mythologizing of victimhood in Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (2001). Orr states that from the immediate postwar period to the 1960s, when Japan became a “mercantilist” success, the Japanese presented themselves as a cultured, peace-loving nation, with responsibility for the war placed on the military and government elites.[6] Orr presents the prevailing pacifist ideology as deriving from a feeling of victimization that developed among the Japanese public after the Asia-Pacific War ended. During the occupation period, U.S. authorities encouraged war victim consciousness to alienate the Japanese from the wartime state and its military. This built on psychological warfare efforts during the war that encouraged Japanese soldiers to allocate blame with their leaders, who led them into unwinnable situations. The goal of the U.S. Psychological Warfare Branch was to undermine morale, charge the military leadership with responsibility for the war, and encourage the surrender of Japanese troops. Shifting blame was a way to give the troops hope that they would not suffer if they surrendered.[7]

This policy was continued after the war, with MacArthur comparing the condition of the Japanese under their former government to a condition of slavery. This rhetoric was part of the process of converting the Japanese into a democratic nation. Because democracy places governing power in the people, the idea that the general Japanese population was not responsible for the acts of the country during the war was reinforced. Orr also points out that the focus on top leadership in the Tokyo War Crimes trials (1946-1948) encouraged people to disassociate themselves from personal responsibility. The purge of top government officials who might oppose occupation reforms also encouraged people to believe that it was the entrenched “system” that had caused the country to suffer.[8] This was problematic, considering that many of Japan’s postwar government leaders were also in positions of government power during the war, but Orr states that these conservative leaders were able to successfully adopt the language of Japanese war victimization in order to appeal to their electorates.[9]

The government’s opposition elements, the Communist and Socialist parties, became vocal opponents of the conservative government’s policy of remilitarization. To rally people to their cause, they utilized war memories of suffering, deprivation, and the victimhood that Japanese felt during World War II. They also consistently called on the conservative Japanese government to acknowledge Japan’s role as the aggressor in the Asia-Pacific War. This use of war memory as a political tool to protest rearmament reinforced the feeling that the wartime government, rather than the general populace, was responsible for the war.

Calls for acknowledgment of responsibility led what Orr identifies as “progressive activists” to take the lead in the formation of a peace movement to lobby against what they perceived to be the reversion of the postwar government to its prewar policy of militarism. The peace movement initially presented the role of the Japanese people collectively (as the masses, national citizenry, or ethnic nation, interchangeably) as being both victimizers and victims. However, because of the way the peace movement utilized personal Japanese accounts of war experiences to promote its agenda, Orr believes the vision of the Japanese as victims came to overshadow the Japanese role as victimizers. He writes that the role of victimizer was passed on to “the system,” the military, or to the militarist state.[10] This feeling of victimhood allowed members of the peace movement to sidestep the important issue of feeling responsible for Japan’s actions during the war. So, the idea that the Japanese as a whole were responsible for the actions of the government became a marginal narrative.

Orr notes that this mythology of victimhood reached its peak with the first postwar generation and then began to shift as people recognized themselves as past victimizers when they were faced with the realities of the U.S. role in the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War (1955-1975). The U.S. used bases built on Okinawa as a staging area for troops, as well as for launching bombing runs into Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Orr relates a trip made by members of a peace movement called Beheiren, founded in 1965 by Oda Makoto, to Hanoi in Vietnam. In 1966, Oda reflected on this trip in an essay, commenting that it was imperative that the Japanese people understand their role as victimizers if they were to avoid repeating the same errors in the future. Oda was specifically concerned that the U.S.-Japan Bilateral Security agreement would draw Japan into a war.[11] Orr indicates that there was a consistent narrative being pushed by social commentators that called on the Japanese to remember their role as aggressors in the war. This group included Okuma Nobuyuki and Nanbara Shigeru during the occupation, Kamei Katsuichiro and Maruyama Masao in the 1950s, and Shimizu Ikutaro and Sakamoto Yoshikazu in the years around the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Bilateral Security Agreement in 1960.[12] However, it is not clear how much impact they really had, because Orr also mentions that depictions of the Japanese as victims in popular media were prevalent throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It seems more likely that it wasn’t until after the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989 that debates about personal war responsibility became widespread in Japan as a public, rather than niche phenomenon.[13]

In War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005 (2008), Franziska Seraphim argues that questions of war memory and postwar responsibility have been a part of public political life in Japan from immediately after the war through the 2000s. She argues that the way war memory was used depended on specific historical factors, including international circumstances, domestic politics, and a shifting public culture. She is very adamant that questions of postwar responsibility and memory have been a part of public political life in Japan since the end of the war and argues against the idea that the Japanese are politically immature, have no sense of guilt, or have a culture of amnesia. Seraphim also addresses the issue of the creation of a national public memory. On the one hand, she says there is an ideal of a unified memory, whether it promotes pacifism or nationalism, that is promoted by Kato Norihiro in his book Haisengoron, for example. On the other hand, there is the messy, complex, history built around special interest politics, which Seraphim holds to be more true to actual events.[14]

According to Seraphim, the Japanese people became accustomed to seeing war memory as part of special interest representative politics and because of this, they saw war memory as an issue that did not concern the individual as an individual or the public as a national public.[15] She contends that the making and negotiating of war memory took place at the middle level of the political process between organized groups of citizens, their constituents, the state, and the larger public.[16] This approach breaks war memory down into specific categories of interest that were pursued by different portions of the Japanese population. There was no feeling of general responsibility for the war as a whole, but rather a diverse set of interests. This is a much more realistic approach to the topic of what an entire population might feel about an event as complex as the Asia-Pacific War.

Seraphim draws on the histories of five prominent civic organizations from across the political spectrum to illustrate her point, including the Association of Shinto Shrines, Association of War-Bereaved Families, Teachers’ Union, Japan-China Friendship Association, and Memorial Society for the Student-Soldiers Killed in War (referenced by the organization’s Japanese name, Wadatsumikai, moving forward). These groups represent a wide range of special interests, including religion, military family issues, anti-militarism, reconciliation with China, and pacifism. They also represent different political leanings in Japan. Organized in the 1950s, these groups established and dominated the use of war memories in special interest politics. These groups are adequately diverse to prove Seraphim’s point and cover issues that are still being debated today, including textbook revisionism, fears of remilitarization, and acknowledgment and reconciliation with China.

Like the editors of Perilous Memories, Seraphim acknowledges that the prevalent discourse on war memory was initially imposed on the Japanese people by the American occupation, which positioned Japan as the sole aggressor in the war. She also agrees with James Orr’s view of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials as a matter of “victor’s justice” that skipped over major issues like comfort women and biological warfare testing in Manchuria.[17]  She looks at the shift in war memory and responsibility from being primarily a domestic issue from the 1950s through the 1970s to one of international and broad public significance in Japan in the 1980s. What Seraphim is claiming is not that international, external events had no impact on Japanese war memory, but rather that these events did not change the competitive nature and utilization of war memory by the special interest groups she is reviewing.[18] She acknowledges the impact of the Vietnam War in forming groups like Beheiren. She also discusses normalization of government relations with South Korea in 1965 and China in 1972, as well as some of the associated problems that prevented an actual discourse of reconciliation. For example, the resumption of relations with South Korea was widely believed in both Japan and South Korea to be the result of business interests rather than a genuine concern for making amends for the past. In China, she cites the role of the government in suppressing the media as the reason there were no similar protests.[19]

Seraphim’s work covers a lot of ground, but it fails to address the public reaction to these special interest groups. The role of other nations in her work is slightly lacking, but her focus is on Japanese national politics and the development of war memory as a tool used by special interests leading up to the 1980s. In the 1980s and beyond, she discusses outside pressures, but only in terms of how the Japanese political body reacted to them. Perhaps her work could have benefited from giving more voice to these other countries, especially in her chapter on the issue of Japan offering apologies to Asian countries in the 1980s and beyond.

James Orr’s work, which presents all Japanese as experiencing a feeling of common victimhood with members of other Asian nations, presents a gap in public understanding of war responsibility that is contradicted by the other works surveyed in this paper, but especially by Takashi Yoshida in From Cultures of War to Cultures of Peace: War and Peace Museums in Japan, China, and South Korea (2014). Yoshida argues that the Japanese understood their role as aggressors in the war immediately after Japan’s defeat as a result of an American “war guilt program” initiated during the occupation period. A problem with his understanding of war guilt, however, is that while he notes that the Japanese rejected the values and conduct of wartime Japan, he fails to address the distinction between the assignation of blame to the military and government elites versus a feeling of personal responsibility among the Japanese public.[20] This nuance being lost does not seriously detract from his examination of early peace movements and museums, however. In his analysis, Yoshida disagrees that Japan, as a nation, has a “history problem,” and attempts to challenge the assumption that all Japanese are committed to forgetting about or denying their imperial past. Instead, Yoshida presents the wartime Japanese populace as having believed in their government as a result of media propaganda and indoctrination.[21] Subsequent to their defeat, they came to grips with their role in the war as aggressors and evidence of this can be found in the peace museums that were constructed.

Yoshida presents the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the primary driving force behind the establishment of the first peace museum. He details the development of an annual Peace Festival at Hiroshima, that began one year after the bomb dropped, into a world recognized event that initially had support from Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan. Despite waning interest from the American government in the face of potential war with Korea and the onset of Cold War politics, Hiroshima’s mayor, Hamai Shinzo was able to secure funding from the Japanese Diet to help rebuild the city into a testament for peace. The Bikini Atoll / Lucky Dragon Five Incident in 1954 provided additional support from both the Japanese national public and international community.[22] In 1955, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was opened to display the effects of the atomic bomb on the city. As indicated in its name, the goal of the museum was to promote peace. The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, originally established as the Nagasaki International Cultural Hall Atomic Bomb Museum in 1955, served the same purpose of promoting peace. These museums speak more to a feeling of victimhood and a commitment to pacifism than a real feeling of guilt for the war, however. It may be that Yoshido is conflating victimhood with a feeling of war responsibility.

Another set of museums included in Yoshida’s work have a more critical perspective. They include the Maruki Art Gallery (1967, Saitama), the Osaka Human Rights Museum (1985), the Korea Museum (2001, Tokyo) and the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (2005, Tokyo). These museums attempt to show the results of Japanese aggression. For example, the Osaka Human Rights Museum discusses the fact that Japanese citizenship was stripped from colonial migrants, while the Women’s Active Museum primarily commemorates the women forced into sexual servitude in the Japanese military’s “comfort women” system. These museums, which are driven by a pacifist agenda, display the devastating effects of the war on people’s lives in Asia and the Pacific.[23] Yoshida does not make it clear that the people who constructed these museums felt a sense of war guilt or responsibility, but it can be inferred from the types of exhibitions they put on display. Additionally, there is a gap of almost twenty-five years between the end of the war and the opening of the first museum listed that condemns Japanese aggression, which contradicts the notion that the Japanese people felt themselves to be personally responsible immediately after the end of the war.

Like Seraphim, Yoshida acknowledges that there are competing narratives of war memory in Japan. He discusses revisionist attempts to influence public discourse on war responsibility by analyzing the reopening of the Battleship Mikasa Memorial Museum and by discussing the role of the Yushukan war museum at Yasukuni Shrine. Both of these museums were reestablished in 1961. The Mikasa museum did not perform well initially, as a result of poor facilities and a lack of interest due to antiwar sentiment. Ironically, the museum received funding from American Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, who turned over royalties to both an essay he wrote for Bungei shunju, a monthly journal, as well as royalties from the Japanese translation of a book he had written titled The Great Sea War. Additional donations were made by American sailors in Japan. The museum was supported by both the conservative Japanese government and the American government, who hoped it would help overcome pacifist sentiment in postwar Japan.[24] The Yushukan museum at Yasukuni shrine was only able to reopen a small display hall, called the Museum of Treasures Left Behind, in 1961. Incremental improvements were made and the full Yushukan museum was reopened in 1986, but it did not gain in popularity until after an expansion in 2002. Yushukan’s stated purpose is to honor war martyrs and reveal the “truth” about Japan’s military history, which gives the museum a pro-militarism perspective.[25]

In Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Undending Postwar (2015), Akiko Takenaka takes a similar approach by using a site to analyze the way that the Japanese have engaged with war memory in the postwar period. The approaches that Yoshida and Takenaka take are slightly different. Yoshida uses a series of sites to show how different collections have been curated to present a specific historical narrative that visitors from both Japan and abroad then engage with. In Takenaka’s case, she is instead discussing how narratives have been applied to a specific site, Yasukuni Shrine.

Yasukuni Shrine, originally built in June 1869 to memorialize the spirits of 3,588 imperialist soldiers who died in the Boshin War, is a Shinto shrine and a war memorial in Tokyo where Japan’s 1868 – 1945 war casualties are collectively memorialized. In order to analyze the history of the shrine, Takenaka makes a distinction between the religious aspect of the site, the site itself as a physical location, and the war memory issues that have become tied up in the term “Yasukuni.” Enshrinement at Yasukuni was promoted as the greatest honor that a soldier could receive. Takenaka believes that this encouraged the devaluation of human life, leading to a greater loss of lives during the Asia-Pacific War. Because this idea of honorable sacrifice was promoted by the government, Japanese in the postwar period came to see it as another sign that they had been deceived by their government, further reinforcing the Japanese public’s notion of shared victimhood.[26]

When Class A war criminals were enshrined in Yasukuni in 1978, the site became a focal point for discussions related to Japan’s role as an aggressor in the Asia-Pacific War.[27] Because Japan is seen as the aggressor in the Asia-Pacific War by China and South Korea, it becomes problematic and controversial for state officials to visit the site and honor the war dead. Takenaka draws a comparison to the contradictions and problems inherent in the Vietnam War Memorial in the United States.[28] She states that many East Asian and Southeast Asian nations that suffered from Japan’s wartime aggression during the Asia-Pacific War have come to see official state visits to Yasukuni Shrine as a sign of Japan’s desire to rearm and engage in future military enterprises.[29] Takenaka argues that critics of Yasukuni have come to see the shrine itself as the source of postwar problems, rather than as a symbol of those problems and have proposed destroying the shrine or building a new shrine for Japan’s war dead, as if that will solve the underlying issues that exacerbate international tensions.

Takenaka does not believe that destroying the shrine is an effective solution. She believes that Yasukuni is being scapegoated by the Japanese public to avoid taking personal responsibility for the actions of the Japanese state during the war. Takenaka’s conception of the Japanese public’s sense of personal responsibility mirrors that of other authors reviewed in this paper. Because of the focus of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials on a select group of leaders, the transition to democracy, and the enshrinement of Class A war criminals in Yasukuni, the public was encouraged to disassociate themselves from any personal guilt. Further exacerbating the situation is the fact that as time passes there are fewer and fewer people left alive in Japan who served in the government during the war.[30] People no longer feel the need to take responsibility for something that occurred before they were born. Nor have any of the authors reviewed made a strong case for why the Japanese public should feel any responsibility for what the wartime government did in their name, either in the present or during the war. Takenaka reveals that many Japanese had no desire to be conscripted, that hardly any mentioned the emperor in letters sent home to parents, and many children mocked the emperor secretly.[31] There was some quiet dissent, but what mechanisms could the Japanese have used to halt the progress of Japanese imperialism? If elected officials were having trouble reigning in the Japanese military in Manchuria, would popular protest have accomplished anything?

In The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan (2015), Akiko Hashimoto uses three key war memory narratives – nationalism, pacifism, and reconciliation – to explore rising international tensions between Japan and China, Korea, and Russia because of unresolved issues leftover from the Asia-Pacific War, including territorial disputes, the Yasukuni issue, apologies and compensation for forced laborers and “comfort women,” and the treatment of POWs.[32] In her analysis, she attempts to understand why memories of national trauma have remained so relevant in Japanese culture so long after the actual event. She argues that war memory and defeat have become an indelible part of Japan’s culture. Like Seraphim, she identifies an increase in the intensity of war memory in public discourse after the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989. Hashimoto focuses on the years between 1985 and 2015 and uses the narratives of the war that are circulated in families, popular media, and schools to examine how the Japanese public has come to terms with an inherited legacy of trauma, loss, guilt, and shame.[33]

Hashimoto argues that the trauma of defeat itself is the catalyst for revising historical narratives.[34] She positions the political debate about war memories as primarily concerned with national belonging and what it means to be Japanese.  She calls this a “project of repairing the moral backbone of a broken society,” recalling the argument made by revisionists about not wanting to promote a masochistic historical narrative mentioned in Perilous Memories.[35] She also identifies the Japanese conflict over its history as part of a larger trend where remembering the past has become part of the experience of forging a collective identity.[36] She is referring to the creation of national narratives as a force to bind a community together. In Japan’s case, this attempt to create a new national narrative is frustrated by internal divisions and external pressures from countries, like China and South Korea, as well as individuals seeking acknowledgment of or reparations for Japan’s wartime acts.

Hashimoto uses oral history, popular media and schools to analyze how war memory continues to impact Japanese society. She concludes that war memories are deeply encoded in everyday Japanese culture and are much more varied than the stereotypical claim that Japan has historical amnesia or a “history problem.” She goes a step further by arguing that there is no collective memory in Japan that promotes a single point of view. There are multiple historical narratives based on war memories that compete for legitimacy. She places these competing narratives into three general categories. The first category of narratives is the “fortunate fall” group, which justify the war and the sacrifices made as a necessary foundation for the peace and prosperity that Japan experiences in the present.[37] Takenaka references this theory as well, in the sense that the soldiers entombed in Yasukuni, and Yasukuni itself, are thought of as the cornerstone that modern, successful Japan is built on.[38] This narrative elides responsibility for starting the war by emphasizing the heroism of the Japanese and the necessity of the war for Japan’s later successes. Examples of this narrative in popular culture are the story of the Yamato, which is continually retold in films, documentaries, textbooks, and speeches. There are also popular movies, like Eternal Zero (2013) and Moon Light Summer (1993). The next category of narratives is the “catastrophe” group, which views the war as an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions. These narratives position the Japanese public as fellow victims of the war. Nakazawa Keiji’s Barefoot Gen antiwar comic is a good example of this category, as well as the animated film Grave of the Fireflies (1988).[39] The third group of narratives is the “dark descent to hell,” which emphasize Japan’s role as the aggressor. This is the approach taken by Ienaga Saburo, a historian, and other scholars who promote a critical viewpoint of Japan as the aggressor in the war in textbooks, popular histories, novels, documentaries, and cartoons.[40]

Carol Gluck touches on the idea of competing narratives in an article titled “The Seventieth Anniversary of World War II’s End in Asia: Three Perspectives” (2015). In discussing how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might approach his speech at this then upcoming event, she reflects on Abe’s previous statement that he wanted to make the past “more forward looking,” which is an interesting statement because it implies revising the historical narrative. Gluck believes that this is indeed what Abe meant by the term. His government and supporters want to produce a positive national narrative that will emphasize patriotism and downplay or not mention wartime atrocities. She notes that this is a path that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry encouraged for both Japan and South Korea, bringing to mind the arguments of other authors in this paper that note the role of the U.S. in creating and maintaining war memory related tensions between Japan and its neighbors.

In reviewing the work of these authors it becomes apparent that war memory is a very complex topic and Japanese national life has been, and continues to be, deeply impacted by the events of the Asia-Pacific War. Because of the policies of the U.S. government, both prior to and after Japan’s surrender, the Japanese public was greatly encouraged to disassociate themselves from personal responsibility for the nation’s role in the war. While there were some elements within the population that attempted to promote a collective sense of responsibility, their narrative was marginal until after the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989. With the development of national histories that have competing claims on truth, Japan is coming to grips with the need to form a coherent historical narrative. How Japan’s history will be represented remains to be seen, though it is unrealistic to believe that the country will unanimously back a single narrative. The three dominant categories of “fortunate fall,” “catastrophe,” and “dark descent to hell” are in competition with each other and will likely remain that way until the events of the Asia-Pacific War fade into the distant past.

It is also unlikely that the Japanese public will suddenly assume a feeling of personal responsibility for the events of the Japanese nation during World War II. It is not even clear why they should, or whether it would be beneficial in any meaningful way. This could be an important area for further study. The authors reviewed all discuss feelings of personal responsibility among the general population, but they did not make an argument as to why the general population should be held responsible. Even in a democracy, are the people really responsible for the actions their government commits in their name? How much control did the Japanese people have over elected officials once they were in office? How much control did they have over the selection of candidates or the election process? What avenues could they have used to try to stop their government from continuing along the path to war, had they wanted to? It would also be interesting to look at comparative studies, to see how other populations have reacted when their governments have engaged in wars that are widely held to be unjust wars of aggression, like the U.S. war in Vietnam and Iraq, for example.

Footnotes

[1] Carol Gluck, et al., “The Seventieth Anniversary of World War II’s End in Asia: Three Perspectives,” The Journal of Asian Studies (2015): 3.

[2] Takashi Fujitani, et al., Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 4-5.

[3] Ibid., 5.

[4] Ibid., 12.

[5] Ibid., 8.

[6] James J. Orr, Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 2.

[7] Ibid., 17.

[8] Ibid., 19-20.

[9] Ibid., 7.

[10] Ibid., 3.

[11] Ibid., 4.

[12] Ibid., 5.

[13] Ibid., 6.

[14] Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2000 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 316.

[15] Ibid., 5.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., 6.

[18] Ibid., 194-195, 261.

[19] Ibid., 194, 196, 204.

[20] Takashi Yoshida, From Cultures of War to Cultures of Peace: War and Peace Museums in Japan, China, and South Korea (Portland: MerwinAsia, 2014), xiii, 14.

[21] Ibid., xiv.

[22] Ibid., 20-25.

[23] Ibid., 49, 100.

[24] Ibid., 145-148.

[25] Ibid., 148-151.

[26] Akiko Takenaka, Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), 11.

[27] Ibid., 2.

[28] Ibid., 3.

[29] Ibid., 4-5.

[30] Ibid., 11-12.

[31] Ibid., 14.

[32] Akiko Hashimoto, The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 3.

[33] Ibid., 4.

[34] Ibid., 5.

[35] Ibid., 2.

[36] Ibid., 5.

[37] Ibid., 8.

[38] Akiko Takenaka, Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), 17.

[39] Ibid., 13.

[40] Ibid., 14.

 

Bibliography

Fujitani, Takashi, Geoffrey M. White, and Lisa Yoneyama. 2001. Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s). Durham: Duke University Press.

Gluck, Carol, Rana Mitter, and Charles K. Armstrong. 2015. “The Seventieth Anniversary of World War II’s End in Asia: Three Perspectives.” The Journal of Asian Studies 1-7.

Hashimoto, Akiko. 2015. The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan. New York: Oxford University Press.

Orr, James J. 2001. Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Seraphim, Franziska. 2008. War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.

Takenaka, Akiko. 2015. Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Yoshida, Takashi. 2014. From Cultures of War to Cultures of Peace: War and Peace Museums in Japan, China, and South Korea. Portland: MerwinAsia.

 

Wide Awake: Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers” and World War I

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The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark book cover image

Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers is an eminently readable account of the events that led up to the outbreak of World War I. Written in a narrative style, but rich with detail and innovative arguments about the origins of the war, Clark’s work is meant for a general audience but will also appeal to scholars looking to broaden their understanding of the events leading up to World War I. Clark is well versed in his subject matter. He is currently the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University with a focus on European history. His prior works include a study of Christian-Jewish relations in Prussia (The Politics of Conversion. Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 1728-1941, Oxford University Press, 1995), a general history of Prussia (Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, Penguin, 2006), and a biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (Kaiser Wilhelm II, Longman, 2000).

In The Sleepwalkers, Clark attempts to fundamentally change the way the origins of the war are discussed. Rather than trying to make a claim about who bears the most responsibility for the outbreak of World War I, the author is instead more concerned with the agency of individuals within the state power structures, the decisions they made, and why. Using a wealth of primary documents in state archives as well as secondary sources, Clark brings these “characters” to life in a story that begins with the assassination of King Alexander and Queen Draga in Serbia in June of 1903 and ends with European mobilization in August of 1914.

The scope of Clark’s narrative is impressive, despite being limited. The focus is placed primarily on Serbia, the Habsburg Empire, Russia, Germany, and France. Clark goes into detail regarding meetings, conversations, letters, and press publications in these countries. Other nations that played important roles in World War I are only touched upon briefly, including Italy, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire. Does it make sense to limit the narrative to these countries? For the most part, yes. Clark demonstrates that the rivalries between Russia and the Habsburgs and between the French and the Germans were the driving forces behind the outbreak of war; the assassination of the Archduke and Archduchess of Austria-Hungary by Serbian assassins was simply a pretext used by these nations to pursue other goals. On the other hand, Clark positions the ongoing decline of the Ottoman Empire and the loss of Ottoman lands to other states as a primary cause of continuing unrest not only in the Balkans, but in Europe as well. If the loss of Libya to Italy and Russia’s longstanding conflict with the Ottomans over the Dardanelles and Bosphorus was so crucial in laying the groundwork for the events that led up to World War I, why was the Ottoman Empire (the so-called “sick man of Europe”) not given a greater place at the table in Clark’s narrative?

The role Clark attributes to the Ottoman Empire in The Sleepwalkers ties into one of his larger themes, in which he presents the alliance bloc system as a driving force behind the outbreak of hostilities. The new bi-polar system (Entente vs Central Powers) developed out of an earlier multi-polar system which hinged on the maintenance of the status quo, including the propping up of the Ottoman Empire as a vital part of the European political establishment. The formation of powerful alliance blocs coupled with the linkage of diplomacy to military power, as well as the lack of available colonial territories to barter and trade away in international diplomacy, created a situation that was inherently volatile. Clark writes that war was not inevitable, that it was the result of actions taken by individuals. The evidence Clark presents strongly supports his thesis. Clark clearly shows that the French elite were agitating for war to regain territories previously lost to Germany. Russian elites were looking for an excuse to finally capture the Dardanelles and Bosphorus. They understood that they would likely trigger a continental war, but decided to push forward with their plans anyway. These players were not sleepwalking towards war; they were wide awake, even if they were unaware of the scale of the consequences their actions would bring.

One of the larger problems with Clark’s work is that he places so much emphasis on Serbia and Serbian history when his narrative clearly shows that events in Serbia and Sarajevo were merely a pretext that France and Russia used to start a war that they hoped would allow them to achieve their own national goals. The amount of space in the book devoted to Serbian history seems disproportionate to the country’s influence on events. Without Russian backing, would a larger continental war have started at all? In his introduction, Clark writes that he is not interested in placing blame, but based on the evidence he presents, Russia is responsible for the start of World War I. Serbia was not a part of the Entente Alliance of 1907. Had Russia not intervened on its behalf, the treaty stipulations would not have been triggered. Germany, by contrast, comes across as an underdog in The Sleepwalkers.

Two minor issues stood out to me in this book. One is the mention of but lack of development of the idea that a new trend in masculinity affected diplomatic relations between the countries involved. The second is the repeated use of “public opinion” to explain events without developing the reader’s understanding of the actual relationship between the media or government and the public. Who was “the public”? The elite, or all classes? What was the literacy rate? Did people consume news by reading or through word-of-mouth in public spaces? Did people understand that some news was camouflaged diplomacy? Clark indicates that the outbreak of war surprised rural populations in Russia and France and they did not understand what was going on, so how could “public opinion” have played such a crucial role in government policy formation?

Overall, Clark’s presentation of the backdrop to World War I in The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is brilliant. It is written in a way that is informative and yet entertaining. He opens an old topic to fresh discussion by revealing the complicated web of interactions between individuals in the state governmental systems, calling into question anew who is responsible for the start of World War I, even if that is not the author’s intention. More importantly, Clark’s work is a solid reminder that wars do not start themselves; people start wars and bad decisions by people in key positions can have devastating consequences.

Book Review: Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction, by Kevin Kenny

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Kevin Kenny’s book, Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction, is part of a series of short introductions on a wide range of topics published by the Oxford University Press. As a very short introduction with just 109 pages of content, Kenny does his best to avoid becoming bogged down in historical details and instead focuses on elucidating the theoretical framework of diaspora itself. Kenny argues that the term diaspora has been used in so wide a variety of situations that it has begun to lose its utility as a tool of study. To combat this trend, Kenny tries to narrow the definition of diaspora by identifying three key attributes that diasporic groups possess: movement, connectivity, and return. He supports and expands on this framework for diaspora by analyzing a geographically diverse range of population movements.

Kenny’s conception of diaspora is heavily rooted in Jewish tradition. He traces the word diaspora back to its use in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures from approximately 250 BCE. He argues that the Jewish understanding of diaspora, which was originally meant to convey the idea of spiritual estrangement from God, became conflated with galut, a Hebrew word which means physical exile (Kenny, 4-5). So, the Jews saw physical and spiritual exile from the land as being part of the same experience or process. Kenny positions this process of catastrophe, forced movement and a hope for redemption through return as the most useful structure of diaspora as a concept.

Is Kenny’s understanding of diaspora sound? Does it make sense to only apply the term diaspora if a migratory group’s situation conforms to the Jewish experience of exile and a hoped for divine redemption, or does that privilege Western understandings of history unnecessarily? One could argue that a word must have a set meaning, but the meanings of words have always changed over time. Also, for an academic study, it might make more sense to define a term in a way that does not rely on a specific set of religious ideas, especially if the goal is to make it generally applicable for groups of differing religious and cultural backgrounds. Because of how Kenny positions the idea of diaspora, at times it feels as if he is stretching the experience of the immigrant groups he examines to push them into the box he has built. He also fails to examine in any meaningful way the experiences of groups that would challenge his construction of diaspora. That may not be a fair critique for a very short introduction, but considering his conjecture that there are many opposing viewpoints of what constitutes a diaspora, including an example could have benefitted readers. Also, if Kenny is committed to the idea of scholars having the obligation to create a specific definition of diaspora and maintain it, why does he backpedal in his closing chapter by asking, “But if a given group chooses to define itself as a diaspora for its own purposes, who is the author of a short introduction to disagree? (Kenny, 109).

Kenny’s book is arranged thematically, rather than by group. He defines how he understands diaspora in chapter one and then spends the next three chapters expanding on the experiences of a handful of groups to elaborate on that definition. On the one hand, arranging his book this way makes it difficult to follow the individual experiences of the groups he reviews. In most cases, there are no chapter subheadings to orient the reader if they were interested in just one group’s experiences, making the reading experience potentially more laborious. Arranging his book thematically also leads to the repetition of information in some cases, which is space that could have been used for opposing views or the analysis of additional groups. On the other hand, organizing the book thematically allows the reader to clearly see the similarities between the experiences of the different groups, which better suits the author’s purpose of attempting to define diaspora.

Kenny’s first qualifier for a group to be a diaspora is an initial movement from a homeland. This movement must have a catastrophic element that creates a sense of imposed exile. Because of his concern for overextending the use of the word diaspora, Kenny is careful when discussing the history of the migration of different groups to differentiate between normal migration and a forced migration that creates a diaspora. His best example to support this idea is his discussion of the continuous migration of Irish to other countries over a period of hundreds of years, beginning in the 1700s. He points out that it was the potato blight in 1841to1855, which caused massive famine and a sudden, massive increase in the number of people migrating out of Ireland that was the defining moment in the creation of an Irish diaspora. The Irish who went abroad blamed England for their circumstances and for the deaths caused by the famine. They felt that England engineered the blight to eradicate them. This feeling of oppression created a sense of exile that reinforced their identity as a diasporic community. He also shows how the Jewish diasporic community suffered a catastrophic event that began a period of diaspora, though he oddly positions the beginning of diaspora in 586 BCE with the Babylonian exile. While historically accurate, Jews see exile and return as cyclical and the most recent exile, imposed by the Romans in 70 CE after they destroyed the Second Temple was the defining event for the majority of diasporic Jews. It marked the end of Jewish sovereignty for approximately two-thousand years and, unlike the Babylonian exile, removed almost the entirety of the population from the area.

Kenny’s second qualifier is connectivity. This is an interesting idea, but it does not seem as well-developed as Kenny’s explanations of either the initial migration or of the desire for return. Or rather, it seems that in each category a different group fits more neatly into Kenny’s definition of diaspora. For the initial migration, Irish and Jews clearly fit into the model of catastrophe leading to diaspora. For Africans, there was certainly a catastrophic event, but Kenny points out that Africans were victims of being sold into slavery in other parts of the world as well. Kenny attempts to downplay the experiences of African slaves in other areas of the world to bolster his claim that Atlantic slavery was definitive in creating an African diaspora. It seems more likely, however, that rather than the initial experience of being sold into slavery, it was racialization that created a feeling of commonality between Africans, which is something that Kenny brings up, but only in the sense that it created a sense of connectivity among Africans in the Atlantic world. This brings up another point. What is connectivity? Did Africans in South America actively communicate with Africans in the southeast United States or the Caribbean? Or is Kenny simply referring to a feeling of solidarity and common experience?

The third qualifier, which focuses on the idea of return, is the most interesting. Kenny focuses on the fact that many members of diasporic communities may not choose to return, even when given the opportunity. He oddly situates a discussion of this regarding Indians in South America in the chapter dealing with connectivity, but it is relevant here as well. This speaks to Kenny’s definition of the desire to return as being a desire to return a homeland that may be more imagined than real. His explanation of return focuses most heavily on the Jewish experience and the Rastafari movement. The Jewish experience was extremely informative because it shows what can happen when a diasporic group attempts to become a singular nation. The differences between the waves of immigrants that arrived in Israel shows that life in the diaspora has an effect on migrant groups. They become partially assimilated the cultures they live in. One could almost say that they stop being part of the same group in almost every sense of the word, becoming something in-between, rather like the Japanese experience in the American west. This is something that Kenny touches on when discussing the reasons why diasporic groups may choose to remain outside of their homeland. His discussion of the Rastafari movement was fascinating, though it seemed out of place. Kenny attempted to present the entire African diaspora in the Atlantic as connected, but used the experience of one group to show a general desire for return to Africa.

There were other odd additions to Kenny’s narrative that seemed out of place. One was the long discussion of the Palestinians in the chapter on return. Why add in a new group of people but only discuss them in a specific chapter, rather than as a part of the whole narrative? This may have been a limitation of the decision he made to structure his book thematically, but if that were the case, it may have presented a cleaner narrative if the Palestinians had not been included. However, since they were included in the narrative, the way they were approached feels like a missed opportunity. Rather than describing in excessive detail the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, Kenny could have examined the Palestinians as a diaspora. Even more, he could have looked at the dynamics between the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas and discussed how they affect, or possibly reinforce each other. Another odd inclusion was the discussion of ancient human migrations out of Africa. Was this necessary for a discussion on diaspora?

Despite any problems that Kenny’s book may have, he is tackling a topic that is hard to define and hard to discuss, especially in a very short introduction. With a book this short, Kenny necessarily must take a certain point of view and stay with it. His desire to give the term diaspora a set meaning is reasonable, especially if we want the term to be useful as a tool for studying migration, and he presents a definition that seems to fit the groups he chooses for analysis reasonably well. Kenny spent time on subjects that were not necessary to his topic, but they do not detract from the book in a serious way. He also seems to broaden and bend his definition based on the group he is analyzing. As an introduction to diaspora, this book is well worth the time it takes to read and, if the reader has more questions, Kenny provides a list for further reading based on chapter.

 

References

Kenny, Kevin. 2013. Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Universy Press.

Reading Response – Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America by Mae Ngai

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Ngai’s main argument is that illegal aliens were created through acts of positive law rather than through bad character, conduct, race or culture. In other words, prior to legislation that designated certain individuals as being in the country illegally, the category did not exist. Further, she argues that illegal immigration is a necessary by-product of a restrictive immigration process and that, in the American context, illegal immigration was not a side-channel to legal immigration. She argues instead that illegal immigration was used as a primary means of entering the U.S. by many immigrants and played a major role in populating the country. It seems that what she is attempting to clarify is the fact that many people immigrated to the country illegally, but found ways to have their status legalized after the fact, with the moral implications of illegal entry being dependent on race and the time-period examined.

While touching briefly on Filipinos, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants, Ngai’s narrative focuses primarily on migrants and immigrants from Mexico and how their experience has shaped the modern discourse regarding illegal aliens in the United States. She presents Mexicans as the archetypal illegal immigrant in the American imagination. In Ngai’s view, the focus on Mexicans as illegal immigrants is a result of the border culture in the southwest U.S. and northern Mexico as well as U.S. labor practices and policies. Ngai’s aim seems to be to show that the push by southwestern agriculturalists for cheap labor drove the importation, legal and otherwise, of Mexican laborers. Because the legal avenues for migration for work purposes became increasingly odious, many Mexicans preferred to cross into the country illegally.  The best example she gives for this is the bracero program, which put Mexicans in a situation that left them generally worse off than if they hired themselves out on an individual basis.

Ngai’s argument is reasonable. She points out that illegal immigration from Mexico was the result of a failure on the part of the U.S. government to create adequate structures for legal entry by Mexican workers. She also points out that the drive for cheap labor that created the bracero program was based on a failure of the U.S. government to stand up to greedy agriculturalists and insist on fair wages for American workers. Ngai argues that this happened because the way people thought of America as a nation shifted. Laws were created to create the desired legal population. This shift created avenues for Europeans to become legalized but left Mexicans excluded from belonging to the nation in the American imagination. This exclusion was also the case for Japanese and Chinese immigrants, regardless of their legal or illegal status and whether they were citizens by naturalization or birth.

Ngai’s use of the Japanese and Filipino experience in the context of illegal immigration seems out of place. Did she include these groups to present a broader contrast between the way that Asiatic and Latin American immigrants were treated in comparison to Europeans? The experiences of these groups show that racism played a part in defining European Americans’ view of the nation, but “nullification” of citizenship rights and decolonization with voluntary repatriation are not the same as being considered an illegal entrant. The concept of being illegal connotes a violation of the law and a lack of citizenship status. For the Japanese, or at least the Nisei, their citizenship was never in question and neither was the legality of their status as Americans. The Issei did not enter the country illegally. They did not have access to citizenship but they were accepted legally, if not socially, as residents. With the Filipinos, repatriation was voluntary, rather than forced, indicating that their position was not illegal in the sense that they could be forcefully deported in an immigration sweep like Operation Wetback.

Ngai’s work is especially important in the way that it reveals the underlying assumptions about how the national body was viewed and how that view created the legal structures that created illegal immigrants. The immigration system was constructed in a way that ignored existing labor migration and pandered to the desire of agriculturalists to maximize profit with cheap labor. The willingness of Mexicans to take on jobs that were considered low paying to Americans fed into a racial image of Mexicans as undeveloped, while simultaneously painting them as lazy or arrogant if they refused to be cheated out of their wages or benefits. The Mexican stereotype that developed seems to have been applied to all non-European immigrants and work like Ngai’s helps to correct that historical narrative.

Reading Response: Becoming Mexican American… by George Sanchez

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Considering the title, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945, one would assume that George Sanchez’s book would be a history about the growth and development of a unique Chicano culture in Los Angeles between 1900 and 1945. However, the scope of the book becomes increasingly far-flung as the narrative progresses, much to the detriment of the author’s stated intention of examining cultural change in Los Angeles. Instead, Sanchez’s book shallowly covers multiple topics and areas, from labor history to radio programming, from rural villages in central and northern Mexico to El Paso, TX and points beyond, leaving the reader with the impression that much ground has been covered, but not in detail on any given subject. Despite the wide range of topics covered, Sanchez uses a variety of records and information from numerous fields of research to support his arguments, including Mexican consular documents, American government records, transcripts of oral testimonies from Mexican immigrants, and letters to provide a broad understanding of the factors that impacted Mexican immigrants to Los Angeles and their descendants.

One of the areas where Sanchez’s work excels is in his depiction of the social and economic interconnectedness of Mexico and the southwestern United States as a result of pre-existing Mexican communities in the area as well as through labor migration that led to cyclical and, eventually, additional permanent settlement. Part I of Becoming Mexican American… describes this process and is, in effect, a transnational historical narrative. Sanchez states that he wants to show that the culture that immigrants brought with them to the United States was not stagnant, but was rather a vibrant, complicated amalgamation of rural and urban mores that developed in Mexican villages in in the second half of the 19th century. However, this does not come through clearly in his writing. For one, the implication is that rural laborers somehow came to possess urban culture while migrating along rail lines for work. Additionally, it implies that laborers arrived in Los Angeles with a fully formed and static culture. It seems more reasonable to say that the process of cultural change that took place in Los Angeles was a continuation of what began in small rural villages in central and northern Mexico.

Sanchez’s comparison of labor migration within Mexico and the United States builds on the idea of regional interconnectedness. He demonstrates this primarily through his discussion of the Mexican rail system that connected northern Mexico more fully to the U.S. than it did to the rest of the country. The opportunities for labor created by the rail system pulled manual laborers away from their homes to travel and work on the rails. As they reached areas closer to the border with the U.S., they saw opportunities to perform the same labor for higher wages. However, this discussion, along with the highly detailed habits of border checkpoint guards, does not seem highly relevant to the topic of the development of a unique Chicano culture in Los Angeles.

Certainly, the openness of the border led to continued migration into the U.S., part of which created the community in Los Angeles, but why was a third of the narrative devoted to what feels like only partially relevant background information. It would have been more useful if the author had provided a brief overview of this topic and then spent more time explaining what the culture of Mexicans in Los Angeles was and how it developed over time. For example, Sanchez devotes an entire chapter to religion, but never goes further than saying the immigrants practiced what Catholic priests in the U.S. considered “folk Catholicism”. What is folk Catholicism? Exactly what were their beliefs and how did they contrast to mainstream Catholicism? Similarly, why did Sanchez spend so much time describing propaganda to encourage Anglos to move to Los Angeles? Why should we care what a Mexican intellectual who is not a resident of Los Angeles thinks about racial homogeneity in relation to the topic of this work? Also, why does Sanchez treat buying a radio as a special sign of cultural development? Is it not normal for people to be interested in purchasing devices that make their lives more comfortable, like the sewing machines he notes were prominent in rural Mexican households in Mexico?

While Sanchez’s book clearly has a lot to offer in terms of in-depth research about regional migration and labor history, most of what he presents is only coincidentally relevant to the community in Los Angeles and how their view of themselves and their position in relation to other inhabitants in the city changed over time. One is left with the feeling that certain sections of the book were originally meant to be stand-alone articles and that an original, cohesive text was supplemented by partially relevant, sometimes dense, textbook-style prose that was book-ended with an argument to attempt to tie everything together.

Reading Response: Development of Modern American Federal Immigration Control

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The authors for this week’s readings have focused on detailing and expanding our understanding of the development of modern immigration control. Erika Lee positions the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act as the primary force driving the creation of federal immigration controls and ideology, politics, and the law of “gatekeeping.” Beth Lew-Williams builds on Lee’s position by discussing the difference between restriction and exclusion, presenting 1888 as the most significant year of change in immigration policy. Hidetaka Hirota shifts the conversation to one with a national perspective by placing the conversation about immigration controls in the context of preexisting state policies and by showing how those policies influenced, created and implemented federal immigration policies. Anna Law, in turn, builds on Hirota’s analysis by showing that pre-antebellum states had directed and meaningful policies regarding migration and freedom of movement, disputing the “open borders” trope she states is common in American immigration literature.

In “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882-1924,” Erika Lee focuses narrowly on the West Coast and describes the process of public fears regarding Chinese labor migration. In her analysis, she describes the exclusion of certain groups of Chinese based on economic circumstances. She brings up the idea of “whiteness,” and while she does not elaborate, race seems less relevant here than labor concerns. Chinese migrants were primarily cyclical, returning to China with earned income rather than intending to settle in the U.S. While public concerns on the West Coast did expand to include other Asian immigrants who did intend to settle, the fears that people on the West Coast are shown to have mostly mirror those that Hidetaka Hirota describes in his article, “”The Great Entrepot for Mendicants:” Foreign Poverty and Immigration Control in New York State to 1882,” in which he describes the frustrations Northeasterners felt as they were inundated with European paupers. The desire to exclude those paupers was not based on race, but on the fact that they were not economically self-sufficient.

So, on the one hand, people on the West Coast were facing labor competition, and on the other, people on the East Coast were facing a potential financial crisis resulting from an overflow of poor migrants that would have to rely on state and private aid. The arguments that Beth Lew-Williams presents in “Before Restriction Became Exclusion: America’s Experiment in Diplomatic Immigration Control” support this argument. While her primary purpose is to draw a distinction between a temporary restriction of Chinese labor immigration in 1882 and the actual exclusion of all Chinese immigration after 1888, her analysis supports the focus of public attention on the West Coast on economic, rather than racial, concerns.

In his previously mentioned article as well as in “The Moment of Transition: State Officials, the Federal Government, and the Formation of American Immigration Policy,” Hirota makes the important point that federal immigration law did not appear out of a vacuum. It was not the major break from tradition that Lee and Lew-Williams so heavily emphasized. Hirota’s focus on the role of the New York and Massachusetts in defining what would become federal immigration law and their roles in subsequently enforcing those laws creates a continuity that was previously lacking. His choice in focusing on New York City was reasonable, given that for the time period covered, that was the port of entry for the majority of migrants. Hirota recognizes that West Coast, as well as Northeastern concerns, played a role in shaping federal immigration policies, but he fails to address the impact this has on southern states if any. As Anna Law mentions in “Lunatics, Idiots, Paupers, and Negro Seamen—Immigration Federalism and the Early American State,” the North and South had different economic concerns regarding immigration and free movement of peoples. This was, however, somewhat beyond the scope of what he intended to focus on and would likely have been more detrimental than helpful to the point he was trying to prove.

 

Reading Response: Historiography of “Whiteness” and race in the United States

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“Irish-American Workers and White Racial Formation in the Antebellum United States,” which is chapter 7 of The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, by David Roediger, “Whiteness, Racism, and Identity,” by Barbara Fields and “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America,” by Peter Kolchin all address the development of ideas of racial identity in the United States. Fields’ work incorporates ideas from Roediger’s earlier book, while Kolchin in turn incorporates their ideas, along with those of Matthew Frye Jacobson into his critique of whiteness studies up to that point. The works reviewed were all written in period covering roughly 10 years, between 1991 and 2002, and are, according to Kolchin, representative of the first decade of a new type of literature addressing the concept of whiteness in American history.

The chapter from David Roediger’s book focuses on the Irish immigrant experience and the racism that they faced. Roediger argues that the Irish were not seen as white and implies that they were considered black. He couches this argument in terms of class conflict and attempts to establish that the Irish differentiated themselves from blacks by pushing blacks out of the labor markets they occupied while simultaneously trying to add respectability to those positions by changing the terminology used. It seems as if Roediger was arguing that the Irish were primarily responsible for their inclusion in the idea of “whiteness”. Roediger also falls into the trap of racial essentialism by claiming that the Irish were predisposed to racist attitudes because of their adherence to Catholicism and their dislike for the British.

Barbara Fields challenges Roediger’s idea by stating that it is impossible for a group that is being subjected to racism to negotiate that racism; they can only challenge it and attempt to navigate the obstacles that are created as a result of the construction of a racist idea about who and what they are. In other words, Fields sees whiteness and race as a cover for racism, because it defines categories and places people in them regardless of their personal identity and in spite of their agency. A portion of Roediger’s work actually supports Fields’ later argument, because he notes the role of the Democratic party in redefining the role of the Irish in American society. The Democratic party recognized the Irish population as an important voting bloc that they could use to maintain power. While the Irish had positioned themselves to be more easily accepted as being on par with native American whites, it wasn’t until they were seen as useful politically that they were granted an equal status.

Further, Roediger seems to premise his work on the idea that the Irish were not seen as white. However, as Peter Kolchin later points out, this is not the case. The Irish were admitted into the country as “whites” and, while the Irish were looked down on, it isn’t necessarily because their color was in question. Kolchin believes that there were other factors that were more important, like the perceived conflict between Irish Catholicism and Protestant American Republicanism. It would also be reasonable to believe that Irish immigrants, coming from a preindustrial lifestyle, and admittedly being called savages, were considered educationally and technologically inferior. They had no skilled labor to speak of and, according to Roediger, performed the most menial work available. It is as if an informal caste system had developed, in which black Americans and the Irish were vying for the bottom rung.

Roediger asks a related question that is somewhat odd, in that the answer should be evident. Why did the Irish identify blacks as the group they should compete against rather than other white ethnic groups? Fields states that whiteness equals white supremacy and European immigrants become white by adopting white supremacy, which results in material rewards. So, the Irish would have attempted to become white by adopting white supremacy. Roediger’s work shows that the Irish did proactively adopt racist rhetoric at the least. However, this contradicts Fields’ own argument about people not having any agency at all in their racial designation. An easier explanation might be that water takes the path of least resistance. Not only were black Americans easy targets who could be attacked with little fear of repercussion, they were directly competing with the Irish for jobs.

Sexual relations are a topic that comes up frequently in Roediger’s reading. He focuses heavily on the fact that biracial sexual relations were looked down on and came up frequently as a “danger” of racial equality, but he does not go into detail (in the chapter reviewed, at least) as to why these sexual encounters were thought to pose such a great risk to American society. The answer becomes clear in Kolchin’s work, where Lincoln indicates that, while blacks should be entitled to the fruit of their labor, he felt that they were inherently inferior. This idea remains prevalent in some segments of society today, which is ironic given the myth of the United States as a “melting pot.” How does a pot of varied ingredients melt together without mixing?

Of the works covered, Kolchin’s raises the most important points in terms of how whiteness and race in general should be addressed in the future. Should race as a category be abolished, or should whiteness be redefined, or should white as a category be abolished and what would that mean for those people that traditionally identify that way? Would abolishing white as a category just create space for another category with the same meaning to take its place? And how does one modify the attitudes of just one group of people? An interesting path of research would be to look at what it meant to be “white” at specific periods of American history and see if those ideas match up with what people thought it meant to be American.

Reading Response: Kathleen Conzen et al., “The Invention of Ethnicity…”

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Kathleen Neils Conzen et al, “The Invention of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the U.S.A.”

In “The Invention of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the U.S.A.,” Conzen and her colleagues are attempting to construct a new conceptual framework for understanding ethnicity that builds off of the earlier work of Werner Sollors. Sollors believes that ethnicity is a “collective fiction” that is essentially invented. Conzen and her colleagues agree with Sollors that ethnicity is constructed, but not that it is complete fiction. Rather, they see ethnicity as a product of “communal solidarities, cultural attributes, and historical memories” (Conzen, et al., 4-5).

In order to prove their point, the authors use three case studies to demonstrate support for their theory that ethnicity is constantly reconstructed. The authors successfully show that there is nothing primordial, in the sense that they are unchangeable, about ethnicities. They are malleable and new expressions of ethnicity, at least in the American context as presented by the authors, are consistently reconstructed in reaction to external pressures or events. In doing so, Conzen and her colleagues demonstrate that expressions of ethnicity in the United States, while sometimes assuming symbols from their homelands, are uniquely American.

The authors also show that immigrant ethnicities have consistently emulated each other or presented their best imagined attributes in order to become respected in society. An interesting problem in the article, though not necessarily with the authors’ work, is that ethnic posturing of supposed positive contributions to society seems to have less to do with the successful integration into American society than the acquisition of wealth and political power does. This becomes apparent when the authors note that the Italian community was able to reposition itself in society, by demanding the establishment of Columbus Day as a Federal holiday and pressuring media outlets to stop referring to Italians as gangsters, only after they had become financially and politically powerful in American society (Conzen, et al., 31).

One of the most important contributions of Conzen and her colleagues’ article is the fact that they present the whole history of American society as being engaged in this process of constant ethnic redefinition. They show that after the revolution against Britain, an Anglo-Saxon Protestant identity was defined in order to maintain a functional society across States with different cultural and national backgrounds. This reinforces the authors’ point that ethnicity is built, fades and is rebuilt in order to meet peoples’ needs, not just by immigrants, but by the supposedly dominant cultural element in the country as well. There is no monolithic American culture that immigrants must emulate in order to become American. The authors show that ethnicities trade values and ideals and are constantly defining themselves and each other.

By complicated an overly simplistic narrative about ethnicities and assimilation into American society, the authors have opened the possibility for a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be an American. Viewing immigration and belonging in America through the lens of ethnic identities that are constantly being redefined clears away the mythology of a monolithic Anglo-Saxon super-ethnicity that immigrant ethnic groups must join. We are left with new questions, as well. Are there essential qualities or ideals that one must subscribe to in order to be American, or is what it means to be American a constantly shifting definition? Another avenue that could be explored using the concept of ethnicity presented by the authors is the fluidity, or lack thereof, of traveling between ethnic groups. This is touched on by the authors, but they focus their analysis on the behavior of ethnic groups as a whole, rather than the transition of a person from one group to another.

Reading Response re: The Nanjing Massacre

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The Great Nanjing Massacre, Zi Jian Li, 1992

Image (above): The Great Nanjing Massacre, Zi Jian Li, 1992

 

Mitter, China’s War with Japan: 119-140.

Primary Source: “The Rape of Nanking: Bearing Witness, The Nanjing ‘Murder Race,’” in The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection (1999): 324-30.

Mark Eykholt, “Aggression, Victimization, and Chinese Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre,” in The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (2000): 11-69.

Takashi Yoshida, “A Battle over History: The Nanjing Massacre in Japan,” in The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (2000): 70-132.

 

The readings for this week center on the events that happened in Nanjing in 1937-1938 when the Japanese Army took control of the city. The Rape of Nanjing, or Nanjing Massacre, was an exceptional event in the war between Japan and China, not only because of the scope of death, destruction and trauma inflicted on the population, but also because of the impact the event has had on the national memories of both China and Japan. The event has become a symbol more than a real event, a tool used to express feelings of victimization and growing strength or, on the other side, a key battlefield in the definition of post-war Japanese identity.

One of the most interesting debates regarding Nanjing is why it happened in the first place, and this is unfortunately one of the debates that has received the least attention. Mitter presents some possible reasons, but they reveal an assumption that the Japanese military was out of control. This plays on the idea that there was a break down in control of the military by the civilian administration. The introduction to the primary source, on the other hand, posits the massacre as a preplanned and deliberate military policy. Eykholt somewhat supports this by stating that the idea of the military being out of control isn’t supported by the facts. The nature of the reported killings and the organized lootings speak to coordinated action. This seems like a more reasonable approach to the situation.

This, however, brings up the problem of responsibility. Who is responsible for what happened? Was blame placed where it should have been? The War Crimes trials, according to Eykholt, focused on American interests in the Pacific and some of the evidence may or may not have been accurate. It seems to have become a symbol for the entire conflict between the two nations and, like Eykholt and Takashi both argue, guilt and blame have dominated the discussion, preventing a real analysis of the events.