In the decades before World War II, 50,000 of the US-born children of Japanese immigrants (a quarter of their total population) migrated from the United States to the Japanese Empire. Although these second generation Japanese Americans (called Nisei) were US citizens, they faced prejudice and discrimination in the US and went to Japan in search of a better life.
Joining me to help us learn about the Nisei who returned to Japan, what motivated them, and the challenges they faced both in Japan and back in the US is Dr. Michael Jin, Assistant Professor of Global Asian Studies and History at the University of Illinois Chicago and author of Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Two students pose outisde a building. Phillip Okano attended school in Japan from 1923-1933,” Courtesy of Okano Family Collection, Densho, This work is licensed under a Creative Common Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Audio Credit: “Tanko Bushi (Coal Miners Dance),” performed by Masao Suzuki, 1956. Courtesy of the Internet Archive. Audio is in the Public Domain.
Additional Sources:
“Stranded: Nisei in Japan Before, During, and After World War II,” by Brian Niiya, Densho, July 28, 2016.
“Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History: Japanese,” Library of Congress.
“Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and World War II,” Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
“First Japanese immigrant arrives in the U.S.” History.com, March 26, 2021.
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Episode link: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/nisei
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