Abstract
America once again has an immigration problem stoked by fear and political opportunism. This review revisits the Japanese American experience in the first half of the 20th century—not because the events are identical to the issues today but because the underlying dynamics are strikingly familiar: the rise of an Asian power perceived as a threat to U.S. global influence; the arrival of immigrants deemed “unassimilable” through racialized stereotypes; and the amplification of public anxiety by irresponsible politicians and media. In the case of the Japanese experience, the rule of law bent to popular will over 40 years to culminate in the mass incarceration of 110 000 Japanese in concentration camps in the American interior. It took another 40 years for Congress and the courts to return to constitutional principles and rectify the irreversible decisions that history would come to condemn.
Keywords
A Military Threat
Japan emerged from the 19th century as an economic and military rival to the U.S. and the Western powers after decisive victories over China (1894-1895) and Russia (1904-1905). Driven by its own claims of racial superiority and a pressing need for industrial raw materials, the Meiji state demanded the same rights to colonial expansion as countries it now saw as peers. The country embarked on a course of aggressive expansionism by claiming Formosa as a spoil of war from China, annexing Korea (1910), and taking over German interests in China and the South Pacific (1914) after joining the Allies during World War I. 1
The rapid rise of the Japanese Empire was the product of military opportunism and strategic aggression, bolstered by quick victories over a weakened China and Western powers increasingly distracted by the rise of Nazi Germany. Japan exploited a fragmented China deep into its “Century of Humiliation,” that began with the Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) and became incalculably worse with civil war, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), which killed an estimated 20-30 million people. Decades of semi-colonial exploitation and the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1912) left China disunited and militarily vulnerable. 2
Japan correctly reasoned that the powers dominating Chinese commerce would likely not intervene militarily if their nationals, offices, and ports remained untouched. The U.S., prioritizing equal market access, had no formal treaty obligation to defend Chinese sovereignty (Open Door Notes, 1899-1900). 3
Under the pretext of the Mukden Incident, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of Manchuria in 1931, encountering minimal resistance. A similar manufactured pretext at the Marco Polo Bridge in 1937 facilitated the invasion of eastern China. Japanese forces swiftly seized major urban centers, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xuzhou, and Wuhan (1937-1938). The fall of Nanjing led to the infamous Nanjing Massacre (December 1937-January 1938), an atrocity that drew international condemnation. 1
The Neutrality Acts of the 1930s (1935-1939), intended to keep the U.S. out of European conflicts, also constrained President Roosevelt’s ability to respond to Japan’s aggression in China. These acts prohibited arms sales and loans to nations at war, limiting American support for China despite growing public sympathy. 4
American policy shifted with the passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. Initially designed to support Britain’s resistance to Nazi Germany, the act was used by Roosevelt to extend aid to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in April. By July, China was formally included among the beneficiaries, marking a move toward U.S. involvement in both European and Asian conflicts. 4
As the Nazis overran France and the Netherlands and bombarded Britain (1940)\, Japan exploited the resulting power vacuum in Southeast Asia, beginning with its occupation of French Indochina (1940-1941). It soon launched a multi-front assault on Western interests: Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), followed by the conquests of Hong Kong (December 8-25), Malaya and Singapore (December 8, 1941-February 15, 1942), the Philippines (December 8, 1941-May 6, 1942), the Dutch East Indies (January 11-March 9, 1942), and Burma (January 20-March 8, 1942). 5
Today, historians generally agree that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was a strategic miscalculation. Japan had achieved many of its short-term territorial ambitions but chose to provoke a formidable adversary whose industrial and military capacity would ultimately ensure Japan’s defeat. 5
A Scapegoat
In the wartime climate, the Japanese American community became a target of public suspicion and governmental overreach. On the U.S. mainland, most Japanese Americans lived in rural areas, often on leased or owned farmland or in smaller cities like Sacramento and Fresno that supported agricultural economies. Urban enclaves formed in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles (population ∼36 000 in 1940), and in Nihonmachi (tr. “Japantown”) neighborhoods in San Francisco (17 000) and Seattle (8 000). 6
These communities were anchored by Buddhist temples, Japanese-language schools, and businesses owned by Issei (first-generation immigrants). Community organizations such as Kenjinkai (prefecture-based associations), Fujinkai (women’s clubs), and the Japanese Association of America (Nihonjin Kai) offered mutual aid and cultural cohesion. 7
While Issei parents maintained traditional customs and language, their Nisei children were American-born citizens, fluent in popular American English, and educated in public schools. This generational divide reflected both adaptation and isolation. The Issei often remained within ethnic enclaves due to cultural and linguistic barriers, while Nisei navigated both worlds. 7
The Japanese American community’s structure was shaped by exclusionary immigration policies. Japanese workers initially filled labor shortages created by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Anti-Japanese agitation led to the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, in which Japan voluntarily restricted emigration to the U.S. to avoid diplomatic embarrassment and to preserve its 1894 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with the U.S. This treaty conferred most-favored-nation status and protected Japanese nationals’ rights to travel, reside, and engage in commerce, important features that demonstrated that Japan was an equal on the world stage. 8
Along with its restrictions on numbers allowed to emigrate, the agreement allowed the unifications of families in the US. Men, comprising more than 90% of American settlers, took advantage of the clause to bring Japanese women to join them as husband and wife. The picture bride system—whereby Japanese women immigrated to marry workers arranged through brokers through an exchange of photographs—stabilized Japanese settlements in America. The gender imbalance narrowed from over 90% male in 1900 to roughly 35% female by 1924. 9
Local hostility persisted. California’s Alien Land Law of 1913 barred land ownership by aliens ineligible for citizenship, a restriction aimed solely on the Japanese. Supreme Court rulings—Ozawa v. United States (1922) and United States v. Thind (1923)—confirmed that Japanese immigrants could not become naturalized citizens on the basis that they were not white Caucasians. 10
Issei farmers adapted by leasing land or placing it in the names of their Nisei children, who had birthright citizenship. Some created corporate and trust arrangements to circumvent ownership bans. Even so, Japanese farmers were often confined to undesirable plots and relied on family labor to succeed. Their success in high-labor crops like berries and vegetables provoked resentment among white farmers, prompting the 1920 revision of the Alien Land Law to close legal loopholes. 11
The Immigration Act of 1924 effectively ended all Japanese immigration by setting a token quota of 100 for all Asian nations. The legislation, authored by Congress and signed by President Coolidge, was an insult to the Japanese nation. Its passage, which ended the Gentlemen’s Agreement, confirmed that the US government did not view Japan on equal terms. 10
As relations between the 2 countries worsened, the Nisei generation came of age. Their birthright citizenship was affirmed by United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), yet their political agency remained limited. Issei parents were disenfranchised, and Nisei youths—many of them still adolescents—had few means to counter the rising tide of anti-Japanese hysteria. 12
The worsening rivalry between their home and adopted countries left the Japanese in America vulnerable. Seen as a fifth column threat, they lacked political allies and faced intense racial prejudice. Legal citizenship failed to protect Nisei and their families from wholescale imprisonment. In February 1942, Roosevelt used the force of the military to relocate 110 000 Japanese persons without due process for years in inland concentration camps. 12
Resistance and Respect
The Japanese American Citizens League, founded in 1929, sought to protect the civil rights of Japanese Americans, especially in land and citizenship disputes. Though often criticized as accommodationist—particularly for its support of government relocation policies as a demonstration of loyalty—it became a key institutional voice amid growing encroachments on civil liberties. 6
A range of allies offered varying degrees of support. Progressive publications such as The Nation and The New Republic, and public intellectuals like John Dewey, objected to racial exclusion. Civil rights attorneys, in particular A. L. Wirin, defended Japanese Americans in land and naturalization cases and later in matters related to internment. 7
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) consistently opposed internment, both before and after Pearl Harbor. ACLU counsel Ernest Besig notably defended Fred Korematsu, whose case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The NAACP occasionally criticized immigration restrictions and later voiced concerns about internment, though its primary focus remained the struggle against segregation and racial violence in the Black community. Jewish organizations, especially those within the Reform movement, condemned the Alien Land Laws and supported citizenship rights for Japanese immigrants. However, much of their energy was directed toward combatting rising antisemitism and Nazi persecution in Europe. 13
Even those sympathetic to the plight of Japanese Americans were often reluctant to speak out forcefully. Fearing reprisal or accusations of disloyalty, many remained quiet in a climate of rising wartime nationalism. 14
As the war turned in favor of the Allies and the perceived threat of the Japanese American community diminished, public opinion began to shift. In a remarkable act of moral courage, Colorado Governor Ralph Carr welcomed Japanese Americans to his state, even as it hosted an internment camp on its eastern plains. The War Relocation Authority began to allow some internees to leave the camps. A resettlement program was launched to relocate Nisei for skilled labor in cities like Chicago, Cleveland, and New York or to agricultural sites in Idaho, Utah, and New Jersey, for seasonal and contract labor. 9
Amid suspicion and incarceration, thousands of Nisei men volunteered to serve in the U.S. military to prove their loyalty. In 1942, the Army formed the 100th Infantry Battalion, composed of Nisei from Hawaiʻi, followed in 1943 by the creation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed primarily of volunteers from mainland internment camps and Hawaiʻi. Their motto, “Go for Broke,” came to define their fearless reputation. 15
The 442nd/100th became the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in U.S. military history. Their valor included the legendary rescue of the “Lost Battalion” of Texas soldiers in the Vosges Mountains and heavy combat in Italy and France. Their sacrifice played a key role in softening public perception of Japanese Americans and laid the moral foundation for postwar civil rights advocacy and redress. 9
President Truman, when awarding the unit the Presidential Unit Citation in 1946, said: “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice—and you won. 15 ”
Legal Challenges and Redress
While Japanese Americans were proving their loyalty on the battlefield, legal challenges reached the Supreme Court. 16 Hirabayashi v. United States and Yasui v. United States (1943) upheld the constitutionality of curfews imposed on Japanese Americans, finding such racial restrictions permissible under national security concerns. In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Court controversially upheld the constitutionality of the mass exclusion and incarceration itself—prioritizing national security over individual rights. This ruling would not be formally overturned but was repudiated in dicta in Trump v. Hawaii (2018), where in theory it bore on the Trump Administration’s travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries. In issuing the decision to uphold the ban, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history and – to be clear – has no place under the Constitution. 17 ”
Later in 1944, the Court issued Ex parte Endo, ruling that the government could not detain a loyal U.S. citizen without cause. President Roosevelt lifted the exclusion orders on January 2, 1945, but Executive Order 9066 was not officially rescinded until February 1976 by President Ford. 16
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 finally abolished racial barriers to naturalization, allowing Issei to become U.S. citizens for the first time. 18
In the 1980s, coram nobis petitions reopened the original Supreme Court cases. New evidence revealed that the government had deliberately withheld intelligence indicating Japanese Americans posed no threat. The lower courts vacated the convictions in Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui. 6
In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act provided a formal apology and redress to surviving internees, affirming that the wartime incarceration had been driven by racial prejudice—not military necessity. At the signing ceremony, President Ronald Reagan was joined by Japanese American Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga of Hawaiʻi, and Representative Norman Mineta of California. Reagan said, “Here we admit a wrong. Here we affirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.” 19
It took 40 years for the xenophobia codified by the Gentlemen’s Agreement to culminate in Executive Order 9066—and another 40 years for the nation to begin undoing that injustice. In today’s accelerated world, similar forces, again fueled by xenophobia, are reemerging at a rapid pace. One hopes that the hard lessons learned from the experience of Japanese Americans will offer guidance as the country once more grapples with the enduring challenge of immigration.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.