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Vol. 30:2 ISSN 0160-8460 June 2002
Securing Our Legacy: Understanding Japanese American Resettlement in the Midwest
by Deborah Mieko Burns and Karen Kanemoto
Throughout the morning of September 11, 2001, and the succeeding days, one group of Americans watched the unfolding events with a sense of foreboding that was rooted in one of the darker episodes of 20th-century U.S. history. Nearly 60 years prior to that date, following the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese warplanes, some 120,000 people (two thirds were U.S. citizens) who lived on the West Coast of the United States were subjected to a prolonged, Government-mandated loss of civil rights because of their Japanese ancestry.
Private Hideo Jack Konman, U.S. Army, at Rohwer Relocation Center near McGehee, Arkansas, March 1945. Many Japanese American men volunteered from U.S. internment camps for service in the U.S. Army during World War II. The segregated Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and Military Intelligence Service, demonstrated exceptional bravery and loyalty on both the European and Pacific fronts. Photograph from the Konman-Matsukawa Family Papers, Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center, Chicago, Illinois.
Forced to abandon their homes and businesses, and relocated inland to internment camps, these Issei (the first generation of Japanese in the United States, consisting of immigrants born in Japan) and Nisei (the second-generation, American-born children of the Issei) had to endure social ostracism and financial losses, as well as the harsh and largely primitive living conditions in the camps. Families were turned upside down as Japanese-speaking fathers relinquished their positions of authority in the household to their English-speaking children. Worse yet, some fathers were removed from the family unit altogether and placed in separate camps.
In the months and years that followed, these Japanese American evacuees faced continued challenges as they were allowed to leave the camps, move eastward, and resettle in areas far from their original homes. During the resettlement years, roughly 1942-50, nearly 30,000 Japanese Americans, attracted by the availability of jobs, sought to make new lives for themselves in Chicago. By 1960, about 15,000 people of Japanese ancestry remained in the greater Chicago metropolitan area.1 Today, the community numbers over 18,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry throughout the Chicago area.
If the "success" of an ethnic group can be measured by the extent to which it is assimilated into the general population, the Japanese American community of Chicago can be regarded as very successful. In light of the number of Sansei (the third-generation, American-born children of the Nisei) who marry outside of their race, it is predicted that, within two generations, 75 percent of the area's Japanese American children will be of mixed race.2
In contrast, the Issei generation has virtually died out, and the Nisei are aging. Published information on the resettlement experience is scarce, and direct testimony from these former evacuees will someday be unavailable. The misguided idea held by the general public and its elected officials that Japanese Americans actually benefited from the U.S. Government's punitive actions toward them during World War II could be perpetuated without history collected from the Japanese American perspective. "Such a wrong-headed perception," states one scholar, "is consonant with the consoling American myth that our nation's most undemocratic deeds and uncivil behavior inevitably result in egalitarian progress."3
Memories fade, and eyewitnesses slip away. This makes access to documents and artifacts of the era all the more important. Through a major project currently in progress, the Japanese American Service Committee seeks to expand and develop its repository of resources from the Japanese American community of Chicago, the surrounding counties, and other Midwestern states.
The Chicago Resettlers Committee and the Japanese American Service Committee
In 1946, during the period when evacuees started to leave the internment camps to begin new lives, a small group of Japanese Americans already living in Chicago, together with the U.S. War Relocation Authority, established the Chicago Resettlers Committee (CRC). The CRC acted as a clearinghouse for jobs, housing, and other practical information, such as the names and locations of area doctors, lawyers, and churches. As a gathering place for people with a common background who were new to the city, the CRC also served as a center for recreational activities and for personal contact. These social and cultural functions persist in the programming offered by the agency in its current form.
In 1954, as the resettlement years drew to a close, the CRC changed its name to the Japanese American Service Committee of Chicago (JASC), reflecting a change in emphasis to social services and community programs. A further change came in the late 1950s, when the JASC began providing services to the aging and elderly Japanese Americans in the area. Among its offerings were English-language classes, piecework employment, and health-care programs. In the 1970s, the JASC built a 200-unit residence for senior citizens, and in the 1980s, it established an adult day care center in its headquarters building. The JASC undertook the building of a 180-bed skilled nursing facility during the 1990s. Both the apartment building and the skilled nursing facility are now independently owned and operated. The adult day care services remain under the aegis of the JASC today.
At this time, the JASC is the only Japanese American social service agency and cultural and community center in the Midwest. It continues to focus on services for the elderly, while designing cultural and educational programs for a broader audience. It also works in partnership with other ethnic and cultural organizations in Chicago to bring quality cultural and educational programs to the area.
The JASC Legacy Center
The JASC's mission is to enhance the quality of life of the Japanese American community by providing social services and cultural programming to Japanese Americans and other Chicagoans, and to increase understanding of the needs and contributions of minorities within the larger society. It promotes intergenerational education, diversity, and cultural heritage through its Legacy Center.
As a library and archive that is open to the general public, the Legacy Center makes available for reference and research archival and educational resources of the JASC and the Japanese American community of the Midwest. In this way, it seeks to preserve and promote community heritage and common understanding of the Japanese American experience as an integral part of American history.
The Legacy Center library contains approximately 2,000 titles on Japanese and Japanese American history, culture, politics, arts, and literature in a variety of formats, including books, periodicals, videotapes, and CD-ROMs. Ephemera such as posters, bulletins, and fliers from local Japanese American and other Asian American organizations are also part of the collection. Of particular interest are a number of published and unpublished articles, papers, theses, and dissertations on Japanese American history in Chicago and the United States.
The NHPRC Project
Through a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the JASC Legacy Center is working to process, arrange, describe, and expand its archival and manuscript holdings. This grant funds the arrangement and description of five manuscript collections, including the Konman-Matsukawa Family Papers, the Mary and James Numata Papers, the Dorothy and Hiroshi Kaneko Papers, the Fumi Yamamoto Papers, and the Tohoru Ed Miyashita Papers. It also funds the development of a records management program to preserve and protect the JASC's records of lasting value. Finally, the grant supports outreach and training for key leaders of other Japanese American community groups to educate them about archival practices. It supports coordinating efforts by these key leaders to preserve and properly care for their own resources so that they are accessible.
Among the Legacy Center's current archival holdings are the JASC's own records, which include documents from its original resettlement activities in the 1940s and 1950s. The Center also houses manuscript collections donated by a number of Japanese American Chicagoans. Spanning a period from the 1920s through the 1990s, these personal papers, photographs, and artifacts collectively offer firsthand accounts chronicling everyday life experienced by ordinary Japanese Americans before World War II, during the evacuation and internment, and through the resettlement years. They reflect the evolution of Chicago's Japanese American community over the decades and into the present. Finally, they trace the nationwide movement under which Japanese Americans sought to obtain redress from the U.S. Government for grave injustices perpetrated during World War II.
In light of the advanced age of a large percentage of Japanese American community members in the area, selection and acquisition of new manuscript collections constitute critical elements in the Legacy Center's plan of action. In many cases, failure to collect materials at this time will result in their total loss later.
Under the grant project, the Legacy Center intends to increase awareness of and promote the use of its resources among the archival, ethnic, and educational communities. This will be accomplished through web sites and other online services, professional and community-based newsletters, and networking within the community.
Japanese Americans in the Midwest
There is no "Little Tokyo" in Chicago or any other city in the Midwest. Whereas the Japanese American population in Los Angeles or Honolulu is well over 100,000, it is only a fraction of that number in Chicago. For that and other reasons, the experiences of Japanese Americans in the Midwest differ significantly from those of their counterparts on the West Coast. Nevertheless, those experiences remain largely undocumented at this time.
With the financial help of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the JASC, through its Legacy Center, seeks to remedy the situation by collecting and documenting historically significant materials within the Japanese American community in Chicago and the Midwest. The development and expansion of this manuscript repository will serve as an important example of documenting an ethnic group from its own perspective, rather than from that of an outside organization.
The JASC's own records reflect more than 50 years of operations within that evolving community, starting at a point during which thousands of Japanese Americans were forced to recast their lives far from the homes they lost. Making those records available for reference and research will add one more clarifying element to the story of Japanese American resettlement. Moreover, it will be an important service for other ethnic groups, the social services community, students and academics, the media, and even state and Federal Government programs.
By creating and sustaining access to these unique resources, the JASC hopes to bridge barriers and create common understanding not only among members of its own community, but also among members of other ethnic, educational, and professional groups. It also hopes to ensure that all Americans can continue to learn from a painful episode in our nation's recent history.
For copies of finding aids, project updates, or additional information, please contact the JASC Legacy Center, 4427 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60640; telephone 773-275-0097, extension 22; or e-mail jasc_chicago@yahoo.com.
Deborah Mieko Burns is Archivist and Karen Kanemoto is Copy Editor at the Japanese American Service Committee.
Notes:
- Masako Osako, "Japanese Americans: Melting into the All-American Melting Pot," in Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 423.
- Ibid., 427.
- Arthur A. Hansen, "Resettlement: A Neglected Link in Japanese America's Narrative Chain," in Regenerations Oral History Project: Rebuilding Japanese American Families, Communities, and Civil Rights in the Resettlement Era (Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 2000), xix.
