Japanese Americans
Japanese Americans are the residents of North America who are of Japanese descent. This term primarily includes immigrants in the United States and their descendants. Today the word Nikkei is also used, which means Japanese ancestry in Japanese . The first generation is also known as Issei ( 一世 ), consisting of the characters for the number “ one ” and “ generation ”. It follows that the second is Nisei ( 二世 ), the third Sansei ( 三世 ), the fourth Yonsei ( 四 世 ) and the fifth Gosei ( 五世 ). However, people often no longer speak Japanese in Nisei or Sansei .
history
Under the Tokugawa Shogunate , which lasted from 1603 to 1868, the so-called land closure policy was followed, which did not allow the Japanese to leave the country. The history of the Japanese-Americans therefore goes back to the emigration to Hawaii at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century. In 1868 the Shogun gave the first Japanese (141 men, six women and one child) permission to emigrate and they were sent to Hawaiian sugar plantations as guest workers . However, these emigrants were already considered illegal a short time later, because the new Meiji government did not recognize this permit.
In 1871, a friendship and trade treaty was signed between Japan and Hawaii, in which the employment of Japanese people in Hawaii was released without restriction. However, the Japanese were not allowed to emigrate for the next 14 years. After that, official emigrants were sent in 1885 in treaty with the then independent Kingdom of Hawaii . The Japanese emigrants took this wave of emigration as an opportunity to increasingly emigrate to Hawaii and the United States.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Japanese immigrants in the western states were subject to increased restrictions: In the Californian Alien Land Law of 1913 (also: Webb-Heney Bill , tightened 1920) B. the purchase of land is prohibited because they could not acquire American citizenship on the basis of the Naturalization Act (1790: "free white citizens") . Attempts have also been made in some areas to create segregated education systems or to ban marriages between immigrants of Japanese origin and whites. With the Immigration Act of 1924 , East and South Asians were explicitly forbidden from acquiring citizenship and further immigration was prohibited. The Japanese government and the public reacted negatively to the restrictions.
Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II
Main article: Internment of Japanese Americans
One of the dark chapters in American history was the Japanese American internment camps; an estimated 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were distributed in eleven different camps in the United States, mostly in the west. During the Second World War, Japanese Americans were interned in special camps. Japanese Americans residing in the western United States were forcibly detained with their parents and children. Even so, many Japanese Americans served with honors in the United States Armed Forces during World War II. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team / 100th Infantry Battalion is the most highly decorated unit in US military history. This unit consisted of Japanese Americans, fought in many European theaters of war, but their families remained in the internment camp. The 100th Infantry Battalion was one of the first units to liberate the prisoners from the concentration camp near Dachau.
Daniel K. Inouye , the first Japanese American in Congress and the Senate, is a veteran with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. In addition, there were Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service who served on the Pacific Front.
population
Hawaii and California are US states that are home to many Japanese Americans. Washington , Nevada , Illinois, and New York also have relatively high numbers.
religion
literature
- Greg Robinson: The Unsung Great: Stories of Extraordinary Japanese Americans. University of Washington Press, Seattle 2020, ISBN 978-0-295-74796-5 .
- Jane H. Yamashiro: Redefining Japaneseness: Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 2016, ISBN 978-0-8135-7636-7 .
- Paul Spickard: Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an Ethnic Group. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 2009, ISBN 978-0-8135-4433-5 .
Web links
- Japanese American National Museum
- Timeline for the history of Japanese Americans
- United States Census 2000
- US Census Bureau, Japanese alone or in combination in 2005. Retrieved December 16, 2006
- Norman Mineta, The Japanese Americans: The War at Home. Retrieved May 1, 2007
swell
- ^ John B. Trevor Sr., 1924: An Analysis of the American Immigration Act of 1924. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Original text of the Immigration Act of 1924 ( Memento of the original of February 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Japan Times and Mail, April 19, 1924, 4: The Senate's Declaration of War.
- ↑ Part I, Chapter 6: The Relocation Centers from Personal Justice Denied. Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians , Washington DC 1982
- ↑ Norman Mineta, The Japanese Americans: The War at Home. Retrieved May 1, 2007
- ↑ Semi Annual Report of the War Relocation Authority, for the period January 1 to June 30, 1946, not dated. Papers of Dillon S. Myer. Scanned image at trumanlibrary.org. Accessed Sept 18, 2006.
- ↑ "The War Relocation Authority and The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II: 1948 Chronology," Web page ( Memento of the original from November 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.trumanlibrary.org, accessed 11 Sep 2006
