1 Kimura, Tsuyuko “Ninenkan o kaerimite“ [Looking back on the two years], Keisen 74 (July 1939), 4, the Keisen Women's College Archives, Tokyo, Japan [hereafter KWCA].Google Scholar

2 The precise number of Nisei students in Japan during the 1930s is difficult to estimate. According to some contemporary sources, there were 40,000 to 50,000 American-born Japanese in the island country in any given year during the decade. The vast majority of them, however, probably resided in Japan permanently with their parents, who had returned home for good. Only about 18,000 Nisei were considered “Americans” by the Japanese police, who had kept a close eye on any “foreign” elements. Still, most of them had spent a substantial amount of time in Japan, receiving much of their formal education there rather than in the United States. In 1940, a survey of Nisei students over eighteen estimated the presence of 1,500 in the Tokyo area. This is probably the most reliable ballpark figure for the Nisei youngsters who are the subjects of this study. See Nisei Survey Committee, The Nisei: A Survey of Their Educational, Vocational, and Social Problems (Tokyo: Keisen Girls’ School, 1939), 2; and Yuji Ichioka, “Beyond National Boundaries: The Complexity of Japanese-American History,” Amerasia Journal 23 (Winter 1998), viii. For the general statistics of Nisei in Japan, consult Yamashita Soen, Nichibei o Tsunagu mono [Those who link Japan and the United States] (Tokyo: Bunseisha, 1938), 319–334.Google Scholar

3 For example, the summer language program at Yonsei University in Seoul attracts hundreds of Korean Americans every year, while the Korean government offers college preparatory classes and three-month cultural immersion courses under the so-called “homeland invitation education program.” Likewise, the Republic of China has sponsored a summer study tour program (known as the “Love Boat”) and intensive language program, and its Chung Hwa Correspondence School has catered to more serious students for long-term education since the mid-1960s. See the National Institute for International Education Development (NIIED: South Korean government) at niied.interedu.go.kr/job/job_03_e.asp; and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (Taiwan) at www.gio.gov.tw/info/yb97/html/ch0903t.htm; and the Overseas Chinese Youth Language and Study Tour to the Republic of China (Taiwan) at www.abcflash.com/studytour. To date, there is only one scholarly work on this topic. Based primarily on oral interviews with past participants, Ellen Wu's thesis offers an in-depth analysis of the Overseas Chinese Youth Language Training and Study Tour. See Ellen Dionne Wu, “Chinese American Transnationalism Aboard the ‘Love Boat': The Overseas Chinese Youth Language Training and Study Tour to the Republic of China, 1966–1997,” (M.A. thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 1998).Google Scholar

4 Wu, “Chinese American Transnationalism Aboard the ‘Love Boat,'“ 19–30; and Erik Guyot, “Taiwan Program's Benefits Include Acquiring Friends,” Wall Street Journal, Oct., 2, 2000. See also “President's Message,” at the NIIED site above. Many parents also think of “practical advantages,” like networking opportunities for career advancement and an enhanced possibility of intraethnic marriages.Google Scholar

5 Ichioka, Yuji “A Study of Dualism: James Yoshinori Sakamoto and the Japanese American Courier, 1928–1942,“ Amerasia Journal 13 (1986–87): 49–81; and Lon Kurashige, “The Problem of Biculturalism: Japanese American Identity and Festival before World War II,” Journal of American History 86 (March 2000): 1632–54. The theme, which was central to the Issei educational agenda, has received little attention from historians in terms of its relevance to Nisei education. The only notable exception is Eileen H. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 146–61, 188–200.Google Scholar

6 To date, there is only one published study that deals with this important aspect of Japanese American history, although it comes short of delving into the local and international contexts of Nisei education in Japan. See Toyotomi Morimoto, Japanese Americans and Cultural Continuity: Maintaining Language and Heritage (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 81–104. The following thesis has a section, which discusses the question of the Nisei's going to Japan from a contemporary perspective. Robert Howard Ross, “Social Distance as It Exists Between the First and Second Generation Japanese in The City of Los Angeles and Vicinity” (M.A. thesis, University of Southern California, 1939), 132–38.Google Scholar

7 For the discussion of the “benefits,” consult Yamashita Soen, Nikkei Shimin no Nihon Ryugaku Jijo [On the study of Japanese American citizens in Japan] (Tokyo: Bunseido, 1935), 8–18; and Tsunemitsu Konen, Nihon Ryugaku no Jissai [Realities of Nisei education in Japan] (Tokyo: Tunbini Shuppansha, 1936), 21–22. See also Morimoto, Japanese Americans and Cultural Continuity, 88–92.Google Scholar

8 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei: The World of the First-Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885–1924 (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 253–54.Google Scholar

9 Nihonjinkai, Zaibei Nihonjinshi, Zaibei [History of Japanese in America] (San Francisco: Zaibei Nihonjinkai, 1940), 590.Google Scholar

10 In fact, immigrant sources indicate that the term “Nisei”—and the concept itself— became popular around 1922 during the height of anti-Japanese agitation in California. A Los Angeles Issei journalist employed that term to differentiate the Japanese youth with American citizenship from those without when discussing the ramifications of racial discrimination to the ethnic collectivity. Thus, the meaning of citizenship relative to the question of anti-Japanese exclusion was intrinsic to the Japanese immigrant ideas of “generations.” For the origin of the term “Nisei” (and hence “Issei” as its opposite), see Fujioka Shiro, Ayumi no Ato [Traces of a journey] (Los Angeles: Ayumi no Ato Kanko Koenkai, 1957), 521.Google Scholar

11 Hachiro, Shishimoto Nikkei Shimin o kataru [On Japanese American citizens] (Tokyo: Shokasha, 1934), 253–66, 275–82; and Morimoto, Japanese Americans and Cultural Continuity, 59, 67–72.Google Scholar

12 Ichioka, Yuji “ Kengakudan: The Origin of Nisei Study Tours of Japan,“ California History 73 (Spring 1994), 34–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Akagi, Roy Hidemichi The Second Generation Problem: Some Suggestions Toward Its Solution (New York: Japanese Student Christian Association, 1926), 37. For more about the JSCA, consult David K. Yoo, Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–49 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 59–63. See also Ichioka, “A Study in Dualism,” and Jere Takahashi, Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 49–53.Google Scholar

14 Nitobe, Inazo Bushido: The Soul of Japan (New York: G. P. Putnams & Sons, 1905); and Nitobe, “Americanism in the East,” in Nitobe Inazo Zenshu [Collective works of Nitobe Inazo] vol. 12 (Tokyo: Kyobunkan, 1969), 215–17. The quotation comes from the latter source. See also Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 44–46.Google Scholar

15 Ichioka, See “A Study in Dualism,“ 59.Google Scholar

16 Yamashita, See Nikkei Shimin no Nihon Ryugaku Jijo, 10–14; and Shishimoto, Nikkei Shimin o Kataru, 74, 94–113. In addition, in so far as immigrant leaders also propagated the Nisei's study abroad as a practical solution to the problem of occupational discrimination on the premise that it would enable the youth to pursue opportunities in Japan or in United States-Japan trade, transnational education partially reflected the hopelessness of their economic life in the United States. For more detail on the Nisei's employment problems, see John Modell, The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles, 1900–1942 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 127–53; and Takahashi, Nisei/Sansei, 37–42. Chinese Americans also crossed the Pacific for better occupational opportunities. Unlike their Nisei counterpart, this group did not seem to have included a significant number of students. For more detail, consult Gloria H. Chun, “Go West … to China: Chinese American Identity in the 1930s,” in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era, ed. K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 170–80.Google Scholar

17 Yamashita, See Nikkei Shimin no Nihon Ryugaku Jijo, 2–4.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., 4–8. Computation by this author.Google Scholar

19 This process of politicization involved both the people of Japan and Issei. For more detail, see Ichioka, “A Study in Dualism,” 58–59; and “Kengakudan,” 42.Google Scholar

20 For this, consult Eiichiro Azuma, “Interstitial Lives: Race, Community, and History among Japanese Immigrants Caught Between Japan and the United States, 1885–1941,” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 2000), 280–90.Google Scholar

21 For example, consult Otsuka Ko, Ishokumin to Kyoiku Mondai [Immigrants/Colonists and their educational problems] (Tokyo: Toko Shoin, 1933); and Kojima Masaru, Dai-Niji Sekai Taisen mae no Zaigai Shitei Kyoikuron no Keifu [Historical trajectories of the education of foreign-born Japanese children before World War II] (Kyoto: Ryukoku Gakkai, 1993).Google Scholar

22 Yasutaro, See Sano “Kaigai ni okeru Kokugo Kyoiku“ [Japanese-language education abroad], in Iwanami Koza: Kokugo Kyoiku [Iwanami collection: Japanese-language education] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1936), 17–18, 20; and Kojima Ken, “Zaigai Hojin Dai-Nisei Mondai no Tenbo” [Future of overseas Nisei problems], in Zaigai Hojin Dai-Nisei Mondai [Overseas Nisei problems] ed. Aoyagi Ikutaro (Tokyo: Imin Mondai Kenkyukai, 1940), 2–5, 14, 18–19. The following contains a complaint on this point lodged by a Nisei. Sam Hataye, “Misunderstood Nisei,” Nichibei Shimbun [Japanese-American News], Dec. 21, 1936. Interestingly, it appears leaders of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy had contemplated the political use of German and Italian Americans through heritage learning on similar grounds. According to a study on the German-American Bund, the Nazi government annually sponsored selected members of the Bund's youth auxiliaries to receive six-week-long courses on National Socialism and anti-Semitism along with a host of other politico-cultural activities. Italy, too, hosted summer camps for Italian American youngsters during the 1930s. See Susan Canedy, America's Nazis, A Democratic Dilemma: A History of the German American Bund (Menlo Park, CA: Markgraf Publications Group, 1990), 99; and Dino Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco: The Immigrant Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), 252–53. To date, however, I have not seen any systematic studies of transnational education among these two groups of Americans in the decade preceding World War II.Google Scholar

23 “Gaikokujin Jido no Shogakko Nyugaku Toriatsukaikata“ [How to deal with the admission of foreign-born pupils into our elementary schools], #130, July 18, 1935; and “Nikkei Beijin Chugakuko, Koto Jogakko to Nyugaku Toriatsukaikata” [How to deal with the admission of Japanese American students into middle schools, higher women's schools, and others], #463, Feb. 19, 1935 and “Migi Futsu Gakumukyoku Kaitono” [Instructions from the educational operations division], no. 6, Feb. 26, 1935, in “Gakusei Seito Soki” [General volume on students affairs], Japanese Ministry of Education, National Archives of Japan, Tokyo.Google Scholar

24 Yamashita, See Nichibei o Tsunagu mono, 322–25.Google Scholar

25 Led, by McClatchy, V.S. a longtime leader of the anti-Japanese movement, the California Joint Immigration Committee criticized the return of Japan-educated Nisei to the United States as another wave of Japanese immigration in disguise. The youths allegedly posed a greater menace to the United States than ordinary immigrants, for they were nominally American citizens with the unflinching “loyalty to Japan.” See Nichibei Shimbun, June 10, 1936, (English section). Similar agitation recurred frequently during the late 1930s.Google Scholar

26 Mainichi, Kashu [Japan California Daily News], March 31, 1940 (English section).Google Scholar

27 Yamashita, See Nichibei o Tsunagu mono, 321–28; and Nisei Survey Committee, The Nisei, 53–55.Google Scholar

28 See Stephan, John J. “Hijacked by Utopia: American Nikkei in Manchuria,“ Amerasia Journal 23 (Winter 1998): 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Tsunemitsu, Nihon Ryugaku no Jissai, 147–49; Nihon Beifu Kyokai, Dai-Nisei to Kokuseki Mondai [Nisei and citizenship issues] (Tokyo: Nihon Beifu Kyokai, 1938), 46–51, box 362, the Japanese American Research Project Collection, University of California at Los Angeles [hereafter JARP]; and Terakawa Honko, Hokubei Kaikyo Enkakushi [Historical overview of Japanese Buddhist mission in North America] (San Francisco: Hongwanji Hokubei Kaikyo Honbu, 1936), 556.Google Scholar

30 “Shitsumon to Kaito” Rafu Shimpo [Los Angeles Japanese Daily News], Jan. 1, 1935. This special New Years’ edition contains a survey of opinions taken from 75 leading Issei in the Los Angeles area. The quotations are from the answers of Kono Katsuya and Ito Seiju, respectively.Google Scholar

31 Boyce, Richard F. “The Second-Generation Japanese Program“ (File 894.427.11/2), Sept. 20, 1935, pp. 23–24; Records of the United States Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1930–1939, Decimal File (LM-58, reel 20); Record Group 59 (RG 59); National Archives at College Park, MD.Google Scholar

32 For this, see Azuma, “Interstitial Lives,” 256–61, 250–52.Google Scholar

33 Rust, William Charles “The Shin Sect of Buddhism in America: Its Antecedents, Beliefs, and Present Condition“ (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1951), 347.Google Scholar

34 Tsunemitsu, Nihon Ryugaku no Jissai, 2–9; Nihon Beifu Kyokai, Nihon Beifu Kyokai Yoran [Guide to Japan America-Hawai'i Society] (Tokyo: Nihon Beifu Kyokai, 1937), 13–14, box 271, JARP; and Rafu Shimpo, Feb. 22, 1937.Google Scholar

35 Takemaro, Shigaraki Kindai Shinshu Kyodan Kenkyu [Study of the Modern Shin Buddhist sect] (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1987), 19, 51–72.Google Scholar

36 Emyo, See Imamura Dai-Ikkai Han-Taiheiyo Bukkyo Seinen Taikai ni yosu [Message to the First Pan-Pacific Buddhist Youth Conference] (Honolulu: Privately Printed, 1930), box 295, JARP.Google Scholar

37 Terakawa, Hokubei Kaikyo Enkakushi, 26–28, 567–68.Google Scholar

38 Kyokai, Beifu Dai-Nisei to Bukkyo [Nisei and Buddhism] (Kyoto: Shinran Kenkyu Hakkosho, 1935), 42–3, box 295, JARP. Nisei leaders in Japan made similar protests. See Rafu Shimpo, May 26, 1938, Dec. 29, 1940 (English section); and Nichibei Shimbun, Dec. 22, 1935 (English section).Google Scholar

39 Konen, Tsunemitsu “Amerika o megurite“ [My trip in America], no. 1–5, Rafu Shimpo, Feb. 22–25, 1937. Eriko Yamamoto discusses the Issei's effort to instill “racial pride” in the Nisei. See her “Cheers for Japanese Athletes: The 1932 Los Angeles Olympics and the Japanese American Community,” Pacific Historical Review 69 (August 2000), 399–430.Google Scholar

40 Azuma, See “Interstitial Lives,“ 246–50.Google Scholar

41 Kyokai, Nihon Beifu Nihon Ryugaku no Atarashiki Hoho [New way for Nisei to pursue education in Japan] (Tokyo: Nihon Beifu Kyokai, 1938), 12, box 362, JARP.Google Scholar

42 Ibid, 9–44; and Nichibei Shimbun, Feb. 26, 1937.Google Scholar

43 Sekai, Shin [New World Daily], Sept., 25, 1939. For more information, see ibid, July 28–29, 1940.Google Scholar

44 Beifu Kyokai, Nihon, Nihon Ryugaku no Atarashiki Hoho, 15–16, 21–23, 37–38.Google Scholar

45 Naoto, Nakajima “Dai-Nisei Ryugakusei no Nayami“ [Predicaments of Nisei students in Japan], Kaizo [Reconstruction] 18 (Aug. 1936), 19–20. See also Nihon Beifu Kyokai, Nihon Ryugaku no Atarashiki Hoho, 23–25.Google Scholar

46 Beifu Kyokai, Nihon, Nihon Ryugaku no Atarashiki Hoho, 43.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 17.Google Scholar

48 Kawai, Michi My Lantern (Tokyo: Kyobunkan, 1939), 91.Google Scholar

49 For her ties to Issei women, see Azuma, “Interstitial Lives,” 119–22.Google Scholar

50 Kawai, My Lantern, 199; and Kawai, “Kami to tomoni Hataraku Warera” [We, who work with God], Keisen 46 (Jan. 1937), 1, KWCA.Google Scholar

51 Kawai, My Lantern, 200.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 206.Google Scholar

53 Letter, Miya, S. Kikuchi to Robert Wilson, A. 4, Jan. 13, 1968, folder 13, box 160, JARP.Google Scholar

54 Nisei Survey Committee, The Nisei, 3.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., 45.Google Scholar

56 Michi, Kawai “Ryugakusei no Sotsugyoshiki ni saishite“ [At the graduation of our Nisei students], Keisen 63 (July 1938), 8, KWCA. Kawai always stressed the importance of the bridge role in her commencement speeches. See Kawai, “Kusabi o utsu mono” [Those who become a bridge], Keisen 52 (July 1937), 1, KWCA.Google Scholar

57 Nagahashi, Sadako “A Nisei Philosophy,“ Keisen News 14 (July 1938), 3, KWCA. See also Hoshi (no first name), “Kawai sensei kara nani o manandaka” [What have I learned from Ms. Kawai?], Keisen 69 (Feb. 1939), 6; and Kimura, “Ninenkan o kaerimite,” 4.Google Scholar

58 Japanese letters by Emiko Murayama and Emiko Yamada, in Keisen 55 (Nov. 1937), 5, and Keisen 56 (Dec. 1937), 5, respectively, KWCA.Google Scholar

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60 Nihongo Gakuen Kyokai, Hokka ed. Beikoku Kashu Nihongo Gakuen Enkakushi [Historical overview of Japanese-language schools in California] (San Francisco: Hokka Nihongo Gakuen Kyokai, 1930), 311.Google Scholar

61 Shin Sekai, Jan. 27, 1932, Sept. 11, 1934; Nippu Jiji [Japan-Hawai'i Daily] June 22, 1934; Nichibei Shimbun, August 6, 1934, and Rafu Shimpo, February 26, 1935. See also Brian M. Hayashi, 'For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren': Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895–1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 119.Google Scholar

62 1940 Graduating Class, ed. Japanese Cooking and Etiquette (Tokyo: Keisen Girls’ School, 1941).Google Scholar

63 Nagasaki, “A Nisei Philosophy,“ 3.Google Scholar

64 Kallen, Horace M. coined the term “cultural pluralism” in 1924. For a succinct discussion of “the battles between the assimilationist and the pluralist perspectives” around World War I, consult Werner Sollors, “Forward: Theories of Ethnicity,” in Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader, ed. Werner Sollors (New York: New York University Press, 1996), xxvi-xxvii.Google Scholar

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70 Sakai, Irene Kaoru an Indio native, ran a school in cooperation with an Issei woman.Google Scholar

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72 For more detail, see Azuma, “Interstitial Lives,” 287–88.Google Scholar

73 The statistics are taken from the following sources: “The Institute's World,” The International Youth 1 (Dec. 1938), 82; and Jun'ichi Natori, “Waseda International Institute and Its Educational Ideal,” The International Youth 1 (Feb. 1941), 21, the Waseda University History Archives [hereafter WUHA], Tokyo.Google Scholar

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78 Natori, “Waseda International Institute and Its Educational Ideal,“ 23.Google Scholar

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80 The Institute had “the two main purposes: to prepare graduates of foreign schools and foreign-born Japanese for entrance into Japanese colleges and universities; and second, to instruct them in the language, culture, and spirit of the Japanese.” See “Kokusai in Perspective,” The International Youth 1 (Feb. 1940), 86.Google Scholar

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87 In understanding this dynamic, Rogers Brubaker's insight into “the triadic relational interplay between national minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands” is useful. He explains that a “national minority” has its own “nationalism” based on localized collective interests, which often clash with the nationalizing nationalism of the country in which the group resides, as well as the “transborder nationalism” of its external homeland. For more detail, consult Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 4–6.Google Scholar

88 Keihokyoku, Naimusho “Showa 16-nen chu ni okeru Gaiji Keisatsu Gaikyo“ [General report of anti-foreign police bureau], 1941, reprinted in Gaiji Keisatsu Gaikyo vol. 7 (Tokyo: Ryukei Shosha, 1980), 164.Google Scholar

89 Hiyama, See Aiko “Ryugakusei-bu no kinkyo“ [Whereabouts of Nisei students], Keisen 95 (June 1941), 6, KWCA.Google Scholar

90 Jun'ichi, See Natori “Showa 17-nendo Hokoku“ [Report: 1942], Waseda Kokusai Gakuin Ho [Waseda International Institute newsletter] 26 (July 1943), 13–14, WUHA; and “Waseda Kokusai Gakuin narabi ni Keiei Kogakubu Setsuritsu Keikaku,” 163–65. The idea of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere formed an ideological underpinning of what John Dower has called a “race war” which Japan waged against the United States and other “whitemen's countries” in the years between 1941 and 1945. Based on the notion of Asia for the Asiatic, Imperial Japan proclaimed its leadership in the struggle for the liberation of Asian nations from white/western control. In this context, Japan often portrayed the history of racial discrimination against Issei and the current internment of Japanese Americans as a concrete example of American racism that Japan was purportedly fighting. For more detail, see Akira Iriye, Japan and the Wider World: from the Mid-nineteenth Century to the Present (London: Longman, 1997), 63–87: John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Book, 1986).Google Scholar

91 Ohashi, Edwin Taro “Why I came to Japan,“ The International Youth 1 (Feb. 1942), 22.Google Scholar

92 See, for instance, Weglyn, Michi Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1976), 41, 127, 149–51.Google Scholar

93 Keihokyoku, Naimusho “Showa 17-nen chu ni okeru Gaiji Keisatsu Gaikyo“ [General report of anti-foreign police force] 1942, reprinted in Gaiji Keisatsu Gaikyo vol. 8 (Tokyo: Ryukei Shosha, 1980), 77; and Murayama Tamotsu, Shusen no Koro [Around the end of the war] (Tokyo: Jiji Tsushin, 1968), 23–24, 156. See also the autobiographies of such Nisei in Amerasia Journal 23 (1997), 145–216; Masayo Duus, Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific (New York: Kodansha International, 1979); Russell Warren Howe, The Hunt for “Tokyo Rose” (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1990); and Mary Kimoto Tomita, Dear Miye: Letters from Japan, 1939–1946, ed., Robert G. Lee (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

94 For the critique of the exclusion of these Japanese Americans from history, see Ichioka, “Beyond National Boundaries,” vii-xi. In 1957, a prominent Nisei journalist Bill Hosokawa printed a poignant article with regards to the Nisei's abandonment of transnationalism in the postwar years. In it, the writer traced the origins of the prewar bridge concept to “idealists and do-gooders on both sides of the ocean,” as well as Issei, whose “dreams could not stand up under the realism of power politics and hot steel” after Pearl Harbor. “But if the Nisei flopped as bridges,” Hosokawa continued, “their faith in their country was justified” because “[t]oday their acceptance as Americans is complete and their position in their native land is secure.” As if he forgot his own struggle to live a transnational life in the late 1930s as the editor of Japan-sponsored newspaper in Singapore, Hosokawa dismissed the bridge concept as having no relevance to their collective identity—one forged in the context of the wartime internment and military service. See Bill Hosokawa, “Maybe Nisei Have Flopped as ‘Bridges’ Across the Pacific,'” Pacific Citizen (Holiday Issue), Dec. 20, 1957, 4.Google Scholar

95 Good examples include Ron Takaki's narratives of multicultural America and its national identity based on diversity, which counter the recent reaffirmation of the preeminence of Western civilization by pundits like Allan Bloom and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. See Ronald Takaki, “Multiculturalism: Battleground or Meeting Ground?,” in Color-Lines to Borderlands: The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies, ed. Johnnella E. Butler (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 3–17; A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1993), esp., 1–17; and Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1998), 1–13, 509.Google Scholar