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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2010
Joseph Kurihara was a son of immigrants, a Japanese American who did everything he could to become a bridge of understanding. Ultimately, however, he came to believe that the bridge that he had built was made of straw.
How did he come to this conclusion? When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Kurihara immediately volunteered his services for the war effort. He volunteered a number of times but to no avail. Instead, he was rejected and—like other Japanese Americans and their parents—he was forced to leave his home and job, and move to what the U.S. government first called “concentration camps” and later, euphemistically, “relocation centers.” What Kurihara learned later, he said, was that his “Japanese features” and his job as a fishing-boat navigator made him suspect in the eyes of the U. S. government, and as a result FBI agents had been tailing him since the Pearl Harbor attack. He could accept these actions as government mistakes.
7 Kurihara did not use the phrases “bridge of understanding” and “bridge of straw.” This is the author's interpretation based on his words and actions.
8 Best, Raymond R., “Joe Kurihara, ‘Repatriate,’”Google Scholartypescript, Japanese Relocation Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 3.
9 Cremin, Lawrence, Public Education (New York, 1976), 27Google Scholar. The quote, which comes from Cremin's definition of education, is an apt description of the path that Kurihara took.
10 Ichioka, Yuji, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885–1924 (New York, 1988), 210–54.Google Scholar
11 The emergence of the bridge idea is discussed in, Ichioka, The Issei, 252–54Google Scholar. Other studies that discuss the bridge idea areAzuma, Eiichiro, “‘The Pacific Era Has Arrived’: Transnational Education among Japanese Americans, 1932–1941,” History of Education Quarterly 43 (Spring 2003): 41–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Tamura, Eileen H., Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana, 1994), 68–69Google Scholar;Takahashi, Jere, Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics (Philadelphia, 1997), 49–53Google Scholar;Yoo, David K., Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–49 (Urbana, 2000), 31–32Google Scholar.
12 Moriyama, Alan T., “The Causes of Emigration: The Background of Japanese Emigration to Hawaii, 1885–1894” in Labor Immigration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States before World War II, ed. Cheng, Lucie and Bonacich, Edna (Berkeley, 1984), 248–61Google Scholar;Irwin, Yukiko and Conroy, Hilary, “Robert Walker Irwin and Systematic Immigration to Hawaii” in East across the Pacific: Historical and Sociological Studies of Japanese Immigraton and Assimilation, ed. Conroy, Hilary and Miyakawa, T. Scott (Santa Barbara, 1972), 46–47Google Scholar. According to “Yoshisuke Kurihara Certificate of Hawaiian Birth,” Office of the Secretary, Territory of Hawaii, May 2, 1910, Kurihara's parents arrived in the late 1880s.
13 S.F.S. #1, Bro. Leo Schaefer, 1913–14, Tuition Records 1912–16, St. Louis College and St. Francis School, file 307, SLC Records, St. Louis School Archives, Honolulu.
14 Yzendoorn, Reginald, History of the Catholic Mission in the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu, 1927), 239Google Scholar;Kurihara, Joseph Y., Autobiography, Japanese Relocation Papers [1945], 1Google Scholar.
15 Manifest of Alien Passengers from U.S. Insular Possessions, manifest no. 14498, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1410 (Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at San Francisco, May 1, 1893–May 31, 1953), roll 83, National Archives Pacific Region, San Bruno, CA.
16 , Kurihara, Autobiography, 2Google Scholar;Iwata, Masakazu, Planted in Good Soil: A History of the Issei in United States Agriculture, vol. 1 (New York, 1992), 221–34Google Scholar;Daniels, Roger, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle, 1988), 144Google Scholar.
17 , Kurihara, Autobiography, 2–3.Google Scholar
18 Daniels, Roger, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley, 1962), 33–34Google Scholar;Wollenberg, Charles M., All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855–1975 (Berkeley, 1977), 53Google Scholar;, Daniels, Asian America, 29–66Google Scholar, 100–54;Chan, Sucheng, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston, 1991), 45–61Google Scholar. For a discussion of the types of jobs available to Japanese, see, Iwata, Planted in Good Soil, 111–52Google Scholar.
19 Catalog of St. Ignatius University, 1916–17, 113–18, RG 4 Catalogs, University of San Francisco (USF) Archives; Kurihara, Autobiography, 3–4.
20 Scholastic Records, 6th Grade, 1912–13, to Senior High School 1925–26, 7th Grade, 1916–17 to Senior College, 1920–1921, St. Ignatius High School, box 9, RG 1, USF Archives; Bulletin, St. Ignatius University, 1916–17, 10–11, RG 4 Catalogs, USF Archives.
21 Photo Albums, St. Ignatius High School [1907–25], USF Archives. Lists of student names accompany the class photos.
22 , Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed, 29–47Google Scholar;Low, Victor, The Unimpressible Race: A Century of Educational Struggle by the Chinese in San Francisco (San Francisco, 1982), 59–73Google Scholar;, Kurihara, Autobiography, 3Google Scholar. San Francisco population figures from 1910 and 1920 U.S. censuses, copy in San Francisco Public Library.
23 Kurihara, Joseph Y., “The Niseis and the Government of the United States,” script [1943], 6Google Scholar, Charles and Lois Ferguson Collection, Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles.
24 , Kurihara, Autobiography, 9Google Scholar;, Best, “Joe Kurihara, ‘Repatriate,’” 19Google Scholar.
25 Kurihara, Joseph Y. Transcripts, 1924Google Scholar, Southwestern University, Los Angeles, California.
26 Kurihara, Joseph Y., “Renunciation of United States Nationality,” Mar. 22, 1945Google Scholar, Case File 146–54–117, U.S. Department of Justice. The author obtained these documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
27 , Kurihara, “Renunciation of United States Nationality.”Google Scholar