Please post one paragraph of critical questions and/or analysis on Azuma’s “Japanese Immigrant Settler Colonialism and the Construction of a US Security Regime Against the Transborder ‘Yellow Peril‘” and/or Peattie’s “South into the Pacific.”

University of Hawai’i Press

Chapter Title: JAPANESE IMMIGRANT SETTLER COLONIALISM AND THE CONSTRUCTION
OF A US NATIONAL SECURITY REGIME AGAINST THE TRANSBORDER “YELLOW PERIL”
Chapter Author(s): EIICHIRO AZUMA

Book Title: Pacific America
Book Subtitle: Histories of Transoceanic Crossings
Book Editor(s): Lon Kurashige
Published by: University of Hawai’i Press. (2017)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvvn1mj.16

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192

1 2

JAPA NESE IMMIGRANT SETTLER
COLONIALISM AND THE
CONSTRUCTION OF A US NATIONAL
SECURITY REGIME AGAINST THE
TRANSBORDER “YELLOW PERIL”
EII CH IR O A ZUM A

Look out; California! Beware! . . .
But while we watch and wait,
They’re inside the Golden Gate!
They’ve battleships, they say,
On Magdalena Bay!
Uncle Sam, won’t you listen when we warn you?

In July  1916 the Hearst newspapers printed this “Anti- Japanese Hymn of
Hate” as a stern warning to the white republic. The two locations mentioned
in this manifesto— San Francisco and Magdalena Bay— carried specific his-
torical meanings, throwing light on an emergent notion of a hemispheric
“Yellow Peril” that revolved around the presence of Japa nese immigrants (Is-
sei) in the western United States and Baja California. The “Hymn” elucidates
an unknown aspect of anti- Japanese race politics in pre– World War II Amer-
i ca. Most studies on the Yellow Peril look at Issei as an object of anti- Asian
racialization in a US po liti cal context or as a mere distraction in US- Japanese
diplomacy.1 Seldom have historians considered its ramifications outside do-
mestic race relations or bilateral imperialist rivalry. As Erika Lee has shown,
the US racial- nationalist formation permeated throughout the Western
Hemi sphere before the 1940s, producing a complex constellation of exclu-
sionist politics that brought together North and South American states in
the eforts to create a “no Asian” zone.2 It is also impor tant that the existing
lit er a ture on the Yellow Peril lacks perspective on the specific impact of Japa-
nese immigrant practice on hemispheric geopo liti cal development— one
that spread from California to the US- Mexican borderlands, and beyond.
This chapter uncovers the complex roles that Issei actions, as well as their
unintended consequences, played in the development of transborder Yellow

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Azuma 193

Peril scaremongering. Misrepre sen ta tions of Issei intentions and their con-
tingent relationships to Japan eventually propelled white Amer i ca to reaffirm
its commitment to the time- honored Monroe Doctrine, shifting the main at-
tention of the US endeavor to preserve its hemispheric hegemony from the
traditional Eu ro pean rivals to the Japa nese racial enemy.

This study, like Brian Hayashi’s in chapter 9, complicates the existing
understanding of the Yellow Peril, but it does so from the vantage point of
what Augusto  F. Espiritu in this book calls “inter- imperial rivalry.” The
Western Hemi sphere of the 1910s through the 1930s constituted an emergent
geopo liti cal site where the United States aspired to construct a national se-
curity regime against a threat of an expansionist Japan and its presumed co-
conspirators, Issei border crossers. Specifically, my analy sis centers on the
mutually constitutive relationship of California- originated exclusionist pol-
itics, transborder Japa nese migration and colonialism, and transborder Yel-
low Peril scaremongering between the 1910s and the 1930s. In a response to
racial exclusion from the Golden State, Issei practices of “frontier conquest”
and settlement south of the border not only confounded California’s anti-
Japanese agitation but also had a significant impact on US imperialist
diplomacy in the Amer i cas. The Yellow Peril—as a discourse and as a basis
for po liti cal formation within and without the white republic— entailed the
entanglements of transnational Issei colonization, mediated and articulated
by their frequent border crossing, and US hemispheric imperialism, rooted in
the Monroe Doctrine. Such racial- imperialist politics culminated in the mak-
ing of a US- led “hemispheric alliance”— a transnational national security re-
gime of the early 1940s— against Japa nese residents and their expanding racial
homeland.

ORIGINS OF ISSEI SETTLER COLONIALISM AND THE MAKING
OF A TRANSBORDER FRONTIER

Inspired by the US example of “frontier conquest,” Issei settler colonialism
took shape in the context of their lived experience as a racialized minority.
Until the late 1890s, the majority of California’s Japa nese were indigent
student- laborers. Well educated and po liti cally conscious, most of these early
Issei congregated in San Francisco.3 Considering the American West as their
own frontier, these youth felt they were as civilized and progressive as white
Americans. Imported into Japan through translated books, the idea of “fron-
tier,” with all its constitutive racism against nonwhites, became adapted to
Japan’s national experience and underpinned what would become a discourse
on “overseas Japa nese development.” Often accompanied by pseudoscientific
theories that stressed the overseas origins of the ancient Japa nese, this popu-
lar discourse posited “expansive traits” of the Japa nese nation and race.4 In
the early phase of imperial Japan’s discursive formation, self- styled Issei

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194 Chapter 12

“frontiersmen” made notable contributions, for they could speak from their
firsthand, real- life experience of the “ trials and tribulations” of conquering
the New World frontier.

Constituting a nucleus of the “discourse on overseas development,” Is-
sei settler colonialism envisaged a combination of mass migration and agri-
cultural colonization to create a “new Japan” in a foreign land. Until the early
1890s, the US West, especially California, occupied a central place in the
dream of “overseas Japa nese development,” since it was the prototypical and
most au then tic “frontier” of all. In the first published “guidebook for going
to Amer i ca,” a San Francisco resident wrote in 1887: “The United States is a
land for new development, which awaits the coming of ambitious youth . . . .
When you come to the United States, you must have the determination to
create the second, new Japan there, which also helps enhance the interest and
prestige of the imperial government and our nation.”5

Between 1892 and 1894, the Issei unconditional embrace of the US fron-
tier underwent an adjustment due to white racism. In the spring of 1892, San
Francisco Issei endured the first or ga nized anti- Japanese campaign. Ten
years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, local newspapers like
the Morning Call and the Eve ning Bulletin cranked out reports and commen-
taries on the new “Oriental” menace, drawing a parallel between the
excluded Chinese and the increasing Japa nese in the white republic. That
comparison registered as an unbearable afront to the immigrant expan-
sionists and their homeland supporters, who considered themselves to be
equal participants in Western modernity. “In no way do we, energetic and
brilliant Japa nese men, stand below (or on a par with) those lowly Chinese,”
one immigrant wrote in a local vernacular paper.6 The first of many similar
occurrences, this bitter encounter with white supremacist attitudes called
into question the naïve belief in racial compatibility, which educated Japa nese
had presumed in their understanding of modernity as something universal.
Many Issei came to realize that being modern, civilized, and expansionist did
not automatically earn them respectful treatment and ac cep tance in the West-
ern world. Increasingly, race became a central factor in Japa nese expansionist
thought, and their outlook on a par tic u lar “frontier” often hinged on the state
of race relations there—an idea that also influenced how homeland expan-
sionists thought about overseas Japa nese development.7

In the pages of immigrant newspapers, one can easily detect how the
prob lem of race negatively afected the Issei prognosis of California’s poten-
tial as a site for Japa nese development after the spring of 1892. Earlier in
August 1891, an expansionist Issei monthly carried a special column that
anticipated unrestricted success in the conquest of the California frontier on
the basis of the pre ce dent set by “vari ous foreign settlers [Eu ro pe ans] for the
last thirty some years.”8 A few months after the 1892 racist press campaign,
however, the same journal showed little trace of its earlier optimism, lament-

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Azuma 195

ing instead the “prevalence of white domination” that “would never let other
races prosper” in their land.9 In order to ensure a favorable outcome for Japa-
nese immigration and colonization, the San Francisco expansionist journal
asserted, it was crucial to study current world afairs and search for “an un-
touched land with a people and po liti cal system that would not shut us out.”10
No longer did the American West seem to ofer such a place, due to the
Anglo- Saxon mono poly of its frontier. The 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian
kingdom by US- backed haole in Honolulu only reinforced the notion that
Anglo- Saxons had no intention of sharing the prize of civilization’s conquest
with the Japa nese. Yet many educated Issei in California still envisioned a
promised land just south of the border, because no counterpart to white
American racism appeared to have existed in Mexico and its contiguous
frontiers. Seen from the racist standpoint of Issei expansionists, Mexicans
were “as spineless as Chinese,” whose homelands had been already (semi)
colonized; they hence appeared “easy to dominate”—so much so that Japa nese
newcomers would have little trou ble rising to the status of a “master” race.11
While scholars of American empire have generally considered the western
seaboard of Mexico a US- dominated region, it actually had more compli-
cated histories in terms of broader inter- imperial relations throughout the
Pacific.

Members of the “Expedition Society” (Enseisha) in San Francisco played
a central role in drawing a new map for Japa nese development in the West-
ern Hemi sphere, a map that gravitated toward the Latin American frontiers
free of Anglo- Saxon hegemony. Takekawa Tōtarō, a key ideologue of the Is-
sei expansionist society, spearheaded the new discourse on southward remi-
gration and Mexican colonization. A typical argument defined the Latin
American country as a “site for a decisive strug gle of [racial] survival that
ambitious men of the cherry- blossom nation (Japan) must undertake with
bravery and grand tact.”12 Takekawa and his Issei associates were no longer
content with vacuous talk of colonial fantasy. “The time has come,” he urged,
“for our compatriots to leap with determination out of complacency and
inaction to put their bodies in the middle of a great [racial] strug gle on the
tablelands of Mexico.”13 In 1893 more than thirty Issei also or ga nized a
Spanish study group in San Francisco, in order to be equipped with the lan-
guage skills necessary for expeditions and future colonization eforts south
of the border.14

Populated with experienced Issei frontiersmen who could readily cross
its southern border, California remained as a base for Issei expansion into
Latin Amer i ca, despite the loss of the US West to white hegemony. US ethnic
communities could still provide aspiring Japa nese settler colonists with
the opportunity to undergo practical training in frontier farming and to
accumulate necessary capital through manual labor. Indeed, for that very
purpose, a group of San Francisco Issei, including Takekawa’s associates,

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196 Chapter 12

established the Society for the Promotion of Colonization (Shokumin
shōreikai) in 1894. This enterprise set out to turn dry land near Bakersfield
into a “Japa nese village” surrounded by rice paddies. The society also
proposed to run a labor- contracting firm to allow an increasing number of
working- class newcomers to make money, settle down, and help erect a
“colonial cornerstone” in California under the guidance of “enlightened”
expansionist Issei. That “cornerstone” would serve as a “way station” into
“Mexico, South Amer i ca, and other open frontiers” of the New World.15

This vision, which combined the transplantation of common laborers
and settler colonialism, sustained the operation of so- called emigration com-
panies in the triangular expansionist cir cuits that tied the US- Mexican bor-
derlands to Japan. Often operated by immigrant returnees, these companies
mushroomed in Japan after around 1894, mirroring the impor tant position
of North Amer i ca in Japa nese expansionist thought of the time. In the cir-
cles of Tokyo’s expansionist pundits, the Sino- Japanese War of 1894–1895, as
well as Issei reports on the loss of California and Hawai‘i, had temporarily
steered much of the colonial gaze toward Korea and Manchuria. Yet the med-
dling of Rus sia compelled victorious Japan to cede the Liaotung peninsula
back to China and accept its waning influence over Korea. This geopo liti cal
development rendered the Asian continent a less promising outpost of set-
tler colonialism, quickly resurrecting the interconnected frontiers of the
US West and rural Mexico in Japan’s public discourse.16 Issei and home-
land advocates of transpacific emigration continued to exert influence in
the polemics of Japan’s overseas development and colonial expansion after
the mid-1890s.

Just as the first wave of the anti- Japanese campaign had forced Issei set-
tler colonialism to re orient itself, the resurgence of California’s exclusionist
attack in 1900 accelerated the flow of Japa nese immigrants toward the con-
tiguous frontier through the agency of emigration companies.17 This agita-
tion resulted in the temporary suspension of Japa nese immigration to the US
mainland from August 1900 to June 1902, followed by Tokyo’s virtual ban
on labor migration in the context of the 1907 Gentlemen’s Agreement with
Washington. Northern Mexico thus emerged as a primary emigrant desti-
nation after the turn of the century. The new immigration flow included both
itinerant laborers and aspiring frontier settlers. Catering to more than eighty-
seven hundred newcomers, three par tic u lar emigration companies facili-
tated this spillover migration to Mexico between 1901 and 1908. The top
management of each com pany consisted largely of former US residents who
had maintained close business ties with Issei “ labor contractors” in Califor-
nia on the basis of shared settler colonialist visions. These transpacific agents
of human trafficking collapsed their business calculations and expansionist
agendas while shipping thousands of new immigrants into the US- Mexican
borderlands.18

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Azuma 197

TRANSBORDER JAPA NESE SETTLER COLONIALISM AND
THE RISE OF THE YELLOW PERIL DISCOURSE

The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907–1908 between the United States and
Japan put an end to transpacific labor contracting and mass migration to
North Amer i ca. In response to the or ga nized agitation in California, Wash-
ington and Tokyo moved to prevent localized racist politics from negatively
afecting bilateral relations. The agreement entailed a US ban on the entry of
Japa nese into the United States through Mexico, while Japan stopped issu-
ing passports to common laborers bound for both the United States and
Mexico. This diplomatic solution addressed the increasing presence and
movement of Japa nese in the US- Mexican borderlands. Indeed, many immi-
grant workers in Mexico had opted to cross the northern border to Texas
and California for better- paying jobs, while some Japa nese residents in the
United States sought refuge from racism and unrestricted colonial opportu-
nities south of the border.19 The contiguous frontier thus constituted a highly
mobile space, where the working- class pursuit of material gains collocated
with immigrant settler colonialism. After 1908 Issei expansionists continued
to carry the torch of settler colonialism into the US- Mexican borderlands,
especially Baja California. They articulated a complex vision that harmo-
nized, on the one hand, with Japan’s national motto of overseas development
and, on the other, with their self- conscious efort to contribute to the Ameri-
can mandate of frontier conquest.

Despite the end of labor immigration after the Gentlemen’s Agree-
ment, cross- border Japa nese mobility sparked the ire of white exclusionists,
prompting them to transnationalize their fight against the “Japa nese prob lem.”
Many pundits presumed that a sinister conspiracy between imperial Japan
and Japa nese Amer i ca underlay transborder Issei movements and invest-
ments. Such misreadings spawned an alliance among grassroots Western
agitators, belligerent national leaders, and opportunistic journalists in their
aspirations for a national security regime through the imperialist diplomacy
of hemispheric racial exclusion. A departure from existing practice, this
diplomacy strove to seal of the US backyard mainly from the racial and
military threats of migrating Japa nese, not from traditional Eu ro pean rivals.
Thus, just as a number of US Issei took it upon themselves to erect “new
Japans” south of the border, intensified talks of the Yellow Peril served to
undermine their endeavors of settler colonialism there through the 1910s.

One example of frustrated Issei settler colonialism involved Abiko
Kyūtarō and Noda Otosaburō, well- known ethnic community leaders who
aspired to weave their enterprise in California into agricultural colonization
in Mexico. Established in 1906, the American Land and Produce Com pany
(ALPC) took charge of that transborder endeavor. With Abiko as the presi-
dent and Noda as the general man ag er, the ALPC first obtained thirty- two

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198 Chapter 12

hundred acres of undeveloped land in Central California. Since 1902 these
Issei had been engaged in labor contracting— a business that enabled them
to secure start-up capital. Subdividing the land into forty- acre units, the
ALPC allowed an individual Issei to live as an in de pen dent “frontiersman.”20
The new settlement would become the “Yamato Colony” of Livingston in
1907.

This episode is well documented in Japa nese American history, albeit in
a rather limited manner. Scholars have only examined how Abiko’s group
strove to sink roots into US soil by practicing Christian- based social adapta-
tion and permanent settlement. What is missing in that interpretation is that
the ALPC also operated self- consciously within a larger Japa nese colonialist
diaspora that viewed all manifestations of migration and colonization as
linked to national/racial expansion, whether inside or outside the Asian
empire. In the eyes of many educated Issei, their aspirations to participate
in mainstream US society did not contradict with their identities as front-
line prac ti tion ers of overseas Japa nese development.21 Printed in a maga-
zine in Japan, ALPC’s publicity material elucidated its embrace of settler
colonialism:

Now many Japa nese nationals are involved in enterprises of overseas
colonization. The rise of the homeland depends on the success of colo-
nization. In view of ongoing Japa nese development [in the wider world],
the American Land and Produce Com pany is prepared to help steady
entrepreneurs and hardworking farmers to build an ideal colony in the
North American frontier.22

In early 1911 this expansionist perspective found another opportunity,
when Abiko and Noda received an ofer to acquire control of two thousand
acres near Magdalena Bay in Baja California. The US- owned Chartered
Com pany of Lower California proposed to sell the Issei a 35 to 50  percent
interest in its entire landholdings.23 In order to assess the prospect for agri-
cultural colonization there, Noda personally traveled to Magdalena Bay. He
wasted no time in producing a positive report that praised the area in terms
of its fertile soil, good weather, and fishing. Noda concluded that “the Japa-
nese can easily penetrate in the midst of natives to form the core- class to
guide them, exploit natu ral resources, and attain healthy agricultural and
fishing development.”24 Because white Americans were preoccupied with
speculative mining ventures rather than farming, Noda insisted, the un-
touched land of Magdalena Bay awaited the arrival of Issei settler colonists
with open arms.25 Abiko and Noda deci ded to solicit support from “home-
land cap i tal ists” in Tokyo to make a go of their Mexican colonization.26

The Issei business plan, however, soon ran into the roadblock created by
the first Yellow Peril scaremongering campaign. When their white business

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Azuma 199

partners informed US Secretary of State Philander C. Knox of the ongoing
negotiations, the official warned: “a transfer [of landownership to Japa nese]
would be quite certain to be interpreted in some quarters in a manner to
cause a great outcry.”27 Indeed, once the news leaked out, the press was quick
to assert that the Issei purchase of the Baja California properties revealed
Japan’s nefarious design to undermine the US mono poly of the Western
Hemi sphere.28 Magdalena Bay had been a site of inter- imperial contestation
between Germany and the United States, where the former had unsuccess-
fully sought landownership “for naval purposes,” and the latter had engaged
in naval target practice between 1900 and 1910.29 Imperial Japan suddenly
appeared as another player, and its presumed militarist intrigue was deemed
congruent with the dubious intentions of the Issei border crossers.

A long- term advocate of US imperialism, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
quickly seized the occasion to clarify with President William Howard Taft
“ whether or not such acquisitions of property or concessions [in Baja Cali-
fornia], if allowed, encroach upon the Monroe doctrine.”30 Lodge had been a
familiar voice of belligerence against Japan’s expansionist ambition as early
as 1897 when he helped garner congressional support for the annexation of
Hawai’i.31 Fifteen years later Lodge’s question reinforced the power ful admoni-
tion of Homer Lea, who had just prophesied the Japa nese takeover of Califor-
nia and a coming war with Japan in The Valor of Ignorance in 1909. Now, the
undiferentiated threat of Japa nese migration and military invasion was alleg-
edly being extended to the Pacific shores of Mexico, where the invocation of
the Monroe Doctrine was reckoned indispensable for its defense. Lodge’s sen-
sationalist spin made Abiko’s business transaction look like a major assault on
US national security via its back door. Speculating that imperial Japan was
conspiring to set up a coaling station in Magdalena Bay, the New York Times
warned the public of Japan’s “growing appetite for new territory” that had
already swallowed up Korea and parts of Manchuria. The editorial asserted
that the United States “could not consent to or permit the establishment of
a Japa nese naval station on this continent.”32 According to the racial-
nationalist rendition of Issei settler colonialism, an attempt to or ga nize a
Japa nese farming settlement on the Mexican seaboard was no dif er ent from
the building of an imperial Japa nese military outpost.

Thus, although the East Coast regional press was yet “not as alarmed as”
West Coast and Hearst newspapers, a national consensus was emerging
about the meaning of Japa nese mobility and settlement in and around the
United States.33 It reawakened the US sense of owner ship about its hemi-
spheric “backyard,” with a strong racial undertone that had seldom been
pres ent in the previous articulations directed at Eu ro pe ans. Conflating trans-
border Issei mobility and Japan’s alleged imperialist designs, the emergent
discourse culminated in the 1912 Lodge Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
The US Senate ratified it promptly to prevent “any foreign power” (meaning

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200 Chapter 12

Japan) from obtaining a place of strategic interest in the Western Hemi-
sphere.34 While drawing on Theodore Roo se velt’s corollary of 1904, which
reserved the United States’ right to exert military force in Latin Amer i ca, this
congressional action diverged in impor tant and fundamental ways from con-
ventional hemispheric diplomacy. No longer did the Monroe Doctrine sim-
ply intend to keep out the po liti cal influence of Eu ro pean powers. It now
aimed to purge the Amer i cas of Japa nese presence— political, military, and
especially racial.35 The princi ple of geopo liti cal nonintervention was trans-
muting into a racial- imperialist endeavor to build a national security regime
against the Yellow Peril that spilled beyond the confines of sovereign US
territory.

Imbued by domestic race politics, diplomacy henceforth constituted a
primary site in the fight against hemispheric “Japa nese penetration” under
aegis of local Western exclusionists, press scaremongers, and bellicose US of-
ficials. Owing to its extraterritorial nature, the southward migration and
settlement of Issei exceeded the scope of existing US laws and eluded pos si-
ble governmental mea sures to handle it. Reaffirmed in the 1911–1912 Mag-
dalena Bay controversy, the Monroe Doctrine proved to be not only the most
efective device of new race- based imperialist diplomacy, but its very justifi-
cation. Because it could empower the United States to resort to military force
as declared by Roo se velt earlier, the renewed US commitment to hemispheric
imperialism— with a veiled threat of punitive naval action— quickly led Ja-
pan and Mexico to declare publicly no support for the Issei acquisition of the
land in Baja California.36

The legacy of this failed attempt at Japa nese development was far-
reaching. The rhe toric that conflated Japa nese immigrant land purchases
with Japan’s “appetite for territory” across and beyond the Pacific became a
hallmark of the Yellow Peril argument in the ensuing years, and its po liti cal
efects reverberated through inter- American relations. First, the national se-
curity implications of Issei property acquisition of the US backyard resonated
with a notable shift in California’s anti- Japanese movement, which had pro-
duced an alien land bill in 1911— the same time frame when Abiko had com-
menced negotiations with Baja California landowners. Enacted shortly
after the Lodge Corollary, the 1913 Alien Land Law subsequently attempted
to tackle the prob lem of Japa nese farming success and land acquisition
within the Golden State.37 Yet the extraterritorial dimension of Issei agri-
cultural colonization, albeit still only a possibility, remained unresolved.
Etched in the consciousness of white Amer i ca, the Magdalena Bay scare
would serve as a pivotal reminder of this sober real ity.

Second, the so- called Zimmermann Tele gram of 1917 valorized the
meaning of the Lodge Corollary. Sent from the German Foreign Minister, the
confidential proposal not only urged Mexico to enter war against the United
States but also requested the Latin American country to broker an alliance

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Azuma 201

between Germany and Japan. Intercepted and disclosed by British intelli-
gence, the German tele gram and intrigue exacerbated US distrust of war-
torn Mexico when the US expeditionary forces were hunting for Mexican
revolutionaries like Pancho Villa. Moreover, the German’s implication of Ja-
pan in its scheme, despite Tokyo’s quick rebuttal, stoked public anx i eties
about Japa nese presence in what appeared to be the hostile neighbor.38 As the
Hearst’s “Anti- Japanese Hymn of Hate” called the nation’s attention to it,
Magdalena Bay became a key trope of an anticipated scourge of a transpa-
cific and transborder Japa nese conspiracy apparently brewing south of the
border. After 1912, the Yellow Peril periodically revivified US imperialist di-
plomacy based on the Lodge Corollary in its relations to Mexico and other
hemispheric neighbors.

JAPA NESE EXCLUSION AND THE DEFENSE OF THE US
RACIAL EMPIRE IN THE WESTERN HEMI SPHERE

In the de cades of the 1910s and the 1920s, the circular relationship of domes-
tic exclusionist agitation, transborder Issei migration, and the Yellow Peril
demagoguery manifested itself on several occasions. Immediately after
Abiko’s failed attempt at settler colonialism in Baja California, California’s
first alien land law prohibited Japa nese immigrant landownership, catalyz-
ing the mobility of many Issei farmers from California to the contiguous
Mexican frontier. Similar to Abiko’s Yamato Colony scheme, the Nichi-
Boku Industrial Corporation (NBIC) of Los Angeles exemplified the craze
for remigration and colonization in northern Mexico during the 1910s. The
com pany acquired eighty- five thousand acres in Sinaloa, which it subdi-
vided for aspiring Issei frontier farmers.39 A younger brother of Takekawa
Tōtarō, who had been a key ideologue of settler colonialism in Mexico in the
mid-1890s, Takekawa Minetarō played a central role in organ izing this ma-
jor land com pany in 1912. Although most investors were Japa nese residents
of Los Angeles, a number of colonial- minded investors in Japan chipped in,
as well.40 Between 1914 and 1921, a total of 104 Issei signed purchase agree-
ments for an aggregate 12,379 acres, and an additional 57 individuals
reserved purchase orders for 4,820 acres.41 A number of first- generation resi-
dents, whom the orthodox narrative of Japa nese Mexican history now
celebrates as ethnic “pioneers,” actually originated from these California Is-
sei, who were inspired by a rosy image of Mexico as an integrated frontier.42

The cross- border movement of Issei settler colonists gathered more steam
in response to the or ga nized anti- Japanese campaigns of 1919–1924 in the US
West. This postwar agitation completed what the earlier movements had
demanded: to put a stop to Issei agricultural development and land control.
Western border states, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas,
adopted stringent alien land laws that denied Issei not only landownership but

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202 Chapter 12

also tenancy. These exclusionist actions articulated white Amer i ca’s resolve to
seal of US sovereign land from the Japa nese race.43

No longer able to sustain an in de pen dent economic life under this legis-
lation, a fair number of Issei farmers understandably took a keener interest
in moving their farming operations south of the border. Community leaders
and journalists also discussed the advantages of Mexican agricultural colo-
nization in the vernacular press after their frustrated legal battle.44 Accord-
ing to them, Mexico was free from the ideology of white supremacy, with no
law prohibiting the Japa nese from buying land. Northern Mexico was still a
largely untouched frontier, much like Southern California of a few de cades
before, which Issei had steadfastly developed into fertile farmlands. If Cali-
fornia Japa nese with capital and farming expertise moved to the contiguous
transborder frontier, expansion- minded immigrants believed that they
would be able to build self- sufficient agricultural colonies connected to the
existing ethnic farm interests in Los Angeles.45 Issei settler colonialism in the
contiguous frontier paved the way to the formation of a transborder ethnic
community that tied US and Mexican Californias. Rather than their “ will”
to collaborate with Japan’s imperialist designs, their practice fundamentally
articulated a minoritized immigrant vision of survival and empowerment,
albeit in transnational fashion.46

The latter half of the 1920s saw a rise in the number of Issei resettlers to
northwestern Mexico. Between 1924 and 1931, 275 and 274 Issei house holds
went through Tijuana and Mexicali, respectively, to resettle elsewhere in Baja
California.47 One group of nearly two hundred former US residents congre-
gated in Ensenada, where they produced chili peppers, beans, and other
commercial crops for the Los Angeles Japa nese wholesale market. While
building a Mexican outpost of Japa nese development tied closely with the US
side, Ensenada settlers also brought more than two hundred new immigrants
directly from Japan to their farms.48 The population of Japa nese in Mexicali
totaled more than eight hundred, most of whom worked on the vast cotton
fields under the US- owned Colorado River Land Com pany. Some of its
shareholders included white landowners who had sought to sell of their
land holdings to Abiko in 1911. Perhaps with their backing, one Issei farmer
named Shintani Kusujirō reportedly managed to establish virtual control
over— but not legal owner ship of— nine thousand acres by the mid-1920s and
ran an irrigation firm of his own near Mexicali.49 The making of these eth-
nic settler communities swelled the demand for additional labor in northern
Mexico, explaining a spike in Japa nese migration figures from fewer than
one hundred to more than three hundred per year during the latter half of
the 1920s.50

The flexible mobility of Japa nese settler colonists across the border, as
well as the evolution of their enclaves in the contiguous frontier, caught the
wary eyes of white Americans. No sooner had the exclusionary laws been

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Azuma 203

enacted than contrived press reports on Japan’s expansionistic intrigues in
Mexico poured in. In October 1924 major US newspapers warned about a
“large colonization proj ect” of one hundred thousand acres in Baja Califor-
nia. This would be a collaborative efort by Japa nese from Japan and the
United States, as well as those already in Mexico. The San Francisco Bulletin
misidentified a dozen Japa nese traveling from California to Mexicali as
“representatives of the Japa nese general staf . . . financiers and industrial
experts,” who purportedly schemed to import “20,000 Japa nese to Lower
California and their settlement near here.”51 Sensationalized US press re-
ports induced the governor of Baja California to look into the rumor, and in
response, the Japa nese embassy in Mexico City hastily issued an official
denial. Yet the following summer saw the magnitude of rumored Japa nese
penetration into the borderlands inflated fivefold up to “100,000 men,” as
reported in the San Francisco Daily News.52

Two years later white fear of the transborder Yellow Peril reared its ugly
head again, condemning the alleged joint efort by imperial Japan and
Japa nese Amer i ca to breach the US control of the Western Hemi sphere. In
April 1926 Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., editorialized on yet another “rumor”
that Japan was pursuing a two- million- acre concession near Magdalena Bay.
His prognostication that the presence of Japa nese immigrants “along the
Mexican seacoast . . . may prove very disastrous to the future of our Pacific
ports” resonated with the thinking of western Senators William Borah
(Idaho) and Hiram Johnson (California).53 Following the 1912 pre ce dent,
their senatorial inquiry resulted in Amer i ca’s reaffirmation of the Lodge Cor-
ollary to the Monroe Doctrine. What is noteworthy is that, although the
rumor was baseless, the power ful symbolism of Magdalena Bay alarmed
Congress enough to warrant the public proclamation of the nation’s imperi-
alist resolution relative to transborder Japa nese threat.

The 1930s saw a sharp decline in Japa nese migration figures as a result of
the efects of the Great Depression and Mexican agrarista movement, but
many Americans, especially government and military officials, maintained
their racial alarmist attitude against the hemispheric Yellow Peril. US gov-
ernment reports unveiled a significant level of official concern about the con-
sequences of Japa nese mobility and settlement— real or imagined—through
the 1930s.54 Because the influx of Japa nese newcomers into the United
States— but not the border crossing of resident Japanese— had been checked
as the result of the 1924 Immigration Act, the Yellow Peril scare was increas-
ingly divorced from its constitutive Western po liti cal context, thereby ac-
quiring a life of its own as a purveyor of Amer i ca’s hemispheric imperialism
and transborder anti- Japanese racism. The de cades following 1924 witnessed
the rerouting of Japa nese migration flows from North Amer i ca to South
Amer i ca; by the mid-1930s, the Japa nese populations of Peru and Brazil had
quintupled and were twenty times larger than that of Mexico. These Latin

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204 Chapter 12

American countries came to figure conspicuously in the US anti- Japanese
discourse and diplomacy. Exemplified by immigration restrictions in Brazil
and a race riot in Peru, US- bred hemispheric scaremongering also worked in
tandem with the rising racial nationalisms of these countries. And, as Jefrey
Lesser and Erika Lee show, there is evidence of the US role in whipping up
local abhorrence of and hostility to Japa nese “infiltration” and “Yellow Peril”
in South Amer i ca toward the end of the de cade.55

In Mexico, where Japa nese had been distinguished in state policy from the
Chinese, who had been long- standing targets of local nativism, allegations
of Japa nese penetration had less influence on public opinion.56 Nevertheless,
a number of US diplomatic and intelligence reports continued to bring at-
tention to rumors of Japan’s territorial ambitions, accentuated by narratives
of surreptitious Issei remigration and land acquisitions in Baja California.
As a symbolic site of a hemispheric race war and inter- imperial contestation,
Magdalena Bay still remained pivotal in this phase of government- led racial
scaremongering and the imperialist diplomacy based on it.

In 1934–1935, for example, B. P. Hastings, a US naval intelligence offi-
cer, cooked up a bogus story of a tripartite anti- American conspiracy around
the area, which purportedly involved the Japa nese of US California, Baja
California, and their home empire. He alleged that a group of Los Angeles
Issei and Nisei businessmen were plotting to secure concessions around Mag-
dalena Bay to set up a clandestine military station and ammunition center
for the Japa nese imperial navy. A fleet of fishing boats— presumably includ-
ing those based in Southern California— would assem ble there, he cautioned,
and they would “be manned by Japa nese naval officers [disguised as common
immigrants] and prepared to serve as mine layers.”57 Follow-up reports, in-
cluding those originating from other branches of the US government, cor-
roborated this wild story with yet more fabrications that “a Japa nese [from
California] recently landed cements, arms, and ammunition . . . for the pur-
pose of erecting fortifications” in the bay.58 A US diplomat thus insisted that
Washington must convince Mexicans to “adopt a policy of excluding the
Japa nese as much as pos si ble from the west coast of Mexico and refusing to
grant fishing and other concessions.”59

Although it might strike one simply as another example of heavy- handed
US diplomacy, this recommendation also articulated the fundamental
dilemma of white Amer i ca’s strug gle against the hemispheric Yellow Peril.
Even with the backing of the Monroe Doctrine, diplomats and military men
remained greatly frustrated by their inability to deal with the transborder
Japa nese threat due to the limits of US sovereign control. Thus, from 1936
President Franklin  D. Roo se velt sought to use the inter- American confer-
ences to forge a “hemispheric alliance” against Japa nese (and Germans)
through discussions of common defense and security issues.60 At the con-
ference in Havana in 1940, many governments in the Amer i cas reached an

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Azuma 205

agreement on the perceived prob lem of hemispheric subversion, which en-
compassed the racial peril of Japa nese immigrants, as well as the military
and po liti cal intrigue of imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. In accordance
with the Havana agreement, the FBI and US military intelligence formally
began surveillance on and propaganda against Japa nese residents in Peru
and other Latin American countries.61

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the US pursuit of a Japanese- free
Western Hemi sphere intensified and became more unequivocal and direct.
In January 1942, under the initiative of the US State Department, a confer-
ence of the foreign ministers of the American states agreed to adopt mea sures
for hemispheric removals, including preventive detention and deportation of
Axis nationals, chiefly Japa nese, which seventeen Latin American countries
carried out in a concerted manner.62 Mexico rid its northern border region of
Japa nese residents— both aliens and citizens— through so- called voluntary
relocation, even before the mass incarceration of West Coast Japa nese Amer-
icans took place. Peru and a dozen other countries allowed the US military to
orchestrate the forced removal and transport of more than twenty- two hun-
dred Japa nese residents to stateside internment camps before their planned
deportation to Japan.63 Thirty years after the first Magdalena Bay scare, the
goal of the Lodge Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was fi nally being ful-
filled, as the US national security regime was at work full steam for the con-
tainment and elimination of the hemispheric racial threat.

This chapter has delineated a chain of ironic historical developments, in
which US racial exclusionism produced and reproduced the kind of Japa nese
immigrant settler colonialism that white Amer i ca desperately tried to stamp
out from the US- Mexican borderlands in the name of the Monroe Doctrine.
Far from the conventional image of Asian “sojourners,” many educated Issei
considered themselves to be modern settler colonists intent on conquering a
wilderness, just like their Anglo- Saxon pre de ces sors, for the sake of advanc-
ing civilization. After 1892, the prob lem of race drove a wedge between their
self- perception and the white American rendition of what pro gress and
civilization entailed. Despite the paradox of Eurocentric modernity, many
Issei acclimated to the closure of the American West, especially California,
and they began to shift their gaze toward northern Mexico and move there.
The Issei embrace and practice of US- style settler colonialism nonetheless
compounded the public notion of a transborder Japa nese threat and
conspiracy— and hence of their nonbelonging in either the white republic or
its backyard. It then facilitated the merger of localized exclusionist politics
with state- led hemispheric imperialism, based on shared fears of the spread-
ing Japa nese racial threat. The transborder Yellow Peril discourse, which
shaped a structure of national thought in the prewar United States, served
as a power ful engine in shaping grassroots racial- nationalist politics and
the US hemispheric diplomacy—as well as the making of an anti- Japanese

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206 Chapter 12

national security regime based on it, beyond the confines of bilateral rela-
tions between the two Pacific powers.

NOTES

Epigraph. The “hymn” was published nationwide si mul ta neously on July 23, 1916. See,
for example, New York American and Los Angeles Examiner, July 23, 1916.

1. See Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti- Japanese Movement in
California and the Strug gle for Japa nese Exclusion (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1962), 65–78.

2. On the idea of the hemispheric Yellow Peril, see Erika Lee, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and
Asian Exclusion in the Amer i cas,” Pacific Historical Review 76 (2007): 537–562. Her ex-
cellent study is not concerned with how Issei settler colonialism, and the transborder
migration cir cuits it produced, contributed to white Amer i ca’s formulation of the
hemispheric Yellow Peril. On an example of a localized manifestation of the Yellow Peril
demagoguery across the US- Mexican border region around Mexicali, see Eric Boime,
“ ‘Beating Plowshares into Swords’: The Colorado River Delta, the Yellow Peril, and the
Movement for Federal Reclamation, 1901–1928,” Pacific Historical Review 78 (2009): 30–
33, 43–45. Despite his attention to a borderlands context, Boime looks at the impact of
the Yellow Peril on US reclamation eforts in the region.

3. Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japa nese Immigrants,
1885–1924 (New York: Free Press, 1988), 16–28; Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires:
Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japa nese Amer i ca (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2005), 35–36.

4. See Azuma, Between Two Empires, 91–92.
5. Shūyū Sanjin (pseudonym) and Ishida Kumajirō, Kitare Nihonjin [Come, Japa-

nese] (Tokyo: Kaishindō, 1887), 5–6.
6. “Zaibei Nihon minzokuon 2” [On the Japa nese race in Amer i ca], Aikoku [Patrio-

tism] 27, April 29, 1892.
7. The firsthand racial experience of Japa nese US residents, as I detailed in my first

book, set them apart from the people of Japan in the long run. While many early expan-
sionists returned to Japan to pursue the life of a colonial master rather than that of a
racial minority, those who stayed were compelled to seek interracial conciliation with,
and ac cep tance by, white exclusionists for the sake of their survival. The people of Japan,
including many returnees, became growingly indignant at white racism, providing a
background for pan- Asianist ideologies of the 1930s. See Azuma, Between Two Empires,
esp. chaps. 2–3.

8. Yamazaki Bungo, “Zai- Beikoku waga dōhō yūshi no jinshi ni nozomu” [Request
for the like- minded compatriots in Amer i ca], Ensei [Expedition] 4 (August 1891): 2.

9. “Kōkai imin” [Emigrant on a voyage], in ibid., 13 (July 1892): 2–3.
10. Ibid., 3.
11. “Shokuminchi ni taisuru honkai no iken” [Our society’s commentary on colonial

settlement], ibid., 5 (September 1891): 2.
12. Takekawa Tōtarō, “Dai ni san ryū no jinbutsu wo motte Bokkoku wo tandai

tarashimeyo” [Let second or third tier people explore Mexico], in ibid., 27 (May 1893): 4.

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Azuma 207

13. Ibid., 5.
14. “Imin no kyūmu Tankenka no ketsubō” [Urgent prob lem— dearth of explorers],

in ibid., 32 (October 1893): 4–6.
15. “Beikoku Sōkō Shokumin Shōreikai,” Shokumin Kyōkai hōkoku [Bulletin of the

Colonization Society] 23 (March 1895): 102.
16. See Nakai Yoshitarō, “Chōsen wo suteyo” [Forget about Korea], Nihonjin [Japa nese]

28 (October  1896): 14. A similar outlook gave birth to the Colonia Enomoto of Chiapas,
Mexico, in 1897. See Daniel M. Masterson, The Japa nese in Latin Amer i ca (Urbana: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press 2004), 27–28.

17. Azuma, Between Two Empires, 29–30.
18. See Nichiboku Kyōkai, ed., Nichiboku kōryūshi [History of Japanese- Mexican

relations] (Tokyo: PMC Shuppan, 1990), 246–319; Kurabe Kiyotaka, Tōge no bunkashi
[Cultural history of mountain passes] (Tokyo: PMC Shuppan, 1989), 71–96.

19. Jesús A. Akachi, Carlos  T. Kasuga, Manuel  S. Murakami, María Elena Ota
Mishima, Enrique Shibayama, and René Tanaka, “Japa nese Mexican Historical
Overview,” in Encyclopedia of Japa nese Descendants in the Amer i cas: An Illustrated
History of the Nikkei, ed. Akemi Kikumura- Yano, 206–210 (Walnut Creek, CA: Al-
taMira Press 2002); Andrea Geiger, Subverting Exclusion: Transpacific Encounters
with Race, Caste, and Border, 1885–1928 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011),
124–134.

20. Ichioka, The Issei, 149–150, 154, 159–160.
21. Azuma, Between Two Empires, 36–58, 91–98.
22. “Beikoku ni okeru yuiitsu no Nihonjin shokuminchi” [The one and only Japa-

nese colony in Amer i ca], Taiyō [Sun] 14 (January 1908).
23. “Need Larger Navy,” Washington Post, April  4, 1912; “Warning to Japan on

Magdalena Bay,” New York Times, April 5, 1912; US Senate Document No. 640, May 1,
1912, p. 4; and Nagai Matsuzō to David Starr Jordan, April 9, 1912, in “Bokkoku Taiheiyō
engan ni oite Honpōjin gyogyōken shutoku ikken” [On the acquisition of fishing rights
by Japa nese along the Pacific coast of Mexico] (hereafter BTH), Diplomatic Rec ords
Office, Japan.

24. Noda Otosaburō, “Bokkoku ryokōdan” [On my trip to Mexico], Hokubei nōhō
[North American agricultural journal] 3 (March 1912): 10.

25. Ibid., 6–7. See also Eugene Keith Chamberlin, “The Japa nese Scare at Magdalena
Bay,” Pacific Historical Review 24 (1955): 351. Without consulting Japa nese immigrant
sources, this article misrepresents Abiko Kyūtarō and Noda Otosaburō as having no in-
tention to “establish there a Japa nese colony on a large scale.” Ibid., 351.

26. Nagai Matsuzō to Uchida Yasuya, March 14, 1912, in BTH.
27. US Senate Document No. 640, May 1, 1912, 4.
28. San Francisco Examiner, January 31, 1912; “Japa nese Deal with Mexico Is Blocked,”

Portland Tele gram, January 31, 1912.
29. David  H. Grover, “Maneuvering for Magdalena Bay: International Intrigue at a

Baja California Anchorage,” Southern California Quarterly 83 (2001): 265, 268.
30. “Fear Grip of Japan,” Washington Post, April 3, 1912; House Resolution No. 522,

May 3, 1912; US Senate Document No. 640, May 1, 1912, 1.
31. Tom Cofman, Nation Within: The Story of Amer i ca’s Annexation of the Nation of

Hawai‘ i (Kaneohe, HI: Epicenter, 1998), 220–221.

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208 Chapter 12

32. “Japan and Mexico,” New York Times, April 4, 1912; see also Grover, “Maneuver-
ing for Magdalena Bay,” 274–276. On exaggerated press reporting, see David Starr Jordan,
Unseen Empire (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1912), 116–122.

33. Grover, “Maneuvering for Magdalena Bay,” 275.
34. Congressional Rec ord, 62 Cong., 2 sess. (1912), 10045.
35. Walter LaFeber, “The Evolution of the Monroe Doctrine from Monroe to Rea-

gan,” in Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman
Williams, ed. Lloyd  C. Gardner, 139–140 (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press,
1986); Grover, “Maneuvering for Magdalena Bay,” 276–277.

36. Ibid.; “Japan’s Premier Tells the Times There Is No Magdalena Bay Incident,” New
York Times, April  6, 1912; US Senate, Report No.  996, July  31, 1912; Chinda Sutemi to
Uchida Yasuya, April 14, 1912; and Chinda to Uchida, April 3, 1912, both in BTH.

37. Daniels, Politics of Prejudice, 46–64.
38. On the impact of the Zimmermann tele gram on triangular relations among the

United States, Mexico, and Japan, see Friedrich E. Schuler, Secret Wars and Secret Poli-
cies in the Amer i cas, 1842–1929 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010),
196–228.

39. “Nichi- Boku Shokuminchi (Nichi- Boku Colony),” Sinaloa, Mexico, ca. 1914, 14–
15, and maps. See also “Nichi- Boku Sangyō Kabushiki Gaisha jigyō setsumei” [Explanation
of operation plans of the Nichi- Boku Industrial Corporation], 1918; Takekawa Minetarō to
Adachi Mineichirō, October 1, 1915, in “Honpō kaisha kankei zakken: Nichi- Boku Sangyō
Kabushiki Gaisha” [Miscellaneous documents on Japanese- owned firms: Nichi- Boku
Industrial Corporation] (hereafter HNB), Diplomatic Rec ords Office, Japan.

40. “Nichi- Boku Sangyō Kabushi Gaisha kabunishi roku” (ca. 1920–1921), in HNB;
Ōkagawa Kō, “ ’Kyogyōka’ ni yoru giji benchā tōshi fando to risuku kanri” [Fake venture
investment funds promoted by criminal- minded entrepreneurs and risk management],
Shiga Daigaku Keizai Gakubu kenkyū nenpō [Annual research bulletin of Shiga Univer-
sity Economic Department] 14 (2007): 14–15.

41. “Tochi baibai keiyakusha” [Parties who made a land purchase contract], ca. 1921,
in HNB. Tally by the author from the list of land buyers.

42. See Nichiboku Kyōkai, Nichiboku kōryūshi, 422–423; Nihonjin Mekishiko Ijūshi
Hensan Iinkai, ed., Nihonjin Mekishiko ijūshi [History of Japa nese immigration to Mex-
ico] (Mexico City: Nihonjin Mekishiko Ijūshi Hensan Iinkai, 1971), 163–164, 235, 239–
241, 326–328; Murai Ken’ichi, Paionia retsuden [Who’s who of pioneers] (Mexico City:
Privately printed, 1975), 63–64, 66–67, 101–102, 107.

43. Daniels, Politics of Prejudice, 79–105.
44. Ichioka, The Issei, 241–242.
45. See Fujioka Shirō, Minzoku hatten no senkusha [Pioneers of racial development]

(Tokyo: Dōbunsha, 1927), 167–297; Rafu Shimpō [Los Angeles Japa nese Daily News],
April 10, 22, 1924.

46. Some Issei moved to Brazil, as well as Manchuria and other internal “frontiers” of
the Japa nese empire. See Eiichiro Azuma, “Community Formation across the National
Border: The Japa nese of the U.S.- Mexican Californias,” Review: Lit er a ture and Arts of the
Amer i cas 39 (2006): 30–44; Azuma, Between Two Empires, 79–83.

47. María Elena Ota Mishima, Destino México (Mexico City: El Colegio de México,
1997), 107, 111.

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Azuma 209

48. Kuga Narumi to Tanaka Giichi, “Bokkoku shucchōkata risei no ken” [Request for
a business trip to Mexico], May  21, 1927, in “Honshō narabi zaigai kokan’in shucchō
kankei zakken: Zaibei kakkan” [Business travels from the home ministry and overseas
branches: consulates in the United States], Diplomatic Rec ords Office, Japan.

49. Yoshiyama Kitoku, Chūmoku subeki Mekishiko [Mexico that deserves our atten-
tion] (San Francisco: Nichiboku Kenkyūkai, 1928), 301. Under Mexican law, foreigners
could not own land within fifty kilo meters along the border, but many got around the
restriction by setting up a land com pany or becoming a naturalized Mexican citizen—an
option that Japa nese in California could not have after the early 1920s.

50. Gaimushō Ryōji Ijūbu, ed., Waga Kokumin no Kaigai hatten: Shiryō- hen [Over-
seas development of our nationals: reference materials] (Tokyo: Gaimushō, 1971), 140,
144.

51. “Japan Colony for Lower California Rumored,” San Francisco Bulletin, Octo-
ber  23, 1924. On regionalized Yellow Peril discourse in the Imperial Valley during the
1910s, see Boime, “Beating Plowshares into Swords,” 40–45. While focusing on Japa nese
presence around Mexicali, this earlier anti- Japanese discourse difered from one in
the 1920s that advocated stronger national security mea sures, since the former was tied
to the endeavor to marshal po liti cal support for a federal reclamation proj ect in the area.

52. “Japs Look to Mexico for Colonization,” San Francisco Daily News, August  3,
1925.

53. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., “ Uncle Sam Should Be Watchful of Japa nese Activities
in Mexico,” Illustrated Daily News, April  2, 1926; “Johnson Asks Inquiry in Mexican
Land Deal,” New York Times, March 30, 1926.

54. Many reports on Japa nese in Mexico and other parts of Latin Amer i ca are depos-
ited, for example, in boxes 220, 221, 226, and 228, Office of Naval Intelligence, Security
Classified Administrative Correspondence, 1942–1946, Rec ords of the Chief of Naval
Operations, Rec ord Group 38, National Archives, College Park, MD.

55. On the influences and roles of US- bred racial scaremongering in those nations
in the 1930s, see Jefrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities,
and the Strug gle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999),
93–94, 116–132, esp. 116; Erika Lee, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ in the United States and Peru: A
Transnational History of Japa nese Exclusion, 1920s– World War Two,” in Transnational
Crossroads: Remapping the Amer i cas and the Pacific, ed. Camilla Fojas and Rudy  P.
Guevera, Jr., 315–358 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012).

56. Nichiboku Kyōkai, Nichiboku kōryūshi, 478–487.
57. B. P. Hastings, “Japa nese Activities— Baja California, Mexico,” January 21, 1935,

in box 226, Security Classified Administrative Correspondence.
58. Guy W. Ray, “Japa nese Activities in the Gulf of California and on the West Coast

of Mexico,” February 11, 1935, 1, in ibid. See also Howard A. Bowman to A. Cohn, Janu-
ary 21, 1935, and Austin Spurlock, “Memorandum,” January 8, 1935, in ibid.

59. Guy W. Ray to Secretary of State, February 14, 1935, in ibid.
60. David Rock, “War and Postwar Intersections,” Latin Amer i ca in the 1940s: War

and Postwar Transitions, ed. David Rock, 23 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994).

61. John K. Emmerson, The Japa nese Thread: A Life in the U.S. Foreign Ser vice (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978), 127.

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210 Chapter 12

62. Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of Amer i ca’s Concentration
Camps (New York: William Morrow, 1976), 58–60.

63. Akachi et al., “Japa nese Mexican Historical Overview,” 213–214; C. Harvey Gar-
diner, Pawns in the Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japa nese and the United States (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1981).

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