The Great Unknown: Japanese American Sketches

The Great Unknown

The Great Unknown

Japanese American Sketches

Greg Robinson

University Press of Colorado

Boulder

© 2016 by Greg Robinson

Published by University Press of Colorado

5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C

Boulder, Colorado 80303

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of Association of American University Presses.

The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, Utah State University, and Western State Colorado University.

∞ This paper meets the requirements of the ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

ISBN: 978-1-60732-428-7 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-60732-429-4 (ebook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Robinson, Greg, 1966– author.

Title: The great unknown: Japanese American sketches / by Greg Robinson.

Description: Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2016. | An anthology of articles that originally appeared in the column, The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great, in the Nichi Bei Times and the Nichi Bei Weekly, and several articles that appeared in other periodicals, as well as some previously unpublished material. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015043305 | ISBN 9781607324287 (cloth) | ISBN 9781607324294 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Japanese Americans—United States—Biography. | Japanese Americans—United States—History.

Classification: LCC E184.J3 R6352 2016 | DDC 973/.04956—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015043305

Credits

Nichi Bei Times: Arthur Matsu, Masuji Miyakawa, Hugh MacBeth, Queer Heritage 2007 (Kiyoshi Kuromiya, etc.), Robert Kuwahara, Kathleen Tamagawa, Guyo Tajiri, Eddie Shimano, Isamu Noguchi, Kajiro/Fred Oyama, Ina Sugihara, John Maki, Basketball (Wat Misaka/Dr. Yanagisawa), S. I. Hayakawa (2 parts), Paul Robeson, Baseball (Jose Nakamura, Bill Nishita, Yosh Kawano), Women lawyers (Tel Sono, etc.), Milton Ozaki, Conrad Yama (Hamanaka), Queer History 2008 (Noguchi, etc), Kay Karl Endow, Ralph Carr/Earl Warren, Jun Fujita, Alan Cranston, Prewar Chicago, Chino/Ohi Family, Koji Ariyoshi, Miné Okubo, Hood River Japanese, Queer 2009

Nichi Bei Weekly: Reiko Sato, Jenichiro Oyabe, Ayako Ishigaki, Lincoln Seiichi Kanai, Queer 2010, Norman Thomas, Anne Reeploeg Fisher/Morton Grodzins, Issei women overview, Fuki Endow Kawaguchi, Shio Sakanishi, Sam Hohri, Hisaye Yamamoto, Gordon Hirabayashi, Yoné Stafford, Queer 2011–, Naomi Nakano, Louisiana, Robert Chino, Research methods, Queer 2012—Same-sex JACL, Mervyn Dymally, Gyo Fujikawa, Shinkichi Tajiri, Stanley Hayami, Yasuo Sasaki, Footnotes, Clifford Uyeda/Ben Kuroki, Bowling, Setsuko Nishi, John Franklin Carter, Regan v. King, Afterword

Discovernikkei: Buddy Uno/Bill Hosokawa

Nikkei Heritage: Death penalty

Feminist Press at CUNY: Ayako Ishigaki

History News Network: McCloy Memo, Michelle Malkin

Densho Encyclopedia: Eleanor Roosevelt

To Thanapat Porjit, with deepest affection

Contents

Foreword by Kenji G. Taguma

By Way of Introduction

1 A New Look at Issei Women

Issei Women: An Overview

Shio Sakanishi: Library of Congress Official and Scholar

Fuki Endow Kawaguchi’s Diary

Tel Sono: Issei Woman Lawyer and Missionary

Ayako Ishigaki: Feminist and Peace Activist

2 Mixed-Race Japanese Americans

Isamu Noguchi’s Struggle against Executive Order 9066

Kathleen Tamagawa: First Nisei Author

The Chino and Ohi Families

Milton Ozaki: Mystery Writer (coauthored with Steven G. Doi)

Yoné Stafford: Pacifist Militant

3 Literature and Journalism

Jenichiro Oyabe: Japanese Yankee at Howard University

Eddie Shimano: Crusading Journalist and Poet

Kay Karl Endow: Novelist, Aviator, and Con Man

John M. Maki: Writer and Educator

Buddy Uno and Bill Hosokawa: Two Nisei Journalists in Occupied China

The Hidden Contributions of Guyo Tajiri

The Tragic and Engaging Career of Sam Hohri

Hisaye Yamamoto and the African American Press

4 Wartime Confinement and Japanese Americans: Nisei Stories

Mitsuye Endo: Plus grand dans son obscurité?

Lincoln Seiichi Kanai’s Act of Conscience

The Exclusion of Naomi Nakano

Koji Ariyoshi: A Hawaiian Nisei in Mao’s China

Sanji Abe and Martial Law in Wartime Hawai‘i

5 Wartime Confinement and Japanese Americans: Friends and Foes

The Case against Michelle Malkin

The McCloy Memo: New Insight into the Causes of Removal

Norman Thomas and the Defense of Japanese Americans

Eleanor Roosevelt and Japanese Americans: A First Look

Paul Robeson: Your Fight Is My Fight

Alan Cranston and Japanese Americans

Two Wartime Governors and Mass Removal of Japanese Americans

Hugh Macbeth: African American Defender of Issei and Nisei

John Franklin Carter: The Real-Life Lanny Budd

6 Political Activism and Civil Rights

Masuji Miyakawa: First Issei Attorney

The Family behind Oyama v. California

Regan v. King: When Birthright Citizenship Was Last Tested

Yasuo Sasaki: Poet, Physician, and Abortion Rights Pioneer

Ina Sugihara: Interracial Activist

Mervyn M. Dymally: Unsung Hero of Redress

Setsuko M. Nishi: A Life of Service

7 Sports

Arthur Matsu: First Japanese American in the National Football League

Nisei in Pro Basketball: Wat Misaka and Dr. Yanagi

Early Japanese Americans in Organized Baseball

The JACL and the Integration of the American Bowling Congress

8 Arts

Jun Fujita: Poet and Photographer

Robert Kuwahara: Cartoonist and Animator

The Double Life of Conrad Yama

Reiko Sato: Actress and Dancer

The Unknown Life and Art of Miné Okubo

Gyo Fujikawa: Artist and Author

Shinkichi Tajiri: Sculptor

9 The Queer Heritage of Japanese Americans

Kiyoshi Kuromiya: A Queer Activist for Civil Rights (2007)

Sexuality from Issei to Nisei (2008)

The Rise of Homophobia in Japanese American Communities (2009)

The Rise of Homophobia: Part 2 (2010)

Hawai‘i 1986: The Shift to Equal Rights (2011)

The JACL’s Historic Vote for Equal Marriage Rights (2012)

10 A New Look at the Unknown Great

The Astonishing History of Japanese Americans in Louisiana

Japanese Americans in Prewar Chicago: An Overview

Japanese Americans and the Death Penalty

The Other Side of the Hood River Story

S. I. Hayakawa: Jazz Specialist and Civil Rights Supporter

Anne Reeploeg Fisher and Morton Grodzins: The Censorship of Confinement

Gordon Hirabayashi’s Surprising Postwar Career

Afterword

Selected Bibliography

Index

Foreword

One community leader once told me that the role of the community press, and the Nichi Bei in particular, was to validate our experience. I initially scoffed at that concept, momentarily tossing it aside as an overreach of self-importance. However, given the closure of Northern California’s two historic Japanese American publications in 2009, I’ve found that notion to not only be true but essentially serve as a mantra for our nonprofit rebirth after the inevitable dissolution of the Nichi Bei Times.

This tome in your hands epitomizes the importance of the community press in preserving history.

On behalf of the Nichi Bei Foundation, its nonprofit publication the Nichi Bei Weekly, its predecessor the Nichi Bei Times (1946–2009), and, before that, the Nichi Bei Shimbun (1899–1942)—what the author of this book refers to as our current publication’s grandfather—I’m proud to introduce Greg Robinson’s new volume of groundbreaking work based on his column The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great in the Nichi Bei Times and Nichi Bei Weekly.

The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great has been one of our most popular columns, and I’m grateful that fellow Nichi Bei columnist Chizu Omori had introduced Greg to me back in 2007, when Greg and I first discussed the idea for his column. His work truly reinforces our newfound educational mission as part of our nonprofit rebirth, and he writes in an accessible manner as well. A quick survey of his work clearly shows that he has written on a diverse array of topics (women, arts, literature and journalism, sports, activism, non–Japanese Americans who helped Japanese Americans, civil rights, etc.).

Over the years, some of his pioneering work has uncovered some hardly known figures in Japanese American history, such as the first professional football player of Japanese descent (Arthur Matsu), those who helped to defend the rights of the Japanese American community (such as African American attorney Hugh Macbeth), and comic artist Robert Kuwahara, who was featured in our The Many Faces of Manga exhibit at the Napa Valley Museum, National Japanese American Historical Society, and other locations. His pieces on Louisiana’s Japanese American community and the Japanese American community in prewar Chicago were especially eye-opening, as are his pieces on Japanese Americans who played roles in landmark events shaping American history such as the Oyama family—the family behind the historic case that overturned California’s Alien Land Act—and pioneer multiracial Japanese Americans. In addition, he has brought attention to the important intersections of Japanese Americans and African Americans, such as Mervyn Dymally, an unsung hero of the Japanese American Redress Movement.

Greg’s work not only pulled these historical figures out of the margins or footnotes but also helped us to realize that the deeper richness of the great Japanese American mosaic goes well beyond stories found within the model minority stereotype.

But perhaps I’m most proud of creating a space for his annual LGBT history column, which for several years we have intentionally placed in our most widely (geographically) distributed issue of the year, our Obon and Summer Festivals Guide.

Greg’s column adds so much depth to our publication and helps us fulfill our goal of giving a voice to the voiceless. And he also understands the role that the Nichi Bei has played in terms of providing him access to the community and creating a welcome place for his research.

Seeing Greg’s Nichi Bei columns published in book form is akin to seeing a baby grow up and set out on its own in the world. I’m truly humbled that Greg has asked me to write a brief foreword to this marvelous collection of his work, and we are proud to see his important work reach and engage a broader audience.

One heavy responsibility of the Nikkei community press, I feel, is documenting the community’s history for generations to come. Years from now, researchers will still refer to print publications for research purposes, just as they do today. And so we are grateful that alongside our day-to-day documentation of our community’s history, we have Greg Robinson’s columns to provide added depth and research into yesteryear, revealing hidden or unknown truths of how we came to be, where we’ve gone, and the people who shaped the development and advancement of our communities. Many of them may be unsung heroes, but thanks to Greg Robinson’s work, they are no longer unknown.

Kenji G. Taguma

President, Nichi Bei Foundation

Editor-in-Chief, Nichi Bei Weekly

By Way of Introduction

It is now more than twenty years since I began working as a professional teacher and writer of history. During most of that time, a central focus of my attention has been the historical experience of Japanese Americans (and more recently, Japanese Canadians). Why is this so? Mainly because I am fascinated by the vital and often-ignored role that the so-called Nikkei have played—despite their small numbers—in shaping North American culture, law, and politics. I have done a great deal of research on the subject and have written a set of scholarly books of which I am proud as well as editing reprints of classic texts, directing anthologies, and contributing articles to journals.

While I have found my writing to be useful and important—along with teaching classes and giving lectures and attending conferences and doing other sorts of academic things—it is not quite enough for me. The problem is, first of all, that these kinds of books and papers take quite a long time to write and publish, and for good reason: they need to be checked and rechecked for accuracy. Because of this time lag, scholarly authors tend to lose the experience of regular contact with an audience. A more serious problem is that academic monographs about Japanese Americans, even good ones, only reach a relatively small number of people. Often they simply are not designed to attract many readers who might be interested in this history, whether they are themselves ethnic Japanese or not.

As a result, ever since I began working as a historian, I have looked for ways to connect with people outside of the typical academic audience, such as talking to community groups, writing magazine articles, and (particularly) blogging. When the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin published a book in mid-2004 that tried to justify and defend the wartime roundup of Japanese Americans and their confinement in government camps (aka Japanese internment), I joined forces with renowned legal scholar Eric L. Muller to write a series of blog posts that critiqued her arguments and pointed out the many errors in her book. It was a revelation to discover, once we finished, that our blogs had reached a whole new public. Many people who had never seen my books now knew my name because of Malkin. It seemed clear that online posts represented a worthwhile means of discussing history, and I accepted an invitation to contribute to Cliopatria, a historical blog. Over the following months, I posted on a wide variety of topics linked to history before family responsibilities forced me to withdraw.

In the process, I realized that beyond reaching a larger audience, I really wanted to find a new and different way to write history. One thing that has struck me over the years is that being a good historian—anywhere—has a lot to do with storytelling: it is no accident that many languages use the same word for both story and history. In the course of my ongoing scholarly research, I regularly came across compelling stories about individual people and their uncommon lives. (The English sections of the old Japanese American press contain a treasure trove of information, especially for the period before World War II.) I wanted to tell these stories, and it was frustrating to have to lay them aside because they did not fit comfortably into the structure of an academic book or historical blog.

It was thus fortunate that in early 2007, Kenji Taguma, the intrepid editor of the Nichi Bei Times in San Francisco, contacted me about writing a regular column. It was a flattering offer for a historian, especially as the name Nichi Bei carried the weight of tradition. The first newspaper of that name, the Nichi Bei Shimbun, founded by Issei businessman Kyutaro Abiko in 1899, was the oldest and, by consensus, the best of the vernacular journals serving the prewar West Coast Japanese community. Shut down during the mass wartime removal, Shichinosuke Asano revived it in 1946 under the name Nichi Bei Times, publishing separate weekly editions in English and Japanese into the new millennium. Kenji had been named editor of the newspaper’s English section some years previously while only in his mid-twenties (this still made him a graybeard in comparison to Larry Tajiri, the most renowned Nichi Bei editor, who was still in his teens when recruited for the editorship in 1934). Kenji was very conscious that the journal should address new issues and audiences and thought I might provide something different. As a non–Japanese American, I was especially touched by his invitation to become a visible member of the community.

We agreed to try an experiment: I would write a set of columns about exceptional people and things in Japanese American history, stretching from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Each column would be about 1,000 words in length—short enough to read easily in a single sitting (the columns grew gradually to 1,500 words or more). I would also assist in finding images to include with the columns. Although Kenji approved a list of proposed topics at the outset, he set no limits and, in fact, encouraged me to write however I saw fit. He also agreed to let me call my column The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great. The first installment appeared in print in April 2007 and was soon after posted on the Nichi Bei Times website.

My work soon achieved a certain success, at least judging by the letters from readers and the various reprints elsewhere. The columns became a regular feature of the newspaper—they eventually appeared approximately every month, though with no set interval. A hiatus of several months occurred in late 2009, when the Nichi Bei Times closed its doors, a sad victim of declining community size. Its website, which had been the main place where people outside the community could see my columns, became inactive. Kenji boldly resolved to carry on, and he founded an all-English successor publication, Nichi Bei Weekly. I moved to the new publication and resumed my column there.

What you hold in your hands now, dear reader, is the first-ever anthology volume of the columns that I wrote for the Nichi Bei Times and Nichi Bei Weekly between 2007 and 2012, plus a selection of others that appeared in outside periodicals or which are published here for the first time. More than any other book that I have written, The Great Unknown is a collection of stories designed to make Japanese American history come alive; my late friend Setsuko M. Nishi referred to these pieces as my bonbons. As the title suggests, the stories bring to life unsung but fascinating people in Nikkei history, shedding light on a galaxy of real-life characters: Milton Ozaki, pulp fiction writer from Wisconsin; Tel Sono, a Meiji-era Japanese woman lawyer who became a teacher in Brooklyn; Art Matsu, a college football star in the 1920s and the first Japanese American in the National Football League; Hugh Macbeth, the maverick African American attorney who was a major wartime defender of Nikkei; among many others. Additional topical essays bring to light unusual information about Nikkei experience. For example, one piece recounts the prewar history of ethnic Japanese in Chicago. Another traces a trio of ethnic Japanese murderers who helped shape public discussion of the death penalty.

The other side of the stories in this book concerns the unknown great: unusual glimpses that show us new sides of people and things that we thought we already knew. Who would have guessed that conservative US Senator S. I. Hayakawa was once a jazz aficionado who wrote for an African American newspaper? Or that his future Senate colleague Alan M. Cranston joined forces with Eleanor Roosevelt in spring 1942 to dissuade President Franklin Roosevelt from signing Executive Order 9066? Or that Robert Chino, a biracial Nisei from Chicago, thought up the name of the civil rights group the Congress of Racial Equality and joined CORE’s first sit-in?

Besides being entertaining (as if that was not reason enough!), The Great Unknown has a serious purpose: through the tales it recounts, the work as a whole reframes the familiar narrative of Japanese Americans. Popular ethnic histories, such as Bill Hosokawa’s Nisei: The Quiet Americans or Paul Spickard’s Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an Ethnic Group, center on the impressive success story of Japanese communities. In contrast, I focus my attention on the unusual and often rebellious sorts of characters who deviated from community norms (the misfits, in artist Miné Okubo’s piquant self-descriptive term). In the process, my work challenges one-dimensional model-minority stereotypes of ethnic Japanese as conformist or colorless and reveals the complex and wide-ranging nature of their experience. I also go against the West Coast–centric focus of standard works by devoting attention to Nikkei throughout the country—notably the cosmopolitan communities of New York and Chicago. Finally, most works on Japanese Americans concentrate on the saga of immigrants or the confinement of West Coast Japanese Americans during World War II. If these areas naturally receive due attention in my narrative, my work breaks new ground in its extended investigation of Japanese Americans in the postwar years—an all-but-ignored period in conventional histories.

By highlighting a series of original themes, my work suggests new directions for further study. For instance, a central element in these stories is the experience of Nikkei women and their role in shaping community life. From the first arrival of women from Japan, a durable (if often contested) strand of feminism has been present in ethnic Japanese communities, which have given rise to surprising numbers of women artists, writers, and professionals. Another theme treated at length in this book is the continuing encounter of Japanese Americans with African Americans. The presence of black Americans and their struggle for equality has remained a vital reference point in the consciousness of so many Nikkei, who have defined themselves alongside blacks, and even sometimes against them. Perhaps the most original aspect of my work, and certainly the most audacious, is the set of articles that explores the evolution of dominant attitudes toward sexuality—including homosexuality—within Nikkei communities. I am conscious that I have done little more than scratch the surface of a still largely unrecorded (and partially taboo) history, one that calls out for intensive research.

Before I start, let me offer a few caveats about this book. First, it is a selection of sketches written for easy reading. While I attach an overall bibliography, I do not include footnotes or specific citations for the numerous newspaper articles and other sources consulted. Also, I have taken the liberty of incorporating additions or corrections in the chapters in those cases where I learned more information after the original column appeared in print, and I have also added a few updates that seemed relevant.

I recognize that there are some important omissions in the text. Most notably, the history of the local Japanese population in Hawai‘i is underrepresented here in proportion to its importance, for reasons having mainly to do with accessibility of sources. I admit to a certain embarrassment over this (relative) absence, as I have sometimes criticized historians who aim to speak about Asian Americans yet leave out Hawai‘i, the nation’s most established and concentrated ethnic Asian community. At the same time, not without regret, I have omitted some writings I have done specifically on Japanese Canadians (including those from the column I write for the Toronto-based monthly Nikkei Voice), as I think they require their own separate study. Furthermore, from the beginning I chose to not write about living people for various reasons, and with very few exceptions, I have followed that rule.

I close by thanking some key supporters. Obviously, my chief gratitude goes to Kenji Taguma, for welcoming my columns in the first place, and to the staff of Nichi Bei Weekly, especially Heather Horiuchi and Tomo Hirai, for continued support and editorial assistance. I likewise am obliged to Yoko Nishimura and Vicki Murakami-Tsuda, of Discover Nikkei, and Ben Hamamoto, editor of Nikkei Heritage, for commissioning other pieces, as well as Eric L. Muller for making it possible for me to post on his blog The Faculty Lounge. Ralph Luker, the presiding spirit of Cliopatria, helped me begin blogging on its pages. Steve Doi, who kindly shared his accumulated information on Milton K. Ozaki and served as cowriter with me on the Ozaki piece, graciously consented to its republication here. Maxime Minne prepared the index.

The Great Unknown

1

A New Look at Issei Women

Issei Women: An Overview

This overview introduces a series of portraits from a whole class of unknown greats: Issei women. Of all the ethnic Japanese in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, the lives and experiences of immigrant women have been arguably the least studied by family and community historians, despite notable efforts by such scholars as Akemi Kikumura-Yano and Evelyn Nakano Glenn. The reasons for this, even leaving aside simple sexism or denigration of women, are not hard to find. Most Issei women generally spoke and wrote English badly, if at all, and thus left few readily accessible primary sources behind. In keeping with popular ideas of the female role in both the American and Japanese societies of the day, they were largely relegated to the care of families and as unpaid labor on farms or in shops. Although I will focus on some outstanding individuals, comparatively few were able to establish themselves in careers. Yet it would be a great mistake to dismiss these women or to minimize their contributions. For Issei women, as a whole, were extraordinary.

First, they were a uniquely educated set of women. As a result of the establishment of universal education in late Meiji- and Taisho-era Japan, they were almost entirely literate—far more so than the average white American of that period. Further, a large fraction of these women continued their education in Japan beyond primary school into high school and normal school, where they studied to become schoolteachers, the only independent career open to Japanese women at that time. (Moreover, because the national universities were closed to women, they studied, in many cases, at Christian schools or with help from Christian missionaries, which facilitated their subsequent familiarity with and embrace of Christianity once in the United States.)

It was precisely these patterns that led them to marry overseas Japanese. That is, because of their extended studies, masses of Japanese women remained single into their early to mid-twenties, which was considered too old for a respectable bride in Japan. Thus, their only remaining option, if they wished to marry, was to look abroad and unite with Japanese immigrant men. Their prospective husbands, themselves generally much older, could not afford to be so choosy about the age of the women who would agree to leave Japan and join them in North America. They gladly tapped into this available pool of potential partners, even though it meant arranging marriages with women they had never seen—women whose educational background, and sometimes class origins, were generally superior to their own. The mass of Issei women wed by proxy came to North America as picture brides, to be greeted upon entry by their new husbands. (Many are the stories of shock and disappointment experienced by women who discovered that their spouses were not so young or prosperous as they had made out, and had sent faked, misleading, or outdated photos.)

We can only begin to imagine the difficulties that these women experienced, suddenly stuck in a new country with an unfamiliar language and customs, trying to build new lives among foreign (and sometimes hostile) natives. Locked into wedlock with strangers, their adjustment to married life was difficult—as in other immigrant subcultures, wife beating and abandonment were legion in Japanese communities—and they had little recourse besides giving up everything and making the long trip back to Japan. Such drastic action became exceedingly more complicated once these wives became mothers; the immigrant women were at the height of their age of fertility, and so the average birthrate in Japanese communities was considerably higher than that among native-born whites. As Issei men, in most cases, did not participate in child care, the women had to shoulder alone the double burden of working and raising a family.

Still, whatever the rigors and trials of their existence, these women not only adjusted with fortitude to their new circumstances, but they pursued social and intellectual interests. Unlike their husbands, who generally had much less education, Issei women remained devoted readers and writers in their native tongue. They faithfully wrote diaries, a number of which survive. (For example, Susan L. Smith’s Japanese American Midwives: Culture, Community, and Health Politics, 1880–1950 (2005), features the diaries of Toku Shimomura, a midwife in Seattle, which furnish considerable information on birthing practices.) They also wrote letters, especially to friends and family members in Japan. They composed a large proportion of the audience for Japanese-language newspapers and magazines, and they long remained impassioned contributors to the haiku and tanka poetry contests run by these newspapers, one of which is poignantly dramatized in Hisaye Yamamoto’s famous story Seventeen Syllables. In response to such demand, the West Coast Japanese press not only expanded its coverage of sections deemed women’s interests, but newspapers engaged feminists such as Mei Tanaka (Ayako Ishigaki) of Rafu Shimpo and Misatoshi Saijo (Miyatsa Asano Saijo) of Sangyo Nippo as regular columnists. Indeed, after the death in 1936 of founding editor Kyutaro Abiko, San Francisco’s Nichi Bei Shimbun, the leading organ of the West Coast Nikkei press, was edited by his widow, Yonako Abiko (who was the sister of the notable feminist educator Umeko Tsuda, founder of Japan’s Tsuda College), until its forced dissolution in spring 1942. Issei aunts also published in the English-language press.

The extraordinary creativity of the women of the Issei generation was most powerfully demonstrated, ironically, by their wartime confinement. Released from farm labor and shop duties and relieved of the need to cook by communal mess halls, these women were able to take advantage of a measure of leisure to cultivate activities they previously engaged in only in stolen moments. They both practiced and taught ikebana, Japanese dance, theater, and folk arts, all of which had been less present in communities during the prewar era.

Finally, the Issei women, to the extent that they could communicate with their Nisei children, were responsible for passing on their interest in education and its value. The stellar educational record of the Nisei generation, especially women, very soon became evident; despite areas of discrimination and exclusion, such as quotas for ethnic Japanese in West Coast medical schools, Nisei attended institutions of higher education in disproportionate numbers well before Pearl Harbor. Researchers in American education have long agreed that the most important variable in determining the educational success of children is the educational level and interest of their parents. Because fathers were more often absent or emotionally distant in Japanese communities, mothers bore responsibility for their children’s achievement and encouraged them to succeed.

Shio Sakanishi: Library of Congress Official and Scholar

In his April 1939 New York Times column, Edward Larocque Tinker offered a laudatory account of a new book, The Spirit of the Brush: Being the Outlook of Chinese Painters of Nature, from Eastern Chin to Five Dynasties, A.D. 371–960, a collection of commentaries on art by Chinese classical painters. Tinker noted that the editor of the collection, Dr. Shio Sakanishi, was to be congratulated. He had not only edited and translated the pieces but had added a set of richly anecdotal biographical essays on each artist that explained their work and ideas on art and nature, thereby transforming the Chinese artists from foreign and exotic figures to accessible ones. Two weeks later, Tinker made a shamefaced apology after discovering that Sakanishi was a lady—and a scholar—and not a gentleman as reported! Tinker was not alone in his astonishment at Sakanishi’s gender, for she ultimately spent a lifetime challenging conventional ideas of women’s role and abilities.

Shio (Shiho) Sakanishi was born to a Christian farming family in Hokkaido, Japan, in 1896. She achieved distinction in her early twenties, when she became the first Japanese woman ever hired to teach at a boy’s preparatory school. She came to the United States in 1922 and enrolled at Wheaton College, where she graduated in 1925 with a degree in aesthetics and literature. During her time at Wheaton, she attracted publicity because of a speech at Mount Holyoke College on the need to encourage women writers, and she announced that she had undertaken a Japanese translation of a biography of that school’s founder, pioneering educator Mary Lyon. After leaving Wheaton, Sakanishi enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she received her doctorate in 1929.

In 1930, after a short stint as a professor of English at Hollins College in Virginia, Sakanishi was hired by the Library of Congress as a librarian in its Asian Reading Room, then called the Orientalia Division (as a noncitizen, her hiring by the federal government required a special act of Congress). Her first task was to sort through some 15,000 Japanese books collecting dust on back shelves. Her skilled and thorough organization of the collection led to her being named director of the division in 1935. In this job, Sakanishi mixed and grew friendly with government officials as well as writers and intellectuals such as Archibald MacLeish (who became her boss as librarian of Congress in 1939) and Ezra Pound. In addition to aiding researchers, she offered public programs on events such as Buddha’s Birthday and gave outside lectures on Asian literature, especially women writers. For example, in 1935 she served as a lecturer at Yale University’s Institute of Human Relations. While researching the origins of printing and papermaking, her passion turned to science. In 1941 she supervised a series of experiments designed to duplicate the process of the million paper charms, a set of Buddhist prayer charms printed by order of the empress of Japan in AD 770 and thought to be the oldest extant examples of woodblock printing. The team discovered that the printing involved baking clay tablets carved with a stylus, then pouring metal over the tablet to create a crude form of type.

Meanwhile, Sakanishi continued translating and began selecting outstanding pieces of Japanese literature for rendering into English. Her first effort, a Japanese comedy called The Ribs and the Cover, appeared in the Golden Book Magazine in 1932. (Soon after, she undertook a multiyear project with collaborators to produce an authoritative list of translations of Japanese drama into English, French, and German, which was released in 1935.) Meanwhile, she received a contract for a set of translations of modern Japanese poets. The first of her translations to appear was that of Meiji-era poet Ishikawa Takuboku’s A Handful of Sand, in 1934. The next year, she completed a translation of Yasano Akiko’s Tangled Hair and Sachio Ito’s Songs of a Cowherd followed in 1936. A small volume of comic playlets, Kyôgen, appeared in 1938. Sakanishi served as a regular book reviewer of Chinese and Japanese literature for the Washington Post and in 1939 she was invited by the New York Times to report on contemporary literature in Japan in a set of articles, The Japanese Literary Scene. Both her incisive criticism of literary movements and her polished English prose drew respectful attention.

In addition to her translations of Japanese works, Sakanishi turned to a compilation of Chinese art criticism—in the process, demonstrating an impressive command of classical Chinese. Her first effort in this field, which appeared in 1935, was an English edition of Kuo Hsi’s An Essay on Landscape Painting, a short book in which the eleventh-century Chinese landscape painter conveyed his aesthetic doctrines. The Spirit of the Brush, Sakanishi’s best-known work, followed four years later.

Although Sakanishi expressed approval of American democratic society, her exalted government position did not isolate her from suspicion due to her Japanese ancestry and Japanese embassy connections. As 1940 dawned, war broke out in Europe and relations between the United States and Japan grew increasingly strained. Sakanishi found ways to assist her adopted country and ease tensions. First, she engaged in historical research that underlined the ties between the United States and Japan. In 1940 she published an edition of the private journal of John Glendy Sproston, who accompanied Commodore Matthew Perry on his historic mission to open Japan. The following year, Sakanishi edited an edition of the unpublished letters of Townshend Harris, the first US consul in Japan.

She also engaged in more confidential intelligence work. In 1941 William J. Wild Bill Donovan, who had been selected as Coordinator of Information, started putting together a team (his agency would soon morph into the Office of Strategic Services, wartime ancestor of the Central Intelligence Agency). In desperate need of agents to collect information and offer advice on Japanese threats to French Indochina, Donovan recruited as his Southeast Asia regional expert Kenneth Landon, who had recently returned to the United States after he and his wife, Margaret, had served for several years as missionaries in Thailand. (Margaret would draw on her experience in Asia for her 1944 bestseller Anna and the King of Siam.) Sakanishi immediately offered Landon, a fellow Wheaton College alum, an office at the Library of Congress and assisted him in his intelligence work. Indeed, in his 1967 book The Broken Seal, historian and intelligence officer Ladislas Faragó asserted rather doubtfully that Sakanishi had been a double agent aiding the US Office of Naval Intelligence (Farago claimed that she fingered a Japanese courier carrying the keys to diplomatic codes, thereby