American Buddhism during World War II Imprisonment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michihiro Ama
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Buddhism

American Buddhism during World War II imprisonment refers to the Japanese American Buddhist experience between 1942 and 1945 when persons of Japanese ancestry, commonly known as Nikkei Amerikajin, were imprisoned. A discussion of the Nikkei Buddhist experience includes the experiences of Euro-American convert Buddhists who supported them during the imprisonment period. Immediately after the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested and interned Japanese Buddhist priests and other leaders of Japanese communities in the United States. In March 1942, the Western Defense Command designated the three West Coast states (Washington, Oregon, and California) and Arizona as Military Area No. 1, from which all persons of Japanese descent, and alien Germans and Italians, were forcefully removed. Following Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the US government removed approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans from the aforementioned military zone and incarcerated them in relocation centers built throughout the continental United States. During that time, the Nikkei community consisted primarily of the Issei, the first generation of Japanese immigrants, and the Nisei, their American-born children. As Tetsuden Kashima defines, the word “internment” refers to the imprisonment of enemy aliens, such as the Issei Japanese nationals, by the Department of Justice and the US Army, while the term “incarceration” refers to the confinement of the Nikkei, including a great number of the Nisei American citizens, by the War Relocation Authority. The word “imprisonment” designates the entire process consisting of internment and incarceration. The study of American Buddhism during World War II is still in its early stages. Finding records and documents related to this subject from the large collections on Japanese American imprisonment is not an easy task. While the National Archives in Washington, DC, maintains the majority of primary sources dealing with Japanese American relocation and incarceration, other institutions, such as the Japanese American National Museum, the University of California-Los Angeles, and museums built around the sites of internment camps, also preserve records. Some of the primary sources are written in Japanese and are located in Japan, which is another stumbling block for researchers who do not read Japanese. Duncan R. Williams’s forthcoming book, American Sutra: Buddhism and the World War II Japanese American Experience, however, will change the current state of scholarship on Japanese American Buddhism during World War II. The forceful relocation of Japanese American Buddhists served to weaken their long-standing efforts to make their ethno-religious practices accepted by America’s general public. Mass incarceration, however, forced the Japanese American Buddhists to further Americanize their religion, generated a set of new Buddhist practices, and gave them opportunities to reflect on their national identities. Buddhist faith and cultural practices associated with Japanese Buddhism contributed to ethnic solidarity, even though the Japanese American community was divided over the issue of US patriotism. During the postwar period, Japanese American Buddhists initiated a campaign to improve their image in the United States and to honor the Nisei Buddhist soldiers who fought during World War II. The formation of American Buddhism was closely connected to the development of US political ideology.

Japanese American Buddhism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michihiro Ama ◽  
Michael Masatsugu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
American Buddhism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jodo Shinshu

Japanese Buddhism was introduced to the United States at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893, but the development of Japanese American Buddhism, also known as Nikkei Buddhism, really began when Japanese migrants brought Buddhism with them to Hawaii and the continental United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been influenced by, and has reflected, America’s sociopolitical and religious climate and the US relationship to Japan, to which generations of Japanese Americans, such as Issei (literally, first generation, referring to Japanese immigrants), Nisei (second-generation American-born offspring of the Issei), and Sansei (third generation), responded differently. While adapting to American society, Japanese American Buddhists maintained their cultural practices and ethnoreligious identity. The history of Japanese American Buddhism discussed in this article spans from the late-19th Century to the 1970s and is divided into three major periods: the pre-World War II, World War II, and the postwar eras. Japanese American Buddhism is derived from the various Buddhist organizations in Japan. The Nishi Hongwanji denomination of Jōdo Shinshū, a form of Pure Land Buddhism known as Shin Buddhism in the West, is the oldest and largest form of ethnic Japanese Buddhism in the United States. In Hawaii, Nishi Hongwanji founded the Hompa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii (HHMH) in Honolulu in 1897. On the continental United States, it established the Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA) in San Francisco in 1898, currently known as the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA). Other Japanese Buddhist organizations also developed in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. They include the Jōdo-shū, another sect of Pure Land Buddhism; Higashi Hongwanji, another major denomination of Jōdoshin-shū; Sōtō-shū, a Zen Buddhist school; Shingon-shū, known as Kōyasan Buddhism; and Nichiren-shū. The characteristics of Japanese American Buddhism changed significantly during World War II, when approximately 120,000 persons of Japanese descent living in the West Coast states were incarcerated because of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The postwar period witnessed a rapid transformation in the status and visibility of Japanese Buddhism in the United States. This transformation was driven by the promotion of ethnonational Buddhism by Nisei and by the growth of interest in Zen Buddhism among the general American public. The positive reception of Japanese Buddhism in the United States reflected and reinforced the transformed relationship between the United States and Japan from wartime enemies to Cold War partners. While they experienced greater receptivity and interest in Buddhism from nonethnics, they could no longer practice or espouse Jōdo Shinshū teachings or adapted practices without clarification. Debates concerning the authenticity of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism and Japanese American Buddhist practices were interwoven within a longer history of American Orientalism. By the 1960s, Japanese American Buddhist communities were transformed by the addition of a small but vocal nonethnic membership and a new generation of Sansei Buddhists. Demands for English-speaking ministers resulted in the creation, in 1967, of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, the first graduate-level training program in the United States endorsed by Nishi Hongwanji. This article is an overview of Japanese American Buddhism with a focus on the development of the Nishi Hongwanji Shin Buddhist organizations in the United States. English scholarship on the development of other Japanese Buddhist organizations in the United States is still limited. Throughout the history of Japanese American Buddhism, Nikkei Buddhists negotiated with America’s political institutions and Christian churches, as well as with Euro-American Buddhists, over Buddhist and cultural practices to maintain and redefine their ethnoreligious tradition. Buddhist temples provided the space for them to gather and build a community of shared faith and cultural heritage, discuss their place and the role of Buddhism in American society, and express their concerns to America’s general public.

Internment of Japanese and Japanese Latin Americans During World War II

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selfa A. Chew
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Coastal Zones ◽  
World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government

The lives of Latin American Japanese were disrupted during World War II, when their civil and human rights were suspended. National security and continental defense were the main reasons given by the American countries consenting to their uprooting. More than 2,000 ethnic Japanese from Peru, Panama, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, and Nicaragua were transferred as “illegal aliens” to internment camps in the United States. Initially, US and Latin American agencies arrested and deported male ethnic Japanese, regardless of their citizenship status. During the second stage, women and children joined their relatives in the United States. Most forced migration originated in Peru. Brazil and Mexico established similar displacement programs, ordering the population of Japanese descent to leave the coastal zones, and in the case of Mexico the border areas. In both countries, ethnic Japanese were under strict monitoring and lost property, employment, and family and friend relationships, losses that affected their health and the opportunity to support themselves in many cases. Latin American Japanese in the United States remained in camps operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the army for the duration of the war and were among the last internees leaving the detention facilities, in 1946. At the conclusion of World War II, the Latin American countries that had agreed to the expulsion of ethnic Japanese limited greatly their return. Some 800 internees were deported to Japan from the United States by the closure of the camps. Those who remained in North America were allowed to leave the camps to work in a fresh produce farm in Seabrook, New Jersey, without residency or citizenship rights. In 1952, immigration restrictions for former Latin American internees were lifted. Latin American governments have not apologized for the uprooting of the ethnic Japanese, while the US government has recognized it as a mistake. In 1988, the United States offered a symbolic compensation to all surviving victims of the internment camps in the amount of $20,000. In contrast, in 1991, Latin American Japanese survivors were granted only $5,000.

Korean Immigration to the United States After World War II

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal Mun-hye Baik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
World War ◽  
American Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Korean Immigration

Korean immigration to the United States has been shaped by multiple factors, including militarization, colonialism, and war. While Koreans migrated to the American-occupied islands of Hawai’i in the early 20th century as sugar plantation laborers, Japanese imperial rule (1910–1945) and racially exclusive immigration policy curtailed Korean migration to the United States until the end of World War II. Since then, Korean immigration has been shaped by racialized, gendered, and sexualized conditions related to the Korean War and American military occupation. Although existing social science literature dominantly frames Korean immigration through the paradigm of migration “waves,” these periodizations are arbitrary to the degree that they centralize perceived US policy changes or “breaks” within a linear historical timeline. In contrast, emphasizing the continuing role of peninsular instability and militarized division points to the accumulative effects of the Korean War that continue to impact Korean immigration. With the beginning of the American military occupation of Korea in 1945 and warfare erupting in 1950, Koreans experienced familial separations and displacements. Following the signing of the Korean armistice in 1953, which halted armed fighting without formally ending the war, the American military remained in the southern half of the Peninsula. The presence of the US military in South Korea had immediate repercussions among civilians, as American occupation engendered sexual intimacies between Korean women and US soldiers. Eventually, a multiracial population emerged as children were born to Korean women and American soldiers. Given the racial exclusivity of American immigration policy at the time, the US government established legislative “loopholes” to facilitate the migrations of Korean spouses of US soldiers and multiracial children adopted by American families. Between 1951 and 1964 over 90 percent of the 14,027 Koreans who entered the United States were Korean “war brides” and transnational adoptees. Since 1965, Korean spouses of American servicemen have played key roles in supporting the migration of family members through visa sponsorship. Legal provisions that affected the arrivals of Korean women and children to the United States provided a precedent for US immigration reform after 1950. For instance, the 1952 and 1965 Immigration and Nationality Acts integrated core elements of these emergency orders, including privileging heterosexual relationships within immigration preferences. Simultaneously, while the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act “opened” the doors of American immigration to millions of people, South Korean military dictatorial rule and the imminent threat of rekindled warfare also influenced Korean emigration. As a result, official US immigration categories do not necessarily capture the complex conditions informing Koreans’ decisions to migrate to the United States. Finally, in light of the national surge of anti-immigrant sentiments that have crystallized since the American presidential election of Donald Trump in November 2016, immigration rights advocates have highlighted the need to address the prevalence of undocumented immigrant status among Korean Americans. While definitive statistics do not exist, emergent data suggests that at least 10 percent of the Korean American population is undocumented. Given this significant number, the undocumented status of Korean Americans is a critical site of study that warrants further research.

Muslims in America from the European Colonial Period to the Present

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
National Identity ◽  
World War I ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Muslims ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Muslim Majority

The history of Muslims in America dates back to the transatlantic mercantile interactions between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Upon its arrival, Islam became entrenched in American discourses on race and civilization because literate and noble African Muslims, brought to America as slaves, had problematized popular stereotypes of Muslims and black Africans. Furthermore, these enslaved Muslims had to re-evaluate and reconfigure their beliefs and practices to form new communal relations and to make sense of their lives in America. At the turn of the 20th century, as Muslim immigrants began arriving in the United States from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and South Asia, they had to establish themselves in an America in which the white race, Protestantism, and progress were conflated to define a triumphalist American national identity, one that allowed varying levels of inclusion for Muslims based on their ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds. The enormous bloodshed and destruction experienced during World War I ushered in a crisis of confidence in the ideals of the European Enlightenment, as well as in white, Protestant nationalism. It opened up avenues for alternative expressions of progress, which allowed Muslims, along with other nonwhite, non-Christian communities, to engage in political and social organization. Among these organizations were a number of black religious movements that used Islamic beliefs, rites, and symbols to define a black Muslim national identity. World War II further shifted America, away from the religious competition that had earlier defined the nation’s identity and toward a “civil religion” of American democratic values and political institutions. Although this inclusive rhetoric was received differently along racial and ethnic lines, there was an overall appeal for greater visibility for Muslims in America. After World War II, increased commercial and diplomatic relations between the United States and Muslim-majority countries put American Muslims in a position, not only to relate Islam and America in their own lives but also to mediate between the varying interests of Muslim-majority countries and the United States. Following the civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s and the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, Muslim activists, many of whom had been politicized by anticolonial movements abroad, established new Islamic institutions. Eventually, a window was opened between the US government and American Muslim activists, who found a common enemy in communism following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Since the late 1960s, the number of Muslims in the United States has grown significantly. Today, Muslims are estimated to constitute a little more than 1 percent of the US population. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the United States as the sole superpower in the world, the United States has come into military conflict with Muslim-majority countries and has been the target of attacks by militant Muslim organizations. This has led to the cultivation of the binaries of “Islam and the West” and of “good” Islam and “bad” Islam, which have contributed to the racialization of American Muslims. It has also interpolated them into a reality external to their history and lived experiences as Muslims and Americans.

Contemporary Fascism’s de-Judified Homo Sacer

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Hong Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Relationship

This article argues that representations in popular culture of the Holocaust of World War II are being used to reframe issues of racism in the United States. It critically examines three major discourse formations: contemporary Western thought on fascism, critical scholarship on the US collective memory of the Holocaust, and popular culture’s use of the Holocaust for racial instruction. The Americanization and de-Judification of the Holocaust shows how fascist racism is constructed through institutional discourses and practices and functions as an archetype for understanding race and racism in the United States. Exploring the emergence of Holocaust references in US public culture following Barack Obama’s election, this article proposes that the analogy gains its efficacy because the Americanization of the Holocaust articulates the relationship between institutional practices and race for racist whites.

In Defense of Justice

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen H. Tamura
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

As a leading dissident in the World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans, Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara stands out as an icon of Japanese American resistance. In this biography, Kurihara's life provides a window into the history of Japanese Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Hawaiʻi to Japanese parents who immigrated to work on the sugar plantations, Kurihara was transformed by the forced removal and incarceration of ethnic Japanese during World War II. As an inmate at Manzanar in California, Kurihara became one of the leaders of a dissident group within the camp and was implicated in “the Manzanar incident,” a serious civil disturbance that erupted on December 6, 1942. In 1945, after three years and seven months of incarceration, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and boarded a ship for Japan, never to return to the United States. Shedding light on the turmoil within the camps as well as the sensitive and formerly unspoken issue of citizenship renunciation among Japanese Americans, this book explores one man's struggles with the complexities of loyalty and dissent.

scholarly journals HISTORISITAS POTRET ISLAM DI AMERIKA

ASKETIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anjar Sri Wahyuni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
World War ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S

The American state that it became the object of the first Islamic da'wah in about 1875, from what was then known as Greater Syria (Great Syria [now includes Syria itself, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine]) until the end of World War I. Followed by a second wave, in the 1920s to then be stopped because of World War II. Immigration laws in this period are rather limiting. Only black or Caucasian people can enter the United States. Arabs are considered not to fall into the two categories. While the third wave, between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s took place along with the occurrence of important changes outside the United States. Muslims who enter the US in this category are more educated. Most of them migrated because of political oppression. At the same time, especially in the 1960s various changes took place in US immigration policy. The job market is expanding and the country needs potential immigrants to fill the posts. Here ethnic or racial boundaries are loosened. Then the fourth wave, lasting about 1967 and still going on until now. They are generally very fluid and fluent in English. Their immigration is in place for various reasons such as for the improvement of professional ability and avoiding Government oppression. They also have the intention to settle or preach Islam in this Country. And the fifth wave started from 1967 until now. Those who came to America in this wave, in addition to economic reasons, political factors are also the main reasons that encourage them to migrate. There are some proofs that Islam came to America long before Columbus and the West.

The Imamura Families and the Making of American Buddhism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michihiro Ama
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Japanese Immigrants ◽  
American Buddhism ◽  
Imperial Japan ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Japanese Descent

The Imamura families primarily refer to Emyō Imamura (1867–1932) and Kanmo Imamura (1904–1986), who each made great contributions to “American Buddhism.” Although a definition of American Buddhism is open to discussion, it began to develop at the turn of the 20th century because of the efforts of Euro-American Buddhist converts and ethnic Buddhists. While serving the Nikkei (persons of Japanese descent) Shin Buddhist community in Hawaii, Emyō introduced Buddhism to a group of Euro-Americans and a member of the royal Hawaiian family. Emyō maintained traditional Japanese temple practices and the political ideology of imperial Japan for the Issei (the first generation, referring to Japanese immigrants), emphasized Buddhist education for the Nisei (the second generation, referring to the children of the Japanese immigrants), and created a Nisei ministry program. He related Buddhist egalitarianism to American democracy and pluralism, which allowed him, together with his congregation, to oppose discriminatory and oppressive policies of the then territory of Hawaii. Emyō defined Buddhism as a form of cosmopolitan religion and spread the universal aspect of Shin Buddhist doctrine. For him, creating American Buddhism was inseparable from redefining Shin Buddhism. Emyō Imamura’s progressive Buddhist vision and conservative Buddhist practices were supported by his family. His wife, Kiyoko Hino Imamura (1884–1962), helped him in his ministerial duties and led the largest association of Buddhist women in Hawaii. Their first son, Kanmo Imamura, served a Buddhist community in Berkeley, California, and promoted the interaction between Japanese American Buddhists and Euro-American Buddhist converts in the Bay Area during the 1950s and 1960s. Kanmo was greatly supported by his wife, Jane Matsumura Imamura (1920–2011). The Buddhist propagation of Emyō and Kanmo exemplified the practice of a Shin Buddhist temple family by which husband and wife work together to promote Shinran’s teaching and the father is succeeded by the first son. At the same time, their efforts created a tension between a sectarian form of Buddhism that persons of Japanese descent practiced in America and a Universal Buddhism that Euro-American Buddhist converts sought. As leaders of the largest ethnic Buddhist organizations in the United States, Emyō and Kanmo responded to the needs of fellow immigrants and Japanese American Buddhists and Euro-American Buddhist converts and sympathizers. The demand of Euro-American Buddhists, together with the strong presence of Christianity and the sociopolitical conditions in the United States at the time, caused Emyō and Kanmo to maintain, redefine, and transform Shin Buddhist practice.

Humanism and Class

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sikivu Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
White Population ◽  
World War ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
The Us ◽  
Changing Demographics

Although early twentieth century humanist discourse was informed by an explicit emphasis on class and socioeconomic redress, contemporary iterations within “organized humanism” have been less definitive. In the post–World War II era, humanist scholars and activists have taken diverse approaches to connecting organized humanism and humanist discourse with class politics and class analyses. Changing demographics in the United States, including the rise of “Religious Nones” and the US shift from a majority white population, may play a prominent role in clarifying the nexus between humanism and class analysis.

Barbed Wire Baseball

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel O. Regalado
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Controlled Environment ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Entire Structure

This chapter describes the uncertain fate of the Nikkei baseball community at the onset of World War II. During this time the Nikkei community was the portrait of a dual existence: an isolated enclave that struggled to find balance between the Japanese spirit drawn from its past and an unconditional duty to display its loyalty to the United States. Japanese American baseball in this period exemplified the Nikkei conundrum. Designed to give its youth an opportunity to play the national pastime in a secure and controlled environment, leaders of their leagues rarely omitted any display that spoke to American patriotism. Yet, apart from a few teams and players, the entire structure of Nikkei baseball existed in virtual isolation from the very group with whom they hoped to someday fuse.

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