Nisei Daughter

With a new introduction by Marie Rose Wong

MONICA SONE

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M o n i c a S o n e

With a new introduction by Marie Rose Wong

U n i v e r s i t y of Wa s h i ngt on P r e s s

Seattle & London

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To Father and Mother

1953 by Monica SoneOriginally published as an Atlantic Monthly Press Book by Little, Brown and Company

University of Washington Press first paperback edition published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company, 1979

Introduction and preface to the 1979 edition 1979 by the University of Washington Press

Introduction to the 2014 edition 2014 by the University of Washington PressPrinted and bound in the United States of America

1716151454321

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

University of Washington PressPO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA

www.washington.edu/uwpress

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataSone, Monica Itoi, 19192011.

Nisei daughter / Monica Sone ; introduction to the 2014 edition by Marie Rose Wong ; introduction to the 1979 edition by S. Frank Miyamoto ;

preface to the 1979 edition by the author.pages cm

Originally published as an Atlantic Monthly Press Book by Little, Brown and CompanyTitle page verso.

ISBN 978-0-295-99355-3 (paperback : alkaline paper)1. Sone, Monica Itoi, 19192011.2. Sone, Monica Itoi, 19192011Childhood and youth.3. Japanese AmericansWashington (State)SeattleBiography.

4. Seattle (Wash.)Biography.5. Japanese AmericansEvacuation and relocation, 19421945.6. Puyallup Assembly Center (Puyallup, Wash.)I. Title.

F899.S49J376 2014 979.7'772dc232013036826

The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of

Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.481984.

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Introduction to the 1979 Edition vii

Preface to the 1979 Edition xv

Introduction to the 2014 Edition xviii

A Shocking Fact of Life 3

The Stubborn Twig 20

An Unpredictable Japanese Lady 43

The Japanese Touch 66

We Meet Real Japanese 87

We Are Outcasts 109

Paradise Sighted 125

Pearl Harbor Echoes in Seattle 145

Life in Camp Harmony 165

Henrys Wedding and a Most Curious Tea Party 190

Eastward, Nisei 216

Deeper into the Land 226

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I T has been over six decades since the release of Nisei Daughter, Monica Sones autobiographical account of her experiences growing up as a second-generation (Nisei) Japanese American in Se-attles Skid Row neighborhood. Born Kazuko Itoi in 1919, Sone pub-lished her memoir under her anglicized and married name in a book that relates a poignant and personal story of cultural history as well as her own personal journey of identity from childhood to young adult-hood during the 1930s and the turbulent war years of the 1940s.

When the book was first released in January 1953, reviews (which included The Seattle Times Book Notes and the Christian Science Monitor) were favorable. Nisei Daughter was noted for being humor-ous, lively, and witty. It was also praised for its honesty as an ac-count of a native Japanese Seattleite who did not exhibit long-lasting resentment for suffering years of racial discrimination or for the per-sonal loss of property that was part of the incarceration experience of World War II. But in many respects, reviewers evaluated Sones book on a surface level, simply as a story, and neglected to acknowledge the miracle that the book had been published at all.

One appreciates the book more when one considers the significance of its contents within the context of the state of Asian America at the time of its publication. Nisei Daughter was one of the few books written by an Asian American author in the 1950s and the first book written about the internment experience from the perspective of a fe-male internee. The book is so widely read because it is a palatable and detailed description of the forced incarceration that resulted from fed-eral Executive Order 9066.

I n t r o d u c t i o n t o t h e 2 014 E d i t i o n

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Introduction to the 2014 Edition xixIn 1953, when Nisei Daughter was first published, Asian Ameri-

cans were referred to collectively as Orientals, and their identities had been and were being formed more around their close association with international political events in Asian countries than around their lives as Americans of Asian descent. At the time of the books release, the United States was still coming to terms with the aftermath of World War II, which had ended less than eight years earlier. It was the early years of the Cold War, and the country was still in the throes of what would be the final year of the Korean War. All of these events highlighted and reinforced anti-Asian sentiment and suspicion and cre-ated a greater need on the part of Asian American communities to find ways to differentiate themselves from Asian nationals. In the public arena, this was accomplished in part through invitations to the peer community to participate in community cultural festivals such as Chi-nese New Year or Bon Odori, through Asian American beauty pag-eants whose contestants represented US values and Asian femininity, and through autobiographical literature.

The federal immigration law that prohibited the naturalization of Japanese Americans ended with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (also known as the Walter-McCarren Act), less than six months before Nisei Daughter was released. This fol-lowed the rights of naturalized citizenship that were allowed to Chi-nese Americans in 1943 and Filipino Americans in 1946. However, national origin quota systems remained in force and limited the num-ber of Japanese who were allowed to immigrate. Still, first-generation Japanese immigrants (Issei) were finally able to apply for citizenship, which granted the associated right of property ownership. It undid the effects of previous discriminatory legislation, such as the Alien Land Laws passed in individual states beginning in 1913, and federal pas-sage of the Immigration Act of 1924. Sones account of housing own-ers who refused to rent an apartment to her family or to the greater Japanese community connects racial discrimination to residential leasing. Throughout the book, Sone weaves her personal story into the

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Nisei Daughterxxframework of these events, illustrating how being an American was measured in light of ones Japanese ancestry and personal identity and often came with a cost to human dignity.

Nisei Daughter was reprinted in 1979. The new reviews were simi-lar to those of the first edition, with some calling the book entertain-ing. Surprisingly, none of the reviewers commented on the connec-tion between this books serving as a foundation for understanding the Asian immigrant experience and the new wave of Asian refugees coming to America in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The voices of pre-twentieth-century immigrants and those of the first-generation Asian American community became an important source of informa-tion in considering and comparing federal policies addressing displace-ment, settlement, and citizenship for incoming Southeast Asians.

Additions to the 1979 edition of the book included an introduc-tion by sociologist S. (Shotaro) Frank Miyamoto and a brief preface by the author. The books reissue paralleled the dramatic social and political changes which led that decade, including the advent of the civil rights and Asian American movements. The latter followed the supposition that Asian Americans were the model minority and served as a catalyst for an associated university discipline that began to grapple with essential studies of immigration numbers, federal laws, patterns of settlement, and organizational structures that helped build the social and physical communities of Chinatown and Nihonmachi (Japantown).

At the same time, studies of the built environment that had begun in the 1960s were examining the contributions of ordinary people in the production of extraordinary environments through the identi-fication of vernacular structures and the interactions in and between cultural neighborhoods. An earnest appreciation for community devel-opment and ethnicity was beginning to surface. In his introduction, Miyamoto included a detailed description of Seattles Japantown that noted its general geographic location in south downtown and consid-ered its orientation with regard to the rest of the city, introducing the

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Introduction to the 2014 Edition xxisubject of a geography produced by race and class. The location and context of their neighborhood framed the lives of Seattles Japanese. Sones view of home was one that she shared with the homeless men of Skid Row, because her parents managed a residential hotel.

In the 1970s a group of young and aspiring writing students from San Francisco State University were actively challenging the stereotype of the Asian American as sojourner (one who comes to America with no intention of staying), preferring instead to look beyond assimilation and dual identities to the traditions created by American-born Asians such as the Nisei. They looked for these traditions in the work of leading Asian American authorsa new approach. The early literary works of Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945), by Jade Snow Wong, and Sones Nisei Daughter were recognized as important literary achievements by Asian American women authors, the latter autobiography daring to give a de-tailed and personal account of the incarceration experience.

Miyamotos introduction to Nisei Daughter was a far cry from the 1953 reviews. His commentary reflected on the new field of academic study that was empowering Asian Americans. He acknowledged the depth and complexity of Sones work by examining the debated theory of the dual identities of that first generation of Japanese Americans, as well as the sophisticated organizational structures that supported the immigrant and American-born generation. Miyamoto introduced no-menclature and concepts that were previously known only in the inner circles of Japanese America but were now becoming part of educating readers and were broadening the awareness of Asian America. On a rudimentary level, readers benefited from understanding the assigned identities of Issei (first and immigrant generation), Nisei (second-gen-eration and American born), and Sansei (third-generation Japanese Americans) that were coming of age with the second edition of Sones book. Clarifying the distinctions between the generations revealed the movement toward immigrant assimilation and explained the tension of identity construction between Nisei and their Issei parents.

As Nisei attempted to pursue educations and careers, the sacrifices

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Nisei Daughterxxiiof the Issei became clearer, such as the compromise of their profes- sional goals out of the economic necessity that came with raising a family or from the lack of employment opportunities that were open to them. For the immigrant population, their classification as resident aliens reinforced a direct psychological connection with Japan and helped them retain the traditions that sustained them and that helped their Nisei children remain aware of their heritage. Nisei identified themselves as Americans, but like their parents, they struggled with acceptance because of peer preconceptions that measured a Japanese-ness that was largely based on physical characteristics.

On the surface, Nisei Daughter is clearly the story of an individual coming to an understandingand celebrationof what it meant to be a Japanese American at a time of great prejudice and discrimination. It is also an account of a community in which Sone sets the scene of a maturely developed Japantown and describes the richness of the day-to-day life of children and their immigrant Japanese parents, who ran the businesses, schools, and services in a largely closed community. Transplanting and adapting cultural traditions and customs were part of the complexity of identity for Japanese at the turn of the twentieth century. Sone exemplifies this throughout the book through references to her being of two worlds in her understanding of her elders and of Japanese language, poetry, philosophy, festivals, and familial roles and responsibilities. As the story unfolds and Kazuko considers the con-tribution that race and gender make to the community outside Japan-town, the interaction between these first two generations of Japanese Americans reflects multilayered challenges to the search for personal identity and its meaning.

There is a timeless quality to Nisei Daughter. In this new 2014 edi-tion, the topics of Sones story can be visited, revisited, and understood within the context of a maturing discipline of Asian American studies that includes a growing body of literature and sociopolitical theories of settlement. So much of the current scholarship embraces an inter-disciplinary viewpoint and approach, some of which challenges, reas-

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Introduction to the 2014 Edition xxiiisesses, and expands the themes that were central at the beginning of the discipline.

At the time of Nisei Daughters first release, acknowledgment of in-terdisciplinary research on Asian Americans was in its formative years, as was certainly the case with any accounts that looked at the intersec-tion of ethnic community and the built environment, and the reader is encouraged to explore what this book tells us about place and memory in a multidisciplinary perspective. Nisei Daughter provides a detailed look into Japantown via the lives of those living in the Carrollton Ho-tel, one of hundreds of single-room-occupancy residential hotels that served as the homes and businesses of the immigrant Japanese. This setting provided a means of making a living in American cities and served as an example of the interactive social organizational structure that Miyamoto referred to in his introduction. Incarceration forced the urban decay and loss of so many of these mature Japantowns, the majority of which have never recovered, even with the valiant efforts of cities and nonprofit organizations to reconstruct them or to create remembrance projects or dedicated memorials.

The Nisei are now an aging and fading population, and, sadly, we are losing the wisdom of that generation. We are also losing the abil-ity to learn firsthand about the cultural transitions and experiences of the initial generation of Japanese Americans who distinguished their understanding from that of their immigrant parents. Nisei Daughter offers us this opportunity. Today, Nikkei is more broadly used as the word to define Japanese Americans, regardless of the earlier genera-tional distinctions. This description is more inclusive and allows for flexibility as Japanese America redefines itself through intermarriage and the arrival of new immigrants.

The dual identity theory that was challenged at the second print-ing of Nisei Daughter has seen a revival under the heading transna-tional theory, which again examines the multiple connections of Japa-nese and Japanese American cultures from a more holistic and global viewpoint. Sones work offers a critical perspective for understanding

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Nisei Daughterxxivthe immigrants transitional experience and transformation to Japa-nese American culture that is not limited by geographic or disciplin-ary boundaries.

Sones brief preface in the 1979 second printing had a passionate tone that was not present in the book itself. The preface surpassed the self-realization of identity to reflect a deeper commitment to complete the story beyond the incarceration and the authors work toward the legislative redress of Executive Order 9066. In Sones words, the ac-knowledgement in 1976 that the mass incarceration was a national mistake . . . was a small, but significant step toward righting a wrong. It took more than another eleven years for the passage of HR 442 and SB 1009 to clear the US House and Senate and head to President Ronald Reagan for his signature before a more meaningful recognition of this social and political travesty was achieved. Another two years would pass before the first redress payment of twenty thousand dollars would be made under the provision of the law that dictated remuneration to begin with the oldest living survivors. In October 1990, the first pay-ment was made to Mamoru Eto, a 107-year-old Japanese American minister in California. Seattles first recipient was Frank Yatsu, who was 106 when the first checks were mailed by the federal Office of Redress Administration. Sone lived to see this happen.

Kazuko Itois search for identity remains an important issue to be addressed as America continues to deal with issues of immigration, assimilation, and the formation of federal laws and their often unin-tended sociopolitical consequencesall of which contribute to per- sonal and community identity. Scholarship continues along the cur-rent trajectory to seek to understand the cultural diversity and social justice that was introduced in Sones landmark work. Nisei Daughter serves as both a measure of our past and an indicator of what we have yet to accomplish in our understanding of Asian America.

M a r i e R o s e Wong

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