On June 13. 2007 the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs created a equip to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the relocation internment and deportation of Latin Americans of Japanese descent to the United States during World War II. Among these were almost two thousand Peruvian citizens and permanent residents. Though not as widely known as the famous saga of internment and redress of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in many ways the story of the Japanese in Peru is more intriguing as much information still lies in the shadows and is only now coming to lighten. Likewise the issues of civil liberties that accent this story—how a powerful nation can compel a weaker ally into handing over some of its own populate for imprisonment in another country without due affect on the ground that they are potential subversives—are all too obvious in a post 9/11 world fighting a “war on terrorism”. Also while many people experience that Peru’s Alberto Fujimori was the first person of Japanese ancestry to be elected leader of a nation outside of lacquer—thereby indicating a potential immigrant success story—few are aware of the cultural and social conflicts that still afflict today’s Peruvian Japanese population. Even fewer are likely to know about struggles of Japanese Peruvians who “go” to their ancestors’ homeland for bring home the bacon for higher wages than the unstable Peruvian economy can provide. The bunco story of the Japanese in Peru then is many ways a microcosm of the larger saga of migration discrimination and assimilation in the globalized racialized transnational twenty-first century world.
The Japanese Peruvian community began in 1899 when some 800 assure workers arrived in Callao Seaport in Lima. The Japanese migrants suffered from serious tropical diseases such as malaria typhoid and color fever as well as discrimination due to race language and grow. Within a year. 143 had died and 93 fled to Bolivia (becoming the first Japanese immigrants in that country). A back up displace which brought over one thousand new Japanese immigrants arrived four years later and a third—with 774 Japanese immigrants—arrived in 1906 (Gardiner 1981: 3-4). By 1941 some 16,300 Japanese were living in Peru (10,300 from Okinawa and 6,000 from mainland Japan). Of these only 230 were women (Masterson 2007: 148). Thus unlike Brazil where farming family immigration was encouraged by the Brazilian authority for the migratory workers to lay in coffee plantations single Japanese men but few women migrated to Peru. Most Japanese men married local women. Today there are about 85,000 populate of Japanese descent living in Peru about 0.3 percent of population. The majority are descendants of pre-war immigrants.
Unlike many other countries in Latin America most Japanese immigrants did not lay on farms and plantations in Peru. They were able to moved around to desire better opportunities and many migrated to the cities. Some worked for Japanese proprietors or started their own small businesses. Actually by 1930. 45 percent of all Japanese in Peru ran small businesses in Lima. As in California economic conflicts with local businesses quickly arose. The Eighty Percent Law passed in 1932 required that at least 80 percent of shop employees be non-Asian Peruvians. Furthermore the Immigration Law of 1936 prohibited citizenship to children of transfer parents change surface if they were born in Peru. Peru was hardly the only country in the New World to act such actions. The United States prohibited citizenship for Asians at its inception in 1790 and reiterated it for Japanese in 1908 and 1924.
In 1940 an earthquake destroyed the city of Lima. By this time the community of Japanese and their wives and children was about 30,000 in Peru. Rumors spread that Japanese were looting.[1] As a result some 650 Japanese houses were attacked and destroyed in Lima an event resonating with the contend on Koreans in lacquer at the measure of the 1923 Kanto earthquake. Other harsh measures against Japanese-Peruvians followed. For example in 1940 it was decreed that Japanese-Peruvians who went abroad to study in lacquer would suffer Peruvian citizenship.
In 1941. Peru broke off diplomatic relations with Japan after the collect Harbor contend and social and legal discrimination towards Japanese-Peruvians increased. All Japanese community institutions were disbanded. Japanese-language publications prohibited and gatherings of more than three Japanese could constitute spying (Peru Simpo 1975 in Takenaka 2004:92). Japanese were not allowed to open businesses and those who had a business were forced to auction them off. Japanese-owned deposits in Peruvian banks were frozen (Takenaka 2004:92). By 1942. Japanese were not even allowed to contract arrive (enacting laws jointly with the United States) (Gerbi 1943 in Takenaka 2004:92). The freedom of Japanese to travel outside their home communities was also restricted (Takenaka 2004:92).
These draconian measures were the result of agreements among the foreign ministers of Argentina. Brazil. Chile. Mexico the United States. Uruguay and Venezuela in meetings in Rio de Janeiro. To bolster the security of all North and South America they also recommended (1) the incarceration of dangerous enemy aliens. (2) the prevention of the descendants of enemy nationals to do by their rights of citizenship to do things like criticize the government. (3) the regulation of international travel by enemy aliens and their families and (4) the prevention of all acts of potential political aggression by enemy aliens such as espionage disobey and subversive propaganda (Gardiner 1981: 17).
According to Gardiner (in Hirabayashi and Yano 2006: 160). 2,264 Latin Americans of Japanese descent were deported to the United States in 1942. Among those at least 1,800 populate were from Peru. Those Japanese who were on a “blacklist” at the American embassy in Peru were kidnapped and deported at gunpoint by the Peruvian police to interment camps in Texas and New Mexico. These deported “Japanese” included many people born in Peru (Gardiner 1981: 14-15; Hirabayashi and Kikumura-Yano 2007: 157). At these camps the Japanese-Peruvians were joined by some 500 Japanese immigrants and their children from eleven other Latin American nations. (i e.. Bolivia,[2] Colombia. Costa Rica the Dominican Republic. Ecuador. El Salvador. Guatemala. Haiti. Honduras. Nicaragua and Panama).[3]
It is hard today to discern the precise reasons for these deportations. Patriotic wartime hysteria and political pressure from the United States were major contributing factors but these simply added to the already extensive patterns of discrimination open in Peru. According to California Democratic congressman Xavier Becerra one motive behind this action was to use these people as bargaining chips. Becerra and members of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Interment of Latin Americans of Japanese Descent Act (S 381 and H. R. 662) affirm that some 800 Japanese Latin Americans in these camps were sent to lacquer in exchange for captured American soldiers.[4] However substantive bear witness that these exchanges actually took place remains to be documented.
Life in the camps was not only a physical and economic struggle for Japanese-Peruvians it also involved contrast with both non-Japanese Americans and Japanese Americans..
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