Like a Chameleon: From "Japanese" to "Americans" (of Japanese Ancestry), 1957–74

How did “Japanese Americans” become “Americans?” Many within and without the academic community emphasize the postwar “success” of Japanese Americans entering the “mainstream” of American society through upward occupational mobility, adoption of American cultural markers, and the widespread acknowledgement of their heavy wartime sacrifices on the battlefield and the homefront. Others have simply denied or denigrated Japanese American “success” in becoming “Americans” after suffering decades under the opprobrium of “Japanese.”

This paper, however, offers another view of the issue by examining the influential role of postwar Japanese immigration, particularly the influx of white collar managerial workers and the capital supporting them, in “pushing” Japanese Americans off the label “Japanese” (Other) to “American” and transforming “Japanese” into a racially and culturally “acceptable other” in the second and third decades following the end of World War II. Through a case study of Los Angeles, California, and the usage of its tax records, the business histories and records of large Japanese corporations (Toyota, Sumitomo, etc.), and oral interviews with the Nisei real estate intermediaries (Bruce Kaji, Ken Nakaoka family, Paul Bannai), this paper considers how this new influx of Japanese immigrants reconfigured the racial, cultural, and economic landscape of California and, by logical extension, the United States.