Treatment of Biracial Japanese Americans During Japanese American Incarceration of the 1940s
Esmé Lee-Gardner
Rates of interracial marriage between white Americans and Asian Americans have continued to rise in the modern era, attributed to both the easing of white prejudices toward Asians as well as the length of time Asians have lived in the U.S. This has led to an increase in the population of multiracial Asians.[1] However, often throughout U.S. history, those with Asian ancestry haven’t been given a choice in how they identify with or express their race.
During World War II, white Americans forced Japanese Americans into concentration camps based on their ancestry. While the War Relocation Authority (WRA) ordered all monoracial Japanese Americans on the West Coast into the camps, a small number of multiracial Japanese Americans were also incarcerated while the federal government figured out what to do with them. The government’s policy was confused and ambivalent; this group of individuals posed an inconsistency within the dominant narrative of a racial binary. The question was asked: Did these people ally more with their Japanese ancestry, or should they retain their freedom and human rights along with their non-Japanese parent?
Eventually, the WRA ruled that this could be answered by examining their “pre-war environment,” based on the gender of their Japanese parent. If the multiracial child’s father was white, they could leave the concentration camp and return to their Caucasian pre-war home. However, if their father was Japanese, they were said to be dominated by their father’s ethnicity, and while they were permitted to leave the prison camp, they could not return to the West Coast. For adult multiracial Japanese Americans, they could leave if they had fifty percent or less Japanese blood and could prove that their home was a Caucasian environment.[2]
This example provides evidence of white ideas that uphold the dominance and superiority of the white race, naming people of color as subhuman and undeserving of human rights. This human rights violation is also gendered, making assumptions about individuals’ lives based on patriarchal and masculine ideas.
[1] Spickard, Paul, et al. “What Must I Be?: Asian Americans and the Question of Multiethnic Identity.” Race in Mind: Critical Essays, University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, pp. 177–209.
[2] Ibid.
Esmé Lee-Gardner
Rates of interracial marriage between white Americans and Asian Americans have continued to rise in the modern era, attributed to both the easing of white prejudices toward Asians as well as the length of time Asians have lived in the U.S. This has led to an increase in the population of multiracial Asians.[1] However, often throughout U.S. history, those with Asian ancestry haven’t been given a choice in how they identify with or express their race.
During World War II, white Americans forced Japanese Americans into concentration camps based on their ancestry. While the War Relocation Authority (WRA) ordered all monoracial Japanese Americans on the West Coast into the camps, a small number of multiracial Japanese Americans were also incarcerated while the federal government figured out what to do with them. The government’s policy was confused and ambivalent; this group of individuals posed an inconsistency within the dominant narrative of a racial binary. The question was asked: Did these people ally more with their Japanese ancestry, or should they retain their freedom and human rights along with their non-Japanese parent?
Eventually, the WRA ruled that this could be answered by examining their “pre-war environment,” based on the gender of their Japanese parent. If the multiracial child’s father was white, they could leave the concentration camp and return to their Caucasian pre-war home. However, if their father was Japanese, they were said to be dominated by their father’s ethnicity, and while they were permitted to leave the prison camp, they could not return to the West Coast. For adult multiracial Japanese Americans, they could leave if they had fifty percent or less Japanese blood and could prove that their home was a Caucasian environment.[2]
This example provides evidence of white ideas that uphold the dominance and superiority of the white race, naming people of color as subhuman and undeserving of human rights. This human rights violation is also gendered, making assumptions about individuals’ lives based on patriarchal and masculine ideas.
[1] Spickard, Paul, et al. “What Must I Be?: Asian Americans and the Question of Multiethnic Identity.” Race in Mind: Critical Essays, University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, pp. 177–209.
[2] Ibid.