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Winter, 2008
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The Double Burdens of Immigrant Nationalism: The Relationship between Chinese and Japanese in the American West, 1880s–1920s

JOAN S. WANG


      SINCE THE ARRIVAL of Japanese immigrants in the American West during the late nineteenth century, the relationship between the Chinese and Japanese there has been complex, marked by suspicion and, at times, direct conflict. Such antagonism between two marginalized minority groups would seem incongruous, given the discrimination they both faced in the New World. Indeed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, as in the previous century with Chinese immigrants, discriminatory treatment of Japanese took root in the western United States and spread throughout the region. A diplomatic agreement between the United States and Japan in 1908 temporarily curbed Japanese immigration. In 1924 the U.S. Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, which excluded, among others, Japanese immigrants—hearkening back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.1 From 1882 to 1924, as American society gradually embraced a nativist outlook toward the Asian groups, relations between them became strained. Increasing competition for a limited supply of jobs, combined with racial prejudice and anti-foreigner sentiment, sharpened estrangement between the groups, leading to mutual hostility that would dominate relations between Chinese and Japanese immigrants for much of the twentieth century. Admittedly, some Chinese and Japanese immigrants empathized with each other's plight, particularly in the context of their shared experiences of discrimination; unfortunately, such feelings did little to bridge the gap between them. 1
      The history of interethnic relations under white racism within the United States is a topic deserving of further exploration in Asian American history. Much of the research on this topic has centered around external political crises, particularly the Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s.2 One of the few studies that has dealt with this subject is Eiichiro Azuma's book, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (2005). The work investigates the interethnic tensions among Asian immigrant groups (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they competed for work and respect within a white-dominated racial order.3 Nevertheless, a careful consideration of this subject that traces its historical trajectory, provides a foundation for understanding the tumultuous relationship between Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and intertwines the local and international contexts of these groups is still sorely needed. 2
      This study focuses on the specific challenges that faced Chinese immigrants in the American West. The conditions of that region, acting within the context of a fledgling Chinese diaspora, created emergent Asian communities accompanied by racial segregation and persecution. Wang Gungwu notes that when studying the history of global migration, one should be concerned with "what people who move out of their countries do to the spaces they leave behind and to the spaces they come to occupy."4 Moreover, according to Wang, the establishment of nation-states (e.g., those in the Americas and Southeast Asia) constitutes an enemy of international migration, with regard to the paradoxical role restrictive institutions play within modern nation-states and the global nature of migration. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants in the United States encountered a dilemma: should they keep one foot squarely in the motherland or step boldly with both feet into their adopted homeland? My research explores the dynamic interplay of the local and international dimensions of Chinese nationalism that gave rise to unique social practices. 3
      In this essay, I am specifically concerned with the early formative experiences that helped forge a distinct identity of Chinese immigrants and how this identity proceeded in step, but also at odds, with that of Japanese immigrants from whom they were increasingly estranged. In the American West, Chinese, along with other Asians, were actively excluded from participating in an expanding American society as the ideology of Manifest Destiny pushed the society ever westward. The tension between Chinese and Japanese complicated the already intricate multiethnic conditions in the area. The budding national identity of Chinese immigrants thus was closely linked to the development of ethnic relations in the American West during the construction of an American nation-state.5 4
      The identity was demonstrated vividly by the anti-Japanese boycotts of the 1910s and 1920s.6 Unlike similar actions in China, which revolved around a boycott of Japanese-made goods and Japanese-run ocean liners, the boycotts in Chinese American communities had a much more local dimension, with the targets being local Japanese services, such as barber shops, bath houses, hotels, brothels, and billiard clubs. How did local events play out against the backdrop of international politics? Perhaps more importantly, how did the animosity between Chinese and Japanese immigrant groups in American society help develop Chinese immigrant nationalism? 5
      To fully examine these interethnic rivalries, I have closely examined two Chinese immigrant newspapers published in San Francisco that circulated throughout the Chinese immigrant community during the studied period: Chung Sai Yat Po (Chinese Daily Paper) and Sai Gai Yat Bo (Chinese World).7 In addition, I refer to some Japanese sources, specifically Shin Sekei (New World), a Japanese newspaper also published in San Francisco. Taken together, these sources all reflect and comment upon ethnic divisions in the region. 6
      I investigate the subject in three areas in the following sections of this article. The first section deals with the social and economic interaction between Chinese and Japanese immigrants; the second section is devoted to the issue of white racism in the American West; and the final section discusses the development of Chinese nationalism in the context of anti-Japanese boycotts that took place within many Chinese communities in the western states. 7
   

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CHINESE AND JAPANESE IN THE AMERICAN WEST

 
      Whereas Chinese began to arrive in North America during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Japanese immigration, on a significant scale, did not begin until the 1880s, first with the introduction of student laborers and later with young men from Hawaii after the United States annexed the Hawaiian Islands in 1898. The first generation of Japanese immigrants (called Issei), following in the steps of previous waves of Chinese immigrants, initially found employment as laborers on railroads; in sawmills, canneries, and mines; and on farms. Due to the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, Chinese were declining in number and aging, and they were replaced by Japanese immigrants as a significant labor force. In accounts of their trips to the American West, Chinese consuls and travelers actively discussed the movement of Chinese and Japanese immigrants within the country. In the summer of 1893, Guoing Cui, then Chinese minister to the United States, Spain (as Cuba was then called), and Peru, wrote in his journal that many Chinese and Japanese had been hired as contract laborers in thirty-two canneries in Oregon. Some Chinese and Japanese in the state also applied to obtain fishing rights like those of local residents, but they encountered protests from white Oregonians. These events revealed the overlap of economic activities between the two Asian immigrant groups.8 8
      In 1903 Liang Qichao, the famous Chinese political reformer, recorded his observations on the relative population change between Chinese and Japanese in the United States and Canada, noticing that the overall number of Chinese was declining while the number of Japanese was increasing.9 In comparing Chinese and Japanese workers in salmon canneries in British Columbia, he noticed that the Japanese worked as fishermen while the Chinese worked on the canning lines, with the wages of the former being several times higher than those of the latter.10 Although the wage differences between Chinese and Japanese workers may have been exaggerated, Liang's claim suggests that Chinese immigrants in the American West faced heightened anxiety and competitive pressure over the increasing Japanese presence in the territories.11 9
      These concerns did not prevent some Chinese labor contractors from trying to profit by acting as middlemen between American employers and Japanese laborers.12 The contractors relied on the coming of young Japanese laborers to sustain their own economic power within various industries as the Japanese followed the steps that the Chinese had taken upon arriving in the U.S. This economic interdependency between the two Asian groups, however, did not last long. As Chinese immigrants were shrinking in number, aging, and becoming increasingly urbanized, Japanese gradually displaced Chinese contractors and laborers.13 10
      Economic displacement and increased competition between the two ethnic groups also took place in many "oriental bazaars" of urban areas. Before Issei came to the American West, Chinese immigrants had established stores to sell both Chinese and Japanese fine arts. One official Chinese report stated that these stores in San Francisco were elegant, stylishly adorned, and splendidly lit each night, thus luring white customers to Chinatown even after the massive 1906 earthquake, when the area was rebuilt. However, the report stated that sales of Japanese fine arts were brisker than the sales of Chinese arts.14 Without the involvement of white dealers, the Chinese dominated the Asian art business and prospered until the arrival of Issei. According to another report by the Immigration Commission there were already, in 1898, twenty Japanese-owned art stores in San Francisco. By 1909 that number had increased to over forty. Taken together, these stores exerted pressure on businesses operated by Chinese immigrants. This same report also indicated that, in Los Angeles, competition from stores operated by Issei was undermining Chinese stores.15 By 1928, according to a report by the San Francisco chapter of the KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party, many Chinese art goods stores had gone bankrupt.16 Given the rapidly increasing number of Japanese immigrants, plus their growing economic clout and ambition in the American West, economic interdependence deteriorated as time passed. 11
      Despite growing tensions on the economic front, Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the western United States lived in close proximity to each other under the setting of white racism. They participated in, for example, gambling and prostitution, which will be discussed in detail later in this section. Let us first consider some of the ways in which necessity created strange bedfellows regarding these two immigrant groups. In 1911 Nobuji Komoto, a Japanese foreman working in fish canneries in Bellingham, Washington, and Anacortes, Alaska, was living in a camp with forty-five Japanese and forty Chinese, where mainly Chinese food was served. Komoto believed that the two groups were able to work together in harmony because the labor force in the camp was highly specialized.17 Other Japanese, however, disliked mixing with Chinese workers. Hideo Miyazaki and Takeko Ujimoto claimed that, although Japanese and Chinese were both Asian, their ways of life differed markedly from each other.18 To avoid being lumped together with the reviled Chinese, Japanese subcontractors engaged in frequent strikes. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Tadashichi Tanaka, a subcontractor for railroad laborers, instituted a policy for his labor gangs in which the workers would clearly differentiate themselves from Chinese immigrants by living like Americans. To that end, he asked his men to wear shirts, dungarees, and American shoes. And because Chinese workers were accustomed to eating warm rice three times a day in the traditional Chinese way, he prohibited miso soup, soy sauce, and even rice from being served in the camps, instead creating strange menus featuring quasi-American dishes such as dumpling soups with bacon, potatoes, and onions, plus pancakes with soy beans and bacon as side dishes.19 12
      Even the occasion of a migrant's death revealed the degree to which the fate of one group depended on the other. As early as 1881, San Francisco's Japanese community reached an agreement with local Chinese, according to which the former would take over part of the Chinese cemetery to bury their dead.20 For the Japanese, going to Chinese restaurants after a funeral became a common ritual. In the early days, when Issei had just arrived in the United States, only Chinese restaurants, given the racial climate, could or would accommodate Japanese gatherings for family, relatives, and friends following the burial.21 13
      As mentioned above, Chinese gambling dens also brought the two groups into close contact, as such dens were an attraction for Japanese workers.22 Issei saw gambling both as a way to relax from hard work and also to make money quickly. Many Japanese workers commonly wasted their wages in the Chinese gambling dens outside of sawmills and railroad or agricultural camps.23 Two major forms of gambling, fan tan and the lottery, predominated in gambling houses operated by Chinese Americans. Gambling dens offering fan tan not only attracted Chinese and Japanese players, but also Filipinos and Koreans. Japanese players interested in fan tan often referred to it as shiko, which means "four ones" in Chinese.24 The lottery, due to its impersonal nature, was successful in attracting a sizable body of non-Chinese players, and again as with fan tan, the Japanese were the most numerous group among them as well as more numerous than the Chinese players.25 14
      According to Liang's account in 1903, Japanese were the major patrons of Chinese gambling dens, especially in Seattle and Vancouver, contributing more than $10,000 each year to gambling dens in Chinatowns across the region.26 In the somewhat lawless frontier areas, the police did not even bother to control Chinese gambling dens so long as they were patronized solely by Asians. Conventional morality of the day associated most vices, particularly those of the most unsavory nature, with nonwhite groups—another example of the strength of white racism.27 15
      The third area of social interaction between Chinese and Japanese immigrants revolved around prostitution. Barred by the Page Act in 1875 on suspicion of prostitution, and by subsequent immigration laws, many Chinese women were forbidden from coming to the United States.28 Between 1900 and 1930, immigration statistics of incoming Chinese female immigrants indicated a trend toward gender disparity, due to political and socioeconomic changes both in China and in America.29 The disproportionate number of Chinese males shaped the Chinese American community in a different way from the Japanese one. Without the possibility of marriage, Chinese males, particularly laborers, turned elsewhere to satisfy their sexual needs. In the western states, one of the available choices was Japanese prostitution. According to Yuji Ichioka, Japanese prostitutes appeared as early as 1884 in Butte, Montana, a mining town with many Chinese laborers. He suspected that before the late 1880s, "some of these women may have been sent to America by the Chinese, in particular those who had been sold to Hong Kong merchants," China and Southeast Asia being the major overseas destinations for Japanese prostitutes beginning in the 1870s.30 16
      Japanese prostitutes competed with both Chinese and white counterparts for customers. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the prostitute population in San Francisco's Chinatown was segregated by race, with each having its own specific district.31 Brooklyn Place, which originally housed many Chinese brothels, was gradually taken over by Japanese prostitutes. By the late 1890s it had become the first area with Japanese brothels in San Francisco.32 Japanese prostitutes were known for requiring all patrons to take off their shoes before entering the room. When leaving, patrons would find a small gift, usually a cigar, in their cleaned, shined shoes. One contemporary observer recalled that the clients of Japanese prostitutes were mostly white men, with only a few Chinese among them.33 In comparing the clientele of Japanese prostitutes with those of the Chinese prostitutes who arrived first, we notice a different understanding of race and nationality in these two groups. According to some studies, Chinese prostitutes divided clients along both class and racial lines.34 Japanese prostitutes, instead of racially dividing patrons into white and yellow, advanced a national distinction between Japanese and Chinese.35 17
      Yet despite their fealty to Japan, Japanese prostitutes and laborers addicted to gambling were, from the perspective of Japanese diplomats and immigrant leaders, highly susceptible to the disease of "Sinification" due to their lack of the bourgeois civility and moral character found in the modern Japan.36 Starting in the 1890s, sensational stories carried by some elements of the American press about Japanese prostitutes, the outbreak of San Francisco's bubonic plague in 1900, and rampant gambling among Asians all led to the Japanese being associated with the Chinese. Japanese immigrant leaders and consuls on the West Coast worried that incidents of "uncivilized" behavior might cause white Americans to accuse Issei of being unassimilable, which would inevitably result in the exclusion of Japanese immigrants, just as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had for the Chinese.37 These concerns reflected a strong degree of national pride among elite Japanese immigrants and a superior attitude with respect to their Chinese peers, which brought about Chinese grievances and thus distanced each group further from the other, specifically with the development of white racism in the American West. 18
   

WHITE RACISM AND ITS IMPACT

 
      Racial prejudice in the American West played an important role in defining the relationship and sharpening tensions between Chinese and Japanese immigrant groups. While whites effaced the significant differences between Chinese and Japanese, regarding both groups as intruders on the western frontier, these two minority groups turned against one another, mimicking the exploitation and oppression committed by white capitalists.38 Beginning with the student laborers in the 1880s, Japanese immigrants consistently showed their willingness to adopt American customs, thus differentiating themselves from Chinese immigrants who, by contrast, remained in Chinese attire, ate Chinese food, and generally failed to integrate into American society. Yet starting in the early 1900s, social and political developments in the American West began to alter the fate of the Japanese, while at the same time shaping the attitudes of the Chinese toward them. With this in mind, I examine the San Francisco school board crisis of 1906 and the legislative process by which California's Alien Land Laws of 1913 and 1920 were passed. 19
      In 1906, under pressure from the Asiatic Exclusion League, the Board of Education in the city of San Francisco ordered all Japanese and Korean pupils to join Chinese students in the Oriental school. Newspapers in Japan intensely criticized the order of the school board, with some even advocating revenge against the United States. The strong reaction in Japan against what was essentially a local matter within the U.S. struck the editor of Chung Sai Yat Po as a positive sign of defiance in contrast to the quiescence with which Chinese pupils in San Francisco succumbed to their placement in the Oriental school in 1885. Unlike the open disapproval shown by the Japanese, both the Chinese American community and China at that time displayed no resistance.39 The newspaper went so far as to suggest that Chinese immigrants should collaborate with Issei by standing up to rebuke educational discrimination toward both groups.40 Later Chung Sai Yat Po specifically reproached the attitude of many Chinese bachelors who did not have children and thus showed no concern for the school board crisis. In bemoaning the apathy of the local community, the Chinese press compared its situation to that of Li Hungzhang, the foreign minister of the Qing court during the Sino-Japanese War, who launched a solo combat mission against Japan without the support of the Chinese people or the government. The column concluded by advocating local unity with the Chinese embassy, as the Japanese had joined with theirs, to protest the unfair ban.41 20
      Apparently, the solidarity displayed by Japan was admired by Chung Sai Yat Po. Given the fierce denunciations of the policy in many of Tokyo's newspapers, the press predicted that if ever Japan were forced into a conflict with America over the issue of education, the result would not be the same as the anti-American boycott in China in 1905. That boycott movement started strong, but after a year had done little to change the lives of Chinese immigrants. According to the newspaper, Japan, with its small population scattered over three islands, would, in contrast with China, be able to show sufficient cohesion to fight off the American giant.42 Watching the anti-Japanese campaign directed by American pro-labor organizations, including labor unions, and politicians run rampant, the Chinese editor concluded that the Chinese community was in the same boat as the Japanese immigrants. More astutely, he observed that ambitious and cunning western politicians, such as California U.S. representative Everis A. Hayes of San Jose, were employing rhetoric hostile to Japanese immigrants to win votes from white laborers in the same way as politicians twenty years before had promoted policies excluding Chinese to consolidate their power.43 Ultimately, however, the position that Chung Sai Yat Po took in support of the cause of the Japanese immigrants triggered suspicion at the local Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA). The CCBA rebuked the newspaper as scum (bai lei, click for expanded view ) and showed reluctance (hui mou ru shen, click for expanded view ) for working too closely with the Japanese community.44 21
      After the school board crisis ended, Chung Sai Yat Po interpreted the nullification of Japanese student segregation as a setback not only for Chinese American pupils, but for Chinese immigrants in general. While nothing changed for the Chinese pupils already in the Oriental school, the different fate of Japanese pupils reminded the Chinese of their unequal status with respect to racial discrimination, particularly as it affected Chinese immigrants and their children.45 As the newspaper stated woefully, the fact that the Chinese students remained in the Oriental school did not mean that they were enjoying "separate but equal" treatment. In America's multiethnic society, the lowly status of China in the international community thus increasingly affected the relationship between the two immigrant groups, particularly after Japan and the United States signed the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1908, which allowed Japan the right to stop issuing passports to laborers desiring to come to America.46 However, the Chinese, while valuing their "face" as much as the Japanese, were prohibited from doing so by the American government.47 22
      In 1913, California passed the Alien Land Law to keep aliens—specifically Japanese—farmers from obtaining agricultural land. According to a Chinese American news release at the time, the Chinese consul general of San Francisco evaluated the potential impact of the act before notifying Beijing. In his report, he noted that the Japanese in California outnumbered the Chinese both in property and in sheer numbers and that if the Alien Land Law passed, the Japanese government would protest the legislation on the basis of its treaty with America. Once the Japanese had succeeded in nullifying the law, their properties in America would be safer than those of the Chinese. However, while the consul general ultimately argued that the Chinese government should follow the Japanese government's lead and attempt to protect the assets of local Chinese immigrants, he did not encourage future cooperation with Japanese immigrants, revealing by such an approach his conservative outlook.48 23
      Indeed, though the law avoided direct reference to the Japanese, instead referring quite generally to "aliens ineligible for citizenship," it was legislated with them in mind. The Chinese knew this well enough to reject the opportunity of working hand in hand with the Japanese when the Japanese Association of America appealed to the Chinese League of Justice of America in Los Angeles to help with the issue. Ostensibly, the members of the latter were formed by Chinese American citizens, not aliens, and thus believed it inappropriate for them to participate in such an appeal against the law.49 In a letter to the California state legislature and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, the Chinese League declared that it was fine to restrict the Japanese in the state, but asked that the legislature "not refer to the Chinese in the law, so that the Chinese Americans could distinguish themselves from the Japanese ones."50 A plausible reason for this unfriendly response may be found in the mutual distrust among Chinese and Japanese immigrants. 24
      Nevertheless, despite the attempt of Chinese Americans to claim their rights as citizens, not all Chinese in the Golden State were in fact citizens. The Alien Land Law, which aimed at Japanese immigrants, had its impact on Chinese immigrants as well. One article in Chung Sai Yat Po said that although the law was intended to curtail the growth of agricultural landholding among Japanese farmers, the Chinese had to realize that the enactment of this legislation was grounded in general nativist discrimination against all Asians. The author employed a Chinese adage to suggest the predicament of both the Chinese and Japanese in American society: Tusi hubei, wushang qilei [ click for expanded view , click for expanded view ] which captures the idea that even foxes sympathize with the deaths of rabbits, because they are similar species inasmuch as both are the prey of human beings.51 The author encouraged the Chinese in California not only to have compassion for their Asian peers, but also to collaborate with them in opposing white rule. Several days later, a news release reported that even though the Chinese owned less land than did the Japanese, both groups would jointly issue a protest to the federal government. The Chinese, for their part, were apprehensive that they would not be able to bequeath what little property they had to their relatives.52 The report, however, turned out to be false, and no concrete cooperative action between Chinese and Japanese immigrants followed. Instead, San Francisco's CCBA worked on its own to stop the legislation by petitioning some of the state's congressmen.53 25
      In 1920, a more restrictive California Alien Land Law was passed to correct ineffective measures set forth in the first law.54 By this time, any thoughts of cooperation were a thing of the past. Some Chinese immigrants not only blamed Japanese immigrants for being greedy and thus allowing the whites to escalate anti-Asian racism, but also showed their indifference to the difficulties facing Japanese farmers.55 One columnist for a Chinese-language newspaper, in reviewing the history of the anti-Japanese movement in the United States, contrasted the relatively mild treatment the Japanese had received in the new country to the much more horrific violence and unfair treatment that Chinese immigrants had suffered since the late nineteenth century. In reexamining the San Francisco school board crisis of 1906, the article taunted Japanese immigrants for being overly sensitive in their objections to the school board decision. It even justified the racism against blacks and Asians, as well as nativist sentiments against immigration in the United States, as natural consequences of population growth.56 In short, the mechanism of white supremacy in American society distorted the perspectives of Chinese immigrants in their views of other minority groups in the United States, which sometimes kept Chinese immigrants from recognizing the immense force of racism.57 26
   

CHINESE IMMIGRANT NATIONALISM

 
      From the last section, we see that discriminatory legislation in the American West aimed at rendering both Chinese and Japanese as permanent foreigners. Enforced isolation, however, did not cause either group to extinguish long-held ties to their native lands or encourage greater ties between Japanese and Chinese. As a matter of fact, the exclusion by whites and the local conflict between Chinese and Japanese not only strengthened the ties of the latter two groups with their native origins, but also made affirmation of such ties into a further liability. Chinese and Japanese in the United States became more involved in the politics of their motherlands, which, in turn, reinforced the clash between the two groups. 27
      While overseas Chinese had long been involved in China's politics, a gradually strengthening nationalism developed among Chinese immigrants in the United States.58 Political events in East Asia had a direct impact on the attitudes of Chinese toward their Asian counterparts in the American West. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, China had suffered under the yoke of Western, and later Japanese, imperialism. The rise of Japan coincided with a series of humiliating defeats for China, including the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, which resulted in concessions of extraterritorial rights, the transfer of Taiwan to Japanese rule, and the levying of additional war indemnities. China had been weak and divided, but following this defeat, a new national consciousness began to develop. Chinese emigrating overseas shared the same strong, defensive feelings, particularly when they were barred from political and social participation in their adopted homelands, be it the United States, Canada, or Australia. Aware that the racial oppression and humiliation they suffered was at least partly due to China's weakened status on the international scene, Chinese immigrants nurtured nationalist sentiments. 28
      The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, coupled with the struggle for control over Manchuria and Inner Mongolia following the Russo-Japanese War, set up a clash between the two groups that was not mitigated by the shared experience of both as immigrant laborers in the American West. In 1895, the Sacramento Bee reported on the celebration of seven hundred Japanese in the area following the victory of their motherland over China.59 In striking contrast, stunned Chinese in the United States expressed disappointment and subsequently lapsed into a state of prolonged apathy.60 More significantly, some Japanese in San Francisco organized military training in a suburban area near the city in order to defend themselves should Chinese immigrants seek violent reprisals.61 In 1905, a gathering of fifteen hundred Japanese in Sacramento celebrated Japan's military victory over Russia at Port Arthur in China.62 Both celebrations evidenced the Issei's great loyalty to their motherland and, consequently, their disdain for their Asian peers—Chinese immigrants. 29
      On many occasions, particularly as Japanese immigration increased, Chinese immigrant nationalism was expressed out of a mix of admiration of and jealousy over Japan's rising international status. In 1900 the Organic Act, signed by American president William McKinley, incorporated Hawaii into the United States. Enacted on June 14, 1900, the legislation effectively outlawed contract labor on the island, causing many Japanese plantation workers to move to the continental United States and British Columbia. Chung Sai Yat Po kept track of these developments, reporting on how the Japanese influx to the Pacific Coast was triggering a new wave of racial anxiety in the American West.63 During the outcry for Japanese exclusion by white labor organizations, one Chinese newspaper disregarded the possibility that the Japanese would suffer the same fate as had Chinese immigrants. For one thing, Japan was quite powerful in international trade and would not allow the Chinese exclusion to be extended to Japanese immigrants. Second, the American government regarded Japan as a gateway to Asia and thus would not irritate the diplomatic relations between the two countries.64 Comparing Japan and China, the editor argued that America respected countries that displayed energy and a strong will (weixin zhi zhi, click for expanded view ), no matter how small their territory (zui er, click for expanded view ) or their physical stature (zhu ru, click for expanded view ). This was evident with respect to China, a country that, despite having a huge population and a massive territory, was too weak to successfully defend itself and thus was subject to all kinds of humiliation by America (kunzhi, zhuzhi, roulin, baiban bukan yanzhuang, click for expanded view ).65 At times, while admiring the rising status of Japan in international society, the editor lamented that he did not comprehend "why Chinese immigrants were so miserable, [with] no place to hide, so as to be the topic of mockery" (buzhi huaren hegu, wudi zirong, jingzhi chengwei huabing, click for expanded view , click for expanded view , click for expanded view ) in incidents in which Chinese immigrants were mentioned whenever local politicians advocated the exclusion of Japanese laborers.66 30
      Even when traveling outside the territory of the United States, some Chinese immigrants took pains to distinguish themselves from their Japanese neighbors. In early 1906, a letter to the editor of a Chinese newspaper in San Francisco reported on an incident that had occurred on the liner Chinese Empress. One Chinese immigrant returning to China observed that white crewmen had given better treatment to Japanese than to Chinese when the ship anchored in Yokohama, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Shanghai. When the ship docked in Yokohama and Kobe, local Japanese vendors were allowed to come aboard and to ply their trade, even though a plague was running rampant in Kobe at the time. In Shanghai, however, white guards prohibited the Chinese vendors from entering. Two such local vendors were chased until both fell into the sea, while another two, allegedly children, were locked in. Noticing the different responses from the white guards, the Chinese traveler concluded that it was indicative of the gap in national power between China and Japan. Moreover, the traveler argued that the servile nature of Chinese people encouraged whites to oppress Chinese but not Japanese, who would complain when facing abuse and therefore were treated more favorably.67 31
      The Chinese traveler's comments seem to be accurate. On April 18, 1906, San Francisco was hit by a catastrophic earthquake. In spite of the large monetary and material contributions Japan made to the city to assist with its recovery, an anti-Japanese campaign that had started before the earthquake became violent in June 1906. Several Japanese scientists from the Imperial University of Tokyo took pictures and conducted an investigation of the city after the earthquake. During the course of their investigation, the scientists were pelted with stones by some white mail boys. In response to these attacks, the Japanese Association of America protested to the post office, with the result that the manager of the office visited the association to offer his personal apology.68 This deferential treatment stands in stark contrast to a contemporaneous incident in which a Chinese immigrant, Mr. Xiong, returning to Chinatown after the earthquake to dig out his personal belongings from the ashes, was stoned to death by several white youths. The editor of Chung Sai Yat Po not only regretted the loss of Xiong's life, but also castigated the leaders of the CCBA and the Chinese consul in San Francisco for their apathy regarding the protection of overseas Chinese rights.69 The article was subtly attempting to incite a Chinese nationalist reaction by mixing admiration and jealousy of the Japanese. 32
      Yet despite the rancor, at times of great crisis Chinese immigrants tried to collaborate with Issei. In 1900, an outbreak of disease—allegedly bubonic plague—in San Francisco's Chinatown triggered a scare in the white community. In the beginning, all the suspected cases were Chinese, and therefore the rumor spread that all Chinese, but not Japanese, would have to be inoculated. With a crisis brewing, one editor of Chung Sai Yat Po called for cooperation between Chinese and Japanese immigrants to fight the racial oppression imposed by American society.70 Soon, a compulsory inoculation order was issued to all Chinese and Japanese, which forced them to share equally the stigma of disease. The Chinese newspaper protested this order, arguing that singling out Asians for the compulsory inoculation failed to address effectively the plague itself, which would continue to spread unless inoculation included all white people as well.71 The shared outrage created a rare sense of unity among Chinese and Japanese. The united front was further reinforced when a Japanese priest was rejected for entry into the United States, reportedly by the Immigration Commission. The Chinese newspaper criticized the unfair treatment and grumbled that repression by the whites was being shifted from Chinese to Japanese immigrants.72 33
      In the 1920s, key incidents began to affect the fate of Issei. First of all, Japan was entering a period of growing conflict with America over control of East Asia. The end of the Russian and German empires, plus the relative weakening of England and France after World War I, inaugurated a new era of competition in the Pacific between Japan and America. A decision to check Japan's growing power was cemented at the Washington Conference of 1922. Second, the enactment of the Immigration Act of 1924 by the U.S. Congress had a large impact on the Issei community and caused a great deal of diplomatic tension between Japan and the United States.73 34
      The Chinese immigrant press responded to the enactment of the 1924 law in various ways. Those who had disputed the Japanese attitude of superiority over other Asian groups showed little compassion for the Japanese plight: Chung Sai Yat Po rebuked Japan for having employed discriminatory policies—policies similar to those of America—against Chinese entering Japan. Moreover, the press chastised Japanese immigrants for previously alienating Chinese immigrants, with whom they shared the same cultural and racial background (danghui ziwaiyu tongwen tongzhong, click for expanded view ).74 Connected to such a reproaching attitude, some Chinese immigrants even welcomed the Act to vent their resentment of Japan's bullying of China during the episode of the Twenty-one Demands in 1915.75 Other Chinese immigrants, however, were in accord with the Japanese immigrant position. They argued that America was bullying Japan during a period when it was especially weak in terms of international politics and domestic affairs. In 1922, the Washington Conference reached a naval settlement that restricted the development of Japanese capital ship tonnage. It also ended the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, from which Great Britain had long desired to free itself. The new Four Power Treaty was signed in 1922 during the Washington Conference. To Japan, this treaty was less advantageous than the previous Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Then, on September 1, 1923, Japan was hit by an earthquake that devastated its major cities, especially Tokyo and Yokohama. The United States seized upon this moment, when Japan was particularly vulnerable, to enact the Immigration Act of 1924 without resistance. Apparently, some Chinese immigrants regarded the Immigration Act as a sign of Japan's declining international status. These Chinese, who connected their miserable fate to the weakened state of China, grew increasingly sympathetic to the predicament of their Japanese peers.76 35
      In light of such sentiments, some Chinese immigrants blamed racial prejudice in American society for agitation against Asians. In Sai Gai Yao Bo, an article titled "Immigration Policies of America and Orientals" argued that immigration problems, just like those of international trade, should be resolved through applying rational economic principles of supply and demand rather than through racial prejudice. In an economic world, it made no sense to ban incoming foreign merchants in order to favor native ones engaged in international business. The author concluded by warning that discriminatory immigration policies had "grave consequences," as was indicated in the letter that Japanese ambassador Hanihara Masanao delivered to the American Congress protesting the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924.77 36
      During this period, several reports from Tokyo on the prospects for an ethnic coalition between Japan and China appeared in Sai Gai Yao Bo. A former secretary of justice in China, according to the Tokyo-published Asian News, claimed that the American exclusion law would ultimately encourage Asian countries to forge an alliance among themselves and to take actions against the United States in the near future. Another report further elaborated on the potential for Asian countries to unite along racial lines to battle the United States. Interestingly, one report from Japan indicated that in Canton, where many Chinese immigrants originated, anti-Anglo and anti-American protests were common, during which protestors expressed their support for the Japanese. This news must have been received with strong trepidation by Chinese in the United States, who had just expressed resentment towards Japan and Japanese immigrants.78 Observing that China no longer mourned as fervently as it once had the May 7 National Humiliation Day that commemorated the Twenty-one Demands, one Chinese-language newspaper editor in San Francisco interpreted the change as an indication that China seemed to loathe Japan less. Yet he still felt uncomfortable about the possibility that China would one day ally with Japan against America. Given the entrenched racial supremacy found in the American West, where Issei were persecuted so fiercely, Chinese immigrants were quite ambivalent about following their mother country in its alliance with the Japanese.79 37
      In fact, despite calls for ethnic unity, the prospects for an Asian coalition were subject to unstable international relations. Political uncertainty in the East Asian region continued to spark unrest at home and abroad. For example, Japan banned Chinese labor from entering the country. Chinese labor representatives in Tokyo pleaded with the Japanese government to repeal the exclusion laws, an ironic counterpoint to Japanese immigrants protesting the American government's passage of the Immigration Act of 1924.80 In the spring of 1924, the U.S. Congress decided to return more of America's indemnity from the Boxer Rebellion to China as a token of goodwill. This action made China hesitant about entering into a Sino-Japanese coalition.81 38
      Ironically, even as the U.S. government enacted a highly restrictive law specifically targeting Japanese immigrants in 1924, some Chinese immigrants continued to harbor an envious resentment of their Asian peers. According to a statement in one local Chinese newspaper, although they shared the same racial background as the Japanese, Chinese immigrants had failed to receive equivalent support from contemporary American politicians when the Chinese Exclusion Act was drafted. The newspaper's explanation for this differential treatment was based on the fact that China was internationally isolated and comparatively weaker than Japan, the lesson being that the stronger the motherland, the better the treatment its emigrants would receive in the adopted country.82 While the argument seemed persuasive, it was driven more by an envious resentment of Japanese immigrants. Such feelings would not have been as powerful if not for an embedded institutional racism in the American West, where Americans pushed ever westward under the ideology of Manifest Destiny and relegated both Chinese and Japanese immigrant groups to a subordinate position in the process. 39
   

THE ANTI-JAPANESE BOYCOTT AND JAPANESE RESPONSES

 
      In the early years of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants forged their national consciousness into a powerful tool that was often employed to effect in their local struggles with Japanese immigrants. The boycott of Japanese goods ignited a major public confrontation between the two groups.83 The origin of the anti-Japanese boycott can be traced back to the Tatsu Maru incident of 1908. It resulted from the seizure of a Japanese ship loaded with gunpowder and weapons. Chinese officials detained the ship out of fear that it would be used to incite revolutionary acts against the government. Yet their efforts were quickly reversed by the Chinese government, which issued an official apology to Japan and returned the Japanese ship. Regarding the action as kowtowing to Japan, many Chinese in Guandong and Hong Kong began a boycott of Japanese goods. Chinese merchants refused to use Japan-owned liners to transport their cargos, instead employing American ones.84 One Chinese-language newspaper in San Francisco reported that Chinese workers at the ports of Hong Kong had stopped manning small ships to unload luggage for those Chinese who were boarding Japanese ocean liners; this was meant as a warning to fellow Chinese not to use Japanese oceanliners.85 San Francisco's Japanese community took revenge by boycotting Chinese restaurants and gambling dens.86 40
      In 1915, the Twenty-one Demands made by Japan on China provoked another crisis.87 Newspapers in China denounced the demands and expressed anti-Japanese sentiments, while merchants in China organized a widespread boycott of Japanese goods. As newspapers and merchants were the main groups fomenting dissent, they suffered the greatest repercussions from the Yuan Shi-kai government of China, which opposed the boycott. It began in many of China's urban centers but quickly extended to Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and North America, where the Chinese government's power did not reach. As the boycott spread, it took root among newspaper publishers, merchants, and students overseas.88 41
      While the anti-Japanese boycott among Chinese immigrants in the United States helped create a sense of identity, it also showed that this kind of identity could produce new hostility within the Chinese community shaped by class, occupation, or education. Nationalist sentiments promoted by the immigrant elites could be put to specific uses, but they simultaneously ran into trouble when confronted with other local interests. Thus, we will see that, as Adam McKeown notes, "the spread of nationalist organizations and the internalization of nationalist values among Chinese migrants was a constantly negotiated process."89 Chinese immigrants first advocated an anti-Japanese boycott in San Francisco. Newspapers such as Sai Gai Yao Bo and Chung Sai Yat Po, which were headquartered in that city, along with merchants selling Japanese arts and crafts and curios, led the movement. Although both Sai Gai Yao Bo and Chung Sai Yat Po, perhaps because of their support for the Chinese Reform Association, disagreed with the KMT's political views, they approved of the KMT view that the danger of an imperialist invasion by Japan was real.90 Following in the footsteps of their colleagues in China, these influential Chinese-language newspapers tried to alert the community to the severity of the Twenty-one Demands. During the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February, Chung Sai Yat Po took pains to contrast the indignant anger of anti-Japanese protesters in China with the joyous celebration in the local Chinese community, which was still rejoicing in the holiday as usual. The newspaper pointedly criticized the community's failure to support the Chinese people's anti-Japanese boycott and compared Chinese immigrants to quiet cicadas during cold days or docile horses under a sweeping stick (han chan zhang ma) to suggest that they were keeping silent and lacked any nationalist pride.91 Thereafter, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, Chung Sai Yat Po, Sai Gai Yao Bo, and other members of the Chinese Reform Association took the lead in planning a boycott. The editor of Sai Gai Yao Bo, Yu Ling, promised to advocate the boycott in his newspaper and to burn all Japanese books in the newspaper's office.92 Some stores in Chinatown, such as the Chee Chong Company located at 736 Grant Avenue, soon followed by refusing to sell Japanese crafts and curios.93 All these various groups soon gathered in the headquarters of the CCBA to plan a communitywide action. 42
      Starting on March 1, 1915, the Chinese community in San Francisco imposed an embargo on Japanese goods.94 Chinese merchants stopped importing such Japanese-made products as silk stockings, porcelain, and other curios. To launch the boycott, a public burning of Japanese-made goods was held for which merchants in San Francisco's Chinatown contributed thousands of dollars worth of whatever Japanese merchandise they had left in their stores. In the meantime, Chinese immigrants refused to take Japanese trans-Pacific ocean liners. Moreover, in October 1915, the China Mail Steamship Company, which catered to Chinese patrons, was established, representing a new stage in the struggle against Japanese-owned ocean liners.95 Chinese in San Francisco also discontinued patronizing stores or companies run by local Japanese, such as seafood shops, bathhouses, barbershops, and billiard parlors.96 Chinese in other towns, such as Fresno, soon followed suit. Some Chinese even stood in front of Japanese theaters to persuade their compatriots to stop visiting such establishments.97 Advocated by elites from the Chamber of Commerce and certain newspapers, the nationalist idea was employed to promote these actions within Chinese communities.98 43
      Yet as the boycott dragged on, it began to take on a more local dimension that helped determine the movement's fate. To understand why, one must look at the local economy of the day, where Chinese restaurants, grocery stores, and gambling houses in particular often relied on Japanese customers to make up a significant portion of their business. Before the movement began, these merchants had claimed that the Chinese in the United States were the only group of Chinese anywhere for which waging such an anti-Japanese boycott was inappropriate. Responding to this assertion, one Chinese American newspaper even suggested that an investigation should be conducted to evaluate the economic cost an anti-Japanese boycott would impose on such business establishments. The newspaper, however, ultimately advocated the use of Chinese (instead of Japanese) goods and encouraged their compatriots, for the good of Chinese everywhere, to endure the financial setback that support of the movement would involve.99 44
      Although certain Chinese immigrants were more than willing to support the boycott, some merchants and laborers refused to cooperate and continued to sell Japanese-made goods or, in the case of customers, to visit Japanese shops. Some Chinese restaurants, grocery stores, and gambling houses still catered to local Japanese. With organized efforts, the boycott's advocates retaliated by announcing the names and addresses of Chinese unwilling to cooperate in the boycott and by sending representatives over to "punish" them. On several occasions, individuals who had refused to cooperate were denounced in the Chinese newspapers and paraded through the streets of Chinatowns throughout the country.100 These cases showed the use of social ostracism by immigrant elites as a way to enforce and spread Chinese nationalism to all members in the community. Nevertheless, the complicated socioeconomic relationship between the two Asian ethnic groups divided the Chinese community and made the boycott harder to enforce, since different Chinese had their own varying concerns and associations with Japanese immigrants.101 While it is correct, as Shehong Chen points out, that the choice was one of livelihood versus national pride, she ignores the far-reaching socioeconomic relationship between these two ethnic groups that lay just beneath the surface of Chinese American class differentiation.102 45
      To counter the Chinese boycott, local Japanese in the western states disparaged the movement for its divisiveness while taking actions to limit the economic fallout. Upon hearing of the establishment of the China Mail S. S. Company, Issei sought to discourage investment in the enterprise by citing the difficulty of running an ocean liner, namely, the hardships in raising sufficient capital, confirming the ship's nationality, and organizing Chinese and non-Chinese sailors.103 As tempers frayed, hostile incidents became increasingly common, like the one where a drunken Japanese immigrant in a San Francisco pawnshop roared his intention of buying a gun in order to kill all of the Chinese in town because of the latter's anti-Japanese boycott.104 46
      The most interesting case emerged with the reconstruction debate over the Walnut Grove Chinatown. Given the influx of Japanese, who gradually came to dominate the asparagus industry in Walnut Grove by 1910, Japanese businesses flourished in the midst of the Chinatown that had existed before that year.105 In early October 1915, Walnut Grove's Chinatown was burned to the ground. Local Japanese blamed stubborn Chinese neighbors who would not allow Japanese firefighters to destroy the facilities in the back of a Chinese church, which enabled the fire to spread to the newer areas and, as a result, damage more Japanese, as well as Chinese, stores.106 In discussing how to reconstruct the new town, many Japanese rejected the idea of living with Chinese; yet others opposed the suggestion of segregation, because their stores were frequented primarily by Chinese customers (in the case of, for example, barber shops). The latter group of Japanese were immediately attacked by their compatriots for desiring to mix with such a despicable race as the Chinese. This case, along with Chinese responses to the anti-Japanese boycott described in the previous section, showed the heterogeneity of responses of both the Chinese and Japanese communities toward the boycott movement.107 47
      The Issei's resistance to the boycott persisted during the next few years. In 1919 the revolutionary May Fourth movement, led by Chinese students who protested Japan's takeover of the previous German concession in Shandong, was regarded by local Japanese as an expression of short-lived passions, and thus not likely to affect the economic order of their lives.108 On May 3, 1928, Japan denied China's Nationalist army transportation rights through Jinan, Shandong province, inciting a new wave of anti-Japanese boycotts in the American Chinese community. Even then, Japanese immigrants took a relaxed approach to the boycott, predicting that soon Chinese immigrants would end it, since the quality of Chinese goods was below that of Japanese ones. Some local Japanese even regarded the boycott as an opportunity to expand their own business territory, since a Chinese embargo on Japanese goods also interfered in the business of those Chinese stores that sold Japanese goods to white customers—customers who would now be forced to shop in Japanese stores.109 In a similar vein, another Japanese newspaper reported that the "wicked" Chinese were taking advantage of the boycott to exploit Japanese immigrants. In the business district near Eighth Street in San Francisco, where Chinese and Japanese stores stood side by side, Japanese formerly bought fish, poultry, roasted pork, and dry goods from Chinese stores. Some of these same stores raised their prices for Japanese patrons, while Japanese stores catering to Chinese did not enact similar policies. Forced to pay higher prices, Japanese responded by opening their own fish stores or by transferring their patronage to white-owned stores. Apparently, the Japanese maintained their pride while blaming the Chinese for the boycott.110 48
      Following demonstrations in San Francisco, Chinese in other cities in the western states launched their own boycotts. In Seattle, Japanese seafood stores in Chinatown lost their Chinese customers during the boycott. Aware of such developments, Japanese store owners were warned that doing business with the Chinese might involve taking unjustifiable risks, given the vengeful sentiments then circulating throughout the community.111 In Sacramento, a Japanese newspaper claimed that while business revenues had decreased for Japanese immigrants, the boycott caused greater pain to Chinese stores than to Japanese stores, leading some Chinese store owners to reject the action.112 Later, another piece of news in the same paper argued that the local boycott in Sacramento had nothing to do with events in Asia. According to the report, many Chinese in town were doubtful about the boycott and thus hesitated to follow its actions, which prevented an escalation of the damage done to the Japanese community. The report predicted that the chaos would calm down soon.113 49
      To some Japanese, the boycotts in the United States were similar to those in Southeast Asia. According to Consul Ida, who had been based in Batavia, Indonesia, sales of Japanese textile goods there were impacted by a Chinese merchant boycott. Yet Japanese merchants soon replaced Chinese ones and expanded the market for Japanese textiles. He claimed that, from his experience, the boycott in the United States would not succeed so long as the local Japanese remained calm. As far as he could see, although the boycotts might affect certain businesses, such as Japanese grocery stores or steamships, for a short time, these eventually would recover. As for other businesses, such as Asian curio shops in the United States, white customers, after failing to obtain goods from Chinese merchants, would soon turn to Japanese retailers.114 All of the above arguments point to strategies adopted by Issei to mitigate the effects of the boycott, strategies that often irritated the Chinese and caused relations between the two Asian immigrant groups to deteriorate. 50
      More significantly, Japanese immigrants used the boycott as a means to promote their anti-Chinese gambling campaigns once again.115 The Issei's community had engaged in anti-Chinese gambling campaigns as early as 1908, without success. Given the American public's impression of Chinese as gamblers or opium smokers, the upper class of Japanese immigrants endeavored to lead the whole community to differentiate itself from the Chinese and, in this way, aligned with white racists against Chinese immigrants. One of the commandments of the anti-Chinese approach was a prohibition on visiting Chinese gambling houses. With the outbreak of the Chinese anti-Japanese boycott in 1915, the Japanese campaign against Chinese gambling became temporarily effective through the remainder of the 1910s.116 51
      Nonetheless, gambling addicts are diehards. News of gamblers being arrested appeared frequently in both local Chinese and Japanese newspapers, with reports of Chinese gambling dens and gamblers (including both Asians and whites) incurring monetary fines as high as hundreds of dollars.117 During the anti-Japanese boycott, Japanese communities in the American West, such as those in Sacramento and Fresno, desperately stirred up the anti-Chinese gambling campaign, even invoking local police forces.118 Although it lingered on into the 1920s, the anti-Chinese gambling campaign was not very successful.119 In Los Angeles, gambling activities were so rampant that, according to the prediction of a Japanese newspaper, gambling dens would soon take up half of the downtown business district. The elite Japanese in the city denounced the Chinese gambling houses, which, while looking like cigarette shops or newsstands, in fact sold lottery tickets and provided a variety of games, day and night. Many operators of these dens tried to attract Japanese so as to make decent Japanese ashamed to pass through the area.120 It was clear that, as far as gambling was concerned, Chinese were being blamed for having corrupted the Japanese community. 52
   

CONCLUSION

 
      The type of relationship that Chinese immigrants had with Japanese immigrants was originally structured by white racism in American society. Just as Wang Gungwu has pointed out that the nation-state is an enemy of migration, the ideology of Manifest Destiny shaped whites' views of Asian immigrants. In the context of this ideology, white racism gradually came to embody local resistance to Asian immigration. Chinese were the first to be excluded, and soon after, when the Japanese became an important part of the ethnic equation in the West, they replaced Chinese as the primary object of racism. The building of state institutions in the West and the erasure by white racism of visible differences between Chinese and Japanese immigrants thus created a wobbly, interdependent relationship between the two groups, which lasted until the turn of the twentieth century, when events took a turn for the worse. 53
      While white prejudice prevailed within American society, evidence shows that the Chinese and Japanese themselves did not share a sense of unity as Asians. Although the two groups tried occasionally to unite in their struggles against oppression, there is little sign that the Chinese and Japanese shared a robust sense of pan-Asian ethnic kinship.121 After the exclusion of Chinese laborers and the influx of Japanese immigrants, Chinese immigrants faced negative bias from some of the Issei. The elite Japanese endeavored to differentiate themselves from the Chinese and subsequently belittled their Asian peers. Nevertheless, with the rise of white antagonism toward Japanese in many western states, Chinese immigrants worked to maximize their social and economic position at the expense of their Japanese counterparts, which was demonstrated specifically during the time of the Alien Land Laws (1913, 1920) and the Immigration Act (1924). Minority groups ingratiated themselves with the ruling class by demonstrating their assimilation and affinity to native society. As illustrated in this essay, Chinese and Japanese in the American West distanced themselves from one another so as not to be blamed or to suffer for the presumed misdeeds of the other group. This in turn kept the existing racial system intact. 54
      The influx of young and aggressive Japanese, however, provoked changes in the Chinese American community. Under the leadership of some elites, Chinese forged their national consciousness as a powerful tool in their struggle with Japanese immigrants. Despite close economic and social interactions between Chinese and Japanese immigrant groups and a shared history of exploitation by white society, the association between the two groups was shattered under the stress of local grievances, as shown in the San Francisco school board crisis, the legislative process of Alien Land Laws, and the enactment of the Immigration Act of 1924. Eventually, leaders of each group embraced nationalism to fight the other. 55
      Chinese elites used nationalism as well to build their own influence, yet with mixed results, as in case of the anti-Japanese boycotts. American interests in the Pacific region further exacerbated competition between the two groups. To the extent that they identified with their own national origins in Asia, conflicts between China and Japan pitted Chinese and Japanese immigrants against each other. The ambivalence of Chinese immigrants toward Japanese immigrants eventually gave way to a hatred of Japan. A strong nationalism thus emerged among Chinese immigrants, which was amply demonstrated in the anti-Japanese boycotts. The local Japanese disparagement of Chinese nationalism further agitated Chinese immigrants. Linking their status in the United States to the fate of China, Chinese immigrants attempted to profit from U.S. hostilities with Japan so as to strengthen their own position in America. The anti-Japanese movement among whites during the early twentieth century wounded the Issei's pride and fueled Chinese nationalism within those immigrant elites who actively launched anti-Japanese boycotts. The boycotts, unfortunately, exposed the difficulty in bringing the entire community together to make a coherent commitment to Chinese nationalism. The development of this type of nationalism created dual burdens for Chinese immigrants, first in the context of the white racism of American society, and second with regard to the international politics of East Asia. 56


NOTES

The author thanks the National Science Council at Taiwan for financially supporting the research work. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor of this journal for their helpful comments, which have enriched this article.

1.  The Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 was passed to decrease the immigration of southern and eastern Europeans by a quota system based on national origin, but it also excluded all Asians due to the ineligibility for citizenship. Japan reacted fiercely against the act as a national humiliation, while Japanese immigrants in the U.S. were disheartened by the law. See Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 38–41, 49.

2.  Edwin Grant Burrows, Chinese and Japanese in Hawaii during the Sino-Japanese Conflict (Honolulu, HI, 1939); Yuji Ichioka, "Japanese Immigrant Nationalism: The Issei and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1941," California History 69, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 260–75, 310–11; Mei Zheng, "Chinese Americans in San Francisco and New York City during the Anti-Japanese War: 1937–1945" (master's thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1990); Renqui Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves (Philadelphia, 1992).

3.  See Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (New York, 2005).

4.  Wang Gungwu, "Migration and Its Enemies," in Conceptualizing Global History (Boulder, CO, 1993), ed. Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens, 131.

5.  This part was inspired by ibid., 135–41. Also see Wang's essay, "Migration History: Some Patterns Revisited," in Global History and Migrations, ed. Wang Gungwu (Boulder, CO, 1997), 15–16.

6.  The anti-Japanese boycott in many Chinese immigrant communities during the period was regarded as an important way of constructing a Chinese American identity. See Shehong Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American (Urbana, IL, 2002).Yet as the author points to the force of the diasporic environment for shaping the distinctive Chinese American identity, she refers to mainstream white society only. The book thus fails to notice that the movement had its sources in the socioeconomic interdependence of Chinese and Japanese and in clashes between them. See Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 85–86.

7.  The newspapers' Chinese titles, Chung Sai Yat Po and Sai Gai Yat Bo, are in their original spellings. Chung Sai Yat Po, published in San Francisco by Ng Poon Chew, a Presbyterian minister and advocate of Chinese American civil rights, was published from 1900 to 1945. Sai Gai Yat Bo was published in the same city from 1909 to 1969. In this study, Chung Sai Yat Po was the only source used for the period before 1909.
      Sai Gai Yat Bo was financially supported by the reform-minded Baohuanghui (later changed to the Chinese Reform Association) and thus differed with the Revolutionary Party (later the KMT, the National Party, after the republic was established in 1912) over China's politics. Chung Sai Yat Po, though inclined to the Chinese Reform Association, took a more impartial and modernized viewpoint with respect to contemporary political issues in China. For the political perspectives of Ng Poon Chew and other Baohuanghui members, see Guanhua Wang, In Search of Justice: The 1905–1906 Chinese Anti-American Boycott (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 85.
      Although the two newspapers may have entertained different opinions regarding Chinese politics, they agreed on many subjects regarding the treatment of Chinese in American society.

8.  Guoyin Cui, Chushi meirimiguo riju (Journal of Chinese minister to the United States, Spain, and Peru), reprinted in Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan (Selections of notes written abroad in the late Qing Dynasty), ed. Department of History, Fujian Normal University (Beijing, 1983), 184.

9.  Liang Qichao, Xindalu youji (Journey to the new continent), reprinted in Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan (Selections of notes written abroad in the late Qing Dynasty), ed. Department of History, Fujian Normal University (Beijing, 1983), 191.

10.  Ibid., 188.

11.  According to Chris Friday, Chinese working in salmon canneries usually earned more than newly arriving Japanese workers, due to the former's higher canning skills and the greater control over recruiting by Chinese contractors. See Chris Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1870–1942 (Philadelphia, 1994), 94–97.

12.  For a discussion of the cannery industry, see ibid., chapter 2, passim, and Kazuo Ito, Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America, trans. Shinichiro Nakamura and Jean S. Gerard (Seattle, WA, 1973), 353–54; for railroads, see Kazuo Ito, Issei, 291–92, 295, 333; for agriculture, see Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle, WA, 1988), 109; Sucheng Chan, This Bitter-sweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910 (Berkeley, CA, 1989), 115, 155–57; and Zaibei Nihonjin Kai (The Association of Japanese in the United States), Zaibei Nihonjin Shi (A history of Japanese in the United States) (Tokyo, 1940), 836–37.

13. Reports of the Immigration Commission, S. Doc. 61st Cong., 2d sess. (1911), vol. 24: Immigrant Labor in Agriculture and Allied Industries of the Western States, 26.

14.  Xu Lingxi (consul of San Francisco), Guanza wushen kaoza Meizhou shangwuji (Observe and investigate the American trade and business in 1908), Yuk Ow research files, AAS ARC 2000/70, Asian American Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

15. Reports of the Immigration Commission, S. Doc. 61st Cong., 2d sess., (1911), vol. 23: Japanese and East Indians in the United States, 114, 208, 234.

16. Dang wu bao gao (Reports of party affairs), Dierci daibiao dahui jishi (record of the 2nd representative conference) of KMT in San Francisco chapter (October 22, 1928), 164–65.

17.  Kazuo Ito, Issei, 360–61, 356.

18.  Ibid., 354, 357, 359.

19.  Ibid., 293–94.

20.  Fijiga Yoichi, ed., Nichi-Bei Kankei Zai Baikoku Nihonjin hatten shiyo (Japanese-American Relationship: The Developmental History of Japanese in the United States) (Oakland, CA, 1927), 52.

21.  David Mas Masumoto, Country Voices: The Oral History of a Japanese American Family Farm Community (Del Rey, CA, 1987), 153.

22.  Gambling had its origins in Chinese immigration. See Raymond Lou, "The Chinese American Community of Los Angeles, 1870–1900: A Case of Resistance, Organization, and Participation" (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1982), chapter 1, passim; also see Liang Qichao, Xindalu youji (Journey to the new continent), reprinted in Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan (Selections of notes written abroad in the late Qing Dynasty), 204–25.

23.  Kazuo Ito, Issei, 342, 413; Masumoto, Country Voices, 19.

24.  The calling of "four" came from the way of playing fan tan. Also see Pei-Chi Liu, Meiguo huaqiao shi (A history of the Chinese in the United States of America), vol. 2 (Taipei, Taiwan,1981), 119–20. For how Japanese recalled the Chinese gambling, see Masumoto, Country Voice, 19–21.

25.  Zheng-chi Kuo, "Hua bu du feng zhi sheng" (Rampant gambling in Chinatown), Qiao bao (Overseas Chinese newspaper), January 23, 1997.

26.  Liang Qichao, Xindalu youji (Journey to the new continent), reprinted in Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan (Selections of notes written abroad in the late Qing Dynasty), 189, 205.

27.  For a good study, see Ivan Light, "From Vice District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns, 1880–1940," Pacific Historical Review 43 (1974): 367–94.

28.  One group that was an exception was the wives of merchants, who constituted the majority of Chinese women in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Other women fought for their rights by challenging immigration laws. See Sucheng Chan, "The Exclusion of Chinese Women, 1870–1943," in Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, ed. Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia, 1991), 94–146.

29.  According to Erika Lee, women made up only 0.7 percent of the total number of Chinese immigrants entering the U.S. in 1900, 9.7 percent in 1910, 20 percent in 1920, and 25.7 percent by 1930. See Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003), 116.

30.  Yuji Ichioka, "Ameyuki-san: Japanese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century America," Amerasia 4, no. 1 (1977): 3–4; Donald Teruo Hata, "Undesirables": Early Immigrants and the Anti-Japanese Movement in San Francisco, 1892–1893 (New York, 1970), 69–70. For a related reference, also see James Francis Warren, Ah ku and karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore, 1870–1940 (New York, 1993).

31.  Chinese prostitutes occupied the older district, which included Waverly Place and Ross Alley. White prostitutes occupied the area between Broadway, Washington, and Kearny Streets, whereas Japanese prostitutes held the outskirts of Chinatown, including Spofford Alley, or operated out of old Chinese brothels in Brooklyn Place. See Pei-Chi Liu, Meiguo huaqiao shi, vol. 2, 612; also, see the same author's book, Meiguo huaqiao yishi (An anecdotal history of the Chinese in the United States of America) (Taipei, Taiwan, 1981), 595–96.

32.  Pei-Chi Liu, Meiguo huaqiao shi, vol. 2, 126–27.

33.  Jin-yuan Yee, "Huaqiao shihua" (A talk of overseas Chinese history), The Chinese Pacific Weekly, January 29, 1949, 16; also see Pei-Chi Liu, Meiguo huaqiao shi, vol. 2, 127.

34.  Lucie Cheng Hirata, "Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth Century America," Signs 5, no. 1 (1979): 13; Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley, CA, 1995), 28; for the clientele of higher-class Chinese prostitutes, also see Pei-Chi Liu, Meiguo huaqiao shi, vol. 2, 127.

35.  Yuji Ichioka, "Ameyuki-san," Amerasia 4, no. 1 (1977): 10.

36.  Azuma, Between Two Empires, 36–40.

37.  Ibid.; also see Donald Teruo Hata, "Undesirables," 74.

38.  Arif Dirlik, "Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America," in Across the Pacific: Asian Americans and Globalization, ed. Evelyn Hu-Dehart (Philadelphia, 1999), 33.

39.  This assertion, however, was different from the reality. For the development of that incident, see Victor Low, The Unimpressible Race: A Century of Educational Struggle by the Chinese in San Francisco (San Francisco, 1982).

40. Chung Sai Yat Po (hereafter CYSP), October 22, 25, 1906, 3; October 26, 1906, 2.

41.  Ibid., October 27, 1906, 1. The advocate pushed the Chinese consul general in San Francisco, Shih-yee Sun, to take action, and in doing so he counseled lawyers regarding the rights of Chinese pupils in California and the United States. See CSYP, November 2, 1906, 3. Also, a letter to the editor rejecting the lawyer's explanation is in CSYP, November 6, 7, 1906, 1.

42.  Ibid., October 27, 1906, 3.

43.  Ibid., October 9, 1906, 3; October 27, 1906, 3; October 29, 1906, 2.

44.  Ibid., February 1, 1907, 2.

45.  In the case of Tape v. Hurley (1885), Joseph and Mary Tape were successful in the lawsuit challenging the San Francisco school board's denial of the right of their daughter, Mamie, to a public education. After the case, the San Francisco Board of Education established a separate Oriental School for Chinese children in Chinatown.

46. CSYP, February 19, 20, 22, 1907, 2.

47.  Ibid., April 22, 1924, 1. Incidentally, around 1907, Chinese students in Japan, along with Korean students, were similarly excluded from Japanese public schools. Acts of excluding Chinese students in Japan had the effect of exacerbating the relationships between Chinese and Japanese immigrants. See CSYP, February 22, 1907, 1.

48. Sai Gai Yat Bo (hereafter SGYB), April 26, 1913, 4.

49. CSYP, April 26, 1913, 3; SGYB, April 28, 1913, 4.

50. SGYB, April 29, 1913, 3.

51. CSYP, May 2, 1913, 1. This principle of collaboration emerged from the anti-American boycott in 1905 and reflected an ideal of universal humanity and a disregard for race and social class. The Chinese boycotters were disgusted with international power politics and had doubts about the inevitable truth in the consequences of competition and evolution based on Darwinism. They instead chose to employ traditional Chinese concepts of universal humanity and emphasized the psychological power of the weak. See Guanhua Wang, In Search of Justice: The 1905–1906 Chinese Anti-American Boycott, 153.

52. SGYB, May 8, 1913, 3.

53. SGYB, May 12, 1913, 3; also see CSYP, May 12, 1913, 2.

54.  As the law of 1913 contained various loopholes, Issei were able to hire lawyers to evade certain of its provisions. For the circumstance surrounding the way the Issei evaded the Alien Land Law of 1913, see Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley, CA, 1977), 63, 88.

55.  See Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (Palo Alto, CA, 2000), 200.

56. CSYP, December 6, 7, 9, 1920, 1.

57.  However, recent studies have uncovered how Chinese immigrants or American-born generations challenged exclusion and thus demanded the same rights for themselves as had all other Americans. See, for example, Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, CA, 1994); Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995); and K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan, eds., Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era (Philadelphia, 1998).

58.  Chinese nationalism had been a force in many Chinese communities overseas. The Qing state was initially hostile to those who left the imperial realm and indifferent to the fate of the Chinese diaspora. But in the late nineteenth century, it recognized the advantages that overseas Chinese could bring. The imperial state expressed its nationalism by selling brevet ranks and titles to many Chinese overseas, following in the model of Confucian gentry culturalism. Up to the republican revolution in 1911, the Qing regime sold countless such ranks and titles to eager buyers. In the meantime, constitutional reformers, namely Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, and their organization, Baohuanghui, also appealed to the national sentiments of the Chinese overseas. Constitutional reformers were more successful than the revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen, as indicated by the many Baohuanghui chapters all over Southeast Asia and the Americas. For the development of nationalism throughout the Chinese diaspora, see Eve Armentrout Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns: Chinese Politics in the Americas and the 1911 Revolution (Honolulu, HI, 1990); Prasenjit Duara, "Nationalists among Transnationals: Overseas Chinese and the Idea of China, 1900–1911," in Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Chinese Transnationalism, ed. Aihwa Ong and Donald M. Nonnini (New York, 1997), 39–60; and Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900–1936 (Chicago, 2001).

59.  Cheryl L. Cole, "A History of the Japanese Community in Sacramento, 1883–1972: Organizations, Businesses, and Generational Response to Majority Domination and Stereotypes" (master's thesis, California State University, Sacramento, 1973), 12.

60.  "Say Chinese Don't Care," New York Times, May 16, 1895. The reporter interviewed those Chinese in New York City.

61.  Zaibei Nihonjin Kai (The Association of Japanese in the United States), Zaibei Nihonjin Shi (A history of Japanese in the United States) (Tokyo, 1940), 667.

62.  Cole, "A History of the Japanese Community in Sacramento, 1883–1972," 14.

63. CSYP, April 25, 30; May 1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 1900.

64.  Ibid., April 25, 30, 1900.

65.  Ibid., May 7, 24, 1900.

66.  Ibid., May 12, 1900.

67.  Ibid., January 13, 1906, 2.

68.  Ibid., June 17, 1906, 2. For the incident in which Japanese scientists were hurt in San Francisco, see also Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, 33.

69. CSYP, June 19, 20, 22, 1906, 2. Nevertheless, CCBA and the Chinese consul did defeat the plan to remove Chinatown from San Francisco.

70.  Ibid., May 21, 1900. For the 1900 bubonic plague, see Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco Chinatown (Berkeley, CA, 2001), 129–46. These pages, however, do not discuss another Asian group, the Japanese, and the possible cooperation between the two groups.

71.  Ibid., May 26 and June 2, 1900. Also see Shin Sekai (The New World), June 2, 4, 1900, 1, for a union between Chinese and Japanese to fight against the San Francisco Board of Health. Yet the union was only temporary and shaky, since both groups distrusted and were estranged from the other. For the Japanese immigrant perspective, especially the view of the elites, see Azuma, Between Two Empires, 39–40.

72. CSYP, July 30, 1900.

73.  As a reflection of America's isolationist mood, Congress passed an immigration law limiting the number of immigrants. The law reduced the maximum number of immigrants from any country to 2 percent of the number of persons from that place as counted in the U.S. population census of 1890. While the law curbed the influx of immigrants from eastern, southern, and central Europe, it also closed off almost completely any immigration from Asia. Yet since Chinese laborers were barred under the Chinese Exclusion Act, the newly restrictive clause hit Japanese immigration hardest. Japanese people interpreted the Immigration Act of 1924 in racial terms. See Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First-Generation Japanese-Immigrants, 1885–1924 (New York, 1990), 247, 249.

74. CSYP, April 22, 23, 1924, 2; May 12, 16, 27, 1924, 1.

75. Young China Morning Paper, May 31, 1924, 2. The paper, however, warned that there was nothing to cheer about, since Chinese exclusion was no less harsh than the 1924 law.
As for the Twenty-one Demands, they were divided into five groups. The first four of the Twenty-one Demands called for Japanese control of Shantung, Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, the southeast coast of China, and the Yangtze Valley. The fifth demand, often considered the most sinister of all, required the employment of Japanese advisers in Chinese political, financial, military, and police institutions, as well as the purchase of at least 50 percent of China's munitions by Japan.

76. SGYB, April 14, 1924, 1; CSYP, April 22, 1924, 1.

77. SGYB, April 19, 21, 29, 1924, 1. Also see CSYP, April 22, 23, 1924, 1.

78. SGYB, April 17, 1924; May 3, 5, 1924, 2.

79.  Ibid., May 19, 1924, 3. The prospects for an Asian coalition against the West, which eventually became a rationale for Japan's expansion, created illusions for certain Chinese intellectuals, such as Dai Jitao, and overseas Chinese during the 1920s. For the case of Dai, see Lu Yan, Re-understanding Japan: Chinese Perspectives, 1895–1945 (Honolulu, HI, 2004); for the case of some overseas Chinese, see Man-Houng Lin, "Overseas Chinese Merchants and Multiple Nationality: A Means for Reducing Commercial Risk, 1895–1935," Modern Asian Studies 35, no. 4 (2001): 985–1009.

80. SGYB, April 17, 1924; May 3, 5, 1924, 2.

81.  For information about returning the indemnity and its possible uses, see SGYB, May 19, 21, 1924, 3; June 16, 1924, 2. When the Immigration Law of 1924 was passed, Chinese immigrants were so overwhelmed by a mixture of suspicion of and estrangement from Japanese immigrants that they ignored the impact of the law on themselves, namely, on the right of entry for foreign-born wives and children of Chinese merchants and of American citizens with Chinese ancestry. See Shehong Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 148–56. The Chinese government used the indemnity to increase the number of professorships in such fields as physics, chemistry, biology, botany, and educational psychology; to create an institute to advance translation skills; and to establish a large library in Beijing. See Luo Xianglin, Liang chen der chushi Meiguo (Envoy of Liang Chen to the United States) (Hong Kong, 1977), 92–99.

82. SGYB, April 29, 1924, 1.

83.  See Pei-Chi Liu, Meiguo huaqiao shi, vol. 1, 563; also see Him Mark Lai, Cong huaqiao dao huaren (From overseas Chinese to Chinese Americans) (Hong Kong, 1992), 286–87. Lai believes that the origin of the anti-Japanese boycott went back as far as the Tatsu Maru incident of 1908, while Liu points to 1915 as the beginning of the Chinese boycott movement. The boycott of Japanese-made goods took place again following the incidents in 1919, 1925, and 1928 and eventually became part of the everyday lives of Chinese in the United States. See Him Mark Lai, Cong huaqiao dao huaren, 287.

84. CSYP, February 29, 1908; March 14, 1908. According to Hsu, Japanese steamship companies joined with American and Canadian companies, beginning in the 1890s, to start regular lines between Hong Kong, Japan, and North America, which were quite popular among Chinese emigrants. See Madeline Y. Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882–1943 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 33–34.

85. CSYP, March 24, 1908.

86.  Fijiga Yoichi, ed., Nichi-Bei Kankei Zai Baikoku Nihonjin hatten shiyo, 152.

87.  For the content of the Twenty-one Demands, see n. 75.

88.  While Chinese students in Japan returned home and protested to the Japanese government, those in U.S. universities, such as Columbia, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, advocated war against Japan and planned to undertake initial military training in America.

89.  For the development of nationalism in the Chinese diaspora during the late Qing and early Republican periods, see McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks, 90–92. The quotation is on ibid., 90; for the fragmentation of nationalism, see ibid., 93.

90.  Him Mark Lai, Cong huaqiao dao huaren, 209.

91. CSYP, February 17, 1915, 1.

92. CSYP, February 23, 1915, 3.

93. Shin Sekai, March 2, 1915.

94. CSYP, February 26, 1915, 2; also March 1, 1915, 3.

95.  For a look at the establishment of the China Mail Steamship Company and how it was linked to Chinese American communities in the United States, see Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 104–10; also see Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943, 187–88. While both works emphasize the significance of the event from the perspective of competition for international power and the establishment of Chinese American identity, they fail to notice the role the Sino-Japanese conflict played within the American West.

96. CSYP, February 19, 24, 25, 1915, 1–2; March 5, 12, 15, 1915, 1–2; April 2, 1915, 7.

97. CSYP, March 2, 1915, 3. In the May Fourth incident of 1919, a similar scenario occurred. See "S. F. Chinese Burn Boycotted Japanese Goods against Nippon," San Francisco Chronicle, December 22, 1919, and "S. F. Chinese Burn Jap Goods," San Francisco Examiner, December 22, 1919.

98. CSYP, February 19, 1915, 1–2; March 4, 1915, 3; March 5, 11, 1915, 1–2.

99. CSYP, editorial, February 19, 1915, 1–2.

100.  For example, see CSYP, December 11, 1931, 4; September 8, 1937, 4; in Chicago and Buffalo, see San-Ming Morning Newspaper, October 9, 1931, 1, and December 5, 1931, 6; in New York, see Ming-chi (Nationalist) Newspaper, August 7, 1937, 9.

101.  Such clashes also occurred within the Japanese immigrant community, where ordinary people did not respond to the appeals of nationalist elites. See Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires (New York, 2005).

102.  See Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 85–86.

103. Shin Sekai (The New World), October 14, 1915, 1; November 1, 1915, 3.

104.  Ibid., November 2, 1915, 3.

105.  Brian Niiya, ed., Encyclopedia of Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present (New York, 2001), 407–08.

106. Shin Sekai, October 9, 1915, 1. For a study of the Chinatown fire and the issue of Chinatown's reconstruction, also see Eiichior Azuma, "Interethnic Conflict under Racial Subordination: Japanese Immigrants and Their Asian Neighbors in Walnut Grove, CA, 1908–1941," Amerasia Journal 20, no. 2 (1994): 33–35.

107. Shin Sekai, October 13, 1915, 3.

108.  Ibid., June 9, 1919, 1.

109.  Ibid., May 15, 1928, 3.

110.  Ibid., May 28, 1928, 7.

111.  Ibid., May 20, 1928, 7.

112.  Ibid., May 23, 1928.

113.  Ibid., May 28, 1928, 7.

114.  Ibid., May 24, 1928, 3.

115.  Yuji Ichioka, The Issei, 177.

116.  For the moral reform of gambling, see Azuma, Between Two Empires, 47–53.

117.  For example, see Shin Sekai, March 26, 1919, 6.

118.  Ibid., April 4, 18, 1919, 6; May 8, 1919, 8.

119.  For instance, ibid., May 20, 1928, 7, regarding the case in Seattle. According to Azuma, some Issei gangsters replaced the monopolizing role of Chinese gambling and controlled numerous gambling dens in California and the Pacific Northwest until the late 1930s. See Azuma, Between two Empires, 59.

120. Shin Sekai, June 20, 1919, 6.

121.  Later, a pan-Asian coalition in the United States sprang from the ethnic and racial consciousness that inspired the drive of various ethnic and racial groups for civil rights, social transformation, and educational reform starting in the 1960s. The Asian American coalition was an offspring of the civil rights movements of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Asian American students, scholars, and community activists tried to recover vanishing or buried pasts and construct a collective identity in the struggle for equality and the promise of American democracy. For more information, see Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities (Philadelphia, 1992); Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia Guide to Asian American History (New York, 2001); and Sucheng Chan, ed., Remapping Asian American History (Walnut Creek, CA, 2003).

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