Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-1-2025
Abstract
This article examines the first cohort of Japanese American voters in California in the interwar years, in order to explore the construction of racialized parameters on Japanese American political agency. Inter-imperial competition between the United States and Japan over the future of the Pacific, along with the popular and legal linkage of race and citizenship, produced a persistent distrust of Japanese American voters. Although Japanese Americans shaped their political strategies to appease these suspicions, militarized state demands for loyalty after the attack on Pearl Harbor sharply contracted their options from a range of diverse ideologies and partisanship to a narrow political spectrum based on loyalty. The specific racialization of Asians as “perpetual foreigners” in the context of military conflict produced unique political constraints for Japanese Americans.
Recommended Citation
Vivian Yan-Gonzalez; Left or Right, Loyal or Disloyal: Ideology, Partisanship, and Empire in the Construction of Interwar Japanese American Politics. Pacific Historical Review 1 August 2025; 94 (3): 299–335. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2025.94.3.299
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association
Included in
American Politics Commons, Asian American Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, Legal Commons, Other History Commons, Political History Commons, Public History Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in Pacific Historical Review, volume 94, issue 3, in 2025. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2025.94.3.299