Issei Quotes

This is the way it ought to be, he thought to himself, to be able to dance with a girl you like and really get a kick out of it because everything’ on an even keel and one’s worries are of the usual ones of unpaid bills and sickness in the family and being late to work too often. Wh can’t it be that way for me? Nobody’s looking twice at us. Nobody’s asking me where I was during the war or what the hell I am doing back on the coast. There’s no trouble to be had without looking for it. Everything’s the same, just as it used to be. No bad feelings except for those that have always been and probably always will. It’s a matter of attitude. Mine needs changing. I’ve got to love the world the way I used to. I’ve got to love it and the people so I’ll feel good, and feeling good will make life worthwhile. There’s no point in crying about what’s done. There’s a place for me and Emi and Freddie here on the dance floor and out there in the hustle of things if we’ll let it be that way. I’ve been fighting it and hating it and letting my bitterness against myself and Ma and Pa and even Taro throw the whole universe out of perspective. I want only to go on living and be happy. I’ve only to let myself do so.

If anything made that country habitable it was the mountains themselves, purple when the sun dropped and so sharply etched in the morning light the granite dazzled almost more than the bright snow lacing it. The nearest peaks rose ten thousand feet higher than the valley floor, with Whitney, the highest, just off to the south. They were important for all of us, but especially for the Issei. Whitney reminded Papa of Fujiyama, that is, it gave him the same kind of spiritual sustenance.

Podczas rozmowy kwalifikacyjnej zapytal mnie,czy mowie po japonsku. Wyjasnilam, ze pochodze z Gardeny, na co odparl: "Och, jestes nisei," jakby to slowo oznaczalo, ze cos wie na moj temat. "Zapomniala pani o swoich korzeniach, chociaz nalezy pani dopiero do pierwszego pokolenia urodzonego na amerykanskiej ziemi. Pani rodzice, issei, pielegnowali dziedzictwo swojej kultury. Nie chce pani uczyc sie japonskiego? Nie chce pani odwiedzic kraju przodkow?" Dlugo meczyly mnie wyrzuty sumienia i zastanawialam sie, dlaczego jeszcze nie mowie po japonsku i dlaczego wole leciec do Paryza, Stambulu czy Barcelony zamiast do Tokio. Ale potem pomyslalam, kogo to obchodzi? Pytal ktos Kennedy'ego, czy mowi po gaelicku i odwiedzil Dublin albo czy codziennie jada ziemniaki na kolacje i zbiera obrazy przedstawiajace iralandzkie skrzaty? Wiec dlaczego my mielibysmy pamietac o swoich korzeniach? Czy nie jest mi blizsza kultura tego kraju, w ktorym sie urodzilam?

The Washington Alien Land Law, enacted in 1921 with the issei in mind, prohibited those ineligible for citizenship from buying or leasing land.

while quietly purchasing land in the names of their American children, who would legally cultivate the plots upon turning twenty-one. But in 1923 an amendment passed, in the wake of the devastating 1922 Supreme Court decision denying issei citizenship, which eliminated this loophole.

while quietly purchasing land in the names of their American children, who would legally cultivate the plots upon turning twenty-one. But in 1923 an amendment passed, in the wake of the devastating 1922 Supreme Court decision denying issei citizenship, which eliminated this loophole. Malcolm Douglas, the prosecuting attorney for King County, encompassing the White River Valley, vowed to pursue violators with zeal. If he proved successful, he proclaimed in the Auburn Globe-Republican, he would drive Japanese from the county.

The Issei were already barred from buying land in California, and by 1920 the state was making it hard for them to even lease.

I can’t help but feel he’s a little disappointed in me because I don’t bow whenever I see him. When he interviewed me, he wanted to know whether I spoke any Japanese. I explained that I was born in Gardena. He said, Oh, you nisei, as if knowing that one word means he knows something about me. You’ve forgotten your culture, Ms. Mori, even though you’re only second generation. Your issei parents, they hung on to their culture. Don’t you want to learn Japanese? Don’t you want to visit Nippon? For a long time I felt bad. I wondered why I didn’t want to learn Japanese, why I didn’t already speak Japanese, why I would rather go to Paris or Istanbul or Barcelona rather than Tokyo. But then I thought, Who cares? Did anyone ask John F. Kennedy if he spoke Gaelic and visited Dublin or if he ate potatoes every night or if he collected paintings of leprechauns? So why are we supposed to not forget our culture? Isn’t my culture right here since I was born here? Of course I didn’t ask him those questions. I just smiled and said, You’re so right, sir. She sighed. It’s a job. But I’ll tell you something else. Ever since I got it straight in my head that I haven’t forgotten a damn thing, that I damn well know my culture, which is American, and my language, which is English, I’ve felt like a spy in that man’s office. On the surface, I’m just plain old Ms. Mori, poor little thing who’s lost her roots, but underneath, I’m Sofia and you better not fuck with me.

No puedo evitar pensar que está un poco decepcionado conmigo porque no le hago una reverencia cada vez que lo veo. Cuando me entrevistó, me preguntó si hablaba japonés. Le expliqué que había nacido en Gardena. Oh, es usted una nisei, me dijo, como si conocer esa palabra significara que sabía algo de mí. Ha olvidado usted su cultura, señorita Mori, y eso que solamente es japonesa de segunda generación. Sus padres issei, en cambio, han conservado su cultura. ¿No quiere usted aprender japonés? ¿No quiere visitar Nippon?

THINGS THEY’VE TAKEN my home my friends my community I’m with Yum-yum when her mom sells her piano. Lucky for them, they own the building, so they can rent it out while they’re gone. Or, technically, Yum-yum owns it. It’s in her name, because the California Alien Land Law doesn’t allow Issei to own property here. But, homeowners or not, they’re as Japanese as the rest of us, so they still have to move.

People turn to glare at us. Nearby, one of the Issei bachelors mutters, “Gasa-gasa.” I look away, red-faced with shame.

Uncle Jimmy was there too, and he [James Hogue] stuck his head into the burning trash and came back out and his hair was all singed up and smoking and his eyebrows were burned off and all that and—he had some like second-degree burns on his face and that sort of thing and everybody was asking him like, ‘What? What did you do?’ and he’s like, ‘I wanted to see the trash burn.’ 

The silence of metaphor accompanies the act of cruelty, as for example with the cannibalistic Japanese who moved directly from the metaphor of love to devouring that marvellous Dutch girl. Or the woman who made a present of her eye to the man who said he was so in love with her gaze. The effacement of metaphor is characteristic of the object and its cruelty. Words are left with only a literal, material tenor. They are no longer signs in a language. This is the silence of pure objectality.

Under the Naturalization Act of 1790, only “free white” persons could become citizens, and Issei remained “aliens” no matter how long they lived in the country.98 Their children, the Nisei, became citizens at birth, as called for in the Fourteenth Amendment. Both Munson and Ringle concluded that Japanese in America posed no significant threat to national security.

no Japanese problem existed on the West Coast. If anything, he worried more about the threat that angry white mobs posed to Japanese communities.100 Despite their conclusions, the federal government labeled the Issei “enemy aliens” and moved against them after Pearl Harbor.

With these marriages came children. Many children. “At the turn of the century, there were only 269 children; by 1910 the number had grown to 4,502; and by 1920 it had multiplied more than sixfold to 29,672.” And so, a measure to limit the Japanese population on the West Coast vastly increased it. Moreover, to the nativists’ chagrin, since those children were birthright citizens, they would have the very rights that the anti-Japan faction was attempting to deny to their parents. Thus most families became a mix of the native born, or second generation—called “Nisei”—and immigrants, or, literally, first generation—“ Issei.

Gordon Hirabayashi was born in Washington State to Christian Issei parents whose flower farm had been seized under restrictive land laws. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Washington, and in the summer of 1940, he attended a YMCA leadership conference at Columbia University in New York, during which he became a pacifist. When he returned home, Hirabayashi joined the Quakers and registered as a conscientious objector. After a curfew was declared for anyone of Japanese ancestry, Hirabayashi decided to resist, continuing to move about freely as a law-abiding citizen. Instead of registering for relocation, Hirabayashi turned himself in to the FBI with the intention of creating a test case of the government’s right to incarcerate Japanese Americans without due process of law.