Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet



I've written before about how Asians tend to overassimilate, since their ancestral cultures emphasize conformity. But of all the Asian ethnic groups in the United States, Japanese Americans are the ones who have assimilated the most. They have the greatest percentage of outmarriage of all the Asian American ethnic groups, and this is true for both men and women. Japanese Americans have married primarily white and Chinese Americans.

There are a number of reasons why their community is disappearing. Although the JA community has been in the US for a hundred years, it hasn't had a constant influx of immigrants, like the Chinese American or Filipino American communities. As a result, most Japanese Americans are third, fourth and fifth generation.

But a big factor in the assimilation of the JA community was, of course, World War II and the internment camps. Being marked as an enemy based on your eye shape had profound effects on the psyches of many Japanese Americans that have lasted generations later.

Prior to World War II, there was a huge Japanese American community on the West Coast. The relocation had removed this community, and when the war was over, the JA community dissipated across the United States. Very few returned to the West Coast.

In an effort to mitigate post-war animosity that would result when Japanese Americans were reintroduced back into mainstream society, the War Relocation Authority told the JA community three things:

1) Don't go back to the West Coast to live.
2) Don't cluster together.
3) Assimilate as much as possible and don't call attention to your Japanese heritage.

The trauma of internment had stripped the JA community of cultural pride and knowledge. When you don't have a proud cultural heritage to give you strength and perspective, then you're more prone to being influenced by the greater society, who may not have your needs in mind.


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Comments

that's good stuff, james. i had always assumed japanese americans assimilate well, but not to that extent.
Invasian said…
Wow, that's disappointing that some have assimilated so much that they are being washed out of our society.
I guess one important thing to take out of it is to always hold on to your culture no matter what the dominant one is.
Hey, really interesting article.

Can't help but be a bit puzzled at the slight negative tone though... its a shame when culture is lost, but is outmarriage not a good thing as well? Why not take that as a sign of increasing acceptance of Japanese Americans by the mainstream? I think it'd be far more worrying if the rate of outmarriage was noticeably low.
J said…
Outmarriage is like everything else: not inherently good or bad. It can be a sign of transculturation in one country or it can be sign of colonialism in another.

I don't think it's a sign that Americans are more accepting of the Japanese. If it is "acceptance," then the acceptance is conditional: you have to conform to us and don't remind us of the past.

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