| \n Title\n | \n\n Nisei: The Quiet Americans\n | \n
|---|---|
| \n Author\n | \n\n Bill Hosokawa\n | \n
| \n Original Publisher\n | \n\n William Morrow\n | \n
| \n Original Publication Date\n | \n\n 1969\n | \n
| \n Current Publisher\n | \n\n University Press of Colorado\n | \n
| \n Current Publication Date\n | \n\n 2002\n | \n
| \n Pages\n | \n\n 522/570\n | \n
| \n WorldCat Link\n | \n\n \n https://search.worldcat.org/title/51375\n \n | \n
\n An influential popular history of Japanese Americans by\n \n Japanese American Citizens League\n \n (JACL)-affiliated journalist\n \n Bill Hosokawa\n \n ,\n \n Nisei: The Quiet Americans\n \n was controversial both for its title and for its seeming embrace of the \"\n \n model minority\n \n \" stereotype.\n
\n \n\n The origins of\n \n Nisei: The Quiet Americans\n \n stem from the\n \n Japanese American Research Project\n \n , which began in 1960 as the Issei History Project. One of the three main goals of the project from the outset was \"to publish a definitive history of the Japanese Americans.\" While envisioned as a scholarly work, JARP Director\n \n T. Scott Miyakawa\n \n decided to also commission a popular history, given, in his words, the \"unhurried pace of academia.\" While JARP considered other authors, included best-selling novelist James Michener, they commissioned\n \n Denver Post\n \n journalist and longtime\n \n \n Pacific Citizen\n \n \n columnist Bill Hosokawa to write the book in 1967.\n \n \n [1]\n \n \n
\n\n Drawing on documents and oral history interviews conducted as part of JARP, Hosokawa told Joe Oyama that he took twenty-two months to write the book, writing two hours a day after work and all day on weekends. Writing\n \n Nisei\n \n took an estimated seven hundred hours, leading Hosokawa to temporarily give up fishing, his favorite hobby. In 1968, JACL worked with literary agent John Hawkins to seek a publisher, eventually selecting William Morrow & Company over several other bids in early 1969. Hosokawa's original title for the book was \"Americans with Japanese Faces.\" However, based on its own market research, Morrow and its executive editor Howard Cady determined that this title would be difficult to market. Hosokawa came up with \"Nisei: The Quiet Americans\" as an alternative, which Morrow felt they could work with.\n \n \n [2]\n \n \n
\n\n When the new title was announced in the summer of 1969, there was almost immediate objection from a segment of the Japanese American community. In the context of rising activism by Japanese Americans—in 1969, the first Asian American Studies courses were being taught in West Coast colleges and universities, the JACL was leading a campaign to\n \n repeal Title II of the Internal Security Act\n \n , and the first\n \n pilgrimage to a concentration camp site\n \n would take place a few months later, for example—many objected to the \"quiet\" adjective. Led by\n \n Edison Uno\n \n , one of the main figures in the Title II repeal campaign, the Civil Rights Workshop of No. Calif.-Western Nevada JACL District Council passed a resolution calling for the JACL's national board to \"reconsider the title of the JACL-sponsored book written by William Hosokawa\" on July 13. In addition to objecting to the word \"Nisei,\" since the book was supposed to be on the history of all Japanese Americans, the dissenters also felt that the adjective \"quiet\" perpetuated the \"model minority\" myth. Raymond Okamura argued that the title served as a \"propaganda device to tell Black Americans, and Mexican Americans to behave like 'good little Orientals' who know their place.\"\n \n \n [3]\n \n \n
\n\n As a result of the organizers subsequently calling for a letter writing campaign to Morrow urging a change to the title at the end of July, Cady reported receiving \"dozens and dozens of protest, letters, cards, and telegrams\" with only a single letter supporting the \"quiet\" title. By the end of August, Morrow had agreed to change the title to \"Nisei: A Valiant Odyssey.\" However, JARP Chairman Shig Wakamatsu and the JACL's executive board objected to the name change, since it would delay publication until after the holidays. Hosokawa was amenable to the name change until organizers threatened a boycott of the book if the title wasn't changed. Finding \"such pressure reprehensible and intolerable,\" Hosokawa compared the boycott threat to \"the kind of censorship that existed in Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan prior to World War II, and which exists today in Soviet Russia.\" In the end, the book was published as scheduled in November 1969 under the title\n \n Nisei: The Quiet Americans\n \n .\n \n \n [4]\n \n \n
\n\n \n Nisei: The Quiet Americans\n \n is divided into three parts: \"Part One: The Early Years\" (14 chapters, 220 pages) covers years prior to World War II; \"Part Two: The Years of Travail\" (10 chapters, 212 pages) covers the World War II years; and \"The Years of Fulfillment\" (3 chapters, 34 pages) briefly covers the postwar era. A foreword by Harvard historian Edwin O. Reischauer, a leading Japan scholar and former American Ambassador to Japan, claimed that Japanese American history \"has been the great American success story writ large—a Horatio Alger tale of an ethnic group.\" While the book is illustrated with many photographs and other visuals, there are no footnotes despite ostensibly drawing from newly discovered JARP derived primary sources.\n
\n\n Mainstream reviews were primarily positive and largely reinforced elements of the \"model minority\" stereotype, with reviewers praising Hosokawa's \"lack of bitterness\" or \"rancor,\" his \"detachment,\" and his \"essentially calm telling of this bitterly tragic part of the Nisei story.\" A review in the\n \n Arizona Republic\n \n called it \"an inspiring account of how an ambitious and motivated minority overcame obstacles sufficient to crush people of lesser fortitude.\" Historian Alice Yang wrote that these reviews \"confirmed the fears of Hosokawa’s critics,\" citing the Nisei \"success story\" and explicitly or implicitly drawing comparisons to other minorities.\n \n \n [5]\n \n \n
\n\n Academic reviews and reaction from within the Japanese American community were more mixed. While historian\n \n Roger Daniels\n \n praised Hosokawa's \"vivid, personal style,\" he also faulted him for the \"use [of] memoir and interview materials somewhat uncritically\" and for being \"too smug\" about the \"happy ending.\" T. Scott Miyakawa—who had once been the director of JARP—questioned the \"relative neglect of the East Coast Issei contributions.\" In a caustic review originally published in the Asian American Movement newspaper\n \n Gidra\n \n , historian\n \n Yuji Ichioka\n \n faulted Hosokawa for overemphasizing \"loyalty\" and success, citing his failure to \"to recognize, let alone analyze, the price Nisei have had to pay for their loyalty obsession\" and claiming that his \"theme is totally out of touch with the hard realities of the time.\" While acknowledging the book's \"general excellence,\" Fred Hirasuna lamented that the \"Issei portion of the Hosokawa book is incidental to the Nisei and the JACL story,\" given it origins.\n \n \n [6]\n \n \n
\n\n Later reassessments of the book by scholars placed the book in the context of its time. Katie L. Furuyama noted the omission of stories of unrest in the concentration camps that \"suggests a larger authorial narrative that mutes mentions of protest or resistance among the Japanese-ancestry population that might suggest weakened American patriotism or a disloyal pro-Japanese sentiment.\" Ellen Wu saw a story in those who protested the book and its title that \"not only told of a wider dissatisfaction among Japanese Americans with the model minority pigeonholing, but also gestured to alternative visions of community and identity bursting open in the late 1960s and early 1970s.\" While citing as a \"significant weakness\" the focus on the West Coast to the exclusion of Hawai`i and other parts of the continent, Greg Robinson see the book as a measuring stick of sorts that \"offers scholars the opportunity to measure how drastically the field has changed since its initial publication, both in the size of the historical literature and the nature of dominant interpretations.\"\n \n \n [7]\n \n \n
\n\n In commissioning the book, the JACL guaranteed sales of 10,000 books and early books were widely distributed by the organization including to some 500 government officials. Released in November 1969, it topped the 10,000 mark by the end of January 1970 and reached 14,000 by May of 1970. A Japanese translation of the book followed at the end of 1971. The University of Colorado Press published revised editions of the book in 1992 and 2002 that included a new afterword that includes the\n \n Redress Movement\n \n . Hosokawa went to write two other books that can be viewed as companion volumes to\n \n Quiet Americans\n \n ,\n \n East to America: A History of the Japanese in the United States\n \n , co-authored by Robert A. Wilson (1980) and\n \n JACL in Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American Citizens League\n \n (1982), both also published by Morrow.\n \n \n [8]\n \n \n
\n \n \n\n \n \n Nisei: The Quiet Americans\n \n \n
\n\n This item has been made freely available in the\n \n Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration\n \n , a collaborative project with\n \n Internet Archive\n \n .\n
\n\n Furuyama, Katie L. \"Imagining Equality, Constructing Ethnicity, Race, Identity, and Nation: The Japanese American Citizens League and the League of United Latin American Citizens.\" Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 2012.\n
\n\n Murray, Alice Yang.\n \n Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress\n \n . Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008.\n
\n\n Robinson, Greg.\n \n After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics\n \n . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.\n
\n\n Wu, Ellen.\n \n The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority\n \n . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.\n
\n\n \n Arizona Republic\n \n , Feb. 6, 1970. [\"But it is an inspiring account of how an ambitious and motivated minority overcame obstacles sufficient to crush people of lesser fortitude.\"]\n
\n\n Beroth, Janet M.\n \n Hartford Courant\n \n , Mar. 15, 1970. [\"And the best part of this sorry mess is the lack of bitterness expressed by these people!\"]\n
\n\n Boesch, Paul.\n \n Houston Chronicle\n \n , Feb. 1, 1970. [\"Like most people, Hosokawa and the Nisei are occupied in trying to discover themselves, to find the reason why they have been able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps so that they can pass it along to other minorities.\"]\n
\n\n \"Chattanooga News-Free Press\n \n , Feb. 15, 1970. [\"The author’s last sentence said his writing has 'been an effort to provide an understanding.' He achieves his purpose, and the effort is notably praiseworthy.\"]\n \n
\n\n Cummings, William K.\n \n American Journal of Sociology\n \n 80.2 (Sep. 1974): 557–62. [\"Hosokawa gives us a detailed and exceptionally well written history.\"]\n
\n\n Dalfiume, Richard M.\n \n American Historical Review\n \n 75.6 (Oct. 1970): 1786–87. [\"The fact that Mr. Hosokawa experienced much of what he writes about adds to the interest of this well-written book, which is aimed at a popular audience.\"]\n
\n\n Daniels, Roger.\n \n Pacific Historical Review\n \n 39.3 (Aug. 1970): 395–96. [\"“The major disappointment of the book is its failure to analyze crucial and bitter cleavages within the Japanese American community, cleavages exacerbated by the cooperation that the Japanese American Citizens League gave to the federal authorities.\"]\n
\n\n Furukawa, Dean.\n \n Amerasia Journal\n \n 19.l (1993): 207–08. [\"Notably missing is the dark side of Japanese Americans. Do criminals or notorious characters, or even mean Japanese American persons, exist?\"]\n
\n\n Hill, Gladwin.\n \n \n New York Times\n \n \n , Dec. 21, 1969. [\"Bill Hosokawa, a\n \n Denver Post\n \n editor, went through the evacuation experience, yet, remarkably, eschews first-person commentary entirely and covers the subject with a similar detachment.\"]\n
\n\n Hirasuna, Fred.\n \n Fresno JACL Newsletter\n \n , Feb. 23, 1970. [\"We take nothing way (sic) from the general excellence of Bill Hosokawa’s book. We urge you to read it.\"]\n
\n\n Honicker, Dolph.\n \n Nashville Tennessean\n \n , Feb. 22, 1970. [\"But Hosokawa’s book is of vital importance today if for no other reason that this: it shows that bigots never improve their vocabulary.\"]\n
\n\n Hurlbert, Roy.\n \n Peninsula Living\n \n , Feb. 14, 1970. [\"The great majority of American Japanese will regard this book as the 'bible' of the Issei and Nisei struggle in combatting white racism and economic adversity.\"]\n
\n\n Ichioka, Yuji.\n \n Gidra\n \n , Jan. 1970, 17. [\"Mr. Hosokawa’s book is popular history. It fits the classic genre of histories written by other ethnic groups which might be labled 'We Too Made A Contribution.'\"]\n
\n\n \n \n Kirkus Reviews\n \n \n , Nov. 12, 1969. [\"Mr. Hosokawa must also be a quiet American; there is no trace of rancor in this account or at the continuing evidence of racial mistrust.\"]\n
\n\n McGloin, John B.\n \n America\n \n , Mar. 14, 1970, 280. [\"Still, the author’s essentially calm telling of this bitterly tragic part of the Nisei story is especially commendable.\"]\n
\n\n Miyakawa, T. Scott.\n \n Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science\n \n 391 (Sept. 1970): 204–06. [\"Hosokawa, an outstanding journalist, has written the first comprehensive story of the Japanese Americans. His is a fascinating narrative, but also a serious work useful for many classrooms.\"]\n
\n\n Robinson, Greg. \"Updating Historiography on Japanese Americans.\"\n \n Journal of American Ethnic History\n \n 22.4 (Summer 2003): 67–71. [\"Beyond interpreting the lived experience of the Nikkei, it remains valuable to assess and comprehend those forces that brought these images into being and those which have so dramatically changed them since\n \n Nisei\n \n 's initial appearance.]\n
\n\n Takahara, Kumiko.\n \n Explorations in Sights and Sounds\n \n 13 (1993): 30–31. [\"The book is not a rigorously objective history of Nisei, however, and is marked with personal prejudice and deficiencies.\"]\n
\n