A look into history of Japanese Americans in relation to other communities in Chicago, IL as a way to understand how racial solidarity and racial tension have impacted the identity of Asian American.

1. Know Our History!
Intersections of tension and solidarity through a Chicago and national lens

2. Intros + Agenda

3. Agenda
● Intros
● Pre-WWII history
● Breakout room #1
● Birth of Asian American as a
Political Identity
● Eric Langowski: Resettlement
and Redress
● Breakout room #2
● JJ Ueunten: Current day
Solidarity
● Breakout room #3

4. Recording We will be recording the main room of this
presentation! If you would like to stay off the
recording, you may turn off your camera and
your name will not be seen.
Breakout rooms will not be recorded. Please
put at * next to your name if you cannot
participate in the breakout rooms.

5. Pre - WWII (Nationally)

6. Oxnard Sugar Beet Strike of 1903
● Formation of the
Japanese-Mexican Labor
Association
● First successful agricultural
strike in Southern
California
● Mexican members of JMLA
backed Japanese members
when they were refused
union status

7. Racial Divides in Seattle
● Both groups faced similar discrimination, but had
different tactics to combat it
○ NAACP: protests, lawsuits, and marches
○ JACL: urged assimilation
● By 1920s, had started to create communities and
resources
○ Tanomoshi - Japanese community venture
capitalist funding for new businesses
● By 1930’s strong difference in economic mobility

8. Black Response to Anti-Japanese Sentiment
“We are with the President in the California
muddle, for as California would treat the
Japanese she would also treat Negroes. It is not
that we desire to attend schools with the whites at
all, per se, but the principle involved in the
attempt to classify us as inferiors- not because we
are necessarily inferior, but on the grounds of
color- forms the crux of our protest.”
- Colored American Magazine, XII (March,
1907), 168-69.
● Most Black Americans had sympathy towards
Japanese Americans, and saw anti-Japanese
sentiment as precedent towards all racism
against non-whites
● Black publications cautioned their readers
against joining in on opposing Japanese
Americans
● Not all agreed
○ Shouldn’t take on other community’s problems
○ Should side with whites
○ Fates are not tied together
○ Financial stake in Japanese laborers

9. Chicago Defender:
April 19, 1924

10. El Monte Berry Strike of 1933
● A strike on labor conditions stemming from the
Great Depression involving Mexican, Japanese,
and white workers
● Low support from Japanese farm operators, who
oversaw 80% of the by leasing from white farm
owners
● Japanese community organized family members
and community members as scabs to work the
land during the strike
● Shows the shift in power dynamics between
Mexican and Japanese Americans

11. Japanese Settler Colonialism in Hawai’i
● First 153 workers came
from Japan in 1868 by
request
● Sugar cane plantations
seen as an ideal emigration
destination
● By 1920 Japanese
population in Hawai’i peaks
at 43%

12. Pre - WWII (Chicago)

13. Chicago’s name comes from the Algonquian
people
1832 Black Hawk War and 1933 Treaty of
Chicago cedes Native land to Europeans and
forces Native Americans out of the Chicago
area
“In 1833, Chicago was a wilderness outpost
of just 350 residents, clumped around a
small military fort on soggy land where the
Chicago River trickled into Lake
Michigan...By the end of the century, this
desolate swamp had been transformed into a
modern metropolis of 1.7 million, known the
world over for its dense web of railroads,
cruelly efficient slaughterhouses, fiery blast
furnaces, and soaring skyscrapers.”
(Smithsonian)

14. 1893 - Japanese people are sent
to Chicago to build Japan’s
exhibit at the World’s Fair
1920’s - about 300 Japanese
Americans living in Chicago
1780’s - Slave trading brings
African Americans to Chicago
1910-1930 - The Great
Migration begins: large
groups of African Americans
flee the South. Primarily to
Chicago’s South Side.
Early 1900’s - Mexican immigrants
arrive in Chicago and settle in
established immigrant
communities
1940’s - Puerto Rican immigrants
come to Chicago, create their own
neighborhoods in existing white
neighborhoods

15. Forced to settle and stay in “Black
Belt” neighborhoods on Chicago’s
South Side.
“Tuberculosis and other diseases spread;
the infant mortality and overall death
rates were higher in the Black Belt than
in the rest of Chicago.” (Chicago Public
Library)
1940’s: as the area grows, there are riots
by white families who live on the “Black
Belt” border and cannot afford to move.
“Early constructions in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries of what it
meant to be Japanese to those who were
not Japanese influenced the meanings of
“Japaneseness”
“The first two decades of Japanese
American history in Chicago, the 1940s
and 1950s, were filled with the
contradictions and uncertainties of how
Japanese Americans would fit into a
black-and-white city.”
(Double Crossed)
Great Depression and WW2 drives blue
collar jobs, and white families, out of
Pilsen and into other suburbs
Not long after, the Eisenhower Express
project takes the homes of thousands of
people and contributes to Pilsen
become a hub for Mexican families.

16. 1923 Tribune article
via Southside Weekly
“[Mexico’s] products are… wastelands,
destroyed resources, illiteracy, poverty,
and ignorance… The great masses of
primitive peoples are unfit for
self-government and educated classes
equally so.”
CPD clubbed, shot and killed Mexicans
and allowed white people to destroy
Mexican property
Race riots of 1919
17 year old Eugene Williams stoned to
death by group of white men. The men
are not arrested.
Riots break out for days
Building tension between Black and
white people in Chicago

17. Breakout Room #1!
- Introductions
- Name, pronouns
- Do you have any family history
pre-WWII in the US? What are
their stories?

18. Birth of Asian American as a
Political Identity

20. “To succeed in America is, somehow, to be complicit with the idea of America — which means
that at some level you’ve made peace with its rather ugly past.” -Vijay Iyer

24. Chicago Resettlement
Guest Speaker: Eric Langowski

25. Breakout Room #2!
- Where was your family
post-WWII? What was their
experience?
- Did anything from this section
stand out to you?
- What questions does this bring
up?

26. Current Day Solidarity

27. Tsuru for Solidarity

28. Fights for Reparations (HR 40)

29. Protesting “Muslim Ban”

30. Letters for Black Lives
https://lettersforblacklives.com/
やさしい日本語
Translated
Japanese Letter

31. Nikkei Uprising

32. Nikkei Uprising
Guest Speaker: JJ Ueunten

33. A group of Japanese/Americans in Chicago
organizing towards collective liberation of
all peoples
● Show up to struggles for liberation led
by directly impacted people and
communities
● Expand, shift, and create narratives of
what it means to be Nikkei in a way
that our reasons for fighting for
liberation becomes clear and invites
more Nikkei to take action

34. Focus areas:
● Incarceration (Cook County
Jail, Nikkei Abolition Study
Group, Immigration
Detention, Defund Workshop)
● Japanese Imperialism and
Colonialism (Workshops,
Global Day of Action for
“Comfort Women” photo)

35. Why organize as Nikkei?
● We’ve been harmed by war and racism,
including WWII incarceration in the U.S.
● Model Minority myth helps uphold white
supremacy
● We’ve benefitted from, and been harmed by
imperialism and colonialism (Japanese,
U.S.)
● Space to process the complexities of our
positions and experiences

36. Stay Connected:
● nikkeiuprising@gmail.com
● @nikkeiuprising on Instagram
● facebook.com/NikkeiUprising
Get Involved:
● Attend workshops and/or
organizers meetings
● Come to Cook County Jail
demo
● Join the Nikkei Abolition Study
Group
● Support fundraiser for solidarity
rally at St. Louis County Jail

37. Breakout Room #3!
- What fears, concerns, and
hesitations come up around you
doing solidarity work?
- How will you be more free when
everyone is more free?