Dissertation Information for Eric WalzNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: Japanese immigration and community building in the Interior West, 1882-1945 Abstract: The history of Japanese immigration to the United States, the subsequent growth of ethnic communities, and the ability of these communities to survive war-time relocation has profited from recent studies of Japanese American communities from Hood River, Oregon, to Cortez, California. Despite the growing interest, immigrant Japanese communities in places like Honeyville, Utah, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Rexburg, Idaho, Maricopa County, Arizona, and Colorado's San Luis Valley remain largely uninvestigated. In these non-Pacific Coast states, Japanese immigrants worked as miners, railroad workers, and farmers; developed viable communities with ethnic associations, farm and labor associations, language schools, and religious institutions; and experienced the trauma of World War II persecution and relocation, though in significantly different ways from those living in the more studied communities of California, Oregon, and Washington. Like their coastal relatives, these immigrants suffered from national laws that barred them from citizenship, state laws that restricted property rights, racial prejudice that created social segregation, and economic competition that spurred violence and vandalism. In addition, they endured these infringements to personal liberty geographically isolated from both their cultural homeland and the support of the larger ethnic settlements of the West Coast. Using oral history collections, interviews, diary entries, newspaper accounts, organization records, and journal articles, this dissertation begins the investigation of these Interior communities by reviewing their Japanese roots and the immigration process, analyzing the factors that led them to the Interior as opposed to Hawai'i or the West Coast, demonstrating how they developed and what held them together (cultural background, common industry, economic and social associations, education, and religion), discussing the effects of World War II, evacuation, and internment, and finally by suggesting their significance in American history.The dissertation concludes that Interior Japanese immigrants came from highly organized rural communities in Japan where they suffered from the adverse social, political, and economic consequences attendant to modernization and industrialization; that the decision to emigrate was an intensely individual experience motivated by educational, military, and familial concerns but economics played the major role; that immigrants came to the Interior in response to economic opportunity and social connections; that as they settled in Interior locations they created traditional family and community associations familiar to pre-emigration Japan; that the World War II experience, despite the lack of general internment; significantly altered pre-war relationships within and without the The history of Japanese immigration to the United States, the subsequent growth of ethnic communities, and the ability of these communities to survive war-time relocation has profited from recent studies of Japanese American communities from Hood River, Oregon, to Cortez, California. Despite the growing interest, immigrant Japanese communities in places like Honeyville, Utah, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Rexburg, Idaho, Maricopa County, Arizona, and Colorado's San Luis Valley remain largely uninvestigated. In these non-Pacific Coast states, Japanese immigrants worked as miners, railroad workers, and farmers; developed viable communities with ethnic associations, farm and labor associations, language schools, and religious institutions; and experienced the trauma of World War II persecution and relocation, though in significantly different ways from those living in the more studied communities of California, Oregon, and Washington. Like their coastal relatives, these immigrants suffered from national laws that barred them from citizenship, state laws that restricted property rights, racial prejudice that created social segregation, and economic competition that spurred violence and vandalism. In addition, they endured these infringements to personal liberty geographically isolated from both their cultural homeland and the support of the larger ethnic settlements of the West Coast. Using oral history collections, interviews, diary entries, newspaper accounts, organization records, and journal articles, this dissertation begins the investigation of these Interior communities by reviewing their Japanese roots and the immigration process, analyzing the factors that led them to the Interior as opposed to Hawai'i or the West Coast, demonstrating how they developed and what held them together (cultural background, common industry, economic and social associations, education, and religion), discussing the effects of World War II, evacuation, and internment, and finally by suggesting their significance in American history. |
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