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Whiteness in paradise: Japaneseimmigrant narratives of identity,collective action, and Japan’s nationalresponsibilityYadira Perez Hazelaa Center of Ethnic Studies, Borough of Manhattan CommunityCollege, City University of New York, New York, NY, USAPublished online: 25 Jun 2015.

To cite this article: Yadira Perez Hazel (2015): Whiteness in paradise: Japanese immigrantnarratives of identity, collective action, and Japan’s national responsibility, Asian Ethnicity, DOI:10.1080/14631369.2015.1025895

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Whiteness in paradise: Japanese immigrant narratives of identity,collective action, and Japan’s national responsibility

Yadira Perez Hazel*

Center of Ethnic Studies, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York,New York, NY, USA

In the 1950s, the Dominican government, under Rafael Trujillo, offered free land toJapanese immigrants to settle along the Dominico-Haitian border. The Japanese colo-nias, or agricultural colonies, were part of nation-building projects in the DominicanRepublic (DR) and Japan, which positioned the Japanese colonias as the solution toboth ‘the Haitian problem’ and overpopulation, respectively. However, over time thecolonias failed, leaving many Japanese migrants disappointed and in need of navigat-ing national identity between the two states. This article examines the ways in whichthe Japanese immigrants navigate shifting local and national interest, ideologies, andlived experience to file a legal civil action suit against the Japanese government for anunfound paradisiacal immigrant experience in the DR. The Japanese court-case pro-vides a compelling case to explore how immigrants refashion national discourses ofidentity and collective legal action to hold natal government’s responsible for settle-ment while also embracing multiple national and ethno-racial identities in their newhomeland.

Keywords: Japanese; immigration; whiteness; Dominican Republic; identity; civil-action

On 31 July 2006, I arrived at the bustling Las Americas airport for a weekend celebrationof the 50th anniversary of Japanese immigration to the Dominican Republic (DR). Theday before my arrival, large formal ceremonies took place where government officialsfrom both the DR and Japan attended. A second-generation Japanese woman in her early30s, Yumiko, informed me that I missed the party, but not all of the talk. The anniversarycelebrations were not only an opportunity to recognize the five-decade contributions ofthe Japanese community in the DR, but were also an occasion to bring attention to theongoing and tenuous civil-action suit that a group of Japanese immigrants to the DR hadfiled against the Japanese government for a failed Dominican settlement.

While smaller semi-centennial celebrations continued throughout the month,Dominican and Japanese government officials, as well as Japanese and local Dominicancommunities, kept their ears to the street anxiously awaiting more information fromTokyo’s District Court about the pending lawsuit that would come to a close any day.For the 126 Japanese immigrants and their families involved in the lawsuit, every phonecall from their lawyers or their civil representative launched speculative conversations anddebates about the final decisions of the over 16 yearlong case and what this meant fortheir current and future lives. However, the immigrants had more than just the judicial‘fight’ for compensation. As Ingeniero1 (Ing.) Mamoru ‘Jose Luis’ Hidaka,2 an immigrant

*Email: yperez@bmcc.cuny.edu

Asian Ethnicity, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2015.1025895

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

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and one of the executive representatives of the civil suit, put it, ‘we not only have to fightfor the wrong that was done in the 1950s, but we also fight for the right to sue theJapanese government’. Ing. Hidaka’s comment reflects the Japanese immigrants’ delicateand at times difficult challenge to negotiate their multiple identities as immigrants ofJapan, as well as residents of and parents of children born in the DR. The prosecutingimmigrants’ initial and continual fight – on a local, national, and transnational level – wasto legitimize themselves as ‘Japanese enough’ to sue the government of Japan, yet‘Dominican enough’ to not be deceived into accepting another unrealistic settlement inthe DR, nor pressured to settle back in Japan after several decades of departure. Althoughseveral settlements of Japanese immigrants were established in the Americas and Asiaprior to the 1950s, this was the first and only state-sponsored settlement of the Japanese tothe Caribbean.3

This article presents the background of this Japanese immigrant community in the DRand the civil action suit. Through the analysis of interviews and conversations I conductedwith Japanese immigrants in the DR from 2000 to 2010,4 I examine how these immigrantshave negotiated their national identities as both Dominican and Japanese, fighting forlegitimacy despite the Japanese cultural norms that would define their legal action againstthe Japanese government as ‘unJapanese’. This article argues that legal and politicalissues, such as land disputes and retribution, are deeply motivated and influenced bythe immigrant communities’ understanding of and commitment to national identities andtheir sense of empowerment in their new host country.

This article aligns with seminal works on Asian ethnicity in the Americas, such as‘New Worlds/New Lives’,5 which places emphasis on contextualizing Asian migrationand immigrant communities’ experiences within national, global, and temporal dynamics.In addition, I use racial formation theory6 as a framework in which to examine race as asocially constructed identity whereby the content, meaning, and importance of racialcategories is created by social, economic, and political factors. Thus, the application ofsuch theoretical perspectives and analytical tools to the analysis of the immigrant com-munity’s experience and collective actions offers a nuanced understanding of Japanesemigration, identity formation, and belonging in the DR.

Settlement of the Japanese colonies

Beginning in the 1950s, the Dominican government, under Rafael Molinas Trujillo,invited thousands of Japanese families to settle in the DR as part of nation-buildingpolicies that sought to limit immigration and settlement of persons of African descent,especially Haitians, and to encourage ‘non-black’ immigrants into the agricultural indus-try. The invitation included gifts of land, infrastructure, and monthly stipends in return forpermanent settlement and farming in colonias (agricultural colonies). The Japanesegovernment advertised the DR as ‘paradise’ and hand-selected a fraction of qualifiedfamilies from hundreds of hopeful applicants. Caribbean scholars interested in issues oftourism have aptly deconstructed national discourse and marketing plans that manufactureand promulgate the myth of the Caribbean as ‘paradise’ and obscure the reality of socio-economic inequalities.7 The image of paradise promised to the Japanese immigrantsfocused on gains of rich fertile lands and blooming farmlands, rather than the tourismideal of aqua-blue beaches and piña coladas. The Japanese government advertised theDR’s invitation as an agricultural paradise where each family would receive 300 tareas offertile land (equivalent to 47.1 acres) and 60 cents a day for meals – a golden ticket formany of the poor, landless farmers who applied to immigrate.8

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The first group of Japanese immigrants arrived by ship in present-day Santo Domingoin 1956 to elaborate welcoming festivities. A few additional ships made the 30-dayvoyage carrying several hundred Japanese families – all in with hopes of establishing asecond home in the promised paradise. Initially, the Dominican government hoped tosettle thousands of Japanese families; however, after several challenges with the first fewcolonias and rising political unrest in the DR, Japanese immigration stopped at 249families with a total of 1319 persons. There were eight colonies established specificallyfor the Japanese immigrants in the Dominican cities of La Vigía, Pepillo Salcedo, LaAltagracia, Agua Negra, La Colonia, Plaza Cacique, Jarabacoa, and Constanza. TheDominican government established six of these colonies along the Dominico-Haitianborder.9

The reference to a second-home for the immigrants was not literal because a majorityof the immigrants did not keep a physical home in Japan. World War II highly affectedmost of the immigrants who came to the DR; especially, those temporarily living in theformer Japanese-occupied territories of Taiwan and Manchuria. About 300 of the immi-grants were professional farmers and fishermen with little to no land in war-torn Japan.The Japanese government advertised the settlements in the DR to their people as perma-nent and paradisiacal. Thus, a majority of the immigrants sold or gifted what they ownedand brought their remaining possessions along on the ship to the DR. These migrationconditions are different from the majority of Japanese migrants who left Japan as dekasegi– persons who leave to earn money with the intentions of returning – to work inagricultural industries in Cuba, Bolivia, Guatemala (re-migrants from Hawaii), Mexico,Peru, and other Latin American countries during the first half of the twentieth century.10

These laborers, while they understood their new home to be in the DR, symbolically, moststated that Japan would continue to be their eternal first home. Such was the sentiment oftwo immigrants, Takeaki ‘Tony’ Hidaka and his wife Miyoko ‘Maria Blanca’ HamadaHidaka, expressed to me at their home in the December of 2000. ‘My parents, born inJapan arrived to the DR to cultivate … to start a new life, but never forgetting Japan’.11

The design and decoration of their home are expressions of this belief and promise withbeautiful mahogany doors, oil paintings of Dominican country-scape, Japanese Girl’s Daydolls and a vibrantly-painted ceramic rooster.

Their statement of never forgetting Japan and the incorporation of Japanese things intheir home connect them to an ancestral and imagined Japan. Japan, also, becomes areference for explaining possible phenotypic ‘otherness’ within the Dominican society,which places this difference outside of Hispaniola. This marked Japan-linked othernessbenefits the Japanese immigrants by bypassing any connection to Haiti, a contentiousassociation within the DR, and allowing for the possibility of homemaking and belongingin the DR without a loss of their identity of origin. Thus, the ability to articulate Japan assecond-home (whether real or symbolic) is an expression of the community’s privilegedposition. This is a privilege not granted to Haitians and many Haitian-Dominicans whopolitically, socially, and even legally are ostracized, disenfranchised, and persecuted forarticulating connections with Haiti.12

The Hidaka family is one of the few families who still lives in the fertile region of LaVega, high in the hills of Jarabacoa, a location not too far from the original coloniajaponesa (Japanese colony). Today, this area is renamed colonia agricola (agriculturalcolony). However, the name change still does not capture the current semi-urban envir-onment of this once rural agriculture sector. Small shops and businesses line the mainstreet with cinderblock and wooden houses randomly squeezed between. The plots of landare seen in the distance. The most successful immigrant colonies are in Jarabacoa and

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Constanza, both located within miles of each other. However, Maria Blanca, who arrivedas a child13 to the DR with her parents, emphasizes that her family’s success in Jarabacoais not evidence of the fulfilled promise of paradise. Maria Blanca and a handful ofimmigrants, who received or bought land in Jarabacoa and Constanza, acknowledgethat the location of their land plots, in the fertile region of the country and further fromthe border, is better than what other immigrants received and thus provided them withsome income opportunities. Despite this, they legitimate their right to sue the Japanesegovernment because their Dominican experience has never been paradise-like; for exam-ple, the increasing urbanization of Jarabacoa mentioned above is one of the many issuesthat contribute to the enormous hardship and uncertainty that continues to fill their day-to-day and future lives.

Most Japanese immigrants were not as fortunate and received little to no fertile land.Japanese immigrants settled in Dajabon, the northernmost colony along the border,received no more than 80 tareas of land with little agriculture infrastructure. By 1965,many of the original settlements have since been abandoned by the Japanese immigrants.Of the eight colonies established, five remain, though smaller in immigrant population.The parents of Mr Hajime Tabata, the former president of the Japanese Club in Constanza,described his journey to Constanza as full of ‘luck and persistence’. His parents wereoriginally established in Duvergé in 1957, where the dirt was dry, rocky, and cactus-filled.The Dominican agricultural ministry officials told them when they first arrived that waterwould be tunneled for farming. Tabata, only 9 years old at the time, clearly remembers thedisappointment, month after month, when the water never came. Within a year, theypicked up and left for Constanza where they were able to receive 15 tareas of land locatedwithin the Hungarian colony.14

Japanese government’s push for migration

By the end of World War II, with its defeat by the United States, Japan had to face USoccupation. During this time, the United States entered and occupied all of Japan,dismantling the Japanese military and establishing military posts in Japan’s southernmostisland Okinawa. American occupation and Keynesian economics heavily shaped Japan’spostwar development. Within the Keynesian framework, poverty resulted from over-population. Shortly after the war, Japan’s population rose due to the return of soldiersand the displacement of people formerly living in war torn cities such as Tokyo,Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. The US pinpointed overpopulation as one of Japan’s mainbarriers to rebuilding their economy. Toake Endoh’s research on Japanese emigrationhighlights how migration to the Americas was also about social control, state expansion,and colonization.15 Thus, within the Keynesian and post-WWII expansionary logic thatdirected recovery from the devastation of the war, Japan needed to push some of itsnationals out of the country, even if it costs them something to do it.16 The hope was thatthe expense of heavy propaganda and financial incentive packages to stimulate emigrationwould pay off once the population declined and stabilized. These migrants would alsoserve as ambassadors, of sorts, providing opportunity for political and economic allianceand ultimately extending Japan’s influence.

Following World War II, opportunities for immigration to the DR, advertised as‘paradise in the Caribbean’, headlined newspapers and magazines all over Japan, usuallyfollowing other immigration possibilities to Latin America. Firsthand accounts of thoseJapanese who already immigrated filled the press. A notable example was Norubu Uda’simmigration narrative. In the mid-1950s, he was one of the first immigrants to the DR and

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his experience was one of the most popular and frequently printed immigrant stories. Udapraised his new Caribbean home, reporting that the houses were neat and fully furnished.He also mentioned that working conditions were pleasant and the food inexpensive andplentiful.17

The Japanese emperor publicly announced his support for immigration calling on inter-ested families to fulfill their duty by leaving Japan and do their best elsewhere.18 The Japanesegovernment told the Japanese immigrants that the reason why the Dominican governmentextended a settlement invitation was a desire for more successful agricultural communities.There was no mention of the immigrants’ integral role in whitening the frontier lands.

Japanese emigration to Caribbean and Latin America

In the last few decades, there has been a growing body of scholars in Japanese immigrantcommunities in Latin American in places with large communities of Japanese descen-dants, such as Brazil and Peru, but also Mexico and Bolivia with smaller, yet significantcommunities. These scholars, each with different units of analysis and national focus,acted as powerful interventions within the storyline of Latin American and Caribbeangrand histories of immigration, settlement, and labor. In much of this work, there is aprimary focus on how the Japanese fit or did not fit within the new national community.Such scholars place national, ethnic, and descendant lines as the main units of analysis.For example, Lesser’s work on Nikkei in Brazil examines the Japanese communities’discontent with how their new home (Brazil) represents and marginalizes them, leading towhat Lesser calls militant ethnics that participate in activities considered resistant tonational and popular categorizations and stereotypes.19 The increased focus on Japaneseimmigrant and descendant identity construction in Latin American and the Caribbean alsounderscores the fluidity, inconsistencies, struggles, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities of theimmigrant experience to new lands. In reviewing the bulk of this work, what emerges is anarrative akin to the unmeltable immigrant where the receiving country’s national identityis either ethnically and or racially static and thus the Asian-ness (their ancestry, culture,and ethnicity) of these communities’ bumps against it. Even the scholars who observe andanalyze the Japanese community’s agency do from the point of view of the fact that thenew place provides hostility, confusion, and negotiation; thus, agency operates withinstructures of exclusion from within a new country.

In the DR, the Japanese immigrants and their descendants also share these pressures ofrepresentation, difficulties of immigration, and acclimation. However, the national and,most importantly, racial context in which the Japanese community entered provides aperspective that illuminates conditions of possibilities for agency in the form of collectiveaction against Japan. Thus, the influence of place and time on understandings of nationalbelonging provides a powerful insight into the current Japanese experience and develop-ment of a collective agency in the DR. The Japanese were invited to settle in the DRbecause they were seen as non-black, ‘white’ even, agriculturalists and thus agents ofDominican modernization. The unmeltables within Dominican national identity werelargely imagined as Haitians allowing for the Japanese to enter as aids and not detrimentsto the nation. This is similar to the ethnographic analysis of James W. Loewen on theChinese in Mississippi20 where the arriving Chinese in the 1930s encountered a vastsocial and economic gulf between the dominant ‘white’ and subordinate ‘black’ undesir-ables. These social, economic, and political conditions provided this particular Chinesecommunity with the privilege and burden of an ambiguous racial identity. The Japanese

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immigrants and their descendants in the DR were granted a non-black identity opening upthe space and possibility for economic and social mobility.

Trujillo’s Dominicanization

The Dominican political context significantly shaped the Japanese immigrants’ settle-ment experience. In the 1930s, the Dominican government, under Rafael L. TrujilloMolinas, engaged in nation-building projects to ‘de-Africanize the country and restoreCatholic values’.21 African and black were codes for Haitian, darker-skinned persons,and opposing ideologies or activities. The border between Haiti and the DR was notofficially delineated for centuries and became an area where escaped slaves formedmaroon communities,22 and higher rates of intermarriage between African ex-slaves andSpaniards facilitated the development of a Creole society.23 In 1935, Trujillo establishedan undisputed border between the two countries, receiving international praise for endingdecades of political disputes. However, shortly after an amicable border agreement,Trujillo affirmed that the central obstacle to modernity was the blacks who live in thefrontier.24

Demographically, historians have described Dominicans as mixed people of Spanish(former colonial power), Taino (indigenous people), and African (former enslavedAfricans) ancestries.25 Racially, the DR’s categorization has shifted back and forthalong a black/white racial binary since the mid-nineteenth through the twentieth centuryby western countries such as Spain and the United States.26 These oscillating racialperceptions of the DR seem to correspond to changing political, economic, or militaristicinterest in this Caribbean nation.

In the 30 years of his rule, Trujillo worked to transform the national and internationalperception of the DR as a white and, therefore, modern nation (Torres-Saillant).27 Thus,national discourse in the DR since the mid-1900s has de-emphasized and belittled thecountry’s African ancestry. Duany states that ‘regardless of the exact demographiccomposition of the people, dominant discourse on national identity defines it as white,Hispanic and Catholic’. 28 Under Trujillo’s government, de-Africanizing andDominicanizing consisted of various, and at times conflicting, racist national projects.Such projects included the removal of Haitians and Dominico-Haitians from the border byexpulsion and massacre,29 recruitment of Haitian braceros for seasonal work onDominican sugar bateys,30 settlement of foreigners and Dominicans with little to nodiscernible Haitian or African ancestry in the western borderlands,31 denial of citizenshipdocuments to individuals with Haitian parents32 and nationalization of industries withlarge western investment such as the sugar industry.33 This series of national projects,including the settlement of the Japanese immigrants along the border, reveals the contra-dictions in Trujillo’s implementation of modernizing the nation and Dominicanizing theland. This contributes to an ambiguous understanding of ‘Dominicanness’ both on thenational and local level. It also highlights Trujillo’s central interest in consolidating powerwith minimal resistance from the people by amplifying their fears of losing sovereignty.He did so by using existent national discourses of national and cultural ‘takeover’, whichwere at first focused on Haiti, but later at the end of his rule, incorporated in the UnitedStates.

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Dominicanization of the border, expulsion, immigration, and settlement of foreigners

In 1937, Trujillo ordered his troops to carry out massive massacre and expulsion ofHaitians and Dominico-Haitians from the border, which cleared the lands he then offeredto white Dominicans from around the country and immigrants from around the world,including Spaniards, Hungarian refugees, and Japanese.34 In addition, Trujillo’sDominicanization projects included creating a bureau to issue and renew state identifica-tion cards, cedulas, to all Dominicans with racial categorization that excluded ‘negro’35 toall Dominicans. With the implementation of cedulas, the state worked to displace theracial category of black with a color spectrum of indio and hispano for all Dominicans inthe nation.36 Dominican nationals were not allowed to identify themselves as ‘negro(black)’ on the cedulas but instead ‘indio oscuro (dark Indian)’. Trujillo ralliedDominicans in support of these Dominicanization projects under the banner of modernity,national identity, and security allowing him to consolidate and extend his power across thecountry.37 Cedulas were denied to children born in the DR to Haitian migrant workerswho have settled and worked on plantations. Citizenship laws deliberately changed toexclude them from receiving birth records and other documents marking Haitians asperpetual ‘migrants’ and thus not eligible for permanent civil status. In contrast, thefirst Japanese immigrants were granted residency status and after several years couldapply for Dominican citizenship. The children of Japanese immigrants born in the DRwere granted Dominican birth certificates indicating a national and racial element beyond‘insider and outsider’ in the welcoming of one foreign group while exploiting another andsimultaneously erasing a national black categorization.

Colonization of borderlands by non-black persons became one of the landscapingsolutions to modernizing the Dominican nation. Dominican national discourse worked tohomogenize the racial landscape of the country, creating a Dominican ethnic identity thatis tied to a non-African and non-Haitian racial identity, even while settling foreigners onDominican land. Peguero states that the sympathizers of the Trujillo regime, mostly elites,understood that the immigration of men and women of European origin was a necessaryand uncompromising element of the life of the nation. Improvements in infrastructure andhuman services were designed to encourage settlement by those selected by thegovernment.38 These policies served to stop the spread of the overtly dark-skinnedAfricans who had resided in the country since colonial times.39

Integral to the successful colonization of the western border was that the settlersunderstood land ownership as private and profit-making. This seemed to have conflictedwith local conceptions of labor and ownership. The Dominican government’s expectationwas that the gifted frontier lands would be occupied, produced, and protected by theforeign and national settlers, which would create a stable non-black human border. Havinglong been intrigued with Japanese culture, Trujillo believed that the Japanese were the‘non-black miracle farmers’ who the nation needed. In this vein, the agreement toestablish colonias japonesa along Dajabon to Perdenales was formed with immigrationcriteria that would attract settlers that would fulfill the multiple goals of whitening,modernizing, and, ultimately, increasing Trujillo’s control, wealth, and power.40

Raquel, a Dominican woman in her 60s, recalls spending several months in 1958 andseveral subsequent summers in Constanza with her uncle who worked in the pine woodindustry. ‘I remember being around seven years. My cousins and I went walking past theJapanese strawberry fields and scrambled to take as many of them [strawberries] aspossible before the Japanese would come out and throw rocks at us, yelling “burglars”’.She chuckles and adds that they were kids unaware of what they were doing. She admits

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that they were probably destroying the plants as they ripped the fruit. ‘We didn’t know thedifference. We just wanted to eat as many strawberries as possible. We didn’t know thevalue or work … of cultivating it’.

Several of the Japanese immigrants recall having a difficult time keeping locals offof their property. Maria Blanca Hidaka mentioned that working with Dominicans was attimes hard because the workers believed that they had a right to some of the crops anduse of the tools because they labored on the land, even though they were getting paid.Maria Blanca remembered always having to remain vigilant even after the neighbors gotto know them. She spoke in a matter of fact manner about peoples’ need for food andother basic necessities, which she linked to their practice of taking things they saw alongthe roads. A few other Japanese immigrants blamed the stealing and crop destruction onthe lack of Dominican government’s intervention in local matters. Many of the immi-grants discuss the difficulties of the first few years as resulting from them or the localcommunity not receiving assistance in integrating with each other. Both the Japaneseimmigrant community and the local communities, as evidenced from locals in Jarabacoasubmitting over 50 written complaints for land distribution from 1961 to 1965, seemedto have a clear perception of difference on how the land would be used and who wasentitled to use the land.

The Dominican government developed strict selection requirements for the Japanesegovernment to follow. The provisions’ goals were to attract productive farmers or fisherswho would integrate with the local Dominican community. The first provision stated thatimmigrating families must have three adults between the ages of 15 and 50 years; thefamily of three adults did not necessarily have to be conjugal. Despradel reported thatsome of the Japanese families adopted or named a cousin or a friend as a fictive kin.41

Because of this first provision, there would be, at least, one Japanese adult without apartner. It was the hope of the regime that this available adult would marry localDominican nationals and, bear children, further whitening the population and permanentlybinding the immigrants to the island. The second requirement outlined the physical andmental conditions, as well as the personality traits, that Trujillo’s government believedwould best fit integration with locals. Moreover, they should be social; this requirementwould facilitate their inclusion into the surrounding Dominican communities – and not ofextreme religious or political views, which Gardiner states was code for no communism.42

The last provision is tied directly to the Dominican government’s strong desire tostrengthen the nation-state through the continual development and expansion of theagricultural industry, especially to facilitate growth of the agricultural arena without, orminimal, need for Haitian laborers.

On 31 May 1960, Trujillo was killed by some members of his armed forces, endinghis 30-year rule of the country. With his death, the financial support and militaryprotection that the Japanese immigrants received ended. In addition, most of theJapanese immigrants had not received the promised amount of quality land, nor the titlesfor the property, mounting their anxieties about their future in this new country. Amajority of the colonias, especially those located in the towns of Duvergé, Neiba, andDajabón ‘were in no condition for growing mainly due to lack of water’.43 The Japaneseimmigrants who were settled in Jarabacoa and Contanza had more luck, but they too didnot receive the total 300 tareas per family and also had difficulties preparing the firstharvest.44

While most of the nation celebrated the death of the dictator, the Japanese immigrantsawaited change with apprehension and uncertainty. Tony Hidaka recalled hearing hisneighbors rejoice and play celebratory music the day the ‘goat’s death’ was confirmed.45

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Only 4 years had passed since the Hidakas had arrived in the DR – and less time sincetheir settlement in Jarabacoa, and though life was not at all what they were promised,Trujillo had been their patron and their possible ticket to achieving the promised paradise.Many other immigrants shared having similar sentiments of not knowing what washappening or what was to come the morning Trujillo was announced dead. MariaBlanca explained that some of the previous occupants, who were locals of the bordertowns, demanded the land back from the Japanese settlers not too long after Trujillo’sdeath. Many of the Japanese immigrants remember the death of Trujillo as the time whenbad became worse, detailing situations where angered townspeople would throw things attheir houses and even burn and steal crops. The Hidaka family empathized with thedisplaced and angry locals, because they too felt displaced. However, it was not as simpleas just giving back the land or relocating. They did not have anywhere else to go; Japanwas thousands of miles away and, for some, returning unsuccessful was not an option.‘Even with it being so bad, most of us waited a few years to see if there was somethingthat would be done’, remarked Tony.46

After Trujillo’s death, landless Japanese immigrants sought the assistance of theJapanese government after failed attempts to rectify the situation with the transitioningDominican government. The Japanese government responded apologetically declaringthat there was not much they could do with regard to the death of Trujillo, however, afew months later, the Japanese government offered the immigrants the option of settling inother Latin American countries or returning to Japan with all travel expenses paid. In1961–1962, 133 families dishearteningly accepted the offer to return to Japan andbordered a ship returning to the east with less than what they came with. When theboat docked, the former immigrants refused to disembark until the Japanese governmentapologized for the settlement fiasco and compensated them financially. The Japanesegovernment refused to take fault but offered the immigrants housing accommodations toease settlement back into Japan. The former immigrants acquiesced and disembarked.Most of the Japanese immigrant families who left the DR settled in Japan or Brazil, with afew settlings in other Latin American countries.47

About 30% of the Japanese immigrant families stayed in the DR, some who hadreceived fertile lands and others who had not. The mass exodus out of the island by theJapanese made additional plots of land available to the remaining immigrants. TetuyaTakada’s family was able to purchase 47 tareas with low interest loans provided by theJapanese government; however, they were forced to return the original plots that theyreceived. Takada recalled how he and his brothers quickly started working on the landand attended just a few months of elementary school. Dominican national newspapersinterviewed Takada in 2000 covering the Japanese immigrants struggle in the DR as aback story to the civil suit. He stated that the Japanese immigrants don’t know whatbeing a child is like, because from childhood they jumped to adulthood.48 Half ofTakada’s siblings returned to Japan after Trujillo’s death.49

For those families that stayed in the colonias, like the Hidaka family in Jarabacoa, many ofthem managed to live comfortably by doing various additional jobs and opening smallbusinesses, some leaving cultivation behind entirely. Nonetheless, the Hidaka and Takadafamilies were upheld as settlement success stories by the Japanese embassy, as well as, by theJapanese and Dominican governments. Tony Hidaka and his family argue that their currentfinancial stability – their businesses and their home – was acquired through hard work. Forhim and other claimants, the lawsuit is the result of several broken promises including theinitial promise of paradise, which has led to over 50 years of hard work, aging, and

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deteriorating health conditions. In addition, they believe that they are too much a part of theDR to pick up and go elsewhere; thus leaving little option for them but tomake legal demands.

The first few years after their arrival, Trujillo’s heavy hand provided shelter for theJapanese immigrants from the angry displaced locals. Most of the Japanese immigrantsnarrate these early years as vulnerable years, where they knew little to nothing about theracial, cultural, and political context of the DR. During the early years, they endured theburning of crops and the animosity of some of their Dominican and Haitian neighbors,which they saw as personal attacks. In hindsight – and with much more knowledge of thenational, racial, and political projects at play, they now understand that these negativeactions were reactions to a misguided political system, which attempted to fatten thepockets of the government, kill the blacks, and pacify the whites. By 2000, a majority ofthe Japanese immigrants, both those who stayed in the DR and those who left, understoodthe reality of their situation as not a gift but a curse covered up by the Japanesegovernment’s lies and impatience.

Establishing their right to sue while remaining Japanese

After reviewing many of my conversations with Japanese immigrants involved in thecase, it was evident that a majority of them felt the need to justify why they (Japaneseimmigrants) were suing the Japanese government. These explanations framed the DR asinculpable and the Japanese government as deceptive, irresponsible, and non-responsiveto their previous calls for help. Thus, it was the Japanese government that created thesituation that led them to ‘no other’ choice but to sue. It became apparent that theprosecuting Japanese community fought against a local and Japanese national notionthat disagreed with the legal course of action and associated suing the Japanese govern-ment with ‘unJapaneseness’. The consistent need to justify the action of suing and toassert the Japanese government’s responsibility for forcing them to take such a ‘heavy’action against them indicates the existence of an invisible but culturally-laden andsignificant discourse that the immigrants feel compelled to confront.

Migrants take action

In 1968, the Japanese immigrants in the DR and the former immigrants living in Japanfounded the Dominica Japanese Federation, amid continuing hardship. The federationacted as a united front in demanding that both governments implement the conditionsthey had been guaranteed as part of the settlement program. Yukichi Saito, the firstsettler of Dajabon who returned to Fukushima Prefecture Japan and died in 1991,compiled a document titled ‘Details of Dominican settlements and their fundamentalproblems’ in June 1983. This document revealed that, in 1956, a Dominican governmentofficial, Louis R. Mercado, wrote to the Japanese government that they could provide‘up to’ 300 tareas of land.50 This was in contrast to the promised 300 tareas per family.The immigrants believed that the Mercado Letter exposed the Japanese governments’propaganda.

Angered by the blatant discrepancy, members of the Dominica Japanese Federationfocused their blame on the Japanese government, solely. They wrote letters to the JapanDiet, Japanese media, and, even, high-profile Japanese celebrities to bring attention totheir situation. The Japanese government claimed that it had no fault and had given theimmigrants all the information available at the time. However, the group of the former andpresent immigrants did not give up because they believed that they were deliberately

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misled. The Japanese government promised acres of ‘paradise in the Caribbean when inreality we found small vacant lots’.51 In 1987, a group of over 170 first generationimmigrants sought the assistance of the Japanese Association of Lawyers. Together theyfiled a claim for human rights violation against the Japanese government.52 In 1991, theCommittee of Human Rights Protection at the Association of Japanese Lawyers in Japandeclared that in the case of the Japanese immigrants in the DR there were human rightsviolations. This declaration gave the Japanese immigrants in the DR the legal ammunitionto pursue the court case against the Japanese government.

In the late 1980s, a group of 186 Japanese immigrants sought the legal counsel of theAssociation of Japanese Lawyers (Association) in Tokyo after years of seeking reprisalfrom the Japanese government to compensate them for not fulfilling its promise for landin the DR. The prosecuting group was made up of first-generation Japanese descents whohad immigrated to the DR from 1956 to 1959 and who became unhappy with hownegotiations with the Japanese government were proceeding.53 A majority of the prose-cuting immigrants live in the DR, with a few members living in Japan. Shortly after theimmigrants brought their case to the Association, the Association created a Human RightsCommittee of lawyers, professors, and journalists to further investigate the Japaneseimmigrants’ claim. Members of the Association visited the DR during the 1990s andinterviewed dozens of key stakeholders in the case including Dominican governmentofficials, government-sponsored Japanese agencies in the DR, and Japanese immigrants.

In 1991, with the representation of the Association, the Japanese filed a case againstthe Japanese government demanding the following: medical insurance for the elders, amonthly pension of 100–300 dollars (US), and facilities for new loans to improve thecurrent economic conditions. The Japanese immigrants claimed that the Japanese govern-ment failed to execute the promise of arable land even after several amicable requests. Thefirst of many requests occurred in 1959, shortly arriving in the DR, and the immigrantsdid not receive the 300 tareas of arable land as promised. Another formal request occurredin 1963 when over 80% of the Japanese immigrants left the DR. The Japanese govern-ment encouraged some of the immigrant families to stay in the DR. For those thatremained, the Japanese government loaned them 550 pesos (equivalent to about $550US) to ease financial hardship and reiterated the promise to distribute to them thepromised allotment of land. In the late 1980s, when the Japanese immigrants soughtlegal representation, the Japanese government had not given them the land or had theycompensated them for it.

On 24 March 1994, the Association filed a claim with the Ministry of Justice in Japanagainst the Japanese government in the names of the Japanese immigrants. The claim wasfiled against the then-Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. The claim demanded that theJapanese government and its coordinating agency in the DR-Japanese InternationalCooperation Agency (JICA) – grant the promised quantity and quality of land to theimmigrants remaining in the DR, compensate the immigrants for damages (includingmaterials, physical, and psychological), and provide benefits that would facilitate financialindependence for the immigrants – including low interest loans that adjust for inflation.Within months, the Japanese government responded that it was not responsible for theimmigrants’ current financial hardship and that it was the Dominican government that isto be blamed for the distribution of the land.

In 1998, the General Director of the Institute of Dominican Agriculture, EngineerPaíno Abreu Collado, organized a meeting at the Japanese Embassy in Santo Domingoand invited all 72 Japanese families that had not received to attend. The purpose of themeeting was to discuss the land distribution issues. At the meeting, the Director

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announced that the Dominican government granted 12,618 tareas of land in the La Luisain the Monte Plata province to distribute amongst the immigrant families. He stated thatthese actions were in part to make right the wrong that the Dominican government haddone of not fulfilling promises of land distribution in the late 1950s. Several familiesworked in coordination with the Dominican officials in hopes of receiving the newlypromised land. After several months, the representatives of the Japanese immigrants’group in suit against the government further investigated the claims and learned that theland was of bad quality and accepting such land would weaken their claim against thegovernment. The immigrants notified the Association of Japanese lawyers and asked forfurther assistance in dealing with the new element of the case – the Dominican govern-ment claiming responsibility. The immigrants claimed that the Dominican governmentclaimed responsibility in return for Japan’s political and economic investment and aid inthe DR.

Mamoru Hidaka argued that the offer of land from the Dominican government, underPresident Lionel Fernández, was an attempt to pacify and ease tensions in the Japaneseimmigrant community and please the Japanese government, a nation that maintainsimportant technical projects and provides consistent funding to the DR.54 Thus, thecourt case became an issue for the DR because of its economic and political ties to Japan.

In July 2000, a group of 177 returnees and immigrants in the DR filed a 3.1 billionyen damage suit against the Japanese government. The prosecuting group’s representativeannounced, ‘Although it’s unbearable to sue the state, it’s the sole solution’.55 TheJapanese government responded with the following official statement, ‘The state onlysupported emigrant applicants and was not in position to conclude an emigrant-sendingcontract [with the Dominican government] and it is the DR that should bear responsibilityfor emigrants’.56 The case went to trial and the trial proceedings occurred in TokyoDistrict Courts with a handful of Japanese immigrants flying to Japan to give first handnarratives of the failed settlement.

Dominican government as a straight shooter

Within 5–8 years of arriving in the DR, the Japanese immigrants actively tried to sort theirsettlement conditions out by meeting with the Dominican ministry of agricultural officialsand calling on the Japanese government. They saw little progress in terms of the fulfill-ment of the settlement agreement, particularly the distribution of promised amount andquality of land. Hidaka comments that it was then that the immigrants understood thattheir condition was a result of Japan’s settlement agreement and Trujillo’s nationalagricultural project.57 It became apparent that both governments used the Japaneseimmigrants to fulfill nationalist goals.

At a 1994 ceremony commemorating 47 years of Japanese presence in the DR in 2003,Alberto Despradel, the former Dominican ambassador to Japan from 1984–1987,announced, ‘the dictatorial government of Generalísimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo neededto promote the migration of Japanese nationals [to the DR] with the purpose of favoring thedevelopment of the Dominican-Haitian border zone. The purpose was to create wealth andwith the strategic placement of the Japanese in that zone to constitute a human border thatserved as a retaining wall to the peaceful invasion of Haitians to the DR’.58 In this speech,to an audience composed of Japanese and Dominican dignitaries, as well as Japaneseimmigrants and their descendants, Despradel affirmed that the final goal of the Japanesesettlement was to provide a ‘“human border” between the DR and Haiti that would ward offanother “invasion”’. In addition, Despradel stated that the Japanese immigrants, full of

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illusions and hope, were betwixt and between two national projects, Japan’s economic andpolitical restoration, as well as the Dominican’s grand ‘racists, anti-black and chauvinistanti-Haitian immigration project’.59 He went further and drew from information anddocumentation he accessed as the former Dominican ambassador to Japan to argue thatthe Dominican government did not ‘hide’ their intentions to settle the Japanese in borderlands.

In the 2000 lawsuit against the Japanese government, Japanese immigrants and theirlawyers reviewed several official correspondences between the Japanese and Dominicangovernments and learned that the special agreement discussed by Despradel was neverfully executed by Japan. In addition, the correspondences from the DR outlined differentimmigration provision than the Japanese marketed.

It is not clear whether the Japanese government was aware or understood the issuesthat the Dominicanization policy would bring to the Japanese settlement. However, ‘Japanshould have made it their business to know … and to sign a settlement contract … youjust don’t send your children without an official agreement or a treaty’, reasoned MamoruHidaka.60 The immigrants understood that the Japanese government’s focus at the timewas something other than securing their well-being and stability in the DR. Hidaka statedthat he personally believes that the ‘Japanese government took advantage of the immi-grants, because, at that time, we wouldn’t question the emperor … if they said go it’sgoing to be good for you, then we went. Similar to kamikaze pilots, but we didn’t knowwe were going down’. In this statement, Hidaka categorized the relationship betweenJapanese nationals and the government as a sort of ‘blind nationalism’ pointing out thatthe government exploited these sentiments.

Defining paradise

A majority of the Japanese immigrants and returnees claimed that they never foundparadise in the DR. It is imperative to analyze the immigrants’ notions of paradise withdescriptions of the quality of land offered. Such an examination leads to a nuancedunderstanding of race, class, nation, and land. Following Howard Winant’s argument onthe genealogy of race and modernity in The World is A Ghetto,61 these border lands andcolonies become part of the racial systems in the DR when the government uses them aspart of the racialized whitening project of Dominicanization, modernity and nation-building.

Takegama is an immigrant from the Kagoshima prefecture in Japan and an activespokesperson of the Japanese immigrant condition in the DR. He details his family’sexperience with the land initially offered as part of the settlement.

My family arrived in Santo Domingo and days after our arrival we boarded an uncomfortablebus with our meek possessions. Within a few hours, we saw lush black soil up ahead.Everyone on the bus was quite pleased to be settled on such land. But the bus never stopped.We kept riding on this very bumpy road for a few more hours. We really could not understandwhat was going on. Then, the truck stopped after about 13 hours and all we saw was dry landsurrounded by cactus. This was our fate. Trees fallen were still green, and stumps remained asthey were. So, we asked for an early mobilization of bulldozers … the situation was verydifferent from the guidelines, which promised that in the initial settlement year, familieswould receive an allotment of 9 hectares of land. Families did not receive individualallotments. Dominican agricultural officials instructed the settlers to carry out joint work onsmaller plots of land. Under the burning sun, we were forced to operate peanut seedingmachines without any horses or cattle.62

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Toru Takegama’s narrative highlighted the disappointment of seeing the land. ‘We allknelt down in despair when we saw the wasteland (www.caribbeannetnews.com, 6 June2006)’.

One Japanese immigrant stated that such a paradisiacal land would have been locatedin the fertile mountain ranges and southeastern locations of the country, much furtheraway from the border than Trujillo have envisioned. The reality of the land conditions inthe colonies, Takegama claimed, overwhelmed many of the immigrants to the point ofsuicide. Double digit suicides occurred amongst Japanese immigrants in the early years 63.Takegama’s association of bad land with characteristics of dry, red, or white in color,peanut-producing, and high surveillance was representative of a majority of the Japaneseimmigrant description of why the land promised was not paradise.

Ing. Mamaru ‘Jose Luis’ Hidaka remarked that, within a few years, the foreign landof the DR became ‘as familiar as one’s own fields … you get to know the lands like youget to know your children, the good and bad. You learn to survive’. That is why Ing.Mamaru Hidaka, as a representative of the prosecuting group, fought vehementlyagainst taking the La Luisa plots from the Dominican government because he knew itwas not the type of land they were promised and believed it would undermine their courtcase.

We know where the good land is located in this country, so when the Dominican governmentapologized for not complying with the 1950s agreement and offered land in La Luisa, weknew that it was bad land … it wasn’t the border, but it still wasn’t good. The Japanesegovernment probably pressured them to take the blame. That land is red, not good, it is notblack. They [government officials] would not live there, none of them.64

Thus, the popular perception of paradisiacal land, among the immigrants, has been influ-enced by local knowledge and their own lived experience in the DR.

Japanese immigrants arrived with conceptions of land, property, and nation that differedfrom their receiving country. Over time, their perception of paradise continued to change toaccommodate and negotiate past experiences and understandings with current interest andopportunities. In the beginning, it seemed like most of the Japanese immigrants settled in theDR hoping for a paradise full of vast fertile lands. However, decades later and in the midst ofa lawsuit, paradise is less attached to the highly politicized quantity of lands and more to dowith the financial stability that the ownership of fertile land offers.

I often asked the immigrants if paradise was attainable at all in the DR without thelawsuit? Seio, a Dominican-born Japanese man, responded, ‘Yes, for the rich, who arenot in need, and for the ignorant poor, who do not know the difference … also there area few Japanese in Constanza who live well’. He testified that his family and mostfamilies he knew, Japanese, Dominican, or Haitian, did not fit this category.65 TerukiWaki, a 58-year old Japanese, claims to have created his piece of paradise, but only afterstruggling. His family received fertile land in Constanza with overgrown pine trees. Theremoval of trees involved months of backbreaking work but once done the land wasready to cultivate. Waki claims that in Constanza ‘the mountain climate is very similarto where we’re from in Japan’, making it a pleasant reminder of his birthplace. Hestarted a Cherry Blossom Festival in these fields for the annual celebration of a popularJapanese cultural event. His mother Choko reminded him of this and shared othermemories of Kagoshima before passing. His fields are full of ornamental flowers thathe sells, providing consistent economic subsistence throughout rough political andeconomic times.66

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Legal fight divides

Both divisions and coalitions characterized the relationships within the immigrantcommunity in the DR and returnees to Japan. In an interview with Naito, an employeeof the Japanese Embassy in Santo Domingo, he stated that the history of Japaneseimmigrants is a tough one because of the conditions of the DR, not Japan.67 He and hisfamily were immigrants as well; however, he held an ambiguous position in relation tothe court case because he believed that suing the Japanese government was misguided.As an employee of the Japanese embassy and an immigrant to the DR, Naito couldrepresent both the Japanese immigrants in the DR and the Japanese government. Inconversations with Mamoru Hidaka, he claimed that those against the lawsuit, likeNaito, believed it to be disrespectful, as descendants of Japan, to sue the Japanesegovernment. ‘It’s not about whether we are Japanese enough or not … the governmentwas wrong for not signing an official settlement contract like the DR signed withSpain’.68

A challenge for most Japanese immigrants, even those not directly involved in thecourt case, was to contextualize their lives within these nation-building projects both onthe level of the court case and their own day-to-day experience. This was also the case forYumiko, who was born in the DR to first-generation Japanese immigrants. When askedhow she identified ethnically, she stated that she is unlike other Japanese Dominicansliving in the DR because she learned Japanese both from her parents and at university inJapan. She received a fellowship from the Japanese education ministry that allowed her tovisit and live in Japan. ‘I’m Dominican, but my [Japanese] culture and language is stillimportant…but you know how it is, the Dominican comes out of me more’, she remarkedexcitedly.69 Yumiko added that she loved both countries, but could only live in the DR.She believed that a successful lawsuit could give the elderly first generation immigrantsthe respect and humanity they deserved.70

Many hoped that the lawsuit would highlight the Japanese government’s responsibilityin maintaining oversight throughout a state-sponsored settlement. The immigrant’s narra-tive echoed political theorist David Miller’s defense of national responsibility in the faceof globalization.

Just as individuals are to varying extents responsible for the good and bad outcomes thatfollow from their actions, so [nation-states and governments] are to varying extents respon-sible for the results of the practices they follow and the collective decisions they take … theextent of responsibility varies along … the degree to which people collectively are actuallyable to control the direction in which their society is moving.71

For the prosecuting Japanese immigrants and their families, the lawsuit meant thepossibility of attaining stability and financial security. It was not about receiving 300tareas of land along the borderlands, which was unrealistic to begin with. They believethat their legal actions do not make them less Japanese or disrespectful people. In fact,they argue that they make their claim against the Japanese government because they areJapanese people who were led astray.

Civil action against Japan

Weeks before the fiftieth anniversary celebrations, Dominican President Dr LeonelFernandez went to Japan to meet the Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at his officialresidence. In this meeting, the Prime Minister noted that he was aware of the consultations

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between representatives from the Japanese government and the immigrants’ lawyers.Japanese national newspapers published statements made in this meeting including thefollowing by Koizumi, ‘I hear that consultations are currently taking place to reach amutually agreeable solution while taking into account the hardships of those people whohave immigrated, and it is my hope that they go well’.72

The Japanese government sent Otsuji as Koizumi’s special envoy to the ceremony inSanto Domingo to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of settling in the country. It wasto represent the initial intent and physical proof of the Japanese government’s continualinvolvement in the Japanese immigrants’ life in the DR – much like the pledge of anabsentee parent to become more involved in their children’s lives. The immigrantswelcomed such actions but did not believe it was enough to drop the lawsuit. Shortlyafter, the Tokyo District Court made an official statement and decision, publicallyacknowledging the government’s liability in the immigration scheme while rejecting thesuit on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ right to claim damage had expired. Days after,Prime Minister Koizumi ordered the government to consider how they could respond tothe immigrants’ issues in the wake of the court dismissing the claim.

On Friday, 21 July 2006 the response came in the form of an official apology issuedby the Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, to Japanese immigrants to the DR for thehardship they experienced under a government-led emigration program in the 1950s. Thiswas the first official apology granted to Japanese emigrants (anywhere in the world) forharsh immigrant experience.

Along with the apology, Prime Minister Koizumi offered to provide the emigrants defacto73 compensation despite the court’s ruling. Koizumi released a statement acknowl-edging that the emigrants faced hardships because the Japanese government did notappropriately conduct investigations in advance or provide information on the settlementarea.74 The statement also said that the government had decided to seek ‘an early and anoverall solution’ over the emigrants’ issue, in consideration of various factors, includingthat the emigrants were aging. In this statement, Prime Minister Koizumi acknowledgedthe validity of the immigrants’ argument and their will to continue the fight. In ourconversation, Takagama noted that the Koizumi’s decision to end the fight was anothervictory. ‘He knew that we were pushing on’. In an official statement to reporters,Takagama stated:

Representing all the other Japanese emigrants to the DR and those who passed away, I wouldlike to thank the prime minister deeply from my heart for his heartwarming words … I’m gladthat we can celebrate the 50th anniversary of Japanese emigrants’ settling in the DR on 29July not as abandoned Japanese people, but as Japanese agricultural emigrants.

The government plans to provide ‘special lump-sum payments’ to each of the 1300Japanese emigrants to the DR, including the plaintiffs, up to 2 million yen (approximately$17,000) in de facto compensation.75 The allocation of this amount was also meant toinclude Japanese immigrants who were not officially in the lawsuit. In addition, thestatement said the government would also increase the amount of financial support toemigrants via local emigrants’ associations ‘out of gratitude for their contribution to thedevelopment of Japan’s friendly ties with the DR’.76 It also proposed seeking a solution toreduce debts the immigrants owed to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA),which continued to increase as a result of fluctuating exchange rates.

Lawmakers, including Hidehisa Otsuji, the former minister of health, labor, and welfare,plan to submit a bill to parliament to realize the government’s plan as a special measures law.

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The bill is intended to legalize special measures so that future government sponsoredimmigration efforts will be better structured, fully executed, and carefully managed.

The prosecuting Japanese immigrants reconciled simultaneous national belongings ascitizens of one state and yet resident members of another, refusing to make a unilateralchoice between Japan and the DR, even in the face of their lawsuit against the Japanesegovernment. Japanese immigrants’ understandings of their identity were situational,elastic, and even conflicted at times. However, they argued that their national or ethnicidentity had little to do with their right to demand retribution, derailing the use of nationaldiscourses that could have ‘othered’ them and possibly invalidated their civil action suit.In this legal narrative, the Japanese immigrants attempted to define themselves asJapanese nationals, as well as, unrealized middle-class Dominicans, in an effort to solidifytheir status as respectable and dignified people in both locales.

AcknowledgementI would like to thank Paula J. Saunders, Kris Shore, Maureen Molloy, Christine Dureau, and ShelleyRoff for providing generous insights and editorial comments. Earlier versions of this article werepresented at the American Anthropology Association Conference, Latin American StudiesAssociation Conference and Auckland University Anthropology Seminar.

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

FundingThis work was supported by the Mellon Mays Summer Grant, Fulbright and University of VirginiaNational Science Foundation Grant.

Notes on contributorYadira Perez Hazel, PhD, is currently an assistant professor at the City University of New York: Boroughof Manhattan Community College and an Oral Historian at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum inNew York City. She completed her PhD and MA in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Virginiaand her BA at Cornell University. She has researched, taught, and published on race, identity, immigra-tion, and nation-building.

Author’s postal address: Center of Ethnic Studies, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CityUniversity of New York, 199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007, USA.

Notes1. Spanish title for a licensed engineer.2. In this article, persons’ names (including Japanese names) are given in western form, unless

otherwise indicated. Thus, given names precede the family name. This naming order mirrorshow these individuals introduced themselves to me. In addition, I refer to people by the namethey asked me to refer to them, which usually was their first name. I will indicate when I amusing a second and or preferred name.

3. For more on Asian immigration and displacement see Chu, ‘Asians in Latin America’,235–45; Peguero, Colonización y Política; and Anderson and Lee, Displacements andDiasporas.

4. The content of this article comes out of 10 years of ethnographic and archival research, whereI lived in the DR and conducted over two dozen interviews with Japanese immigrants understate-sponsored agreements, Japanese descendants, Japanese immigrants who came after the1960s, and Dominicans living and/or working near the original Japanese colonies. I also draw

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from several events, conversations, documents, and observations collected during my half adozen trips to the DR since 1999. In this article, I focus largely on the interviews withJapanese immigrants who live in the DR and hold leadership or representative roles in thelawsuit against Japan.

5. Hirabayashi, Kikumura-Yano, and Hirabayashi, New Worlds, New Lives, 19–20.6. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States.7. See Anders et al., Sun, Sex and Gold; and Strachan, Paradise and Plantation for more on

history and usage of Caribbean as paradise tropes.8. Gardiner, La politica de inmigracíon del dictador Trujillo, 180.9. Horst and Asagiri, “The Odyssey of Japanese Colonists,” 342.10. For an overview of Asian Diaspora, see Hu-DeHart and López, “Asian Diasporas in Latin

America and the Caribbean”; Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams; and Kikumura-Yano,Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants.

11. Ing. Mamoru Hidaka, personal interview, Santo Domingo, D.R., Dec. 2000.12. See Candelario, “‘Black behind the Ears’ and Up Front Too?”; Perez Hazel, “Sensing

Difference.”13. Miyoko ‘Maria Blanca’ Hidaka and her husband Takeaki ‘Tony’ Hidaka were born in Japan and

were brought over by their parents/guardians. I do not use the generational categories of Issei orNisei to describe them because these terms may obscure more than they reveal. Within the contextof the court case in the DR, there is a difference between Japanese immigrants born in Japan andraised in the DR who came under the 1950s settlement and other Japanese immigrants born inJapan and raised in DRwho came after the 1960s. Current use of these cohort (generational) termswould define these two groups of Japanese born and Dominican-raised persons as Nisei (actuallysome scholars may even call both these groups Issei) obscuring the political, social, economic, andlegal differences that they encountered before, during, and after their migration – differences thatare at the heart of the legal suit.

14. Comité Ejecutivo de la Conmemoración, Hoy dia todavía nos encontramos vivos aquí, 67.15. Endoh, Exporting Japan, 11.16. See Hall, The Political Power.17. Letter from Uba to Trujillo, October 31, 1956, BORSE, 3:4, 83.18. In Kaigai-Iju bulletin published by Japanese Emigration Association on 20 November 1955

and mailed to the President of the DR on 27 December 1955. This publication is found in theNational Archives of the Nation, Secretary of External Affairs,#4527.

19. Lesser, A Discontented Diaspora.20. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese.21. Knight, The Caribbean, 225.22. Levitt, The Transnational Villagers, 231.23. See Derby, “Haitians, Magic, and Money,” 488–526.24. Turits, “A World Destroyed,” 632.25. Ibid, 633.26. See Duany, “Reconstructing Racial Identity”; and Candelario, “‘Black Behind the Ears’ – And

Up Front Too.”27. Torres-Saillant, “The Tribulations of Blackness,”126–146.28. Duany “Reconstructing Racial Identity,” 50–51.29. See Roorda, The Dictator Next Door.30. Martinez, “From Hidden Hand,” 57–84; and Santana, “The Role of Haitian Braceros,” 120–132.31. Augelli, “Agricultural Colonization in the Dominican Republic,” 15–27.32. Tavernier, “The Stigma of Blackness,” 96–104.33. See Wedeman, Development and Corruption.34. Gardiner, La política de inmigración del dictador Trujillo.35. Turits, “AWorld Destroyed,” 632; and see Fennema and Loewenthal, La construccion de raza.36. See Simmons, Reconstructing Racial Identity.37. See Galindez, The era of Trujillo.38. “La desastrosa inmigración japonesa a la República Dominicana.” Idea Network (accessed

February 16, 2015). http://www.ideamatsu.com/migraciones/600-9-1.htm.39. Peguero, Colonización y política, 65.40. Despradel, La migración japonesa, 5.41. Ibid., 7.

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42. Gardiner, La política de inmigración del dictador Trujillo, 126.43. Dr. Masahisa Yamashita, Personal conversation, Santo Domingo, D.R., March 2013.44. Takeaki ‘Tony’ Hidaka, Personal conversation, Jarabocoa, D.R., March 2013.45. Takeaki ‘Tony’ Hidaka, Personal interview, Jarabacoa, D.R., December 1999.46. Ibid.47. Comité Ejecutivo de la Conmemoración, Hoy dia todavía nos encontramos vivos aquí, 67.48. “Japoneses en RD demandarán su gobierno.” El Nacional, May 15, 2000.49. Ibid., 2000.50. Ing. Mamoru ‘Jose Luis’ Hidaka, Copy of Mercado letter, December 1999.51. See note 48 above.52. Letter to Japanese Ministry of External Relations, 1997.53. “Focus: Reality was harsh for Japanese emigrants to Dominican Republic.” Kyodo, March 6,

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