I leaned against the railing of the afterdeck of the SS Meiggs and watched Shanghai's skyline in early July, 1946. A Canadian missionary who occupied a bunk near mine in a cargo hold, was telling me of his experiences in inland China.
From far below I heard religious singing and as I looked down on the pier I saw about a hundred Jews with upturned faces. Prom the ship's deck more than a hundred Jews who leaned against the rail began humming as though in response. Soon they, too, began to chant.
This departure of Jewish refugees pointed up the historical persecution of the Jews. They were then people without a homeland. As the ship moved down the river to the open sea, the plaintive refrain of the chant came to us from the shore.
I recalled that when I was a child in Kona, even before I had met a Jew, father constantly told us that the Jews were persecuted because they did not have a country. In 1946, the British were still fighting the Jews in attempting to keep them from establishing their homeland in Palestine. But my father had no clear concept of a democratic state.
Until the day he died he worshipped the emperor of Japan and told us heroic stories of warlords in feudal Japan. Father Was a 200 Per Center Father told us children that we would always be Japanese because the white man felt superior to and was prejudiced against Orientals. He believed that a strong Japan would protect us. To him, a strong Japan was a militarist Japan and the logical development of his thinking meant war. He was a 200 per cent Japanese, a counterpart of the 200 per cent Americans of the West. And like other 200 per centers, he harbored racial prejudice.
One called the Orientals "Mongols" and ones like father called a Caucasian not "hakujin" (white man) but "ketto" (hairy man).
Father never experienced or observed a group of forward-looking white people joining with non-whites to fight militantly for equality. His contact with the white man was on the plantations where lunas abused contract laborers like him. He never knew what a democratic trade union was like, where workers depended upon their own resources.
Contract Laborers Looked for Foreign Aid
He and the majority of others of his generation who came as contract laborers, being denied citizenship, looked to Japan for protection. And because the plantation employers used force, violence, deceit and bribes to keep the workers from organizing, and from cooperating among themselves and with laborers of other national stock, they looked more to their native countries for support. And the stronger their native countries, they believed, the greater the pressure they could bring to bear on their adopted country to treat contract laborers better.
To father and others like him of his generation who were unfamiliar with democratic organizational procedures, the idea of an all-powerful emporer appealed.
But workers have become self-reliant with the passing of years. They choose their leaders and take care of their own problems. But the right to cooperate among themselves to better their conditions was won through hard struggles. And the idea of unity — the need of it — had to be learned by them.
When Does Feeling of Equality Come To An Oppressed Minority?
On the Meiggs, I enjoyed talking to Jewish refugees. For many years had noticed the pride the Jews had in their culture and background. It seemed to me that those I had known did not fall for the idea of "assimilation," as some members of other persecuted minorities did.
Conscious assimilation accepts the superiority of another culture. It is an attempt to submerge one's self in another culture and to lose his own cultural identity.
It seemed to me that the Jews I had known did not consciously put on a chameleonic act in order to be "accepted." Anglo-Saxon culture is just another culture to them, having its good and bad points. They have theirs.
These people fought prejudice and discrimination and asserted their equality. And when one fights in such a manner how can he feel inferior to the race, cultural and religious supremacists? Actually, a person belonging to a suppressed minority begins to feel equal to the others when he consciously begins fighting prejudice.
Citizens Told To Sign Alien Manifests
We sailed toward home for about 10 days among pleasant companions. One morning I was sleeping on deck when the ship's loud speaker announced my name along with those of two other Nisei.
One of them was Arthur Miyakawa from New York, who had been in charge of our OWI office in Hankow. The other was a young Nisei woman who was returning to the U. S. after spending the war years in Japanese-occupied China.
We three went to the purser's office, wondering why we were the only ones called.
A Chinese American clerk in the purser's office asked us to sign a manifest.
I read the heading of a big yellow sheet. I said: "But this is an alien's manifest."
"Yes. You sign on the alien manifest."
I informed the clerk that I was a veteran. I was now an employe of the State Department.
The clerk said that made no difference. All Orientals, regardless of citizenship, must sign an alien manifest.
Arthur and I tried to argue that we three should sign a citizen's manifest.
The purser said: "It's your State Department which laid down the regulation long ago. Don't blame us. We don't want to treat you as non-citizens."
The clerks said: "It's the Department of Interior regulations. If I were to travel, I must do the same thing because I am in Oriental. Don't raise hell with me."
We signed the manifest.
A Caucasian seaman who had been listening to our heated conversation asked us what was wrong. We told him and he hit the ceiling.
Ugly Head of Discrimination Emerged As We Neared Home
This incident brought home to me that during all my months in Asia, the people there had accepted me and other Americans of Oriental ancestry, as Americans.
We had been born and raised in the United States. But as we approached our native land, we found that we had to enter our country by signing an alien manifest. The foreigners, who had their own country, had no kick about signing an alien manifest. It was proper for them to do so. The seaman told us we shouldn't give up our fight.
He said that Negroes, whites and all minorities must get together to fight discriminatory practices. "If you win, the others benefit. If the Negroes win, you benefit. That is how we fight in our maritime union," he explained. I got off the ship in San Francisco and headed for Los Angeles to meet Taeko and our daughter Linda.
I had last seen them at Manzanar Relocation Center. The life behind) watch towers and barbed wire was behind us.
I Signed a Contract With a Publisher
The three of us travelled to New York where I was going, to be separated from the U. S. Information Service. I wanted to write a book about my overseas experiences. Numerous friends and acquaintances had encouraged me to do so. I did not know how to go about contacting publishers. Friends helped me in making the rounds of publishing houses. One day a publisher I had never gone to asked me to contact his firm immediately.
I learned that a vice president of the firm was in China looking for manuscripts. A friend of mine had told him about my wartime experiences. He was interested and wired his home office to arrange a meeting with me. I prepared a synopsis of a book I intended to write. The publisher gave me a contract and paid me what was considered a substantial amount for an unknown writer. He wanted to rush the book, and I did my best to speed production on my end.
As I brought the draft of the chapters to the firm, the editor who took the material seemed pleased. Meanwhile the publisher announced the publication of my book in his spring booklist. It was the winter of 1946. I had three more chapters to write.
Political Climate Changes Drastically In Our Own Country
While on this stretch I received bad, news. One evening a writer friend came to my apartment to inform me that the publishing firm had undergone a shakeup. In this process my book, along with about 10 others, had been dropped. When I went to the publishing firm the next day I found that the vice president and a few other editors were either resigning or were being laid off. A major issue was policy disagreement. I was told that the Roosevelt New Deal era was at an end and that U. S. domestic and foreign policy would swing to the right. Witch hunting of the publishing and radio businesses was expected.
The firm's president wanted to stay conservative and play safe. All this happened a few weeks before the application of the Truman doctrine in Greece and Turkey. I also found that the company's vice president and president disagreed over Henry Wallace's views on China at that time. The firm had been publishing Wallace's books. At lunch with the firm's executives, Wallace had criticized Chiang Kai-shek's regime and talked of the need of a coalition government in China. Since the firm's vice president agreed with Wallace, the company president clashed with his subordinate.
So my book was dropped. Times were changing rapidly. Suppression of ideas and information by political pressure on publishing companies was part of the tidal wave of hysteria which was to silence liberal radio commentators, writers, professors and artists of all types.