シゲル・フリオ・ツハ

With Japan’s era of isolation ending with the Tokugawa Shogunate in the late 1800’s, its era of diaspora began. During the Meiji restoration, changes in Japanese state policies such as increased taxes and mandatory military service, along with the need to escape economic hardships forced many people to emigrate. The most notorious destinations were across the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii and the Pacific U.S. region. However, with emerging anti-Japanese racism, anti-immigrant policies such as the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 forced Japanese migrants to shift their migration to new destinations in Latin America, of which Brazil and ...

What do you hate most about this world? Posed this question, you are undoubtedly thinking of forces that have most deeply disrupted and disturbed your life and that of those around you. Disease, poverty, violence, all sure quickly bubble up from the depths of your memories and highlight the pages of the story that is your life when you think about the answer to this question. Needless to say, such an answer will vary with every individual, and even within every individual, such an answer will vary with the time and situation we find ourselves in. If I had to ...

It is difficult to remember exactly what it was like to be Japanese in Peru. My ethnicity mattered a lot, and at the same time, it feels like it did not. While this may be contradicting, I do not see it as logically problematic. I have taught many classes on race, ethnicity and racism, and it is always amazing to hear students of color talk about the absence of racism in their experiences growing up. However, as these courses progress, the same students become aware that racism did (and does) exist in their lives, but that they simply had not ...

Cherishing the values of the first generation of Japanese migrants to the United States of America, Tsukasa Matsueda, Ed.D. writes a compelling book that is simultaneously an honoring of the Issei and a message to younger generations.

Dr. Matsueda honors the Issei by recounting their history of struggle in the U.S.; He recapitulates the episodes of racism that they faced as they first took their part in U.S. society as cheap labor and then as a fictitious military threat during World War II. In order to get through these difficult times, the Issei relied in a system ...