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The Unpublished Diaries of Charles Kikuchi: “Black and Yellow” through the Eyes of a Progressive Nisei Intellectual

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Matthew M. Briones
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Extract

In the winter of 1942, only a year removed from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and nearly seven months into his internment at the Gila River Relocation Project in Arizona, a young Japanese American named Charles Kikuchi recounts an afternoon's passing conversation in his diary. “I was walking over by the Butte this afternoon and I stopped to talk about the camp with a Negro workman who was digging postholes for the fence which is going around the place,” writes Kikuchi. The young African American asks the young Nisei (that is, second-generation Japanese American) about the loyalty of other Japanese Americans and is disappointed to discover Nisei allegiance to the United States. The workman responds, “Boy, you are making a mistake. Why should you be loyal to a country that don't want you? … This is a white man's country and all the colored peoples of this world has got to change this so that I can get a good job just like a white man and I don't have to dig post holes to lock you Japanese up who are born in California. You help this country out and they will turn around and give you a kick in the pants afterwards.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 28 , October 2004 , pp. 383 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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References

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