Nisei (二世, "second generation") is aJapanese-language term used in countries inNorth America andSouth America to specify theethnically Japanese children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants, orIssei. TheNisei, orsecond generation, in turn are the parents of theSansei, or third generation. These Japanese-language terms derive fromichi, ni, san, "one, two, three," the ordinal numbers used withsei (seeJapanese numerals.) Thoughnisei means "second-generation immigrant", it more specifically often refers to the children of theinitial diaspora, occurring during the period of theEmpire of Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and overlapping in the U.S. with theG.I. andsilent generations.
A poster used in Japan to attract immigrants to Brazil. It reads: "Let's go to South America (Brazil highlighted) with your entire family."
Although the earliest organized group of Japanese emigrants left Japan centuries ago, and a later group settled inMexico in 1897,[1] today's largest populations of Japanese immigrants and their descendants are concentrated in four countries:Brazil (2 million),[2] theUnited States (1.5 million),[3]Canada (130 thousand),[4] andPeru (100 thousand).[5]
Some USNisei were born after the end ofWorld War II during thebaby boom. MostNisei, however, who were living in the western United States during World War II, were forciblyinterned with their parents (Issei) afterExecutive Order 9066 was promulgated to exclude everyone of Japanese descent from theWest Coast areas ofCalifornia,Oregon,Washington, andAlaska. It has been argued that someNisei feel caught in a dilemma between their Nisei parents and other Americans.[6] The Nisei ofHawaii had a somewhat different experience.
In the United States, two representativeNisei wereDaniel Inouye andFred Korematsu. Hawaiian-born Daniel Ken Inouye (井上 建,Inoue Ken, 1924–2012) was one of many young Nisei men who volunteered to fight in the nation's military when restrictions against Japanese-American enlistment were removed in 1943. Inouye later went on to become a U.S. Senator from Hawaii after it achieved statehood.
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu (是松 豊三郎,Korematsu Toyosaburō, 1919–2005) was one of many Japanese-American citizens living on the West Coast who resisted internment during World War II. In 1944, Korematsu lost aU.S. Supreme Court challenge to the wartime internment of Japanese Americans but gained vindication decades later.[7] ThePresidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, was awarded to Korematsu in 1998. At the White House award ceremonies, PresidentBill Clinton explained, "In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls.Plessy,Brown,Parks ... to that distinguished list, today we add the name of Fred Korematsu."[8]
The overwhelming majority of Japanese Americans had reacted to the internment by acquiescing to the government's order, hoping to prove their loyalty as Americans. To them, Korematsu's opposition was treacherous to both his country and his community. Across the span of decades, he was seen as a traitor, a test case, an embarrassment and, finally, a hero.[9]
The children of these Japanese Brazilian (Nipo-brasileiros) immigrants would be calledNisei.
Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside ofJapan, estimated to number more than 1.5 million (including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity),[10] more than that of the 1.2 million in theUnited States.[11] TheNisei Japanese Brazilians are an important part of the ethnic minority in thatSouth American nation.
Within Japanese-Canadian communities across Canada, three distinct subgroups developed, each with different sociocultural referents, generational identity, and wartime experiences.[12][13]
Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians have special names for each of their generations in North America. These are formed by combining one of theJapanese numbers corresponding to thegeneration with the Japanese word for generation (sei 世). The Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian communities have themselves distinguished their members with terms likeIssei,Nisei, andSansei which describe the first,second and third generation of immigrants. The fourth generation is calledYonsei (四世) and the fifth is calledGosei (五世). TheIssei,Nisei andSansei generations reflect distinctly different attitudes to authority, gender, non-Japanese involvement, and religious belief and practice, and other matters.[14] The age when individuals faced the wartime evacuation and internment is the single, most significant factor which explains these variations in their experiences, attitudes and behaviour patterns.[12]
The termNikkei (日系) encompasses all of the world's Japanese immigrants across generations.[15] Thecollective memory of theIssei and olderNisei was an image of Meiji Japan from 1870 through 1911, which contrasted sharply with the Japan that newer immigrants had more recently left. These differing attitudes, social values and associations with Japan were often incompatible with each other.[16] In this context, the significant differences in post-war experiences and opportunities did nothing to mitigate the gaps which separated generational perspectives.
The generation of people born in Japan who later immigrated to another country.
Nisei (二世)
The generation of people born in North America, South America, Australia, Hawaii, or any country outside Japan either to at least oneIssei or one non-immigrant Japanese parent.
The generation of people born to at least oneYonsei parent.[17]
The second generation of immigrants, born in Canada or the United States to parentsnot born in Canada or the United States, is calledNisei (二世). TheNisei have become part of the general immigrant experience in the United States and Canada to become part of the greater "melting pot" of the United States and the "mosaic" of Canada. SomeNisei have resisted being absorbed into the majority society, largely because of their tendency to maintain Japanese interpersonal styles of relationships.[18]
MostNisei were educated in Canadian or American school systems where they were taught Canadian or American national values as national citizens of those countries of individualism and citizenship. When these were taken away in the early 1940s, theNisei confronted great difficulty in accepting or coming to terms with internment and forced resettlement. OlderNisei tended to identify more closely with theIssei, sharing similar economic and social characteristics.[12] OlderNisei who had been employed in small businesses, in farming, in fishing or in semi-skilled occupations, tended to remain in blue-collar work.[19] In contrast, the youngerNisei attended university and college and entered various professions and white-collar employment after the war.[16] This sharp division in post-war experiences and opportunities exacerbated the gaps between theseNisei.
In North America, since the redress victory in 1988, a significant evolutionary change has occurred. The Nisei, their parents and their children are changing the way they look at themselves as individuals of Japanese descent in their respective nations of Canada, the United States and Mexico.[20]
There are currently just over one hundred thousandBritish Japanese, mostly inLondon; but unlike otherNikkei terms used centered from Japan to distinguish the distance from Japanese nationality elsewhere in the world, these Britons do not conventionally parse their communities in generational terms asIssei,Nisei, orSansei.[21]
Thekanreki (還暦), a traditional, pre-modern Japanese rite of passage to old age at 60, was sometimes celebrated by theIssei and is now being celebrated by increasing numbers ofNisei. Rituals are enactments of shared meanings, norms, and values; and this Japanese rite of passage highlights a collective response among the Nisei to the conventional dilemmas of growing older.[22]Aging is affecting the demographics of the Nisei. According to a 2011 columnist inThe Rafu Shimpo of Los Angeles, the obituaries showing the number of Japanese Americans in their 80s and 90s — Nisei, in a word — who are passing is staggering"[23]
The Japanese-bornIssei learned Japanese as their mother tongue, and their success in learning English as a second language was varied. MostNisei speak Japanese to some extent, learned fromIssei parents, Japanese school, and living in a Japanese community or in the internment camps. A majority of English-speakingNisei have retained knowledge of the Japanese language, at least in its spoken form. MostSansei speak English as their first language and most marry people of non-Japanese ancestry.[16]
There was relatively littleintermarriage during the Nisei generation, partly because the war and theunconstitutional[25] incarceration[26] of theseAmerican citizens intervened exactly at a time when the group was of marrying age. Identification of them with the enemy by the American public, made them unpopular and unlikely candidates for interracial marriage. Besides this, they were thrown, en masse, into concentration camps[27][28] with others of the same ethnicity, causing the majority of Nisei to marry other Nisei. Another factor is thatanti-miscegenation laws criminalizing interracial marriage, cohabitation, and sex were in effect in many U.S. states until 1967.
This is why third generation Sansei are mostly still of the same racial appearance as the Issei, who first immigrated to the U.S. The Sansei generation has widely intermarried in the post WWII years, with estimates of such unions at over 60 percent. In contrast, interracial marriage is much more common in Brazil, which led to a higher degree of mixed ethnicity there despite the larger Japanese population.
When the Canadian and American governments interned West Coast Japanese citizens, Japanese American citizens, and Japanese Canadian citizens in 1942, neither distinguished between American/Canadian-born citizens of Japanese ancestry (Nisei) and their parents, born in Japan but now living in the U.S. or Canada (Issei).[29]
In 1978, theJapanese American Citizens League actively began demanding be taken as redress for harms endured by Japanese Americans during World War II.
In 1988, U.S. PresidentRonald Reagan signed theCivil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided for a formal apology and payments of $20,000 for each survivor. The legislation stated that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".[31] TheCivil Liberties Act Amendments of 1992, appropriating an additional $400 million in order to ensure that all remaining internees received their $20,000 redress payments, was signed into law by PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush, who also issued another formal apology from the U.S. government.
Japanese and Japanese Americans who were relocated during WWII were compensated for direct property losses in 1948. These payments were awarded to 82,210 Japanese Americans or their heirs at a cost of $1.6 billion; the program's final disbursement occurred in 1999.[32]
In 1983, theNational Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) mounted a campaign demanding redress for injustices during the war years.[33] NAJC hiredPrice Waterhouse to estimate the economic losses to Japanese Canadians resulting from property confiscations and loss of wages due to internment. On the basis of detailed records maintained by theCustodian of Alien Property,[34] it was determined that the total loss totalled $443 million (in 1986 dollars).[33]
In 1988, Prime MinisterBrian Mulroney gave that long-awaited formal apology and the Canadian government began to make good on a compensation package—including $21,000 to all surviving internees, and the re-instatement of Canadian citizenship to those who were deported to Japan.[35]
The number ofnisei who have earned some degree of public recognition has continued to increase over time; but the quiet lives of those whose names are known only to family and friends are no less important in understanding the broader narrative of thenikkei. Although the names highlighted here are over-represented bynisei from North America, the Latin American member countries of thePan American Nikkei Association (PANA) includeArgentina,Bolivia,Brazil,Chile,Colombia,Mexico,Paraguay,Peru, andUruguay, in addition to the English-speakingUnited States andCanada.[36]
Ford Konno (born 1933), Olympic gold medalist (1952, 1952) and silver medalist (1952, 1956) swimmer
Tommy Kono (1930–2016 ), Olympic gold medalist (1952, 1956) and silver medalist (1960) weightlifter and only lifter to have set world records in four different weightlifting classes[47]
James Shigeta (1929–2014), an American film and television actor
Mike Shinoda (born 1977), musician, rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, graphic designer, manager and film composer. Member of the American bandLinkin Park and supplementary groupFort Minor
Monica Sone (1919–2011), American author of the autobiographicalNisei Daughter
David Suzuki (born 1936), Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist
Asahina, Robert (2007).Just Americans: How Japanese Americans Won a War at Home and Abroad: The Story of the 100th Battalion. New York: Gotham Books.ISBN1-59240-300-X.OCLC143249949.
Harrington, Joseph D. (1979).Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America's Pacific Victory. Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises.ISBN9780093368010.OCLC5184099.
McNaughton, James (2006).Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service During World War II. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army.ISBN9780160729577.OCLC70149258.
Moulin, Pierre (1993).U.S. Samuraïs in Bruyeres: People of France and Japanese Americans: Incredible Story. Peace and Freedom Trail, France (ed.). Translator: David Guinsbourg. Vagney, France: G. Louis.ISBN2-9599984-0-5.OCLC82373241.
Sterner, C. Douglas (2008).Go for Broke: The Nisei Warriors of World War II Who Conquered Germany, Japan, and American Bigotry. Clearfield, Utah: Utah American Legacy Historical Press.ISBN978-0-9796896-1-1.OCLC141855086.
