Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II

The question of identity—national, ethnocultural, and religious—is central to Facing the Mountain. On the surface, the Japanese American experience during World War II pits them against the majority Americans—Anglo-Saxon, white, Protestant. Japanese Americans living in the US were othered racially, culturally, and maybe even politically; they were unified as “enemy aliens” in the eyes of some white Americans. Yet as the author explores this question, the reader learns about more complex gradations of identity within the Japanese American population as well.

American colonialist settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries promoted white Western European supremacy, suppressing the Indigenous population of the continent, forcibly importing enslaved Africans, looking down on incoming Southern Europeans, and restricting immigrating Slavs, European Jews, and East Asians. Legal hindrances, such as immigration restriction acts, and widespread nativism and racism were underpinned by pseudo-science focused on perceived racial differences in intelligence and behavior. Given this context, it is unfortunately not surprising that Japanese immigrants fleeing terrible economic conditions in late-19th and early-20th century Japan were seen as inferior because of their race. They were relegated to working long hours in menial labor jobs such as farming, rail, mining, and service industries. However, despite facing racism in the US, some first-generation Japanese Americans held prejudicial attitudes toward their own.

The first difference Brown draws between first-generation Japanese Americans has to do with class. Despite living in the US for decades and respecting the country’s laws, Issei were prohibited from obtaining citizenship through naturalization per Ozawa v. United States Supreme Court case. However, while some Issei remained impoverished farmers, like Rudy Tokiwa’s parents, others pursued the proverbial American dream by slowly working their way up to the middle class, like the Shiosakis, who owned and operated a successful laundry. Another class marker within the first-generation Japanese American community was regional identity of origin: “Those who hailed from one prefecture in Japan often looked down on those from another” (54). At the bottom of this hierarchy were the Okinawans—the Ryukyuan people of Southern Japan—an ethnically and culturally distinct group.

Second-generation Japanese Americans, or Nisei, were pulled in a variety of directions by their complex identities. For one thing, Nisei ties (or lack thereof) to Japanese culture and customs caused generational clashes within families. Having obtained American citizenship through birth, many Nisei had no interest in Japanese culture and felt completely American. Other Nisei, however, wanted to maintain a relationship with their parents’ homeland and traveled to Japan to visit extended family and for education. Both of these decisions—to adopt Japanese identity or not to engage with it—were a potential trigger of conflict between generations, as it could violate the Japanese custom of respecting elders, especially fathers as decision-makers. Moreover, for second-generation Japanese Americans interested in maintaining a relationship with their parents’ homeland, other questions of immigrant identity arose. Fumiye Miho illustrates the problem of belonging such Nisei faced. Having often experienced prejudice in the US, she also failed to find a home in Japan, where, despite embracing the language and culture, she was seen as a foreigner, insulted for her “degenerate Western apparel” (301).

American regional identity also played a significant role within the second-generation Japanese community. Brown describes a lack of cohesion between the Hawaiian (the “Buddhaheads”) and the mainlander Nisei (the “kotonks”). Because the Hawaiians were outside the exclusion zone, their families did not experience the concentration camps. Of course, there were exceptions to this rule, as Kats Miho’s father was imprisoned for being an important member of the Japanese American community in Hawaii and having strong ties to his homeland. Overall, however, it was not until the Japanese American chaplains suggested sending the mainlanders on field trips to the concentration camps that the Hawaiian Japanese Americans that Brown writes about fully realized the extent to which their mainland counterparts were negatively affected.

Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 regarding exclusion zones brought the question of identity to a head. Yet here, too, the reactions varied. The majority of Japanese Americans chose to stay quiet and comply despite losing their homes, livelihood, and way of life. Others, like Gordon Hirabayashi, opted to peacefully challenge the constitutionality of these wartime measures. Forty years later, in the 1980s, he was proven right with his convictions overturned. And others instead fought hard to prove their loyalty to the country that punished them on racial grounds by volunteering to fight in Europe and becoming the most decorated unit in World War II.