International Scholars discuss U.S. History: "Thrust into the Mainstream: American Assimilation Policies" at Japanese American National Museum July 24

The Japanese American National Museum will host an afternoon of engaging lectures comparing two strikingly similar instances of the United States government implementing racial policies: Japanese American “resettlement” after World War II and Native American “relocation” in the 1950s, on Saturday, July 24 at 1 p.m. The discussion will revolve around Dillon S. Myer, director of the War Relocation Authority (WRA), and later the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Myer was responsible for planning and carrying out official government policies aimed at assimilating Japanese Americans and Native Americans into American society. Space is limited so reservations are required.

Thrust into the Mainstream will be led by Donald Fixico, Ph.D., Professor of History and Director of the Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas, and Brian Masaru Hayashi, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Integrated Humanities Studies at Kyoto University, and author of For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism Among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895-1942. Fixico and Hayashi will sign their books after the lecture.

This program will discuss a major ongoing debate among U.S. historians: The experience of immigrants and assimilation efforts against non-Caucasian people. Hayashi, an expert on Japanese American history and the question of assimilation, will discuss the policies authored and implemented by Myers and the WRA during World War II and their impact on Japanese Americans. The WRA was responsible for overseeing the unconstitutional removal, incarceration, and resettlement of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during and after the war.

“My underlying idea [for the resettlement of Japanese Americans] is that since these people are going to continue to be American citizens,” said Myers to the U.S. Senate in 1943, “they will have to merge into our economy and be accepted as part of it, otherwise we are always going to have a racial problem.” According to Richard Drinnon, author of Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism, Myer’s method of achieving this type of assimilation was to “melt away or boil away the cultural heritage of his redistributed ‘evacuees.’”

Fixico is one of the leading authorities on Native American history and culture, and will discuss how Myers, once again in the 1950s, implemented assimilation policies for Native Americans as he had for Japanese Americans at the close of World War II. This time it was called “relocation,” and Native Americans were strongly encouraged to leave their reservations and move into urban areas in order to be assimilated into the U.S. economy and culture. According to Drinnon, it did not matter to Myers that neither the Japanese Americans nor the Native Americans were consulted in shaping these policies. As Myer said in 1952, “We must proceed [with Indian relocation] even though Indian cooperation may be lacking in certain cases.”

This program is free with paid admission, and was made possible by the California Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Japanese American National Museum is located at 369 East First Street in downtown Los Angeles. Museum hours are Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Thursdays from 10 a.m.–8 p.m. For reservations call the Museum at 213.625.0414 or visit the Museum’s web site at www.janm.org for more information.