In The Shadow of Executive Order 9066: A Comparative Analysis of Economic Opportunity For Japanese And Black Americans, 1940-1970

Abstract

Executive Order 9006, authorized the United States military to evacuate roughly 120,000 people of Japanese descent from the shores of the West Coast at the start of WWII. The speedy manner in which the government executed these orders precipitated immense capital losses for those interned during the war. With their prewar communities destroyed, Japanese Americans were forced to resettle and rebuild throughout the North at WWII's conclusion. Concurrently, Black Americans were undertaking a major migration out of the South. Both of these ethnic groups endured flagrant discrimination and searched for opportunity in the postwar years. This thesis explores the issue of access to economic opportunity following migration using the concurrent migrations of Black and Japanese Americans to do so. I aimed to illustrate that the reception of these migrating groups as they arrive in receiving sites had consequences on their ability to thrive. I asked two research questions: (1) What was the difference in economic opportunity between these two ethnic groups following WWII? And (2) Why did this difference in access to economic opportunity occur? I hypothesized that Japanese American migrants had greater wage mobility and access to opportunity post-internment than Black American migrants and that social and political mechanisms of the postwar years promoted the economic mobility of Japanese migrants and impeded this ability in Black migrants. To answer these research questions and test these hypotheses I conducted two analyzes which together demonstrated new evidence that racial prejudice and host-community hostility incite grave consequences for migrant groups' ability to thrive. The first analysis utilized census data from 1950-1970 to evaluate the economic opportunity of each ethnic group and then estimate the elasticity of substitution by race in the northern labor market to see how they each fared. This study first found that Japanese Americans demonstrated greater occupational diversity and higher human capital investment in educational attainment than Black Americans did. It then found that the elasticity of substitution between Japanese and White Americans was 12.5 which difference from Black and White Americans elasticity at 7.6 is statistically significant. This study demonstrated that economic opportunity was greater for Japanese Americans and that a possible reason for this disparity was greater ability of Japanese Americans to be interchangeable in the labor market than their Black American counterparts. This thesis sought to further investigate why this difference in economic opportunity may have occurred. The second analysis of this thesis analyzed the leading editorials of the Pacific Citizen and Chicago Defender to identify the dominant goals of Black and Japanese Americans society in the postwar period as well as the rhetoric of its messaging. This study demonstrated that both Black and Japanese Americans desired full citizenship status, the removal of discriminatory barriers and legislations, and for their loyalty and capability as Americans to be recognized. Furthering the findings of this study, three political and social mechanisms of opportunity–government intervention, ethnic enclave formation, and deindustrialization– were identified as possible inhibitors or catalysts of access to economic opportunity. This thesis ended with a consideration of these two ethnic groups' ability to thrive and how it relates to discussions of other migrating groups. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to tell the story of these two groups' migrations as well as expand the discussion on the consequences of inadequate reception upon a group’s arrival.