Nisei
Though nisei means "second-generation immigrant", it more specifically often refers to the children of the initial diaspora, occurring during the period of the Empire of Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and overlapping in the U.S. with the G.I.
Although the earliest organized group of Japanese emigrants left Japan centuries ago, and a later group settled in Mexico in 1897,[1] today's largest populations of Japanese immigrants and their descendants are concentrated in four countries: Brazil (2 million),[2] the United States (1.5 million),[3] Canada (130 thousand),[4] and Peru (100 thousand).
Most Nisei, however, who were living in the western United States during World War II, were forcibly interned with their parents (Issei) after Executive Order 9066 was promulgated to exclude everyone of Japanese descent from the West Coast areas of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.
At the White House award ceremonies, President Bill Clinton explained, "In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls.
Within Japanese-Canadian communities across Canada, three distinct subgroups developed, each with different sociocultural referents, generational identity, and wartime experiences.
The Issei, Nisei and Sansei 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] Older Nisei who had been employed in small businesses, in farming, in fishing or in semi-skilled occupations, tended to remain in blue-collar work.
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.
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.
[16] An illustrative point-of-view, as revealed in the poetry of an Issei woman: By Meiji parents Emigrants to Canada The Nisei were raised to be Canadian citizens Of whom they could be proud.
There was relatively little intermarriage during the Nisei generation, partly because the war and the unconstitutional[25] incarceration[26] of these American citizens intervened exactly at a time when the group was of marrying age.
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.
[31] The Civil 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 President George H. W. Bush, who also issued another formal apology from the U.S. government.
[35] The number of nisei 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 the nikkei.
