THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
American Catholic Missions to Japanese in the United States: Their Intersection of Religion,
Cultures, Generations, Genders, and Politics, 1910 to 1970
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Department of History
School of Arts and Sciences
Of The Catholic University of America
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
©
Copyright
All Rights Reserved
By
Yuki Yamazaki
Washington, D.C.
2011
American Catholic Missions to Japanese in the United States:
Their Intersection of Religion, Cultures, Generations, Genders, and Politics,
1910 to 1970
Yuki Yamazaki, Ph.D.
Director: Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Ph.D.
This dissertation focuses on American Catholic missions to the Japanese in the United
States during the early to mid twentieth century. Because this evangelization was one of the
very first foreign missions by the U.S. Catholic Church, the thesis provides several unique
findings such as some new aspects of the experience challenging the ideas shared among
home missionaries in the United States, the role of Catholicism in enculturation of an ethnic
minority group for whom Catholicism was not a majority faith, and the influence on
Americanization by the service of a religious minority to an ethnic minority.
This unique mission before and during World War II also tested the values of both of
the missionaries and the Japanese. On the one hand, this historical setting forced all of the
members of the mission society—the leaders, local missionaries, women religious and
religious brothers to play unusual roles which were beyond their ordinary tasks. On the other
hand, the patriarchal nature of the Japanese society was shaken in their encounter with
Catholic missionaries who founded a bilingual school. Since this school also brought
Catholic and non-Catholic Japanese together, both religious and national values which were
new to those Japanese immigrants were introduced from children to parents and from women
to men. It is also a history of community building and networking by Nisei, the secondgeneration Japanese Americans who graduated from those mission schools while receiving
entire their education in the United States.
The research for this dissertation was supported mainly with the documents housed in
the archives of the dioceses and the mission societies which assisted those Japanese in the
United States. In addition to the archival documents exchanged among the missionaries, the
communication and newsletters written in English and Japanese addressed to/from those
Japanese, Issei immigrants and Nisei citizens, revealed what they had thought and expected.
Thus, this dissertation covers the history of Catholic missions to the Japanese in the
United States from its beginning in 1912 to the virtual ending of the education for the Nisei’s
children in the 1970s. It also includes most of the regions where the mission was pursued.
This dissertation by Yuki Yamazaki fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral
degree in Philosophy approved by Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Ph.D., as Director, and by
Christopher J. Kauffman, Ph.D., and Joseph M. White, Ph.D. as Readers.
_________________________________
Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Ph.D., Director
_________________________________
Christopher J. Kauffman, Ph.D., Reader
_________________________________
Joseph M. White, Ph.D., Reader
ii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
iv
Introduction
1
Chapter One: Founding a Home Together
11
Chapter Two: Foreign Mission at Home
55
Chapter Three: Bridging between the Homes, Bridging between the Nations
98
Chapter Four: New Mission in the Foreign Land at Home
171
Chapter Five: Our Home in America, Our Home in the Mystical Body
234
Bibliography
300
iii
Acknowledgment
I am grateful for all the support I have received while researching and writing this
dissertation. I would never have been completed without the guidance of my committee
members, help from friends, and support from my family.
I am deeply obliged to my advisor, Dr. Leslie Woodcock Tentler, of The Catholic
University of America, the director of my dissertation committee, for her generous support of
wisdom and experience. Her intelligence and humor as well as motherly assistance have also
given me an ideal role model as a professional woman in academia. I would also like to
thank Dr. Christopher Kauffman and Dr. Timothy Meagher for guiding my research for the
past several years and helping me develop my understanding of the subject. I extend special
thanks to Dr. Joseph M. White, who was willing to participate as a part of my final defense
committee at the last moment. His lavish assistance was significant in betterment and
completion of this project. The memory of Dr. John Witek, S.J., of Georgetown University
whose acute criticism was covered with wit reminds me of my great fortune to study history
in the United States. I sincerely appreciate my many professors, friends, and colleagues,
both in the United States and Japan, whose counsel and encouragement was most valuable
while I pursued this project.
The services rendered to me by the various archives were immense. I especially
acknowledge the assistance of Ms. Ellen Pierce and Father Michael Walsh, M.M., of the
Maryknoll Mission Archives, Brother Daniel Peterson, S.J., and Father Silvano Votto, S.J.,
of the California Province Jesuit Archives, Dr. Jeffrey Burns of the Archives of the
Archdiocese of San Francisco, Mr. David Kingma of the Archives of Gonzaga University,
Ms. Marcia Stein and Mr. Peter Gunther of the Chicago Province Archives of the Society of
the Divine Word, and Mr. William J. Shepherd of the American Catholic History Research
Center and Archives of the Catholic University of America. I am very thankful to Sister
Alice Nugent, D.M.J. who generously shared historical documents, which she had collected
for her own research, with me.
I have been blessed with various informants whose memories and experiences are
critical in the creation of this dissertation. If I had not had the chance to meet Mrs. Julia
iv
Nagao at a monthly Mass gathering for Japanese Catholics in Metropolitan Washington, D.C.,
this project would never have begun. My special thanks go to Mrs. Nagao, Sister Antoinette
Yae Ono, M.M., the late Sister Mary Nagashima, M.M., and Sister Cecilia Nakajima, M.C. I
acknowledge Mr. Harry Honda who munificently provided his experiences and knowledge in
the history of Maryknoll mission in Los Angeles.
I am deeply indebted to Dr. Monica Maxwell-Paegle, of Georgetown University, for
her painstaking task in proof reading my draft. Her friendship and encouragement was a
substantial source in my ability to continue this project.
I must acknowledge the support of Mr. and Mrs. William Lofquist whose friendship
and hospitality finally convinced me I am their “adopted daughter.”
The enormous blessing I have received is a wonderful family. My brother, Kunihiro,
and his wife, Tomoko, who have known the ordeal to graduate with a doctoral degree shared
many of their experiences with me. Their earnest attitude and energy in working has
continuously given me an inspiration to pursue the project.
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to mention my parents, Ryuji and Masako
Yamazaki who have supported me through all with their best wishes. They are the hardest
workers I have ever known and mobilized me to greater effort. It is a true blessing that I
have their love and support which I can always count on. I would like to dedicate this work
to them.
Yuki Yamazaki
v
Introduction
This dissertation focuses on American Catholic missions to the Japanese in the United
States during the early to mid twentieth century because they not only had an impact on the
immigrants in an environment of discrimination, but also provided immense opportunities for
the missionaries themselves to explore new roles. The history of these Catholic missions
began in 1912 when the Church recognized that the Japanese Catholics in the United States
were not being served adequately. Several religious orders, recognizing the need, became
active on the West Coast by establishing ethnic schools and parish churches for the benefit of
both Catholic and non-Catholic Japanese. While historians and anthropologists have argued
the importance of observing the process of the creation of ethnic communities, the case of
Catholic missions to Japanese in the United States has not yet been fully analyzed in
academia.
This topic has been ignored for the following reasons. First of all, few historians of the
United States read or speak Japanese. Dr. Joanne Doi, M.M., is one of the few exceptions
who theologically analyzed the creation of the Japanese Catholic community in Los Angeles.
Having grown up in the Maryknoll mission in Los Angeles as a third generation (Sansei)
Japanese American, Dr. Doi examined the practice of pilgrimage to the internment camps
which had been built for Japanese Americans during World War II and focused on the inter-
1
religious nature of this pilgrimage while elucidating the meaning of race and identity for the
Japanese Americans through a framework of theological interpretation.1
Second, both the designations “Catholics among Japanese” and “Japanese among
Catholics” mean “minority among minority.” The Catholic population in Japan in the
modern era has never exceeded .4 percent of the total population. When the U.S. Church
recognized the first Japanese Catholics among the immigrants in the United States in the
early 1910s, there were about 58,000 Japanese along the U.S. Pacific Coast. Because both
Catholic and Protestant missions in Japan were mainly introduced through education by their
mission schools, their population often represented intellectual or middle class urban
Japanese who sought better education often along with the ideas of Western civilization. On
the other hand, most of the Japanese came to the United States as laborers or from rural
regions at the turn of the twentieth century. Behind the scenes of Japanese emigration in the
midst of the nation’s modernization and westernization, heavy land taxation caused hardships
among farmers in rural Japan. Christianization in Japan occurred more in urban regions.2
Therefore, the percentage of Japanese Catholics in the United States at this time was most
likely less than the percentage in Japan.
This small population of Japanese Catholics was also a minority group within the
Catholic population, who were still a minority group themselves. In ethnic discrimination,
especially as rivals against the Catholic population in a variety of labor unions represented by
the Irish on the West Coast, it was never easy for those Japanese Catholic laborers to sit in
1
Joanne Doi, M.M., “Bridge to Compassion: Theological Pilgrimage to Tule Lake and
Manzanar.” Ph.D. Thesis, Graduate Theological Union, 2007.
2
Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New
York: Penguin, 1989), 42-48.
2
the pews in church where their white counterparts belonged. Also, there was no chance of
finding a priest to hear their confession in the Japanese language in the churches of the West.
It had been only a few years before the recognition of the needs of Japanese Catholics in the
United States that the American Church was removed from the mission status in the
Apostolic Constitution by Pope Pius X. At the time, American missionaries encountered the
question of whether they should work for home missions or foreign missions of the ethnic
group whose main body was not Catholic. As it was still a minority group in American
culture in the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church needed to explore this totally new
experience. Thus, the Catholic missions to the Japanese in the United States were confronted
with the dilemma of how they should organize the service of “minority to minority.”
However, the significance of this study should not be underestimated in spite of its
focus on the population of two minority groups. In the American Catholic mission to the
Japanese, the Catholic population and the numbers of baptisms may not necessarily reflect
the influence and importance of their work. Since the missionaries to the Japanese on the
West Coast began their mission by establishing schools which provided bilingual education
in English and Japanese, these schools became the centers of Japanese communities where
Japanese sent their children and participated in a variety of religious and cultural activities
representing both America and Japan. Also, since bilingual education attracted both
Catholic and non-Catholic Japanese families entering the middle class for whom the schools
were affordable, their interactions shed light on the internal development of ethnic groups,
especially among their more upwardly mobile members. Those schools were located in
urban centers such as Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Therefore, the members of
3
those missions consisted of urban and suburban residents among the Japanese. The Catholic
mission history to the Japanese in the United States was thus the history of community
building of urban ethnic enclaves.
Although a majority of the Japanese gathering around the Catholic schools did not
convert to Catholicism, their interactions with Catholic missionaries illuminated not only
religious and cultural encounters but also the behavior of Japanese in the United States on
how to find the balance of their identity between American and Japanese, or even something
else beyond the national identity. This issue of ethnic identity could easily open a discussion
about whether religious conversion influenced their assimilation to American culture. Since
Sidney L. Gulick, a Protestant missionary to Japan, stated in 1914 that Protestantism was
“working powerfully to assimilate the Japanese into American life,” there was a myth that
conversion to Protestantism was a tool in breaking the barriers of American mainline culture
against the Japanese. 3 Dr. Brian Masaru Hayashi, however, raised a question against
Gulick’s arguments while closely examining the cases of some Nisei (second generation
Japanese) converts to Protestantism and finding that their faith in free thinking and
individualism in their covenants with God did not necessarily help them to assimilate to
American values. Rather, Dr. Hayashi indicated they were isolated from both other Nisei
Japanese and Americans.4 In contrast to the Japanese converts to Protestantism who were
educated in Japan before World War II when the nation provided the militaristic and
imperialistic education described in Dr. Hayashi’s work, this dissertation discusses Japanese
3
Sidney L. Gulick, The American Japanese Problem (NY: Scribner’s, 1914), 114-117.
Brian Masaru Hayashi, ‘For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren’: Assimilation, Nationalism,
and Protestantism among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895-1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1995).
4
4
graduates from Catholic bilingual schools who received all of their education within the
United States even though their parents wished them to gain Japanese language and cultural
knowledge at those schools. A striking difference between two religious orders in this
respect was found through the research. The Maryknoll Foreign Mission Society of America
whose members were heavily Irish ethnics and the Society of the Divine Word which was of
German origin with a largely German membership showed contrasts when it came to
Japanese assimilation. While covering the period of political and economic discrimination
against the Japanese in the early twentieth century and the compulsory internment during
World War II, this dissertation also seeks to establish those patterns while at the same time
making a contribution to American ethnic and Catholic history.
This dissertation closely examines the effects of Japanese Catholic missions on three
groups—missionaries, Catholic Japanese, and non-Catholic Japanese in order to clarify the
relationships among these three groups.
Both priests and women religious enjoyed immense amounts of freedom and adventure
in their missions. This dissertation is written chronologically and each chapter takes up
roughly a decade, starting from 1910. Chapter 1 discusses the first Catholic missionaries to
the Japanese in the United States who were neither American citizens nor Japanese. Those
priests were born in Europe and pursued their work in mission territories where Catholicism
was still the minority and there were not many priests. Those priests naturally engaged in the
work of foreign missions along with the assistance of a religious brother and women
religious who were Japanese by birth. Japanese who encountered those European
missionaries in the United States were Issei (immigrants). The Japanese baptized before they
5
left Japan were obedient laity directed by European priests. Unlike European Catholic
immigrants of the same period in the States, Japanese ethnic Catholicism was not clearly
recognized. Nevertheless, the recognition of the faith in the Japanese mentality by those first
missionaries made their work unique in contrast to later missionaries of American Catholic
orders.
In Chapter 2, the transition of Japanese missions from those European missionaries to
the societies founded in the United States is discussed. During this transition, it is observed
that two societies which succeeded the work of the first missionaries led the Japanese
communities in remarkably different ways. Although both groups of missionaries founded
mission centers where there were bilingual schools for Nisei (second generation) children, a
newly established foreign mission society tried to seek methods for working among those
immigrants and their children within the American Catholic experiences in home missions
which focused on American born non-Christians such as African Americans and Native
Americans. Even with the lack of experience, women religious became bridges between
those immigrant parents and the priests. Those women religious were the ones who explored
the opportunity of foreign missions within their own land.
Also, the education for those Nisei children who were nurtured at those mission
schools must be discussed. Several important results of the Nisei education in America
emerged. First, those children were not influenced by the Japanese imperial education
system although they learned Japanese language and culture at those schools. Second, those
Issei parents bonded more with American society than those who sent their children back to
Japan for education. In other words, those Issei parents were more distanced from Japan and
6
its cultural heritage, supposedly having more chances for conversions. Since children in their
schools and women in the activities of the missions were the first ones strongly influenced by
the missionaries, the conversions were often “from children to parents” and “from women to
men.” In this way, the mission had silently shaken the patriarchal social order based on such
a traditional value to Japanese as in Confucianism.
In Chapter 3, maturing mission activities nurtured experienced missionaries who
worked for the Japanese both in Asia and the United States. The development of the
missions by those missionaries also meant the expansion of the mission field from urban
centers to suburban areas. In addition to the works by women religious, religious brothers
won trust within the Japanese communities. At the same time, some shifts in the Japanese
population occurred on the West Coast. One of the mission centers, Seattle, lost the
congregation with some influx of the population into Los Angeles. This difference in the
population trend pushed Japanese Catholics in Seattle more powerfully into their own
parishes for assimilation.
This chapter takes up the 1930s when the international relations between the United
States and Japan became intensified. Among those missionaries who worked both in Asia
and the United States, some leaders had a strong role in the peace-keeping movement in
order to avoid war between the two nations. Although this ended unsuccessfully, their
political involvement in the movement for peace opened the opportunities of the mission to
the Japanese during the war time.
During this decade, the graduates of those mission schools began working in influential
areas such as media, law, and medicine. Also, they created a graduate network of the
7
Catholic missions. This chapter reveals the unexpectedly unique nature of the graduates of
one of those Catholic schools which was observed on the eve of World War II—their loyalty
to the American government. However, their path toward this loyalty was not
straightforward Americanization. This process is explained more in Chapters 4 and 5.
Also, the nature of the mission toward Issei and Nisei is explored in Chapter 3. For the
foreign-born Issei, the missionaries’ work was with the foreign missions while it was the
home missions for American-born Nisei children. Due to the foundation of bilingual schools,
Christian missions for Nisei have often been discussed as an education of ethnic values of
Japan while the mission for Issei was the teaching of American values and language through
religious education.5 The Catholic cases would reveal more a complex nature of the roles of
Christian missions to the Japanese.
Chapter 4, which takes up the period of World War II, focuses on the Catholic missions
as becoming significant centers for all the Japanese in each mission area. The missionaries
quickly reacted to support the Japanese who were ordered to relocate into the internment
camps. They required humanitarian treatment for those Japanese and gained leading roles in
registration for relocation. Their freedom to register Japanese by family unit prevented the
separation of family members. Also, expatriated Japanese-speaking priests were assigned to
all the internment camps which held Japanese Catholics. It became one of the most
significant mission impacts on non-Catholic Japanese in mission history.
Networking and re-networking of Japanese communities is another important topic in
this chapter. The alumni of the Catholic schools began publishing newsletters in several
5
Arihiro Omiya, Amerika no Kirisutokyo ga wakaru [For understanding American
Christianity] (Tokyo: Kirisuto shinbun sha, 2006), 116-123.
8
camps and those papers were exchanged among the Japanese in those camps. Also, when
many young Japanese left the camps for the eastern regions where the military restriction was
not in force, a new Japanese Catholic center was established in Chicago and the members of
the missions from three different cities interacted under recognition by the Archbishop. The
experience of relocation of the Japanese through this Chicago center helped other Japanese
relocate back in the western regions. The research revealed a significant role of a religious
brother whose leadership has been rarely discussed. Although the restriction of his personal
files in the archive will last for forty more years, this chapter contributes to providing a new
information about the community building of the Japanese with this religious brother’s
assistance. Also, the internment of two Japanese American women religious in a camp
expanded the opportunities of women in Catholic missions which were often discussed in a
heavily male-oriented context.
In Chapter 5, the network of the Japanese Catholic communities extended beyond the
Pacific—the mission members worked not only for resettlement of the Japanese in the United
States but also for post-war reconstruction in Japan. This network transcended the lines
between clergy and laity, Issei and Nisei, men and women, as well as Catholic and nonCatholic.
As a conclusion of this dissertation, the experiences of those Catholic missions are
reflected in the memories of two lay people--one was a male Issei and the other was a Nisei
who later became a woman religious. Their voices testify how their balance of the ethnic,
cultural, generational, gender and political boundaries was supported by their Catholic faith.
It was a stroke of unexpected good fortune that the source of these lay people was available
9
and it is appreciated that it was possible to achieve certain balance in writing a narrative
included all the participants in the missions--priests, brothers, women religious, and lay
people.
In order to analyze the cases of Los Angeles and Seattle, the author relied heavily on
the documents at the Maryknoll Mission Archives. The current members of St. Francis
Xavier Japanese Catholic Center in Los Angeles, mostly the Nisei alumni of the mission
school, complemented the information. The Alumni Newsletter collection in this Los
Angeles Center supported the picture of the roles of the laity. For the discussion of San
Francisco, the sources at the Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the Society of
the Divine Word provided rich information about European born missionaries. In addition to
those archives, California Province Jesuit Archives and the Daughters of Mary and Joseph
allowed the author access to documents which contain information about the virtually untold
history of Japanese Catholic communities in the United States during the early to mid
twentieth century. Thanks to the assistance of those archivists and the cooperation of the
mission members, this dissertation is able for the first time in academia to cover the history
of Catholic missions to the Japanese in most of the regions where the mission work was
pursued.
10
Chapter One: Founding a Home Together
[M]any will come from the east and the west, !
and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob !
at the banquet in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 8:11)
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, !
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, !
and of the holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)
[T]he Catholic Church does not distinguish one nationality from another.
She recognizes no color line, she simply binds together human beings
in the love of the one all-loving Christ.
(Bishop Thomas Conaty. Bishop of Monterey-Los Angeles, 1903–1915)
The year 1911 was the first epoch-making year for opening up opportunities for the
American Catholic Missions to Japanese in the United States. In both the northern and
southern regions of the Pacific Coast, there were two Japanese souls simultaneously raising
their voice for the Savior.
One was in Los Angeles. This was a legendary voice of a Japanese Catholic man who
presented the needs of Japanese Catholics in the United States to the Church hierarchy for the
first time in the history of this group. In 1911, Leo Kumataro Hatakeyama, a veteran of the
Russo-Japanese War residing in Los Angeles, sent a letter back to Japan to Bishop Alexandre
Berlioz of Hakodate asking for the sacrament of Confession written in his own language and
sent by registered mail to Berlioz. Hatakeyama did so because he found neither a priest who
understood his language nor a church where he was able to sit in a pew among the EuroAmerican Catholic laity. This request to take his written confession in a registered letter and
also to give him absolution in the same way arrived in the hands of the Bishop of Hakodate,
the hometown of Hatakeyama and a port city on the Northern Island of Japan. Of course, it
11
1
12
was impossible for the bishop to accept this request in accordance with Canon Law.
However, Berlioz assured Hatakeyama that he was concerned with the needs of Japanese
Catholics in the United States and would do his best to solve their problems.2
Father Albert Breton was a missionary to Japan from the Paris Foreign Mission Society.
Bishop Berlioz of Hakodate, who had also been sent to Japan from the same order, asked
Breton to stop by in the United States to conduct research on the needs of Japanese
immigrant Catholics after his trip to Europe for convalescence. They expected that his stay
would not be very long. However, the reality turned out to be that Breton stayed in the
United States for more than ten years through the 1910s. Later, Breton founded most of the
important Catholic missions for the Japanese in the United States with the assistance of
Japanese women religious who were invited from Nagasaki—another port city of the
Southern Island of Japan, also known as a major Catholic region—along with enthusiastic lay
people.
In the same year in Spokane, a Japanese Catholic man entered the Society of Jesus as
the “first of [his] nationality to become [a] member of the order in America.”3 Francis Eizo
Masui headed for San Francisco, then for Los Gatos to affiliate himself with the Society as a
1
Chapter X, Art. II, Section 1, “Of Confessors who are neither Canonical Parish Priests, nor
Vicars-General, nor Regulars” in Elements of Ecclesiastical Law: Compiled with the Syllabus,
the Const. Apostolicae Sedis of Pope IX, the Council of the Vatican and the latest decisions
of the Roman congregations; adapted especially to the discipline of the Church in the United
States, Sebastian B. Smith (New York: Benziger, 1877), 408-409.
2
“Japanese Work in Los Angeles,” Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Archives (MFBA)
Collection, Development Houses, California, Maryknoll Mission Archives (MMA).
3
"Local Japanese Joins Jesuits," Spokane Review (1911).
4
13
brother with three other Gonzaga students who were of Irish heritage in July 1911. Masui
was then twenty-four years old. His decision to enter the Jesuit order was considered by
local Catholics “to be of historical significance, recalling, as it [did], the early part of the
seventeenth century, when the hundreds of Japanese Catholics were martyred.” In Spokane,
several Japanese had converted to Catholicism. However, Masui was the first in the United
States to enter the order.5 The call was only a few years before the opportunity to serve his
own people as a part of the American Catholic Mission arose. He would, in fact, play an
important role in assisting the Jesuit fathers who would take over a northern region of the
mission from Breton.
Only a few years prior to the Catholic Church recognizing the needs of Japanese
Catholics in the United States through the petition of Hatakeyama, the political environment
between the United States and Japan simultaneously provided broader mission opportunities
to the Church. The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 and 1908, though discussed in the
larger political context of international issues, had an impact on Japanese immigration as a
result. While there were more single young men who were labor migrants expecting to stay
in the United States for some years and to return to Japan before the Agreement, the
immigrants began inviting their family members while expecting to settle down in the United
States after the Agreement. Although this change was a byproduct of the Gentlemen’s
Agreement between the United States and Japan, the Catholic Church in the United States
4
The other three Gonzaga students were William O’Brien, son of J. P. O’Brien of Spokane,
Daniel Meagher of Missoula, Mont., and John J. Keep of Boston, Mass. Ibid.
5
Ibid.
14
had a chance to found a community for Japanese based on families from the beginning of the
Mission.
The Gentlemen’s Agreement, a series of six notes exchanged between the Untied States
and Japan, was the first and most influential legal factor to determine the pattern of the
migration of “Issei,” the first generation of Japanese immigrants. The Agreement sought to
respond to the ethnic discrimination against the Japanese in San Francisco where the Board
of Education had decided to segregate the students of Japanese descent when the city
suffered a shortage of facilities after the powerful San Francisco Earthquake that destroyed
school buildings. In the agreement, the Japanese government agreed not to issue any more
passports for its citizens who wished to sail to the continental United States for labor. This
successfully reduced the numbers of emigrants from Japan to the United States. In exchange,
the U.S. government agreed to accept the Japanese who already resided in the United States,
to permit their family members to enter the nation, and to avoid legal discrimination against
Japanese children in the schools of California.
The political environment at the turn of the twentieth century was totally
unsympathetic to Japanese in California. In 1902, the federal government renewed the
Chinese Exclusion Act which had been passed twenty years earlier (1882). This second
renewal enacted this law permanently. After the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad,
numbers of Chinese surplus workers in the labor market flooded into the California economy.
Despite the fact that Northern California was highly unionized, the cheap labor of those
Chinese migrants threatened the labor market. Although the middle-class and farm
employers welcomed those low-cost laborers in the beginning, anti-Orientalism led by the
15
unions and the media revealed that the discrimination was heightened not only by genuine
economic causes but also by racial aspects. The Japanese migrants in the mainland United
States would follow the same track as those Chinese laborers in the labor competition.
The first Japanese groups of the labor migration in the nineteenth century had headed
for Hawaii as government-sponsored contract laborers between 1885 and 1894. Signing the
contract, those Japanese laborers would work for three years mostly on plantations in Hawaii.
They were paid and provided board, lodging, and medical care. According to Ronald Takaki,
the wage in Hawaii was calculated to be six times more than the day-labor in Japan during
the same time period after accounting for the currency exchange rate. Japanese farmers in
the late nineteenth century were suffering from the new land tax which was collected for
supporting the rapid modernization and militarization of the nation by the government. This
new taxation impacted the farmers especially in the southwestern prefectures. Following the
advice given by the president of a major Japanese trading company, Hawaiian consul R. W.
Irwin began recruiting contract workers from the southwestern prefectures including
Yamaguchi and Hiroshima where the economic conditions were significantly worsened by
the new taxation and the increased farmer debts. The labor opportunity in Hawaii was so
attractive for those farmers in southwestern prefectures who faced economic hardship that
28,000 people applied for only six hundred emigrant slots announced by the government to
make up the first group of laborers to Hawaii in 1885.6
There are no data on how many Japanese returned to Japan, stayed in Hawaii or moved
to the mainland of the United States after their three-year labor contracts. Some historians
6
Ronald T. Takaki, Strangers From a Different Shore: a History of Asian Americans (New
York: Penguin, 1989), 42-45.
16
estimate that almost half of them returned. At the beginning of the 1890s, significant
numbers of Japanese began crossing the Pacific toward the West Coast of the United States
both from Japan and Hawaii. In the year 1895 when the Japanese government terminated
sponsoring contract laborers to Hawaii and transferred the contracts to private companies,
29,000 Japanese were counted in Hawaii. Until the U.S. government almost completely
restricted the immigration from Japan into the United States while using a quota based on the
census of 1890 by the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924, the number of Japanese who migrated to
Hawaii counted 200,000 and an additional 180,000 migrated to the mainland of the United
States in total. This number in the mainland rose significantly when the United States
annexed Hawaii as a result of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Japanese who had labored
in Hawaii thus gained more freedom to sail to the West Coast for better wages. While this
trans-Pacific migration of Japanese makes it difficult for researchers to have accurate
numbers of migrants, it provided the Japanese loopholes even under the legal restrictions of
migration.
Economic competition with white laborers was the most considerable domestic cause
of the ethnic tension against the Japanese. A large segment of Japanese immigrants were
engaged in agricultural labor. Considering the fact that Japanese immigrants who had
suffered from the land tax and decided to find labor opportunities out of the country were
farmers, it was understandable that a major part of the migrants of this ethnic group worked
on plantations in California. Also, there were Japanese plantation owners who arrived on the
Pacific Coast earlier. The easier communication in their own language with employers was
attractive when the migrants took the first steps in the unknown land. In the early 1900s,
17
only a decade after a big wave of Japanese migration to Hawaii and the mainland began,
most of the newly arriving immigrants had no family or relatives who would take care of
them. Instead, those plantation owners and small entrepreneurs gave a hand.
Those Japanese employers functioned the same as small entrepreneurs for European
immigrants on the East Coast. Those plantations owned by Japanese became the center of
ethnic enclaves as the Japanese Issei newcomers gathered and settled down. Valerie
Matsumoto introduces some Japanese families’ testimony that they preferred rural areas for
raising their children in a quiet environment distanced from the hardships caused by ethnic
tensions in the city as well as the desire to maintain their ethnic identity while living and
working among other fellow Japanese. Those Issei appreciated these “rural values.”7
The Euro-American employers in Northern California also sought laborers who would
be willing to work at “close-to-subsistence” wages because such workers were in a shortage
due to unionization in the area. Attracted to the labor opportunities, more than 40,000
Japanese transmigrated from Hawaii coming to California between the annexation of Hawaii
in 1900 and the Gentleman’s Agreement in 1908. 8 Japanese worked not only on farms, but
also in the cities where middle class Americans liked to have them as gardeners or domestic
servants.
7
Valerie Matsumoto. Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in
California, 1919-1982 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 1-7.
8
Roger Daniels, Coming to America: a History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American
Life (New York: Harper Collins, 1990), 6.
18
The Japanese population in California before the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 was
heavily dominated by single young male laborers.9 Japanese migrants considered themselves
as dekasegi-nin, or temporary laborers seeking job opportunities outside of their hometowns,
and sending money to their families. Although emigration abroad was more adventurous, it
was only an extended version of dekasegi, and a large part of them originally did not assume
that they would settle down in foreign lands permanently. However, the Japanese
government had the intention to have their citizens abroad as bases of the Japanese economy
outside of the country. While this plan was more strongly pursued in Asian countries, the
Japanese government paid specific attention and became selective when it sent emigrants to
the United States.
In order to gain competitiveness and an honorable position for protecting the nation
against the Western Powers, the Japanese government enthusiastically pursued the program
of westernization and modernization. For the same purpose, the government required
Japanese emigrants to be respectable representatives of the homeland. They screened the
applicants of migrants to Hawaii and the United States. Due to the primogenital system of
inheritance and limited arable land of the country, the younger sons of Japanese families
needed to relocate themselves to work, in many cases employed in towns. Psychologically, it
was easier for those younger sons to apply to move abroad as they were not tightly bound to
their parents compared to the eldest sons. Takaki introduces a principal’s instruction to the
students at the morning ceremonies of the elementary and middle schools: “First sons, stay
9
Daniels discusses that “more than 75 per cent of Issei had been less than thirty years old
when they arrived in the United States.” After the consideration that “many of them had
come by way of Hawaii, the median age at the time of original emigration had been less than
twenty-four years.” Ibid., 13
19
in Japan and be men of Japan. Second sons, go abroad with great ambition as men of the
world!” The keyword was “Japan’s national honor.” Learning from the Chinese experience
as “a failure” and perceiving the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a tremendous dishonor
against their home nation, the Japanese government needed to avoid any factor of Japanese
expulsion in the United States. Consequently, the average Japanese-male immigrant was
literate and arrived in the United States with more money than European immigrants. The
Japanese government selected healthy and literate young men who “would creditably
maintain Japan’s national honor.”10
Nevertheless, the Japanese government faced a tremendous obstacle in protecting their
people and “the national honor” from racial prejudice in the United States when the Board of
Education of San Francisco took steps to segregate Japanese children. In addition to
California’s anti-Orientalism based on anti-Chinese tradition as well as an anti-Japanese
movement based on the economic cause of organized labor in northern California, the
Japanese victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War yielded suspicions against the
Japanese among the people in California.11 The business circles in the United States began
complaining that their economic opportunities in China would be threatened due to Japan’s
ambition over the land and the U.S. government needed to secure the Open Door Policy in
China.
During the years of 1907 and 1908, there were two negotiations between the United
States and Japan that proceeded simultaneously. On the issues of the security of the Pacific
region, the discussions were made in the United States by the U.S. Secretary of State and the
10
11
Takaki, Strangers From a Different Shore, 45-49.
Daniels, Coming to America, 106-107.
20
Japanese Ambassador to Washington. Pursuing the arguments from their predecessors, Elihu
Root and Kogoro Takahira reached agreements on “[the c]ontrol of the Pacific as an
international highway of commerce, [the r]espect for the territorial rights of each nation and
the maintenance of the existing order of things in the Pacific are, and [t]he Open Door in
China and the maintenance of the territorial integrity of that country.”12 In other words, the
agreement consisted of the official recognition of the territorial status quo as of November
1908, confirmation of the territorial integrity and the independence of China, free trade and
equal commercial opportunities in China, Japanese recognition of U.S. annexation of Hawaii
and the Philippines, and American recognition of Japan’s position in Manchuria. Since the
agreement also implied the American acknowledgment of Japan’s right to annex Korea and
dominance over Southern Manchuria, Japan’s special position in Eastern Asia was
guaranteed in the framework of treaties where the United States was involved. Thomas
Bailey maintains that this point, besides the immigration issue, was the only really important
consideration from the standpoint of the Japanese in the discussions of 1907 and 1908.13
On the other hand, in Tokyo the immigration issues were focused on the discussions
between Thomas O’Brien, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan and Tadasu Hayashi, the Foreign
Minister of Japan. Earlier than the discussions in Tokyo, President Roosevelt had issued an
executive order on March 14, 1907 to bar further Japanese immigration from Hawaii, Mexico,
and Canada. It was the president’s first response to the segregation of school children of
Japanese and Korean descent in San Francisco. The Gentlemen’s Agreement, the result of
12
Thomas A. Bailey, "The Root-Takahira Agreement of 1908" The Pacific Historical
Review 9, no. 1 (1940): 19.
13
Ibid., 35.
21
more than a year and half of detailed negotiation between the two nations begun in Tokyo
was the next and final step of the plan of the Roosevelt Administration in order to have the
Japanese government agree to the prohibition of the direct immigration of laborers.14
In exchange for the maintenance of the status of Japanese immigrants who had already
been admitted to the United States by the American government, Japan agreed not to issue
any more passports effective for the continental United States to laborers whether they were
skilled or unskilled. On the other hand, the American government accepted that the Japanese
passports would be issued to “laborers who have already been in America and to the parents,
wives and children of laborers already resident there” due to the provision of the status of
Japanese already in the United States.15 Daniels points out that the Japanese government
pursued the agreement thoroughly and conscientiously and that most historians have hailed
the highly successful result of the discussions. Nevertheless, the latter part of the agreements
invited situations unexpected even by the people in the administration.16
Thousands of Japanese male residents in the United States began bringing over wives
under this agreement, in most of the cases in the traditional manner which their families and
other go-betweens of their native villages would select the women for those men. The
traditional arranged marriage transformed to an unusually extended version of a “picture
bride” for Japanese laborers far from their native land. It was desirable for the Japanese
government in the early twentieth century that the emigrants would settle down while
forming families in foreign lands so that they would contribute to a solid economic
14
Daniels, Coming to America, 44.
Ibid.
16
Ibid., 44.
15
22
foundation for Japan. However, this exotic custom to most Americans, especially
Californians, appeared strikingly treacherous. Some historians have called it a loophole.
Others have called it a by-product. In either case, this new circumstance aggravated the
exclusionism in California.17
At the same time, Japanese began founding the communities based on their families.
John Modell’s data of the Japanese immigrants to the United States also show a change in the
figures between pre- and post-Gentlemen’s Agreement eras. Modell explains that the male
migrants after the Gentlemen’s Agreement were much more likely to arrive in the United
States with their parents or to join parents who were already there. He also states that “[t]he
rise in such two-generation families (as well as in extended kinship groups) was one of the
most distinct by-products of the Gentlemen’s Agreement, and . . . one of the most
consequential.” The conclusion of Modell would have been no doubt in the West Coast that
“the presence of the family created both pressure and means for the creation of an ethnicgroup economy.”18
In addition, the women entering America as the wives of the immigrants provided more
opportunities for them to settle down raising children who were American-born American
citizens. In the beginning of the 1910s when Catholic Mission began for Japanese in the
United States, the political environment caused by local ethnic discrimination had determined
the life of family-oriented Japanese communities for future decades.
17
Ibid.
Modell gives an example that the corresponding rise for those who were seventeen years
old or younger when they arrived was from about 33 to 86 percent. John Modell, "Tradition
and Opportunity: the Japanese Immigrant in America" The Pacific Historical Review 40, no.
2 (1971): 163-82.
18
23
A Paris Foreign Missionary priest, Albert Breton arrived in Los Angeles on October 1,
1912. After his treatment for paralysis in Europe, Bishop Alexandre Berlioz, another M.E.P.
(Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris; Society of Foreign Missions of Paris in English)
priest who then directed the diocese covering the northern regions of Japan, asked Breton to
visit the West Coast of the United States en route to Japan to investigate the needs of
Japanese Catholics in the United States. Upon his arrival, Breton began visiting all the cities
with parishes under the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and Monterey while residing at the
Cathedral Rectory on Main Street.19
Breton’s first Mass in Japanese was celebrated on December 25 of the same year at the
Brownson House in the Mexican settlement on 711 Jackson Street, Los Angeles. Although
the congregation was made up of fewer than ten people, this beginning seemed promising
with full enthusiasm. Soon after his arrival, Breton welcomed his first two parishioners--Leo
Hatakeyama, who wrote the letter to Berlioz and Tonari from Oshima Island. Tonari was a
gardener at the Spalding in Point Loma, San Diego. Breton describes their first meeting
proudly as follows:
He (Tonari) came to see me on an early morning of October 1912. Went right away to
the Cathedral to attend mass. Seeing there was no altar boy with the priest, he bravely
walked up the aisle and answered mass in a perfect manner to the amazement of the
celebrant, Msgr. Hartnett, vicar general.
19
Albert Breton, M.E.P., "Personal Souvenirs and Notes: Los Angeles." (ca. 1930).
Document in possession of Sister Alice Nugent, Daughters of Mary and Joseph, privately
shared with the author.
24
Leo Hatakeyama had lived in El Monte. However, upon the arrival of Breton, he
moved to Los Angeles in order to live close to the newly arrived priest who had come to
California responding to his own request.20
Within the year 1912, two other Japanese Catholic young men who heard of the work
of Breton in Los Angeles asked him to come to San Francisco. These two were Francis
Kusama and Hamai. Thus, the mission of Breton expanded to Northern California.21
There was another Francis in San Francisco called Francis Sakamaki who had arrived
there in 1906. He was the only Catholic in his family. This Francis met Michael Nakamura
at St. Ignatius’ College (the present University of San Francisco) as students. They
frequently met in the hall of St. Dominic’s Church until Nakamura returned to Japan. After
Francis was alone in the city for a while, the news that Breton had come to Los Angeles for
the ministry to Japanese Catholics on the West Coast arrived in San Francisco. He would
meet Breton in 1913.22
In 1913, the mission shows huge development. Based in Los Angeles, Breton made the
travels to search out Japanese Catholics, starting from the Southern part of the regions under
the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and Monterey. His destinations included San Diego, San
Bernardino, Redlands, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Watsonville, Monterey, Fresno, and even
Bakersfield in San Joachim Valley. Breton describes that most of the small number of
Japanese in these areas owned stores and delivered things to the Japanese in their
20
Ibid.
Albert Breton, M.E.P., "Personal Souvenirs and Notes--San Francisco." (1930). Document
in possession of Sister Alice Nugent, Daughters of Mary and Joseph, privately shared with
the author.
22
Alice Nugent, D.M.J., "St. Francis Xavier Mission--Morning Star, San Francisco."
Unpublished research article, n.d., 37.
21
25
neighborhoods. Otherwise, those Japanese people worked as gardeners and were provided
board in country ranches.23
Breton recognized that the Japanese lived “apart from the Americans” and “there [was]
a good reason to it.” At this time, the priest found that many young Japanese laborers still
intended to finally go back home with what they saved in the United States. “They [worked]
more, [spent] less and [aimed] at going back to their mother country for good, after saving as
much money as they [could].” As this result, “[the] Japanese life [was] far below the
Americans.”24
While those young Japanese still struggled with living in the United States by
themselves, the political conditions which would have an influence on the pattern of the
Japanese settlement took another step in the year 1913. It was the California Alien Land
Law of 1913 which prohibited “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning land or property,
but permitted three-year leases. This bill was introduced for the first time on January 13,
1913 by Democrats and Progressives in both houses accompanied by another bill that would
bar all aliens from ownership of land. Ostensibly this law looked to be one of political
triumph for the anti-Japanese movement in California. However, even Hiram Johnson, the
leader drafting this bill had known that Japanese land tenure in the state would not be
seriously affected by this bill. Roger Daniels asserts that Johnson and his colleagues knew
that those Japanese Issei “ineligible to citizenship” would transfer the land title to American
citizens close to them. The growing number of Issei who had American-born children
“merely had the stock or title vested in their citizen children, whose legal guardianship they
23
24
Breton. “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—Los Angeles.”
Ibid.
25
naturally assumed.”
26
It was easy for those Issei who had family including American-born
children to evade this bill and consider permanent residence in the United States. Also, the
Japanese who wished to settle down on the West Coast permanently needed to have family
foundation, specifically with the children born in this country.
Through his travels around the state, Breton always received warm welcomes since he
had already been known as “a French missionary ad gentes [to the nations]” working for the
Japanese “by all [C]atholic circles” where he visited. He notes meeting a Jesuit in Santa
Barbara, an Irish priest in Watsonville, a German born pastor in Castroville, Redemptorists in
Frensno, French Sulpicians in Menlo Park and San Francisco, and Paulists in Saint Mary’s.
Breton made a special note on the Marist Fathers of Our Lady of Victories who provided
room and board for weeks while he was on mission. Contrary to his anxiety that he could
have been told, “My dear Father, I am afraid you are losing your time on those people. You
had better tell them to go home,” it did not happen at all to him.26
Through these travels, on the other hand, Breton recognized both the hardship of this
mission and the enthusiasm of himself toward this work. He wrote that:
For the Japanese scattered in the country, all I could do was to visit the [C]atholics as
often as I could to foster their faith by the reception of the sacraments, to tell the
pagans that I was interested in their welfare and they should not be afraid of going to
the local Catholic Church, school or hospital.27
25
Daniels, Coming to America., 58-64.
Breton, “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—Los Angeles.”
27
Ibid.
26
27
Breton worked with the first three Japanese adults who were baptized by Bishop Conaty at
the Cathedral on Holy Saturday of 1913. With the aim to establish concrete work for this
mission, he also opened evening class for Japanese adults to learn English.28
In the same year in San Francisco, the mission shows progress assisted by the
archbishop who was one of the most helpful supporters and sympathizers through the
history of the Japanese mission in America. In May, Archbishop Patrick W. Riordan asked
Breton to investigate and report about the Japanese problem. After their communication,
several primitive foundations for the mission were built. The archbishop introduced a
wealthy woman called “Mrs. Heggarty [sic.]” 29 who employed a Japanese Catholic couple
at her home in San Francisco. She proposed having a meeting at her home. At this meeting
which the archbishop, several priests including Breton and twenty Japanese attended, it
was decided that a club house would be opened for the Japanese boys under the
responsibility of Father Thomas J. Brennan, assistant at the Cathedral. For the Japanese
girls, they planned to ask the Helpers of the Holy Souls to take charge. Also, Breton
scheduled a one-week monthly visit to San Francisco from Los Angeles.30
Archbishop Riordan rented the house at 2158 Pine Street and Bishop Conaty of Los
Angeles opened it on August 31 of that year. The Monitor reported:
It is a long span of the time from the days of St. Francis Xavier and his missionary
work in the Orient to this latter day, then after four centuries and a half of terrible
vicissitudes, the sons of Dai Nippon [Great Japan.] “The Land of the Rising Sun,”
are once more gradually emerging into the greater light of the Holy Catholic faith.
28
Ibid.
She was a wife of an attorney-at-law, Charles J. Heggerty. The City Directory of San
Francisco, CA. 1908. http://www.archive.org/stream/sanfranciscocali1915polk#page/904/.
30
Breton, “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—San Francisco.”
29
28
Yet these four hundred and fifty years were traversed on Sunday last, when a
building at 2158 Pine Street was dedicated as the center of Catholic Japanese in San
Francisco. The building has been donated and furnished for the purpose by His
Grace Archbishop Riordan, and Rt. Rev. Bishop Conaty of Los Angeles,
representing the Archbishop, who was unavoidably absent, presided at the simple
ceremonies and blessed the building.
It was a curious assembly which gathered on the ground floor of this building
Sunday afternoon, eager to witness the proceedings. While the Paulist Fathers have
been busy with the Chinese, calling them in to the fold, other forces of the Church
have busied themselves in different quarters, listening to a call for aid from the soul
of a Japanese, who, for himself and his brothers, asked for the solace of the Faith.
The story of Catholicism in Japan bears witness to the unconquerable truth of the
Gospel, and it was told by Bishop Conaty with that eloquence of his which, once
heard, is never forgotten. He took his hearers back to the days when St. Francis
Xavier toiled among the natives of Japan.31
It was in the same article that the story of Leo Hatakeyama’s request was introduced
in the address of Conaty. Since the original information of this incident which would be
shared all the missionaries who took charge of Japanese Catholics in the United States later
is contained in this missive and no other letters remained, the following is significant:
Some years ago one Mr. Leo Hatakeyama, a young Japanese from the Diocese of
Hakodate, over which Bishop Berlioz presides, landed in California. He had been
baptized in Japan, but after four years’ stay here found himself a stranger to
Catholics and Catholic priests, to none of whom could he make himself understood.
He then wrote to Bishop Berlioz and made the singular request that he be allowed to
forward his confession in a registered letter, begging the Bishop to forward in like
manner the instructions for penance and the absolution. Such a letter could not go
unheeded, and the result was the arrival at Los Angeles of Rev. A. Breton, P.F.M., a
priest of the Foreign Mission Society, Paris, who has spent five years in Japan and
speaks the language fluently, and who established the first mission with Bishop
Conaty’s cooperation in Los Angeles last Christmas.32
31
“Sons of Japan are Catholics: Interesting Address by Bishop Conaty at Dedication of
Catholic Japanese Home. Vice- Consul Speaks: Rev. A. Breton. One of the Fathers From
the Foreign Mission, Paris Takes Part in Establishing Missions For Japanese Here.” The
Monitor, 6 September 1913.
32
Ibid.
29
The article relates that Breton gave a speech symbolically in Japanese after the bishop had
blessed the house. Also, it took up the names of some important figures among the
attendants, including “Mr. Kumazaki,” the Japanese Vice Consul, “Mr. Shigeta,”
representative of the Japanese Catholics in Los Angeles, “Mr. Inui,” Secretary of the
Japanese Consulate, and Mr. Hamai. They all spoke in English and some of their speeches
were remarkably good. Although the gentlemen from the Consular Service were not
Christians, they held great admiration for the spirit of Christianity. Inui remarked that “he
realized that the work of the Catholic mission was calculated to render his countrymen
more honored as citizens of this country.” There were “large number of Catholics, anxious
to witness the ceremonies.” Bishop Thomas Conaty also attended with his future successor,
Rev. John J. Cantwell. Conaty’s address specifically praised the work of the Helpers of the
Holy Souls who “were strongly in evidence and moved among the Japanese women and
children with their wonted kindly attention to the comfort of others.” Conaty concludes his
address while welcoming the Japanese Catholics and non-Catholics present at the
dedication of the new mission saying:
Thus you, my dear Japanese children, have a tradition worthy of your love and
veneration. You are here in a land where people meet from all countries; but the
Catholic Church does not distinguish one nationality from another. She recognizes
no color line, she simply binds together human beings in the love of the one allloving Christ.33
The Japanese mission in San Francisco thus formally began. After Breton visited
San Francisco from Los Angeles regularly for one year, he suggested to Archbishop
Riordan that it would be necessary for firmer establishment of the mission to have a priest
33
Ibid.
34
residing at the mission center who would complete the charge.
30
The first contact was
made on November 15, 1913 from Auxiliary Bishop Edward Hanna to the Jesuits’
California Provincial, Rev. James Rockliff.
We have had a most earnest petition from the Catholic Japanese of San Francisco,
begging us to intercede with you. They must “to have” and, if possible, “to hold”
Father Von Egloffstein, who upon a time was very helpful to them. The Archbishop
[Patrick Riordan] and myself would be pleased if it were possible for you to allow
Father Von E. to come to San F. and, if you thought it wise, to [take] charge of the
work for the Japanese which promises well. They already have a house, and Father
Le Breton comes from Los Angeles to minister to them, but if one of our own San
Francisco priests, who knows a bit of Japanese, and is evidently very dear to the little
brown men, were here, I am sure it would be better.35
In addition to this letter in November, Auxiliary Bishop Hanna wrote the provincial
that they would pay for the rent of the office and expenses of the missioner (Egloffstein) on
December 14. Hanna enthusiastically stated that Egloffstein would have enough time for
the transition between missions and there would be many ways of adding to the “Japanese
fund.”36
The Japanese mission in San Francisco was transferred to the Society of Jesus when
Julius von Egloffstein, S.J., arrived in San Francisco on January 15, 1914. He left
Lewiston, Idaho where he had been in charge of the Native American mission. In San
Francisco, there resided more than 7,000 Japanese who were mostly “pagans.” The
Protestants had been working among the Japanese for more than 20 years. The Jesuits
34
Breton, “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—San Francisco.”
Letter of Auxiliary Bishop Edward Hanna to California Provincial James Rockliff. 15
November 1913. San Francisco: 1/1-2. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los
Gatos, CA.
36
Letter of Auxiliary Bishop Edward Hanna to California Provincial James Rockliff. 14
December 1913, Collection of San Francisco: Box 1, Folder 3, Provincial Archives of the
Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
35
31
accepted the archbishop’s invitation to take up the work and ministry “under the patronage
of the Apostle of Japan.” Thus, the mission was named after Saint Francis Xavier.37
For the first four months, Egloffstein lived at Saint Ignatius College in San Francisco.
In March 1914, Brother Francis Masui, S.J., the first Japanese Jesuit in the United States,
was assigned to this mission. Masui left the mission of Saint Ignatius in the state of
Montana and arrived in San Francisco on March 21. Since both Egloffstein and Masui
wanted to live in the mission residence where several Japanese had been living together,
they needed a larger house. They moved to a location near the original mission center
(from 2154 Pine Street to 2941 Pine Street.) However, this residence was not large enough
to operate a school. Aiming to use the residence as a school, the San Francisco mission
moved again to 2911 Buchanan Street. According to the initial offer by the Archdiocese,
the rent of this site was paid under the name of the archbishop.38
On September 14, 1914, a school for Japanese children was opened under the
direction of the Sisters Helpers of the Holy Souls on this site. On November 29, with the
attendants of “a large number of believers and of pagans,” Riordan blessed and consecrated
the mission chapel with a solemn ceremony. There were approximately forty Japanese
faithful, mostly converts, who gathered in this chapel every Sunday. From nine o’clock to
three o’clock, school children learned Christian doctrine and other subjects selected for
them by the Sisters. Those Sisters also taught sewing and music to older girls once a week.
37
Father Pius L. Moore, S.J., “History of the Mission of St. Francis Xavier for the Japanese
in San Francisco, California: From January 15, 1914, until July 1, 1916,” Collection of San
Francisco; Box 12, Folders 1-4. ca. 1916, Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los
Gatos, CA.
38
Ibid.
32
One year after the foundation of the school, the students numbered thirty-five boys and
girls.39
Initially, the financial source for the mission was truly limited. Although the
archdiocese paid Egloffstein a salary of thirty dollars a month, he needed to cover both
himself and Masui. In order to earn his living, Egloffstein became the chaplain of the
Sisters of Holy Souls. The assistance by the Helpers of the Holy Souls toward the Mission
was generous and kept growing. Those sisters taught in the boys’ school for free. They
also instructed the girls who attended public schools. In addition, they donated
furnishings and other things, especially the altar of the chapel. They showed their concern
for the salvation of souls through those actions.40
Among the friends of the Mission in San Francisco, the Japanese consul, Yasubaro
(possibly, Yasaburo) Numano was significantly remembered by the missionaries. Even
though Numano was not a Catholic, he donated $200 and sent “a very gracious letter to the
Father at the Mission” when the mission school was founded. This encouraged Jesuit
missionaries significantly as they recognized how highly the other Japanese in the city
esteemed their work. Also, they appreciated that their mission occasionally appeared in the
newspapers of the Japanese community.41
Those missionaries were respected and appreciated by the Japanese possibly because
of their non-American personalities. Interestingly, both Egloffstein and Masui themselves
were born outside the United States and were converts to Catholicism. Julius Egloffstein
39
Ibid.
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
40
33
was a son of Baron Gustav von Egloffstein and his wife, Friderica, born in Multhaussen,
Bavaria in 1849. The family was Lutheran and Julius was brought up in that faith. He
attended the University of Heidelberg and converted to Catholicism in 1870 at the age of
21. After he entered the Benedictine Order, he had to leave the monastery because of ill
health. Thereupon, Julius came to San Francisco and taught in old Saint Ignatius College.
He entered Jesuits on June 6, 1874 in Santa Clara, California. After two years of novitiate
and one year of scholastics, he taught in California and was sent to Europe. He taught
disciplines ranging from theological studies to mathematics in England, Rome, Holland,
Monaco, and Vienna. Although Egloffstein had a strong desire to go to Japan for mission
work, his wish was not granted and he was sent to Italy where he worked in pastoral work
with German-speaking migrants from 1891 to 1907.42
Egloffstein came back to the United States in 1907 and began teaching mathematics,
German, and French at St. Ignatius College in San Francisco in 1908. Masui wrote an
episode which guided Egloffstein regarding the Japanese mission during the time he was
teaching at St. Ignatius from 1908 to 1912.
He came to S.F., one day. He was walking on the Market St. when a Japanese boy
saluted him. So, Fr. asked him to visit himself in St. Ignatius Coll. This was what
first made Fr. Egloffstein think of the Japanese mission in S.F. Fr. Egloffstein
started to learn Japanese when he was sixty years old, from then he worked until he
died at the age of seventy-two.
42
Personal directory of Jesuits in the United States: Julius von Egloffstein (1849-1921),
January 15, 1914-June 27, 1918; August 22, 1919-April 20, 1921. Provincial Archives of the
Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.; Francis Xavier Eizo Masui, S.J., “A Short History of the St.
Francis Xavier Mission in San Francisco (1914-1925),” Written at Rokko Catholic Church,
Kobe, Japan. 5 January 1951. The copy of the notes was personally shared by Sister Alice
Nugent, D.M.J.
34
Masui takes up another “edifying” example that Egloffstein was distanced from
ethnic discrimination or biases in the story of a court case where he defended a Jewish
merchant with whom Egloffstein built a good relationship through purchases of secondhand furniture from a middle-class white woman. Despite his age, Egloffstein worked hard.
He also said Mass in the chapel of the Holy Souls every day except Sunday as the pastor.43
Brother Francis Xavier Eizo Masui was the one who was in charge of the Jesuits’
Japanese mission for the eleven year period aside from the first two months, from March
1914 through December 1925. Masui was born in the town of Mugi, in the province of
Tokushima on the Japanese island Shikoku on July 28, 1886 as a son of Koshiro Masui and
Yuki Wanda. After attending public school in his home country for thirteen years, Eizo
Masui came to the United States in 1907. For five years and six months before he joined
the Society of Jesus, Masui worked at various jobs. He learned English and the Catholic
faith from Pius Moore, S.J., then a scholastic in Spokane, Washington. Moore succeeded
Egloffstein in the Japanese mission in San Francisco. There is a letter which remains from
Masui’s father written in the Japanese language that he would allow his son to join the
Jesuits. According to the report by Moore, Masui was the first convert at the Japanese
Mission in Spokane. After being sent to the St. Ignatius Mission in Montana as a cook in
1913, Masui was assigned to the Japanese Mission in San Francisco in 1914. He worked
as a catechist and cook, close to his fellow Japanese in California as a good friend.44
43
Masui, “A Short History of the St. Francis Xavier Mission in San Francisco (1914-1925).”
Personal directory of Jesuits in California: Francis Eizo Masui (1886-1955), March 21,
1914-December 28, 1925. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
44
35
The team of these first two missionaries characterized the Japanese mission in the
United States as unique. Although this San Francisco mission was the first formally
dedicated “American” Catholic mission to the Japanese in the United States, by the nature
of these two persons (Masui and Egloffstein), the mission was truly universal and catholic
beyond class, race, and ethnic boundaries. Both were foreign born converts and thus were
able to be close sympathizers to the Japanese people who flocked around the mission
church. These missionaries witnessed in practice to what Conaty had said: “[T]he
Catholic Church does not distinguish one nationality from another. She recognizes no
color line, she simply binds together human beings in the love of the one all-loving Christ.”
Five months later, Conaty dedicated the mission and club house for the Japanese
Catholics of Los Angeles on Sunday, February 1, 1914. This house was expected to be for
the use for young Japanese boys. While the mission in Los Angeles was founded by
Breton earlier than the Mission in San Francisco, it took a longer time for the Los Angeles
mission to settle down at 707 West Second Street. The Japanese mission of Los Angeles
was placed under the same patronage as the San Francisco mission, St. Francis Xavier.
The Tidings published on February 6, 1914 reports on the attendants and the
ceremonies. The dedication was presided over by Bishop Conaty assisted by Rev. Francis
J. Conaty, Rev. F. C. P Campbell of Burbank, Rev. Michael Onate, C. M. F., of the Plaza
Church, Rev. Edward Brady and Rev. A. I. Eling of the Cathedral. Among the guests was
Rev. Mr. Yamasaki, a Japanese Episcopal minister. The presentations from Bishop Conaty
36
included a beautiful wood and ivory crucifix which was hung in the reading room, the gift
of “Mr. Morneault,” a Canadian Catholic.45
Starting with an address in Japanese by Breton, the ceremonies included remarks
in English by Harry Shigeta, chairman of the event, “Mr. Wakabayashi,” secretary of the
Japanese Association of Southern California, “Mr. Togari” of the Yamato Company, and
“Mr. Suski” on behalf of the Japanese Catholics. In Japanese, Breton told the attendees
that they were “to enjoy the benefits of the new club house through the kindness of Bishop
Conaty” and that “all their non-Catholic friends would always be welcome.” Also, in
English in the afternoon’s exercises, Breton stressed appreciation to the bishop and said:
I thank you with all my heart in behalf of the Japanese Catholics, who are so happy
to have a place where they can meet one another; so happy to have a priest to take
care of them; and I assure you that you will not be forgotten in the prayers that are
said in this house. I thank you also in behalf of the non-Catholics, who do not realize
yet what you have done for them, but who will realize later what this mission house
means to them.
From the experience of the previous ten years in Japan, Breton understood that the
mission would be hard. Nevertheless, he expected many blessings while trusting in the
prayerful support by the bishop and the diocese. He was encouraged by the presence of the
prelates of California while quoting St. Augustine, “Where there is love, there is no
labor.”46
Bishop Conaty, as well, responded enthusiastically while reminding them that it was
an honor to dedicate both the first Catholic club house for the Japanese in San Francisco
and the first Japanese Catholic mission of the United States within his diocese. In this
45
“The New Japanese Catholic Mission Dedicated last Sunday by Bishop Conaty: An
Interesting Program,” Tidings. 6 February 1914.
46
Ibid.
37
address, Conaty revealed that Breton had almost fifty Japanese Catholics, and thirty-five or
forty had converted to Catholicism since he arrived in Los Angeles, saying that “they have
come back to the faith that was taught their forefathers by St. Francis Xavier.” Conaty was
delighted to see that many people who attended the dedication were concerned about the
Japanese mission. He also promised, “our people will sustain [Breton’s] efforts by
assisting him in every way” because he was to remain with the Catholics in Los Angeles
and it was “his desire to awaken interest in the work of the Japanese in Los Angeles.”47
Conaty was also pleased with the hymns to our Blessed Mother of Lourdes sung in
Japanese by the young daughters of Suski because “these hymns which you and I learned
as children” symbolically showed “the beauty and universality of the Church.” “[W]e all
recognized the air [although] we didn’t quite catch the words.” It represented “the
beginning of a larger and greater family which [would] carry on the good work which
Father Breton [had] begun.” Finding a sign of unity in this small presentation, the bishop
declared that “this small corner of Second Street” be the home of a number of young
Japanese boys, a source of great blessing to them, and the place the Japanese would have a
right to feel “that the Church of God is for all races and for all people.” As St. Francis
Xavier did to their forefathers, the bishop extended his blessing to all people who were
involved in the beginning of the mission: the ones who cooperated with Breton regardless
of faith, and the Japanese brethren both Catholic and non-Catholic.48 With the cooperation
of the American clergy and laity, the ones who held faiths beside Catholicism, and the
Japanese themselves along with the European priest, they began founding a home together.
47
48
Ibid.
Ibid.
38
Through this time of the formal dedication of the mission, one of the first works that
Breton had continually founded developed--an evening school for Japanese to learn
English. Although its first meeting was at the Brownson House in March 1913, within
three months, they had the good fortune to have the efficient direction of Miss Holleran49,
who taught with much enthusiasm, skill, and affection for the Japanese students. She had
carried her experience of several years of teaching in the public schools in Los Angeles.
She knew how students would learn the language with joy and fun. She had no hesitation
to explain the words and sentences through gestures and grimaces.
On one occasion, one of the students asked the meaning of the word “embrace,” and
as a synonym of the word could not be readily understood, Miss Holleran, nothing
daunted, threw her arms around the neck of a demure little Japanese woman, much to
the embarrassment of the latter, but to the exceeding enjoyment of the boys of the
class. Where upon all shouted out in unison, “ I un’stan.”50
The pupils showed their appreciation by bringing their friends to the school and the
school needed more rooms for growing attendants as a result. Until the new school opened
in the fall of 1913, the Cathedral School provided two large classrooms for Japanese
children. The number of pupils grew constantly as the school enjoyed a high reputation
which attracted Japanese parents and children. When the new school opened, it had four
grades. The two higher grades were under the guidance of a regular instructor who taught
every evening of the week. For the first two grades, a different teacher instructed each
evening. This plan provided the pupils who had just begun studying English many more
49
She is possibly Margaret Holleran, one of the daughters of Michael Holleran who resided
in the city of Los Angeles. Los Angeles City Directory, 1909.
http://rescarta.lapl.org:8080/ResCartaWeb/jsp/RcWebImageViewer.jsp?doc_id=Los%20Angeles%20City%20Directories/LPU000
00/LL000007/00000002.
50
John B. McNellis, “Japanese Catholic Night School.” Tidings (1914).
39
opportunities to interact with native speakers. It “[trained] the ears of the boys and girls to
the different voices.” Breton was thankful to these volunteer teachers who supported them
during these initial years.51
The mission in Los Angeles had the most important development and became more
concrete when four Japanese Sisters arrived in the city in 1915. While the original
intention of Breton was to have fully professed women religious to help the mission, he
secured four “semi-religious Sisters” since the sisters in Japan could not be spared from
their mission there and it was not possible for Breton to take fully professed nuns.
Although these women already lived in the community and aided the missionaries in
converting the people, they had not been yet recognized as “a regular congregation of
nuns.” Breton asked them to come to the United States to assist him from Nagasaki. There
were more than two hundred women like them in this diocese alone.52
Breton formed the congregation and called it Homonkai (Sisters of the Visitation).
Those four women in Nagasaki had been under the direction of Father Emile Raguet, a
missionary to Kagoshima who had been required to organize a good catechist group such
as “Adorers of the Cross (Amantes de la Croix)” beginning in 1907. The eldest among
those four was Margarita Sue Matsumoto who worked as the mother superior of this
community. She had no hesitation about sacrificing herself in leaving her home
permanently for an unknown country in order to serve for the Japanese mission in the
United States. From that time forward, she never looked back to Japan. Although her age
precluded her from adapting to many differences in the life in Los Angeles, she worked
51
52
Ibid.
“Work of the Japanese Missions,” Tidings, March 1915.
40
hard and piously until her death four years later. She was buried in a Catholic cemetery in
Los Angeles, called Calvary Cemetery, in a plot of the Daughters of Charity. Angela Tsue
Yamano succeeded to her work. During their combined ten years of service, they worked
for the Japanese in the dioceses of San Francisco, Monterey, and Los Angeles, as well as
Sacramento.53
On May 1, 1915, the Japanese Sisters’ Home for orphans and non-orphans was
opened in a rented house at 129 South Flower Street. They had fifteen children when the
service began. The orphanage was transferred to a larger house at 1239 West 23 Street
with twenty-three children on May 1, 1916, a year after the original opening. The sisters
found the permanent location in the house and property of an old pioneer family, the
Workmans, at 425 South Boyle Avenue. They moved into the new place at the end of
1918 and made it the convent for the whole community.54
At the same time, the Japanese sisters prepared for opening the kindergarten. It
started on May 1, 1915, on the same day as the Sisters’ Home opened, in a rented house at
133 South Hewitt Street in the center of the Los Angeles Japanese settlement. From the
beginning of this kindergarten, the staff arranged for school bus service. They bought a
second-hand Ford and hired a driver in order “to go all over the city as far as South
Vermont and 38th Street, and [get] the children back and forth to the school.” It was an
attempt by Breton to serve the children from the broadest area possible.55 Some Japanese
53
“Historique de L’Institut du Homonkai.” Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of
San Francisco.
54
Father Breton, “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—Los Angeles.”
55
Ibid.
41
families resided far from the center of the Japanese community of Los Angeles. However,
responding to this call, they began taking part in this community through Breton’s mission.
There were thirty-five children who joined the kindergarten at its opening. In the
kindergarten, Sister Angela, a Japanese, and Miss Gilroy, an American woman, taught
English and Japanese. Breton recognized how significant it was to teach both languages
and traditions to those children who succeeded in two cultural heritages and would be
called “Nisei (the second-generation)” born as American citizens. A special course in
Japanese language was held every afternoon for those children after attending public
school.56
Since Breton preached each Sunday in Japanese, the needs for Sunday schools were
gradually recognized. Breton began three Sunday schools in the vicinity of Los Angeles.
The first school was organized in Puente, in October 1915, which had ten children. The
second one was in Vernon begun in November 1915 for eight children. The third school
came to Tropico for twenty children, established in February 1916. In September 1916,
Sister Roberta of the Franciscan convent on Santee Street joined and took charge of
teaching the English class for three years. At this time, Catholic sisters taught both classes
of the languages for Japanese children. When Sister Roberta was reassigned, the
Daughters of Charity on Boyle Avenue agreed to succeed Sister Roberta. Sister Zoe and
Sister Stephanie taught English while Sister Angela and Sister Veronica continued to teach
Japanese as a “foreign language.” Responding to the success of these initial works of
education by the sisters, in January 1918, Bishop John J. Cantwell made an official visit to
56
Ibid.
42
the mission school and authorized starting a new grammar school while providing funding
of ten thousand dollars. Six months later, a new site for the larger school was bought at
226 south Hewitt Street. The kindergarten was transferred immediately. In September, a
regular grammar school began with the first grade. Combined with both kindergarten and
grammar school, the enrollment was 120 pupils. Each grade was added every year after
the opening.57
In Fall 1916, Breton visited Japan to recruit young Japanese Sisters for the Mission
in Los Angeles. In Spring 1919, he traveled again for the same purpose. At the highest
numbers, the Sisters of the Visitation counted eleven women. Even after Mother Margarita
Matsumoto died in Los Angeles in 1919, those sisters devotedly labored for the needs of
the Japanese on the West Coast. Tuberculosis work was added at the beginning of 1920.
Mrs. E. Markle, a Catholic nurse in Oakland, approached Breton and said that she wished
to devote herself to the care of the tubercular patients among the Japanese. Soon after
receiving her offer, Breton contacted her and assisted her in starting a sanatorium in
Monrovia. Markle started with “a dozen Japanese patients at a time” and continued her
charity work until her death twenty years later. The sanatorium became an important
foundation of Breton’s Japanese Catholic mission along with the sisters’ home and the
kindergarten.58
After the United States entered World War I, Egloffstein, S.J., of the Japanese
mission in San Francisco was transferred to the German mission at Saint Mary’s Church in
San Jose as superior and pastor. On June 27, 1918, Pius Leo Moore, S.J., who had been an
57
58
Ibid.
Ibid.
43
assistant to Egloffstein, took over the mission until Egloffstein returned. Born in Spirit
Lake, Iowa, Moore was the very first American-born missionary priest for the Japanese
Catholic community. After he joined the Jesuits on August 13, 1900, Moore taught at St.
Stanislaus in Lewiston, Idaho from 1903 to 1905 and came to the West Coast to study
Philosophy at Gonzaga College in Spokane, Washington from 1905 to 1908 where he
enthusiastically taught Catholicism to Japanese students. Moore claims that there had been
a Japanese mission at Gonzaga College begun six years before Breton arrived. There had
been seventy-three Japanese in this mission at Gonzaga. Francis Masui was the first
convert of this Japanese group at Gonzaga College under Moore’s guidance. 59
Masui noted that Moore was always known “by the name of Fr. Pius Moore.” While
Moore himself had no idea why he was called by his full name, some Japanese parishioner
said that the reason was because he was “pi[o]us.” Masui continues:
He [Moore] looked hard at him. We did not notice any exterior piety in Fr. Moore—
however once we noticed how he prayed unexpectedly. One day we were driving an
auto along the country road. Suddenly we had passed the front of the country church.
“Master!” We heard Fr. Moore whispered [sic.].
Moore’s three sisters were in religious orders and he loved them deeply. His
humanitarian affection based on his faith was inculcated in the family. When it permeated
through his Japanese brethren, the Jesuit mission in San Francisco had one of the most
enthusiastic pastors who tried to make another and even larger family among those
Japanese.
59
Pius Moore, S.J. “The Question of Our Japanese Mission of St. Francis Xavier, San
Francisco” (Undated report), S.F. 1/9-13, Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los
Gatos, CA.
Francis Eizo Masui, S.J. “A Short History of the St. Francis Xavier Mission in San Francisco
(1914-1925).”
44
The annual letter of the Japanese mission of San Francisco written in 1916 by Moore
explained the progress of their activities. There had been thirty-one converts since the
mission by Egloffstein began. Ten of these converts died soon after. Egloffstein visited
and helped the sick and the poor in the public hospital. Those Jesuits observed with a
certain amount of astonishment that “the Japanese expect[ed] the splendor and good
number of people in attendance” even at funerals for the poor. The annual letter also
referred to three Japanese women whose husbands had been converted shortly before them.
Agnes Nobuchi, a devout Japanese woman, instructed those Japanese. During the
administration of baptism, the priest followed the custom that existed in some missions.
“While the priest [read] the words in Latin a catechist, as [was] the custom in Japan, [read]
all the words in Japanese.” There were Japanese parishioners of the San Francisco
community who came to Sunday Mass from distant places, such as Oakland and Berkeley.
In order to receive Easter Communion, there was a person who traveled even 190 miles by
train to the mission. Once a year, another person devoutly made the Spiritual Exercises for
three or five days in a house of the Society. While viewing the piety of those Japanese
Catholics under their mission, Moore stressed the necessity of the mission as well as his
hope and enthusiasm.
Because of some prejudice that I cannot understand, some Catholics in churches for
Americans so loath the Japanese that if a Japanese, even if he is a Catholic, enters a
pew where they are, the Americans instantly rush to another pew. Because of this,
the Japanese should have a church of their own. It would be good and would greatly
lead to the salvation of souls if, in every city of the state of California, as well as in
all of the region that is called the “Pacific Region,” Missions for the Japanese, whose
number approximately 98,000 were set up. With God’s help this Mission, under the
patronage of Saint Francis Xavier, will be the beginning of this ministry, and with
45
the passing years will also be the “mother” of other missions among these Japanese,
whom the Apostle of Japan had the habit of calling “the delight of my soul.”60
Moore joined the mission at the termination of Tertianship on July 1, 1917. During
the months of summer vacation, he gave the spiritual exercises in various places. After
returning to the mission, he began a night school for Japanese adults. This school was
filled with young Japanese men who worked everyday and could not attend school during
the day. They showed “the greatest eagerness.” Moore noted that approximately forty
men and some of their wives attended this night school from October 1916 through July
1917. Three times a week, a devout and zealous young man named Daniel Danahy
assisted the missionaries at the school. His goodness and patience “edified” the Japanese
significantly.61
In November 1917, a “Catholic Mission Club” was begun. Three purposes of this
club were:
First, to increase the believers’ knowledge of spiritual things; second, to teach the
history, customs, and affairs of this region; third, that the members, by coming to
know each other better, might lead other Japanese to the knowledge of the Holy
Church.
Each month, the members published a bulletin, Catholic Club News copies of which are
unable to be located now.62
60
Pius Moore, S.J., “Annual Letter of the Mission of Saint Francis Xavier for the Japanese in
California,” pp. 5-7, June 1916, S.F. Folder 12, Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus,
Los Gatos, CA.
61
Pius Moore, S.J., “Annual Letter of the Mission of Saint Francis Xavier for the Japanese in
the city of San Francisco, California, from July 1, 1917, to July 1, 1918,” pp. 8-10, S.F.
Folder 12, Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
62
Ibid.
46
The Mission school for Japanese continued to have almost thirty students. A devout
woman, Mrs. Mary Moffit helped the sisters at the school with her knowledge of music. In
the spring of 1918, Egloffstein set up a school for the study of the Japanese language in
response to the need and desire of the Japanese children who wished to study their native
language. With the assistance of the missionary in Yamaguchi, Japan, a young Japanese
Catholic woman arrived in San Francisco in March to begin to teach Japanese.63
During the year from July 1917 to June 1918, eight Japanese were baptized: six were
adults and two were infants. Among them, four adults received instruction in the public
hospital by Masui. Anthony J. Nakamura, “a spiritual son of the Mission” assisted those
missionaries. This year, many friends of the mission donated furnishings, books, pictures,
and sacred objects to the chapel. Also, much new equipment for games on the grounds
was donated for the use of the children.64
On June 27, 1918, Egloffstein was appointed superior of the residence of St. Mary’s
in San Jose and Moore became the head of the mission. There is a small note that
remained from the discussion of the Jesuits’ Provincial Consultation in Santa Clara on
March 20, 1917, regarding their question about whether the Japanese mission in San
Francisco should be turned over to the fathers of the “Missions Étrangères.” At this point,
they determined that it would be better to do “nothing of that kind.”65 Nevertheless, under
the direction of Moore, the Mission had a significant amount of expansion.
63
Ibid.
Ibid.
65
Minutes of the Provincial Council, 20 March 1917, Santa Clara, CA., Box 328, Book 2.
p.63. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
64
47
A few days after the appointment of Moore, he spoke about the works and needs of
the mission in an audience with Archbishop Edward Hanna.66 After listening to Moore,
the archbishop gave his permission to buy a larger house for the mission. The mission
property was purchased in September 1918 at Octavia and Pine Streets at a cost of $23,000
paid under the archbishop’s name. The address was 1715 Octavia Street. This property
included some grounds surrounding an old private house. A chapel was placed in two
large rooms in this building and the rest was a residence for Moore and Masui. While the
improvements and accommodations for a kindergarten and afternoon school amounted to
$1,000, this cost was paid as well.67 The Missionary celebrated Mass in the new chapel on
the last Sunday of September. At the beginning of the school year, approximately sixty
students presented themselves.68
In October 1918, influenza attacked the city of San Francisco; consequently the
school was forced to close. Both Moore and Masui as well as the sisters were busy visiting
and helping the sick. During this epidemic, there were twelve baptisms. When the
epidemic ceased, the students returned to the school.69
The Mission began an afternoon school for women and an evening school for men.
The missionaries gained additional assistance from a devout Catholic woman born in Japan,
Mary Ruby Gibbs, for the sisters at the school. Gibbs later entered the Novitiate of the
66
Pius Moore, S.J., “Annual Letter of the Mission of San Francis Xavier (for the Japanese) of
San Francisco in California, from July 1, 1918, to July 1, 1919, S.F. Folder 12, pp. 11-12.
Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
67
“Historical Record of St. Francis Xavier’s Japanese Catholic Mission.” Document in
possession of Sister Alice Nugent, Daughters of Mary and Joseph, privately shared with the
author.
68
Moore, S.J., “Annual Letter: July 1918-June 1919.”
69
Ibid.
48
Religious of the Sacred Heart. During this year, Joseph Miyamoto in the mission died after
he was baptized. He was a catechumen while helping the Mission with a great deal of
work and brought flowers for the altar on Sundays. Aside from the epidemic, there were
fourteen baptisms and two blessings of weddings. The mission also received various sorts
of donations, most notably two statues and some benches for the congregation.70
In June 1919, the news arrived in San Francisco that Breton brought six Japanese
sisters and postulants from Japan. While Breton stayed at the mission in San Francisco,
Moore asked him, if the archbishop should approve, to send two Japanese sisters to the
mission of San Francisco during the month of August and Breton consented. Before the
feast of the Assumption, those sisters made the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius for the
first time under the direction of Moore in Los Angeles.71
When Moore returned to San Francisco, he received a letter from the provincial
which named him rector of St. Ignatius College in San Francisco. On August 22, 1919,
Egloffstein was reappointed to the mission. The Japanese sisters, along with the Helpers of
the Holy Souls, devotedly assisted Egloffstein with teaching and performing works of
religion. On Christmas day 1919, two adults were baptized. On Easter 1920, eight were
baptized—one man, one woman with her daughter, and five other girls. However obedient
Moore was, he was too enthusiastic about the mission and too affectionate toward those
Japanese people to leave the mission without sorrow.72
70
Ibid.
Pius Moore, S.J., “Annual Letter of the Mission of Saint Francis Xavier for the Japanese of
San Francisco in California from July 1, 1919, until July 1, 1920.” Folder 12, pp. 13-14.
Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
72
Ibid.
71
49
The mission of Breton extended to several other states through the years of the 1910s.
Since the information about Breton’s arrival was taken up in some local Japanese
newspapers, he received letters from Japanese Catholics to ask him to visit them and
provided their addresses. Those letters came even from Mexico. Also, Father Thomas, a
Belgian missionary in Hawaii, asked him for Japanese catechisms and prayer books.73
Breton’s first visit to Sacramento was made in November 1914. It was the center of
an important Japanese farming district. Bishop Thomas Grace welcomed him warmly and
had Father William O’Toole of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament to help him in
canvassing the city. Breton recognized that St. Stephen’s school located at 3rd and O
Streets was close to the Japanese settlement. He had a meeting with the Franciscan sisters
in charge of this school and they consented to cooperate with Breton’s mission at their
place. The sisters promised Breton that they would induce the Japanese parents to send
their children to St. Stephen’s grammar school at the beginning of the next school year.
The number of Japanese children gradually increased. In 1917, the Franciscan sisters
added a kindergarten for the Japanese children to their school. At this time, Sister Teresa,
one of the Japanese sisters of the Visitation, left Los Angeles for Sacramento to assist the
Franciscan sisters at their convent until 1921 when she returned to Japan with other
Japanese sisters. Thus, the priest in charge of St. Stephen’s Church was also in charge of
73
Albert Breton, “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—Other States.” (ca. 1945) Document in
possession of Sister Alice Nugent, Daughters of Mary and Joseph, privately shared with the
author.
50
the Japanese mission. This Franciscans’ mission continued until 1941 when the Japanese
were sent to the internment camps.74
In 1914, Breton traveled to Utah answering one of the calls by Japanese Catholics in
Salt Lake City. Although he found there were few Japanese settled there, Breton tried to
give any sort of assistance to those Japanese Catholics. He also traveled to Arizona twice
or three times covering Flagstaff, Phoenix, Prescott, and Nogales. After traveling from one
border to the other of the state, Breton found a few individual Catholics working in
American families. He had no way to assist non-Catholic people there. However, he left
the mission work to “the Sisters in charge of the parochial schools and hospitals” which he
visited and he recommended that the Japanese meet those sisters.75
The case of Wyoming was unique. Father Joseph Conrath, pastor of Rawlins, wrote
Breton in 1916 about a Japanese prisoner under a death sentence who had become
interested in Catholicism through conversation with another prisoner. Soon after that,
Breton sent this young Japanese man a few religious books in Japanese. Later, Breton
decided to stop by Rawlins, Wyoming to see him on the way to go to Vancouver when he
traveled to Japan for recruiting women religious. He spent two days in the prison with the
young Japanese man while telling him about the Catholic religion and “fundamental
truths.” A few weeks after Breton left for Portland and Seattle, Father Conrath baptized
74
Albert Breton, “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—Sacramento.” (ca. 1945) Document in
possession of Sister Alice Nugent, Daughters of Mary and Joseph, privately shared with the
author.
75
Breton, “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—Other States.”
51
this young Japanese prisoner. Interestingly, this young man later wrote Breton that he was
granted a new trial after the baptism and finally he was released.76
Although Breton traveled to Portland, Oregon several times, it was a difficult place
for him to establish a concrete mission work. While he stayed there as a guest of
Archbishop Alexander Christie for the first time, he became acquainted with the Japanese
colony. However, he met only about ten Catholics out of three or four thousands. He met
with the sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary who promised to welcome Japanese
children at the Cathedral school.77
En route to Vancouver from where Breton would sail to Japan in 1916, he found both
great opportunities and needs in the Seattle mission. While staying with Bishop Edward
O’Dea, Breton observed a much larger Japanese colony than most places he visited. In the
Japanese colony where the hotel business was successful and hospitality was established,
Breton met some Catholic families. One was a Japanese tailor who was baptized in Tokyo
and whose two girls attended the parish school of St. James Cathedral. When the great
dome of the St. James Cathedral, only nine year old, collapsed under the weight of an
unusual snowfall during his stay, Breton called the assistance of the Japanese. Many
Japanese including non-Catholics took part in this restoration. From this time on, Breton
became enthusiastic about establishing a mission in Seattle. This would be begun in the
1920s with the Foreign Mission Society of America or Maryknoll.78
76
Ibid.
Ibid.
78
Ibid.
77
52
In Vancouver, Breton found that the Oblate Fathers took care of the Japanese work
with an enthusiastic lay woman, Kathleen O’Melia, a convert from the Anglican Church.
She conducted an evening school for Japanese adults who studied English with her. When
Breton visited the school, the students counted about twenty. He encouraged her to
continue this work under the guidance of Father Joseph F. O’Neil and Father Louis Forget,
the pastors of the parish. During the following years, Breton maintained a regular
correspondence with her and visited Vancouver twice for encouraging them. O’Melia later
would join the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement. The Japanese work in Vancouver
would be under the auspices of the Graymoor Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the
Atonement.79
Some of the significant contributions to the Japanese Catholic mission in the 1910s
by Breton included the networking of the Japanese communities and the family-based
community building. In the Extension Magazine, which is the publication of the Catholic
Church Extension Society to support Catholic mission in rural areas, published in April
1916, John B. McNellis took up the Protestant efforts to convert the Japanese in California.
Before the Catholic mission began, the Protestant denominations had carried on their
campaign among the Japanese in California for thirty years. They had forty-eight missions
under nine different denominations with a total attendance of 2,430. Those groups
conducted twelve night schools and approximately 300 young Japanese men attended.
79
Albert Breton, “Personal Souvenirs and Notes—Vancowver B.C. [sic.]” (ca. 1945).
Document in possession of Sister Alice Nugent, Daughters of Mary and Joseph, privately
shared with the author.
53
They also had seven kindergartens with an attendance of 150. The Y.M.C.A. erected a
$25,000 building for Japanese adults in Los Angeles.80
The Catholic mission, born when Breton arrived on the West Coast, was still small in
the 1910s. McNellis’ article explained there were eighty Japanese Catholics in Los
Angeles and vicinity in 1916. However, forty of them had been baptized by Breton. Also,
eighty more Japanese, mostly children, were under instruction to prepare for baptism.
Although it was still small, the mission was constantly growing.
Breton was literally at the center of this mission. His residence was known as “the
Japanese Catholic Club” where social gatherings of the Japanese were held. Breton
provided evening class for Japanese men and women in the Cathedral school and the Jesuit
missionaries in San Francisco did the same. Not only did they teach English and the faith,
they intended to have the Japanese attendees know each other in those regions. It was
same for children. When those missionaries had a car to pick up children from their
residential quarters to take them to the kindergartens, their mission area was also expanded
to those suburbs. Breton opened a Sunday school at Vernon, an important farming district
about six miles from Los Angeles. Since there was no suitable place for their meeting,
Breton borrowed an idea of the Catholic Church Extension Chapel Car which he saw at the
Panama-Pacific Exposition. An automobile which conveyed Breton and his missionary
party to Vernon played the role of a “mission car.” As an old rancher offered the use of a
garage for the class, this “mission car” became the place where people gathered for the
Sunday school. In Puente, a farming center about twenty miles from Los Angeles, a
80
John B. McNellis, “Japanese Missions in California,” Extension Magazine (April, 1916).
54
church offered a place for Sunday school meetings for the Japanese and their activities
were conducted more easily. Even better, the attendants of Sunday school had an
opportunity to attend Mass every Sunday. Those satellites were under Breton’s
supervision and their information was shared in Los Angeles. By the nature of this
beginning of the mission by Breton who traveled to search out most of the Japanese
Catholics on the West Coast by himself, the information about all other areas where he
visited were converged in Los Angeles at “the Japanese Catholic Club.” The Japanese
Catholic communities connected with each other through Breton in the 1910s.
It was also significant that the missionaries had the assistance of women religious.
Those sisters were the key figures in caring for the women and children in the Japanese
community. McNellis noted that there were 8,000 Japanese children in California and 90
percent of them were American-born citizens. Their number increased at the rate of 1,800
every year.81 In contrast to the Protestant missions which had begun by taking care of
single young laborers from Japan, the needs of the mission for the Japanese families
became obvious when Breton arrived. Many non-Catholic Japanese gathered at the
missions and sent their children to the mission schools and kindergartens. The
missionaries believed those children were at the center of their hope for the mission. The
involvement of women was also important because they were, as mothers, at the center of
the families. When the missionaries took care of the family based community, including
the “pagan” Japanese, the mission was promising. And it was future oriented.
81
Ibid.
Chapter Two: Foreign Mission at Home
The Catholic Church of the United States faced a new century of missionary endeavor
at the end of the Spanish-American War. The mission work overseas began. After the
Treaty of Paris was signed on December 10, 1898, the U.S. Church became responsible for
sending the bishops to those territories, such as Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam, now
under the control of the United States. Angelyn Dries discusses about Catholic reaction to
Protestant mission efforts which had advanced conversions of the people in former Spanish
territories to Protestant Christianity.1 This attention by the American Catholic Church also
called for foreign missions which focused on China along with the government’s arguments
for Open Door Policy.
The American Church had experiences in home mission to convert non-Catholics
within the United States. Those efforts for the mission work included the Paulist-sponsored
Apostolic Mission House at the Catholic University of America in 1902, the founding of the
Catholic Church Extension Society by Francis Clement Kelly in 1906, and the convening of
Catholic missionary Congresses, whose first assembly was held in Chicago in 1909.2
Foreign mission work by the American Church was stimulated by those initiatives of home
missionaries.
During the time of the developments of the efforts of those home missions, the work of
the Society of the Propagation of the Faith (SPF) became active. Founded in 1822 in Lyon,
France as A lay-operated mission society, the SPF was approved for its foundation in the
1
Angelyn Dries, The Missionary Movement in American Catholic History (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 1998), 62-67.
2
Ibid., 67-71.
55
56
United States in 1884 and incorporated in 1897. With local units in each diocese, the SPF
emphasized prayer for missions abroad and the fundraising in order to send men and women
for mission work around the world. The society was absorbed in the Holy See’s
Congregation of the Propaganda Fide in 1921.3
Experiencing this zeal for the missions both at home and overseas at the turn of the
century in the United States, the first foreign mission society of the American Church, the
Foreign Mission Society of America, Maryknoll, was founded in 1911. Their largest concern
was the mission in China. The U.S. Church, however, encountered people who were in need
of a foreign mission on their own land. The first experience of the foreign mission by the
American Church included Japanese in the United States. In this environment, the Japanese
mission was transferred from Breton to Maryknoll, and from the Jesuits to the Society of
Divine Word in the 1920s.
The case of the Japanese mission in the United States was unique. While the
“foreign mission at home” often is associated with examples of immigrant churches
represented by the ethnic groups such as Italians and Polish where their native priests
served the people in order to maintain their faith and culture in accordance with their ethnic
heritage, it rarely has included the factor of home missions because those groups had
already established strong ethnic churches. The population of those groups was heavily
Catholic. Different from those European immigrant groups, most of the Japanese in the
United States were not Catholic when the American missionaries began their work. Thus,
the propagation work for them could have more likely been home mission which was
3
Ibid., 71-74.
57
similar work to Native Americans or African Americans. They did not have native priests
from Japan in the United States either. On the other hand, the mission to Japanese on the
West Coast was begun at the request of Japanese Catholics. Although the numbers were
small, those Japanese had had their faith and their church in Japan.
There was a question whether the methods for the mission to the Japanese in the
United States should have been a home mission or a foreign mission although most of the
missionaries to the Japanese in the 1920s did not recognize that it was the major issue of
the disputes in which they were involved through the transitions of the mission. In Los
Angeles and Seattle, the Japanese Mission was transferred from Father Breton to the
Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Maryknoll which had been founded in 1911.
Maryknoll sent their first foreign missionary group to China in 1918 and no one had
returned from the mission field to the United States when their mission began for the
Japanese on the West Coast. In San Francisco, the Jesuit missionaries experienced the year
1920 in both sorrow and struggle. Beloved Father Egloffstein died in April. In addition to
the Japanese mission, Jesuits experienced financial difficulty in the Native American
mission. All of the transitions of the Japanese missions were bittersweet with success,
hope, and some controversy over the lack of sharing the perspectives about the “foreign
mission” for the Japanese in America.
In 1919, the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America was still a young
organization. The society was founded by two priests who met at the Twenty-first
Eucharistic Congress in Montreal, Canada in September 1910. They discussed the strong
necessity of foreign mission work in the pre-Spanish-American War era. James Anthony
58
Walsh had worked for the Office Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Boston for
seven years where he silently founded “the Catholic Foreign Mission bureau.”4 Thomas
Frederick Price was a home missioner in North Carolina. At Montreal, Price contacted
Walsh and they discussed establishing the first U.S. Catholic foreign mission society.5
Although these two priests shared some commonalities in such things as frugality
and devotion to the Virgin Mary, their figures in documents are in stark contrast. A
charismatic first superior general, Walsh left his name on every important document which
highlighted his high competence as an administrator. Father Price, on the other hand,
insisted his name be left out and that no photos of him be published after Maryknoll was
launched. While his importance was often overlooked due to this policy at Maryknoll, the
truth is that Father Price played significant roles in starting the society.6
While Maryknoll was founded as a foreign mission society, it was founded on the
spirit devoted to the home mission. As a home missioner, Price was much better known
than Walsh whose circle of friends was mostly limited to New England. Price was a wellknown figure in Baltimore and Ellicott City, Maryland where he had attended St. Charles
College and St. Mary’s Seminary. He also published his own periodical, Truth, which was
read all over the country and was an instrument for his missionary work in the South.
Price traveled all over the country to visit his friends and was invited to speak about the
new seminary when it opened. This style of the announcement about the news of the new
mission society through the country solved the financial problems with which Father
4
Field Afar 15, no. 9 (September 1921): 268.
Raymond A. Lane, M.M, D.D., The Early Days of Maryknoll (New York: David McKay,
1951), 34-39: Dries, The Missionary Movement in American Catholic History, 74-78.
6
Ibid.
5
59
Walsh had been concerned at the beginning. A personal friendship between Price and
James Cardinal Gibbons, the archbishop of Baltimore, became another strong element in
launching the society. “Freddie” Price had been an altar boy for Father Gibbons in North
Carolina and this friendship lasted for a long time. Price was also a classmate of Cardinal
William Henry O’Connell of Boston at St. Charles College. Behind the scenes, the
assistance based on those personal friendships of Father Price became valuable and
powerful contributions to provide the new society a solid foundation. In this aspect,
Maryknoll was a fruit of Price’s networking.7
Formally organized in 1911, the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America was
on a hill facing the Hudson named “Maryknoll” for the devotion to the Virgin Mary by the
two founders who desired to have the name link the new mission work with the Queen of
the Apostles. On September 7, 1918, the “Departure Bell” at Maryknoll was tolled for the
first time when the group of the first Maryknoll foreign mission took off to China. Eighty
people gathered on this night for the departing missionaries. Some of them had grown up
from boys to ordained priests within six years along with the history of the new society.
The bell was what Walsh had brought back from Japan. A French missioner in Japan gave
him this old bell which had hung in a Buddhist temple in the northern region of the
mainland of Japan and asked Walsh to place it at the new seminary. This Japanese bell
still tolls for blessing the missionaries upon departure from Ossining, New York where the
headquarters of the society has been located since its founding.8
7
8
Ibid.
Ibid., 43-45, 228-237.
60
In 1919, the superior general of the Paris Foreign Mission Society advised Albert
Breton that he go back to his mission in Japan at the earliest opportunity because of the
shortage of priests in Japan. Receiving Bishop Cantwell’s suggestion that Breton should
find someone who could take over his mission for the Japanese, he went to the East in
order to look for a mission society which was willing to take care of the Japanese Catholics
on the West Coast.9 Breton also wanted to establish a religious community for the
Japanese sisters of the Visitation formally approved by the Church. However, Cantwell
did not approve Breton’s idea to establish their own religious community because “they
had no [significant] increase of their [Japanese] numbers since their arrival in the United
States.” The Gentlemen’s Agreement was signed in 1907 between the United States and
Japan for the restriction of any more Japanese citizen’s entry to the United States for the
purpose of labor. Therefore, the bishop suggested that the Japanese sisters join any
existing communities.10 Breton found that “the newly established Maryknoll society
welcome[d] the proposition and [was] authorized by S.C. Propaganda to take up the
Japanese work in L.A. and also in Seattle.”11 He also expected that Japanese sisters would
have the chance to work for their people on the West Coast under the guidance of Mother
Mary Joseph, the founder of the Foreign Mission Sisters of St. Dominic, known as
Maryknoll Sisters. Mother Mary Joseph, former Mary Josephine Rogers, had been
encouraged by Walsh, the co-founder of Maryknoll, to establish a constructive activity for
9
Albert Breton, “Notes of Father Albert Breton: Other Cities.” Document in possession of
Sister Alice Nugent, Daughters of Mary and Joseph, privately shared with the author.
10
“Japanese Work in Los Angeles.” Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Archives (MFBA)
Collection, B-17: Box 1, Folder 1, Maryknoll Mission Archives (MMA).
11
Breton, “Notes of Father Albert Breton: Other Cities.”
61
the Church. She joined the staff of Field Afar, the magazine of Maryknoll and supported
the society while organizing a group by lay women who were later called Teresians, after
St. Teresa of Avila. Those Teresians were trained for the religious life under the protection
of the Archbishop of New York and became Dominican Tertiaries in 1916. Recognized by
Pope Benedictus XV in January 1917 as a sisterhood, former Teresians devoted to foreign
missions and were now called the Dominican Tertiaries of the Foreign Missions. On
February 14, 1920, they received papal approbation as a diocesan religious congregation,
the Foreign Mission Sisters of St. Dominic—it was the time Breton sought the successors
to the Japanese mission for himself and an affiliation for Japanese sisters. Thus, two
Maryknoll groups linked together in strong cooperation looked ideal for Breton to pursue
both of his proposals—the succession to the Japanese mission and the Japanese sisters’
congregation.
For the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, it was only a year after the
first bell tolled for the Chinese mission. Maryknoll officially encountered the new mission
field “within” the United States when Bishop John J. Cantwell of Monterey and Los
Angeles sounded out the superior of the society about the interest in Breton’s Japanese
mission in the summer of 1919—the people from the home country of their Departure Bell:
This will introduce to you Reverend A. Breton, who has labored for many years among
the Japanese of Los Angeles. His work, both in Japan and among the Japanese of this
city, has been of great value to the Church, and he desires to speak to you on matters of
special importance in this regard. Any help that you can extend to him in his work will
be greatly appreciated by me.12
12
Letter from Bishop Cantwell to Walsh, 18 June 1919. MFBA, B-17: Box 1, Folder 1,
MMA.
62
Although the response of James A. Walsh, its superior general written on July 21, has not
been found, Cantwell delightedly wrote to Walsh again about the necessity of the
assistance by Maryknoll, not only by male members but also by the sisters:
The future of the Japanese Mission here would be very precarious if anything happened
to Father Breton. He has built up a very credible institution. He has told you all about
his work, and I assure you that anything he told you was told without exaggeration.
I look forward with much interest to see you here in Los Angeles in the fall. I am
anxious too, that the Sisters to be brought here, should receive some special training.
Father Breton, I think, works them too hard.13
Initially, this arrangement created a fruitful collaboration between Father Breton and the
Maryknoll priests. Breton wrote to Walsh on October 14 of that year saying, “I feel like
belonging half to Paris and half to you, and I am quite at home with your priests.” The
letter was written when Breton was in San Francisco and saw the Maryknoll missionaries
depart for China. He felt that the Maryknoll men and he shared the same passion in the
foreign mission.14 With this empathy, Breton was thoroughly unstinting in providing the
information to Maryknoll regarding the mission of the Japanese in the United States
through his experiences. Under the support of Bishop Cantwell, who was specifically
sympathetic to this mission, Breton sought expansion and unification of the Japanese
mission in the United States under Maryknoll. Those two goals constituted a significant
part of the agenda of Breton’s networking of Japanese Catholic through the coastal regions.
In 1919, Maryknoll and Breton worked together to seek the opportunity of the mission.
Observing their cooperation and urged by Breton, Cantwell announced the official transfer
13
Letter from Cantwell to Walsh, 29 July 1919. MFBA, B-17: Box 1, Folder 1, MMA.
Letter Breton to Walsh, 14 October 1919 (Attached to Byrne to Sr. Susanna 12/11/33).
MFBA, B-17: Box 1, Folder 1, MMA.
14
63
of the Japanese mission from the hands of Breton to the Catholic Foreign Mission Society
of America:
From today you will therefore consider the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of
America as being officially in charge of the Japanese Mission in Los Angeles. We
shall welcome to the work one of your priests, who under the guidance of Father
Breton will be inducted into his new field of labor. The sisters will be a great help.
Through the courtesy of the Superior of the Sisters of Charity, two members of that
community are teaching in St. Francis Xavier’s Japanese School. I wish you would
arrange to have two of your Sisters replace them, and take charge of this school by
next September.
The Japanese Sisters are conducting . . . a home for Japanese children . . . This work
is progressing satisfactorily. . . I would like to see your Sisters establish themselves
near the Japanese Convent so as to be able to co-operate with them and gradually
teach our Japanese nuns American ways and the language.15
With the regards to expansion, Breton was considering Seattle which also was one of
the most important centers of Japanese migrants of the time. Accompanying a Japanese
woman religious, Sister Julia who worked in San Francisco, Breton began to research the
situation in Seattle for the expansion of the Maryknoll Mission in early January of 1920.
Breton met Bishop Edward J. O’Dea and found he was in favor of the idea of their mission
for the Japanese in his diocese. Breton received a message from Bishop O’Dea to Walsh:
[T]his is a big city, 400,000 people, next to New York as foreign trade port, that the
Japanese here are very strong and numerous, that our Catholics here have good spirit
and will help in the establishment of the work, that I will be glad to give a few
hundred dollars to help in the beginning. 16
Breton also met with the Japanese consul and numbers of Japanese families in the
city. Those meetings helped him provide a strategy to start a mission for Maryknoll in
15
Letter from Cantwell to Walsh, 2 March 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 1, Folder 2, MMA.
Letter from Breton to Walsh, 3 January 1920, Vancouver, B.C. MFBA Collection, B-17:
Box 32 Folder 1: Dev. Houses—Seattle: Correspondence: House Specs. & Plans, MMA.
16
64
Seattle. The original idea of Breton regarding the mission in Seattle was to found a
Catholic day nursery where the children were looked after during the day while the parents
worked. By the time he wrote suggestions about the Seattle mission to Walsh, Breton had
arranged for a house and a Japanese woman, “Mrs. Abe,” whose husband was a catechist
in the church of Nagoya for many years.17
In April 1920, Breton proposed to Walsh a more stable plan saying, “the opportunity
is a golden one to start a kindergarten [rather] than a day nursery.” Observing that there
was neither a kindergarten nor a day nursery in the Japanese area in Seattle, Breton
suggested “the kindergarten which [would] naturally bring about the school in the near
future” would provide more advantage to the mission. Breton also urged a quick start by
Maryknoll:
Now I hear that the Protestants are seriously thinking about starting a similar work and
they feel kind of sore that we are going to take the lead in the matter. If we want to
make a good start and have the monopoly of the work, we must not waste any time but
start right away and in the right way. I was going to start the work on May the 10th
with the Abe family in charge of it until you send the sisters. But everything well
considered this is what I think would be the best plan which I humbly ask you to
approve.18
The bishops of Los Angeles and Seattle noticed that “non-Catholic sects” had been
working among “the Orientals” on the West coast for more than thirty years. However,
“there had been no Catholic action whatsoever” besides Breton and the Japanese sisters.19
On the same day as he wrote to Walsh, Breton also wrote to Sister Teresa, possibly one of
the Japanese Sisters of Visitation:
17
Ibid.; Letter from Breton to Walsh, 6 January 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 32 Folder 1, MMA.
Letter from Breton to Walsh, 30 April 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 32 Folder 1, MMA.
19
John C. Murrett, M.M., “Maryknoll-in-Seattle.” The Field Afar, (February 1933).
18
65
The Japanese Consul is already a friend of ours. All the Japanese here know of the
Sisters’ work, in hospitals, orphanages, etc., and they are glad to know that you are
going to work for them. Seattle is a wonderful field, much better than San Francisco
and Los Angeles put together. Without being a Prophet I can tell you that by the end
of next year you will have 200 children in your kindergarten. The reason is that there
is no kindergarten yet among the Japanese, and nearly every day the Japanese papers
of Seattle complain about the children playing in the streets or staying in apartments
and hotels, learning nothing good, and they advocate the establishment of
kindergartens by the different Protestant churches. If we start right now, we shall
have the monopoly of it all.20
Breton quickly arranged for the launch. He announced that the kindergarten would
be opened only with the Abe family on May 10 while they would wait for the more
substantial opening until Japanese Sister Teresa arrived in Seattle because great and
immediate demand was anticipated. Therefore, Breton sent Sister Teresa “to get American
ladies interested in furnishing the Kindergarten and to have everything ready by the
opening day. Breton had arranged with Father J.G. Stafford, rector of the St. James
Cathedral to have the opening ceremonies on May 30. Thus, the official beginning of the
operation of the kindergarten was scheduled for June 1, 1920. Walsh was satisfied with the
plan as well as the change which Breton had outlined. He promised to send two Maryknoll
sisters to Seattle by May 30. They were Sister Teresa Sullivan and Sister Gemma Shea.
Walsh also promised to send a priest to Seattle later.21
Sister Teresa Sullivan was a middle-aged woman. She had left her position in the
dean’s office at Harvard Medical School and joined Maryknoll. Sister Gemma was 24
years old. Recollecting the opening of Seattle Mission, Sister Gemma said:
20
Letter from Breton to Sr. Teresa, 30 April 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 32 Folder 1, MMA.
Letter from Breton to Walsh, 10 May 1920; Letter from Walsh to Breton, 22 May 1920.
MFBA, B-17: Box 32 Folder 1, MMA.
21
66
When we entered Maryknoll, we thought we were going to spread the Faith among
people in foreign lands, but there we were on our way to Seattle. And when we got
there, we did feel as if we were in a foreign land. There were about 8,000 Japanese,
living mostly in “oriental” part of the city.22
It was the beginning of the Mission by Maryknoll Sisters in Seattle, a foreign mission at
home. On Sunday, May 30, 1920, the Japanese mission in Seattle had a formal opening
with the ceremony in the largest room of the rented house on Spruce Street. Stafford, the
rector of the cathedral presented a speech on behalf of Bishop O’Dea. The Japanese consul,
whose name was Hirota, sent two representatives to speak for their people. Breton’s
address was spoken in Japanese while he explained about the work and dedication of the
sisters. Father Cairns of Maryknoll came from San Francisco and blessed the house later.
Both Catholic and non-Catholic Japanese attended the opening. American Catholics of the
city collected $500 as a gift for the dedication of the new mission. Seattle had between
15,000 and 20,000 Catholics, in a population of 320,000.23
The kindergarten began two days after the ceremony. The number of the children
increased from sixteen in a short time. Breton expected that the kindergarten would have
an average of five new children every week and that the mission would be self-supporting
with thirty children at $10.00 per month.24 With this increase in the number of children,
Walsh decided to send another Maryknoll, Sister Gerard Gallagher from New York. Thus,
arranged by Breton and Walsh, the Japanese mission in Seattle was opened with three
Maryknoll sisters. Father Joseph A. Sweeney arrived in Seattle from Maryknoll in the
22
Sr. Mary McCormick, M.M., “Maryknoll in Seattle.” MFBA, B-17: Box 32 Folder 1,
MMA.
23
Field Afar, (July 1920): 160; Letter from Sweeney to Walsh, 17 August 1920. MFBA
Collection, B-17: Box 32 Folder 1, MMA.
24
Letter from Breton to Walsh, 7 June 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 32 Folder 1, MMA.
67
summer 1920. Until the arrival of Sweeney, Breton asked the sisters not to give up
Sunday school under any circumstances in order to hold the children who were attending
the mission. Breton also arranged the donation of Church linen, vestments, and $100 for an
altar from the Extension Society through Bishop Francis Clement Kelley who was devoted
to the home mission in the United States in the 1920s and led the society.25
With regards to unification of the Mission, the issue was San Francisco. The
Japanese missions on the West Coast in the 1910s had been divided between the Society of
Jesus and Breton. Along with the request by the superior general of the Society, Pius
Moore, S.J., wrote about the situation and provided his analysis of the Japanese mission in
1918 or 1919. Moore thought “[p]erhaps for unity and plan of work it would be advisable
for one order of priests to have entire charge of the large Japanese population.” From this
point, Moore recognized that Breton desired “to have complete control of Japanese mission
work in the United States.” Nevertheless, Moore states in this report, “I personally think
an American missionary can do more good amongst them than a foreign-born priest.” He
alluded to the idea that the unified Japanese mission through the entire West Coast would
be the work of the Jesuits. The Japanese population was increasing to over 100,000 with
11,000 children when he wrote this report. Moore specifically compared this situation to
the declining population of Native Americans which became less than three times as many
as the increasing Japanese population. Because “Indian” had been the most important
25
Letter from Breton to Walsh, 7 July 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 32 Folder 1, MMA.
68
missions for the Jesuits, Moore concluded that the Japanese mission would be even more
important for their society.26
Moore observed that Breton had a better start for Los Angeles than the Jesuit mission
in San Francisco. The diocese provided Breton a $12,000 club house “at the very
beginning of [the] work.” Breton also had enthusiastic Japanese sisters who supported him.
Nevertheless, Moore thought the Jesuits had more advantages. The Japanese who came to
the United States “to study America [would] prefer native-born missionaries to work
amongst them.” For the needs of Japanese people, the Jesuit mission had Brother Masui, a
native Japanese as “an excellent Coadjutor.” Also, the Society of Jesus would be able to
use their San Francisco mission as “preparatory school for [their] Jesuit mission in Japan.”
Before going to Japan, those missionaries would have chances to learn the language.27
Before Maryknoll was invited, Moore had assumed the competition would be only
between their society and the Paris Foreign Mission Society. He preferred to avoid
unpleasantness among the missionaries in the north and south of the West Coast and to
maintain “limited territory” between two societies. Yet, if the Jesuits had resigned the
Mission entirely to French priests, Moore questioned if “Paris fathers” were able to control
such a large mission field.28
Moore accurately recognized the purpose of the request by the superior general about
the analysis of the Japanese Mission in San Francisco. In July 1918, the provincial council
took up this subject:
26
Pius Moore, S.J., “The Question of Our Japanese Mission of St. Francis Xavier, San
Francisco.” S.F.: 1/9-13. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid.
69
Should the Japanese Mission in San Francisco be handed over to the Congregation
which has charge of the Japanese in Los Angeles, so that one body could have charge
of all the Japanese on the Coast: After discussion, it was decided that we should not
urge the dropping of the Mission, but should the Archbishop suggest our giving it up
to F. Breton, we should not object. If we keep the Mission then it should be the
Archbishop who is to do the buying of the house and lot now proposed. The
Archbishop is to make the Archdiocese responsible for the paying of the bills: the
Society is not to be responsible: we give our services, and that is all.29
Breton understood that the Society of Jesus would possibly give up the Mission in San
Francisco for financial reasons.
[T]he Jesuits in San Francisco do not take as a Society very great interest in the work,
and would have no objection to pass it over to some other organization, better fit for the
work. They are handicapped on account of heavy debts on their college and church,
and want to concentrate all their strength to clear the debt.
Their giving up the mission would make easy the unification of the work in the three
large Japanese colonies of the Coast: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.
The Techny Fathers [the Society of Divine Word] also seem anxious to get to the Coast
for propaganda, and would be glad to cast their lot with the Japanese to get in it. These
are matters I should be glad to talk over with you, before you go to San Francisco, if
possible.30
In the letter of November 13, 1919, Breton wrote to Walsh again that “a definite
arrangement has to be made immediately concerning the Japanese Mission in California,
San Francisco, as well as Los Angeles.” He was confident in his observation that Bishop
Cantwell was delighted with Maryknoll’s decision to take up the work in Los Angeles.
29
“Excerpt from Provincial Consultation Minutes.” 16 July 1918. Box 328, Book 2, p.87.
Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
30
Breton to Walsh, 14 October 1919, Attached to Byrne to Sr. Susanna 12/11/33. MFBA, B17: Box 1, Folder 1, MMA.
70
About the issues in San Francisco, Breton asked Walsh to arrange for the decision with the
Archbishop.31
This promising cooperation between Breton and Maryknoll tragically fell apart by
the beginning of 1921. The discordance was gradually revealed between a European priest
and American priests as well as between Japanese sisters and American sisters. The
ostensible issues concerned the finances and on the canonical status of the Japanese sisters.
However, a series of misunderstandings guided them to distrust each other in the depths of
their minds. On both coasts of the United States, one in Ossining, NY, and the other in Los
Angeles, CA, no one was able to provide a clear answer as to who had both responsibility
and authority for the Japanese mission while preventing conflicts.
The beginning may have been a simple misunderstanding. In early December 1920,
Walsh wrote with anxiety to Breton that Breton seemed inspired by some laity who
“unwittingly misquoted” Maryknoll sisters in the discussion of personnel issues at their
kindergarten.
At all events, the Sisters had no reason to conclude from anything that I said that you
were no longer connected with the Kindergarten, and the very fact that I instructed
them to ask your advice on certain matters is proof of this. As a matter of fact, I look
to you for help all along the line, as we arranged upon at the beginning, and I think it
would be very unwise for us not to take advantage of your knowledge and
experience.32
31
Breton to Walsh, 13 November 1919, Attached to P.J. Byrne to Sr. Susanna 12/11/33.
MFBA, B-17: Fox 1, Folder 1, MMA.
32
The first line of the anxiety of misunderstanding is observed in the letter from Walsh to
Breton, 4 December 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 32, Folder 1. Dev. Houses—Seattle: Csp.,;
House Specs. & Plans, MMA. This letter was a reply to the letter from Breton to Walsh, n.d.
MFBA, B-17: Box 32, Folder 1, MMA.
71
Walsh tried to explain that there was no intention on the Maryknoll side to lessen the
authority of Breton in his missionary work. It probably was one of the reasons why
Maryknoll first sent young George Staub to direct the mission in Los Angeles. They
expected this young priest to cooperate with Breton while asking guidance from this
experienced missionary so that the transfer would be executed smoothly and peacefully.
However, this incident disclosed the difficulty of having two leaders in a mission.
Breton wrote that he was a man who had responsibility through his experiences, but no
authority after the transfer of the mission. Staub may have taken the opposite view. Walsh
began seeking another leader who would represent Maryknoll on the West Coast holding
both responsibility and authority.
In this communication, Breton asked for Walsh’s understanding regarding the
Japanese mission. It was his first criticism against Maryknoll:
First, that your idea is to direct all the activities here including the Japanese work,
from the Maryknoll headquarters, which gives the local missionary very little chance
to express his own views based mostly on experience. This I admit might be the
right policy if you had at Maryknoll a man who has experience of the Japanese work
and knows the conditions here. Unfortunately such is not the case. Secondly, it
becomes more and more evident to me that the Maryknoll propaganda comes first in
your mind and the Japanese work is only of minor importance. This might be alright
in places, but I don’t suppose that the Bishop of Los Angeles has called the
Maryknoll missionaries to this diocese first to raise money for Maryknoll, and
secondly to keep the Japanese mission alive. I who was instrumental in having the
mission turned over to your society rather than to any other missionary society, I
must admit that I am greatly disappointed. The Japanese Sisters also you understand
did not make the sacrifice of leaving family and country just to help in the Maryknoll
propaganda. Their only purpose in coming here was to work for the conversion of
the Japanese.33
33
Ibid.
72
In spite of the efforts to repair relations between the two parties, Breton doubted the
enthusiasm of Maryknoll in the Japanese mission which he had devotedly built up. Staub
stood for Breton and criticized his own society that their sisters did not fully comprehend
the difficulty of their work which separated them from the life they had enjoyed in
Maryknoll and that the society did not pay enough for the work.34 Breton thought the
Japanese sisters and he himself needed an extension to stay until the Maryknoll sisters
would get used to the work. In the same letter, Staub introduced a plan Breton suggested
to build a small office on the first floor of the house annexed to the chapel for the
convenience of both Maryknoll sisters and Japanese sisters. Breton’s plans were often
costly for the young society in which Father Price, the legendary co-founder, had assisted
Walsh at the beginning of the society while working in extreme frugality.
Walsh may have observed that there were two different ways to pursue the mission
between himself and Breton. For Walsh, Maryknoll should start to make their own way to
support the work and should leave Breton. For Breton, the mission transferred to
Maryknoll still required the assistance of himself and the Japanese sisters. Staub was much
more sympathetic to Breton so that his own society gradually considered him disloyal.35
Other issues concerned Walsh--the canonical status of the Japanese sisters. When
those Japanese sisters were invited to Los Angeles under the jurisdiction of Bishop Conaty,
they had received training at local convents in Japan and their status was recognized as
“semi-religious.” Breton organized them as the “Japanese Sisters of the Visitation.”
34
Letter from Staub to Walsh, 10 July 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
Letter from Walsh to Bishop Cantwell, 5 April 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3,
MMA.
35
73
Breton tried to amalgamate those Japanese women to Maryknoll sisters who were still
called “Teresians.” Walsh recognized the complaint among their sisters in Los Angeles
about the leadership in their work and asked for a settlement by Bishop Cantwell.
On arrival at Los Angeles, our Sisters found themselves under, rather than over the
little Japanese women, and, as Your Lordship knows, I encouraged their separation,
although I was pleased to find a cordial friendship between the two communities.
Mindful now of the purpose of their call to Los Angeles, and of your own solicitude of
the Japanese women, in the event of Father Breton’s withdrawal, I write to ask Your
Lordship to kindly settle at your convenience, the relationship of Maryknoll sisters to
the Japanese Community.
36
After examining the situation, Bishop Cantwell could not find any Episcopal approval for
those Japanese women. While paying full respect to Breton and those Japanese sisters in
their mission for more than six years in Los Angeles, Bishop Cantwell urged Maryknoll to
absorb them.
My desire when your Sisters came to Los Angeles was that they should take full care of
the spiritual direction of the Japanese Sisters, and that every assistance should be given
to the Maryknoll Community to absorb into the larger community, these devoted
women, who to my mind have no canonical status.
I have spoken to Father Breton about the necessity of amalgamating under your
direction, the Japanese Sisters with the Maryknoll Community. From what I have
learned, the most of the Japanese Sisters would be very glad to place themselves
under the kindly direction of the Maryknoll Community. 37
While tertiaries were discussed as one of the options for the Japanese sisters to take
between Bishop Cantwell and Walsh, Mother Mary Joseph rejected the opinion as she
required full Maryknoll sisterhood for them. They agreed that the Japanese women who
36
Letter from Walsh to Bishop Cantwell, 5 April 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3,
MMA.
37
Letter from Bishop Cantwell to Mother Mary Joseph, 7 April 1921; Letter from Bishop
Cantwell to Walsh, 12 April 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
74
agreed to this offer would amalgamate with the Maryknoll sisters and the rest would have
to return to Japan. Cantwell maintained “[t]he Japanese converts must conform to
American ways in religious matters.” The Japanese women were to be interviewed for this
decision in May, before the school closed for the summer of 1921.38
Walsh intended to send an experienced priest to direct the mission on the entire West
Coast after August 1—an experienced priest who would represent both “authority” and
“responsibility.”39 However, the necessity of the replacement of the director of the
Maryknoll Mission in Los Angeles arose unexpectedly with the arrival of a short telegram
to Ossining from Staub. “My resignation effective immediately.”40 With both fatherly
words over the young priest and wisdom to keep the information of the mission for his
successor, Walsh attempted to prevent Staub from making too impulsive a decision.
Breton confided to Mother Mary Joseph that Staub left the order for a more personal
reason than his conflict with the society. This problem was later confirmed by a friend of
Maryknoll in Los Angeles. Staub left not only the society, but also the priesthood. Breton
feared the vocation of Staub. He also knew with sorrow that Walsh thought erroneously
that he must have misdirected Staub.41
William S. Kress arrived in Los Angeles in May 1921. He was born in 1861 in East
Liverpool, Ohio. Ordained in 1888, he formed the Cleveland Apostolate with two other
members. This group was organized with diocesan priests and preached to both Catholics
38
Letter from Cantwell to Walsh, 27 April 1921; Mother Mary Joseph to Walsh, 12 May
1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
39
Letter from Walsh to Staub, 4 April 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
40
Telegram from Staub to Walsh, 27 April 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
41
Letter from Mother Mary Joseph to Walsh, 12 May 1921. Maryknoll Sisters Archives
Collection, MMA.
75
and non-Catholics throughout the United States. When this group was discontinued in
1920, he resigned his position as a pastor of St. Edward’s Parish in Cleveland and joined
Maryknoll. At age sixty, it was no longer easy for Kress to learn a new language and to
prepare for foreign mission. The superior general assigned him for the mission on the
West Coast. Walsh believed the position in Los Angeles required a priest ripened with
experiences, just like Kress.42
One of the first assignments of Kress was to witness the interview of the Japanese
sisters by Walsh. With assistance in translation by Breton, the two Maryknollers were
informed about what the Japanese sisters thought of the mission and Maryknoll after
working together for fourteen months. Nine out of ten women refused to remain with the
Maryknoll sisters. Some were excused for health reasons and others were excused for
language issues with regards to teaching at the school. However, most strikingly, a
Japanese sister refused amalgamating with the Maryknoll sisters because Americans and
Japanese were too different to work together both in thoughts and acts.43 It was the very
first time that Maryknoll was questioned about work with and for foreign born people.
They could not understand what the rejection of those Japanese sisters meant at that time
though. Although it was a bitter lesson for Maryknoll in their international expansion for
the society in the future, the impression of Kress about the original members of the
missionaries from Japan became noticeably negative. The only Japanese sister who
desired to remain with Maryknoll was Sister Marianna. This Japanese group did not pay
her expenses to Maryknoll which Kress referred to as a “dowry.” This problem placed the
42
43
Necrology of Father William S. Kress. MMA.
Letter from Mother Mary Joseph to Walsh, 12 May 1921.
76
relations between the two groups into further conflict in a series of discussions about
reimbursement for the Maryknoll property which the Japanese sisters had originally bought.
At the commencement in the middle of June 1921 held in the rear of the home,
departing Breton gave an address in Japanese while Kress did so in English. Breton
explained the reason why the original group of missionaries would leave. He interpreted it
as a situation in which women religious were needed in Tokyo for establishing a new large
center and many of the members abroad had been called. Japanese attendants showed their
friendship both to Breton and the Maryknollers, and it relieved Kress. 44
Regarding the plan after the commencement of the school, Kress had written to the
superior that Breton would leave in two weeks—it would be on June 20, 1921. After
hearing some confessions of the Japanese in Santa Barbara, Breton was going to San
Francisco to meet Bishop Cantwell and Archbishop Hanna before his departure. Kress
thought “[i]t [was] just as well to be rid of one who [would] not work with [them].” 45
Nevertheless, Kress still tried to maintain “pleasant enough” relations with Breton. At this
time, however, Kress preferred to have any other priest intercede between himself and the
Japanese people as well as for his absence from Los Angeles.46 The appearance of Breton
was already distasteful enough to Kress. He was even frustrated with the fact there were
two Japanese sisters who would remain to assist the mission both in Los Angeles and San
Francisco until September in order to complete the transfer. Kress doubted the reason of
44
Letter from Kress to Walsh, 17 June 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 11, Folder 2. Dev.
Houses—Los Angeles: Japanese Mission: Reports and Correspondence, MMA.
45
Letter from Kress to Walsh, n.d. but possibly 3 June 1921; Telegram from Kress to Walsh,
6 June 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 11, Folder 2. Dev. Houses—Los Angeles: Japanese
Mission: Reports and Correspondence, MMA.
46
Ibid.
77
the postponement of Breton’s departure. Breton did not seem satisfied with the mission
work led by Kress. The issue of reimbursement may have been only an excuse for this
postponement about which Kress thought Breton did not pay much attention.47
This intuition by Kress that the reason for Breton’s remaining on the Pacific Coast
may have been other than fiscal issues was probably correct, although Breton surely
needed some secure finances for establishing a community for those Japanese sisters when
they returned to Japan. The initial payment of $3,000 for the property which Japanese
Sisters had used for the mission was advanced by Maryknoll in 1920. However, the
amount of $2,000 which was suggested by Bishop Cantwell to Maryknoll to be paid to the
Japanese sisters was denied. Although Maryknoll said that they would pay this amount
during 1921, later revised to by January 1, 1922, Kress refused to pay it due to the
insufficiency of the funds of the Society. Moreover, Walsh and Kress complained that
those original missionaries overestimated the cost of furniture which was to be transferred
to the Maryknoll sisters. Throughout the year 1921, the criticism of Walsh about Breton
was represented by the words to Mother Mary Joseph:
One strong point which I emphasized was that I thought that they were too much
engrossed in the idea of gaining a large amount of money for the work and that the
spirit has failed in consequence.48
While Bishop Cantwell later explained that Breton “justly forfeited” the amount of
$2,000 as Breton’s appeal to the Japanese in Los Angeles made an unsettled financial
47
Letter from Kress to Walsh, 10 June 1921; Letter from Kress to Walsh, 17 June 1921.
MFBA, B-17: Box 11, Folder 2 Dev. Houses—Los Angeles: Japanese Mission: Reports and
Correspondence, MMA.
48
Letter from Walsh to Mother Mary Joseph, 14 April 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3,
MMA.
78
situation in their mission field, this Bishop’s reasoning seemed neither to be recognized by
Breton, nor other Japanese who were involved in this issue.49 The reactions among the
Japanese against Maryknoll became bitter.50 The Maryknoll sisters noticed that some of
the Japanese, though quietly, were going to keep their children from Mass and school. It
was presumed to be a protest against the situation about the time of the departure of Breton
and the Japanese sisters.51 A more powerful objection arrived across the Pacific in the
summer of 1921.52 One of the most prominent Catholic lay persons in Japan, then Captain
Shinjiro Yamamoto, or Stephen, of the Japanese Imperial Navy, wrote Walsh. They had
known each other in person through the Maryknoll mission on the West Coast and in Asia.
Yamamoto was in profound anxiety that this dispute might cause many different
kinds of prejudice both in the United States and Japan, among both Japanese Catholics and
non-Catholics. First of all, Yamamoto warned the superior general that Maryknoll
missionaries would face “unpleasant difficulties” if they had not solved the problem before
their arrival in Japan. Yamamoto was one of the first men “to propose the Propaganda
Fide to send American Catholic missionaries to Japan, in order to increase the inadequate
number of missionaries working here, and also to better the rather strained situation
between America and Japan.” 53 Yamamoto had some “bad impression” concerning
49
Letter from Breton to Walsh, 2 March 1924; Stephen Shinjiro Yamamoto to Walsh, 10
July 1922. MFBA, B-17: Box 11, Folder 2, MMA.
50
Letter from Bishop Cantwell to Giardini, 4 June 1926. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 2,
MMA.
51
Letter from Swift to Walsh, 24 July 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
52
Letter from Yamamoto to Walsh, 10 July 1922. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 2, MMA.
53
Letter from Yamamoto to Walsh, 12 November 1922. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3,
MMA.
54
Maryknoll being “dishonest” and “heartless” which should be cleared up.
79
Second,
Yamamoto explained that those difficulties had already been anticipated in Japan because
of the attempt at revolution in Korea on March 1, 1919. This incident was perceived in
Japan to have been led by American Protestant missionaries. Thus, not only the Japanese
people but also the government was extremely nervous about anti-Japanese Christian
missionaries. Yamamoto pointed out that the Japanese public did not distinguish Catholics
from Protestants. They were “all looked on under the general denomination of Christians.”
Finally, Yamamoto implied to Walsh that he suspected the unfairness to the Japanese
sisters had been a result of ethnic discrimination against the Japanese among Maryknoll
missionaries.
Up till now our Catholic missionaries have behaved quite fairly towards us, the French,
as well as the Germans, Spaniards, Canadians, Americans-your own fellow countrymen,
etc. Of late our Government having deeply appreciated this point, showed itself more
favorable. Towards us than towards the Protestants. How regrettable it would be, if you
were to sow new seeds of prejudice against the Catholic Church, and consequently
hinder its development here.
I am sure that before long I may receive from you a direct answer which will, I hope,
clear up all bad impression concerning yourself and your respectable congregation. But
if I fail to get the necessary explanation, my conscience will oblige me to send all
documents to the Holy See, and to ask the Japanese Government to take necessary
measures to prevent the coming to Japan of the missionaries of a congregation which,
in its own country acts so unfairly towards Japanese subjects.
How regrettable it would be, if you were to sow new seeds of prejudice against the
Catholic Church, and consequently hinder its development here.55
Walsh probably did not understand what Yamamoto meant. Neither did Father Kress.
Nor did even Bishop Berlioz who expressed an apology to Father Walsh on the issue
54
Memorandum and Summary of the problem by Walsh. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3,
MMA.
55
Yamamoto to Walsh, 12 November 1922.
56
caused by Breton.
80
The most worrying for Yamamoto was that his fellow American
Catholic missionaries were believed by the governmental authorities in Japan to stand for
legalized discrimination against the Japanese on the West Cost. Yamamoto was not only a
Naval Officer but often represented the government as a diplomat. His proficiency in the
French language which he gained through his education at the Morning Star School by
Marianist Fathers in Tokyo resulted in his position as an interpreter for Crown Prince
Hirohito in his tour to Europe. After this trip, Emperor Taisho appointed Yamamoto as a
personal tutor for his son. Stephen Yamamoto often played significant roles as a diplomat
thereafter. He shared anxiety and resentment about a series of new laws against Japanese
immigrants in the United States. The School Board of San Francisco tried to segregate
Japanese children in the public schools in 1906; the Alien Land Law of California in 1913
prohibited Japanese purchase of land in the state; and the Johnson Reed Act was to be
signed only a couple of years later. The Japanese Government strenuously worked on
opposing this legalized discrimination against the Japanese in the United States.
Walsh did not understand because it was unimaginable that his missionaries were at
fault in this respect. They were all enthusiastic about serving people who needed
assistance. They were all caring for the people whom they served. Walsh was proud of his
sons and daughters. What was wrong?
Walsh never paid attention to a certain issue which Breton had taken up in the letter
of April 1920:
56
Letter from Bishop Berlioz to Walsh, 10 April 1922. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3,
MMA.
81
Father Staub will do very well in the propaganda work for The Field Afar. He will
make a hit in that line. As a missionary, of course, he still has to acquire experience.
We get along very well and are like pals together, but I cannot help worrying about his
strong inclination to boss everything alone. It would be all right if he had the
experience of the work he is in charge of. But he has no experience whatsoever on the
matter, and starting from the fact that we are in America, he seems to see and judge
everything with American ideas exclusively. It would be a big mistake to think that
Japanese pagans can be handed like American Catholics. They are to be won over
through kindness, patience and politeness – never through bossing, bullying or posing
too much as money maker.
When you have a chance, please insist on the above point, for Father’s own sake and
for the sake of your future work in Japan – expose these ideas not as coming from me,
but as a result of what you have seen in Japan yourself. It was my intention to
initiate him gradually into the secrets of the Japanese mentality, but I am afraid that
my cooperation is not so welcome as I had anticipated.57 (my underlining)
Walsh believed the problem came from the personality of the young priest and never
answered about “the Japanese mentality.”58 Walsh paid no attention to different
approaches to Catholicism between Americans and Japanese although he may have thought
that the Japanese would need more guidance than their American counterparts. However,
Breton recognized the difference. So did Sister Angela, 38 years old, the second oldest
among the Japanese sisters. At the interview in response to whether she favored joining
the Maryknoll sisters, Sister Angela replied that “Japanese could not live with Americans,
owing to a different mentality.”59 It may be premature to call it ethnic Japanese
Catholicism. Catholicism in Japan was still too young to have ethnic characteristics after
Japanese Law finally ended the prohibition of Christianity in 1876. Nevertheless, French
missionaries who had been stationed in Japan recognized that uniqueness through their
experiences. Breton was one of them. More than anything, the Japanese sisters invited
57
Letter from Breton to Walsh, 22 April 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
Letter from Walsh to Breton, 28 April 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
59
“Examination of the Japanese Sisters.” MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
58
82
from Nagasaki had been proud of their own brilliant Catholic history of martyrdom since
1596.
Consciously or unconsciously, the original group of missionaries and the Japanese
congregation as well as Yamamoto expected that their own Catholicism should be
respected in the United States. On the other hand, it was the purpose of American
missionaries to propagate the faith as the Church in the United States which the founders of
Maryknoll believed to “grow to full stature when it sent their own son and daughters to
people in lands where Jesus and His message were unknown.”60 Bishop Cantwell insists:
If the Japanese ladies do not come under the jurisdiction of the Maryknoll Sisterhood,
those who refuse to do so should be returned to Japan. There is no question as to the
great asset which the Japanese Sisterhood has been to the work among the Japanese.
In answer to your query “could the Japanese Sisters manage their temporal affairs,” I
am confident they could not do so in this country along Catholic lines. Secondly, they
could not recruit themselves. Thirdly, the Japanese left to themselves would put
Japanese trimmings on our American Catholicity. This we cannot permit. The
Japanese converts must conform to American ways in religious matters.61 (my
underlining)
Father Walsh concurred with Bishop Cantwell:
I referred to Bishop Cantwell’s letter addressed to the Sisters and read it to Fr. Moore
together with our answer. I told him the result of our inquiry and emphasized the need
of Americanizing these young Sisters if they are to remain in this country. I spoke on
our desire to promote a Catholic spirit, and alluded to the surprise expressed by several
Californians at the idea of our Sisters taking in Japanese women on the same level. I
looked upon this act as an object lesson in Catholicity. I told Fr. Moore that Bishop
Cantwell desires to be just and kind, but that they should remember, as he expressed it,
that they are leaving the work for which they came to America. That the Sisters should
60
“Maryknoll and its Founders.” Pamphlet: Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. The Catholic
Foreign Mission Society of America, 2008.
61
Letter from Bishop Cantwell to Walsh, 27 April 1927. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3,
MMA.
83
keep the good of the work in mind; that they came here for souls and not for
themselves.62 (my underlining)
Father Kress and Maryknoll missionaries were innocent. They even tried to have the
Japanese sisters in their society with the status of “on the same level”—equal to the
American Sisters. Catholicism is universalism. In the light of their devotion to this
mission, they did not deserve to be accused. They simply did not understand why Breton
stayed longer on the West Coast even after the transfer of the Mission and he continued to
grate on their nerves. They did not recognize that they had started their mission to the
Japanese in the United States based on the idea of home mission. “Personally, I have lost
all confidence in him, for many reasons.” Walsh lamented to Bishop Cantwell.63
Breton once again took up the issue of the Japanese mentality and a different
approach to be taken for the Japanese Catholic mission before their clash.
The Maryknoll Sisters keeping on complaining that the office work, bookkeeping, etc.
was taking too much of their time, I asked Fr. Staub to take full charge of it, which he
did, beginning July 10. – If this was a bad move, instruct me what to do, and I will act
accordingly. From the day a clear understanding of our respective duties was reached,
Fr. Staub and I have been working heart and soul together, without the least difficulty
occurring between us.
I do not want to draw any unfair parallel but since the two Societies have been working
together, I could not help noticing how, though the Japanese sisters may not be the
refined ladies that our American ideal would like them to be, nevertheless they serve
God “in simplicitate cordis,” and that is the only thing that counts in the sight of God,
the only thing that brings His blessings upon any work, the only thing that has made
this work successful.64 (my underlining)
62
Walsh to Moore, May 1921. “A resume of instructions given at Los Angeles soon after the
interview with the Japanese ‘Sisters.’” MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
63
Letter from Walsh to Cantwell, 13 November 1922. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3,
MMA.
64
Letter from Breton to Walsh, 13 July 1920. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
84
Breton was innocent. He was anxious about being away from his Japanese brethren.
He simply could not leave them in the hands of American missionaries who did not
understand what Breton explained—the Japanese mentality, a key for their future
conversion. It was also a key to the foreign mission. Only three months after his official
departure from the Los Angeles Mission, Breton came back to the West Coast in
September 1921 and stayed there until January 1922. Breton kept up communication with
the Japanese in Los Angeles and asked for fundraising for the Japanese sisters. Since the
mission school was dedicated in the winter of 1921, Kress complained that some donations
expected from Japanese parents went to Breton instead of the Maryknoll mission. As his
presence in Los Angeles was not officially related to Maryknoll and Kress did not know
the schedule of Breton, Maryknoll failed to invite Breton to the school dedication. If Kress
had known about Breton’s presence in Los Angeles, he wrote the superior general that he
would have asked Breton to give an address in Japanese. A speech in Japanese was what
Kress would never be able to accomplish. Incomprehensibility was not only on the issue
of the language, but also regarding the Japanese culture in its Catholicism.
Bishop Berlioz was innocent. He knew the strategy of the mission about which
Breton tried to inform the Maryknoll missionaries. The Paris Foreign Mission Society had
had a rich history and experience with foreign missions. Bishop Berlioz shared the idea
with Breton and pursued their idealism in the mission. However, he did not know that
Maryknollers were more inclined to “home missions” than “foreign missions.” American
missionaries did not share the idea which Bishop Berlioz and his colleagues nurtured in
Japan when their “foreign mission” just began “at their home.”
85
Maryknoll sisters were experiencing deep anxiety about what they would have to
overcome through their newly assigned mission:
The departure of Fr. B. and the Sisters has caused more ill feeling than we ourselves
know. The prejudice among American Catholics in Los Angeles against the Japanese
people, I believe is not half so strong as it is against us. “We” are “to blame” for
sending out “these poor little Sisters” and Fr. B.
I can tell a vast difference between this past year and the preceding one, and deeply
regret, for the sake of our Maryknoll, and perhaps of our future in Japan, that we should
be so disliked.
In my estimation it is not so serious that we should be unpopular among the natives,
(our own Americans), but that we are not making ourselves more popular among the
people whom we came to help is a source of real worry to me, and this feeling is shared
by the Sisters. 65
Because of this recognition, though it was a bitter experience to them, the Maryknoll
sisters later acquired and accepted the nature of “the foreign mission at home” more
smoothly than the priests. Concerning the priests, the return of the Maryknoll priests who
had experienced a “foreign mission” on foreign soil needed to be heard from. An
American-born priest who acquired the language and knowledge about the people would
come back in the middle of the 1930s, a decade after Maryknoll sisters began the
cultivation of the American mission to Japanese in the United States.
Although the transition of the San Francisco Mission from the Jesuits to some other
order had been considered as early as in the late 1910s, the thought gradually became
realistic after the Mission lost Father Egloffstein, S.J. Since December 1919, the health of
Julius Egloffstein had declined and never improved. While this 72-year-old priest became
weaker each day, Pius Moore was called back from St. Ignatius College where he was the
65
Letter from Sr. Magdalen to Walsh, 14 May 1922. MFBA, B-17: Box 15, Folder 3, MMA.
86
rector. Both tasks at St. Ignatius College and St. Francis Xavier Japanese Mission
burdened him. He returned to St. Francis Xavier Church every Sunday for Mass having
the assistance of Father Leo Simpson. Moore was the only priest who spoke Japanese
then.66
On Easter Sunday of 1920, seven baptisms encouraged the Jesuit missionaries.
Egloffstein humbly asked for Extreme Unction on the feast of St. Joseph. After receiving
it, he agreed to go to St. Mary’s Hospital where he was expected to have the best medical
treatment. The condition of Egloffstein improved to some extent. On April 17, “the
solemnity of the Patronage of St. Joseph,” the Mission building was rededicated. For the
dedication of this building which had been recently painted and renewed, a large number of
Japanese and non-Japanese, Catholics and non-Catholics attended. They took part in the
procession. This remodeling of the building was completed at the expense of the
Archbishop.67
The week that opened with such joy ended with “the greatest sorrow.” On
Wednesday, April 20, Egloffstein died. The funeral took place in the Church of St.
Ignatius instead of the mission chapel because there were so many people who wished to
attend the Mass. “All of the faithful, as well as the school children and a large number of
pagans” joined to send the dearest father to the Lord’s hands.68 At that time, the mission
had lost a considerable amount of stability although the missionaries’ enthusiasm was
66
“Annual Letter of the Mission of St. Francis Xavier for the Japanese (San Francisco,
California) from 1 July 1920 to 1 July 1921. S.F. Folio 12, pp.15-16. Provincial Archives of
the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
67
Ibid.
68
Ibid.
87
never extinguished just as the zeal of Egloffstein who desired to stay at the Japanese
mission until almost the last day never diminished.
Augustine A. Dinand, S.J., took over the pastoral work at the San Francisco Mission
in June 1920. Although he was almost fifty years old when he was assigned, Dinand
diligently studied Japanese and tried to have full understanding of the mission and the
people.69 In cooperation with Moore, Dinand tried to maintain and even expand the
mission. Brother Masui continued to catechize the Japanese. Within a year, Dinand was
able to read a Japanese sermon. Moore kept the first Sunday of the month to be preach and
to hear confessions at St. Francis Xavier Mission by his “apostolic zeal.”70
The number of baptized Japanese who belonged to the mission in the year 1921-1922
was approximately 110. It slightly increased to about 125 in the year 1922-1923. Regular
Mass attendants were approximately 30 adults and 30 children. This number also rose a
little in a year. The Sunday catechism class had almost 50 people who were taught by the
Sisters and several adults prepared for Baptism. There were 11 people who received First
Communion and 7 received the sacrament of Confirmation in the year 1921-1922. The
following year had 15 adult Baptisms, 4 infant Baptisms and 3 Confirmations. The
attendees in the kindergarten next to the Mission increased from 70 to 90. They were three
to six years old. Approximately 40 children from 7 to 12 years old came to the Mission to
study Japanese after attending the public school everyday. Those children were under the
69
Moore, S.J., “Annual Letter 1920-1921.”
Augustine A. Dinand, S.J., “Annual Letter of the Residence of St. Francis Xavier for the
Japanese 1921-1922,” S.F. Folder 12, pp. 17-18. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus,
Los Gatos, CA.
70
88
guidance of the Sisters Helpers of the Holy Souls. The teachers consisted of three
Japanese sisters, an American sister, and three lay people.71
The debt of the mission decreased from $12,000 to $9,000 in the year 1921-1922 and
the archbishop gave $85 for the maintenance of Dinand and Masui. Brother Masui often
visited the Japanese in the hospital. Dinand, along with the brother, occasionally visited the
prison at San Quentin to catechize and baptize a Japanese convict (Augustinus Furui) who
was convicted of a double homicide and hanged.
He accepted the punishment his crime with a great spirit of repentance, indeed even
willingly. On the day of the execution of the death sentence, from when he received
Holy Communion until the moment of his death, he continually prayed to God and
pressed an image of Jesus Crucified to his chest, and awaited death with a quiet
disposition. Fr. Dinand gave him the name of Augustinus [same as Father Dinand
himself.]
On Christmas Eve of 1922, the Mission had Archbishop Hanna and Shichitaro Yada,
the Japanese Consul General to San Francisco among the audience. The Japanese children
put on a play in the parish hall of St. Dominic’s, the nearby parish to St. Francis Xavier.
The audience received a variety of books on Catholic doctrine.72
The Mission added a new section to the kindergarten where the pupils were taught
lessons which corresponded to the first grade of the public school in January 1923.
Approximately 16 students regularly attended this school for a two-hour session every day.
The Mission took this opportunity to teach the children both English and Catechism.
While observing successful conversions in substantial numbers after the Father of the
71
Ibid.; Augustine A. Dinand, S.J. “Annual Letter of the Residence of the Mission of St.
Francis Xavier (San Francisco, California) 1922-1923,” S.F. Folder 12, pp.21-22. Provincial
Archives of the Society of Jesus.
72
“Annual Letter (San Francisco)” 1921-1922; 1922-1923; 1923-1924.
89
Congregation of St. Paul opened a Catholic school for the Chinese in San Francisco, the
Jesuit missionaries were hoping to open a grade school for Japanese children.73
During the month of September 1923, the Japanese in San Francisco were
profoundly afflicted by the great earthquake in Japan. Many friends of the mission grieved
at the letters and telegrams which informed them of the death of their relatives. Since
people in Japan were in need and poverty due to the fires caused by the earthquake, Dinand
placed several appeals in local newspapers in order to ask for aid for those people in Japan.
He sent over $600 as well as ten cases of clothing for those people in Japan.74
Despite those efforts and considerable success by Dinand in cooperation with Moore
and Masui after the death of Egloffstein, their mission in San Francisco could not avoid the
difficulties of the transition. Unlike Egloffstein, Moore and Dinand, their successors were
not very careful to protect the mission and caused the transfer of the mission to another
religious order. John D. Nestor, S.J., a native of Galway, Ireland worked for the Mission
only between May and October of 1924. His successor, Theodor Pockstaller, S.J., born in
Vorarlberg, Germany also had a short term between October 1924 and January 1925.
Especially because of Pockstaller’s declining health, there was instability in the mission.
Although having adequate knowledge of the Japanese people and language, his condition
which had forced him to return from Japan never improved while he was in the position in
San Francisco. Finally, he was transferred to St. Mary’s Hospital and left the mission.75
73
“History of the House of the Residence and Mission of St. Francis Xavier 1922-1923,” S.F.
Folder 12, p.23. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus.
74
“Annual Letter (San Francisco)” 1923-1924.
75
“History of the House of the Japanese Mission in San Francisco, California 1924-1925,”
S.F. Folder 12, pp.26-27. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
90
The last Jesuit to minister at the mission in San Francisco took over Pockstaller’s
position. Father Peter Hipp, S.J., was already seventy when he arrived in San Francisco.
Born in Gensingen (Rhein-Essen) Germany in 1854, an experienced military chaplain, he
was ignorant of Japanese language and culture. Since the 1880s, his destinations for
foreign missions had been India and the Philippines. Within a short time, Hipp studied
Japanese so intensively that he heard the confession of Japanese women. For Moore who
struggled to maintain this San Francisco mission while serving at St. Ignatius College as
the rector, Hipp was the least desired successor. Inadequate communication between those
two priests caused problems and misunderstandings in the mission. In this friction,
Brother Masui, two Japanese Sisters of the Visitation as well as the Sister Helpers of Holy
Souls dedicated themselves totally to the people in this mission.76
Even in this last year of the San Francisco mission for the Jesuits under this difficulty,
they still achieved some good fruits of their work. Fourteen adults and nine infants
received Baptism. On the first Sunday after Easter, nine boys and girls received First
Communion. Six received the sacrament of Confirmation. The attendants of the
kindergarten counted ninety-one including many non-Catholics. Among the Catholic
children of the Mission, forty-one attended public grammar schools and six attended public
high schools. There were three intelligent girls whose parents were still non-Catholics.
76
Ibid.; “Excerpt from the history of the College of St. Ignatius, 1925-1926,” S.F. Folder 30,
pp. 175-176. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
91
The missionaries shared great hope. After the hours of the public schools, approximately
ninety children came to the mission to study Japanese language.77
The boys came to the mission each Saturday to study Catholic doctrine from Masui
while the girls came on Sunday for catechism and a brief talk with the sisters. The mission
took care of fifty-four families—twenty Catholic families and the rest of “mixed
marriages.” The Jesuit’s last annual letter of 1924 to 1925 concluded:
Everyone attended the Spiritual Exercises in May and the Lenten devotions with
notable fervor. These included not only boys and girls, but also their parents, among
whom were a good number of pagans.78
They still hoped that the mission would be able to grow through those children who
received baptism first in their families.
The friction between Hipp and Moore finally led the former to submit a financial
report on questionable activities to the provincial. Moore’s generous lending was reported
as unspecified expenditures which were not possible to trace in the accounts. Moore’s
vindication did not change the outcome. 79 As a matter of fact, the Society had already
decided to transfer leadership of the mission. The only issue remaining was the question of
to whom it should be given. In the beginning of May 1925, their provincial indicated to
the superior general that they would transfer it to Maryknoll:
77
“Annual Letter of the Japanese Mission in San Francisco, California, from July 1, 1924, to
July 1, 1925,” S.F. Folder 12, p.29. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos,
CA.
78
Ibid.
79
Letter of Peter Hipp, S.J. to Fr. Provincial Joseph M. Piet, S.J., 18 June 1925, S.F. Folder 1,
pp.14-16. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus; Letter of Pius Moore, S.J. to Fr.
Provincial Joseph Piet, S.J., St. Ignatius College, San Francisco, 18 June 1925, S.F. Folder 1,
p.17. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
92
Propter difficultatem inveniendi aptos Patres qui Missionem Iaponicam in urbe San
Francisco current, proponitur ut tradatur Societati Americanae Missionum Exterarum
apud Maryknoll, quae dicitur prompta adeam accipiendam.
(Because of the difficulty in finding Fathers fit to care for the Japanese Mission in
the city of San Francisco, it is proposed that the Mission be handed over to the
American Society of the Foreign Missions at Maryknoll. These have stated that they
are ready to accept the Mission.)80
As Breton had pointed, both Maryknoll and the “Techny Fathers” had been interested
in taking this Mission. However, the final decision went to the Society of the Divine Word.
Cum Nostri non potuerint Missionem Iaponicam in urbe San Francisco rite
administrare, gaudeo eam traditam esse Societati missionariae tam florenti et vigore
plenae, ac propter suam strictam disciplinam valde comendabili. Ex altera vero parte
dleo necessarium fuisse opus tam pulchrum et vere apostolicum relinquere.
(Since we [the Jesuits] cannot properly administer the Japanese Mission in the city of
San Francisco, I am glad that it has been handed over to a missionary society that is
so flourishing and full of vigor, and most commendable because of its strict
discipline. On the other hand, I am sad that it was necessary to give up a work that
was so beautiful and truly apostolic.)81
Joseph Riordan, S.J., was sent to San Francisco on October 5, 1925 not as a
missionary but as an administrator to look after the mission and to oversee the transfer to
the Society of the Divine Word, which took place on November 15, 1925. Only a few days
before Father Riordan arrived, Hipp had died from a severe heart disease. It was October 2.
After all the Jesuits left, Brother Francis Xavier Eizo Masui remained in the mission for a
thorough and easier transition to the next hand. The last report of the mission, under the
title of “the History of the College of St. Ignatius” is supposed to have been written by
Moore.
80
Letter from Fr. Provincial Joseph Piet to Fr. General Wlodimir Ledochowski, 1 May 1925,
Rome 1925, 17b. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesus, Los Gatos, CA.
81
Letter from Fr. Provincial Joseph Piet to Fr. General Wlodomir Ledochowski, 30
December 1925. Provincial Archives of the Society of Jesuit, Los Gatos, CA.
93
The day before [November 14, 1925], Fr. Stoeke of the Society of the Divine Word
had arrived. 11 years as a Missionary in Japan had prepared him for this work. It
was a Sunday. The Father preached in Japanese, then the Mission was handed over
to him. After the Mass the congregation greeted him. Their representatives said
much in praise of our Fathers who had worked for them at the Mission. At the same
time they promised their fidelity and help. The next day Fr. Riordan returned home.
With the permission of Superiors, Br. Masui, who knew the situation very well,
remained at the Mission, so that the new Missionary could thoroughly investigate the
state of things. Brother was recalled to the College on December 28, and on the
following January 1 went to the city of Seattle.82
The mission was thus transferred to the Society of the Divine Word completely with the
departure of Masui.
Since the preparation for another transfer of the Mission in Los Angeles, Father
Kress repeatedly requested the superior to have native Japanese priests in their mission.
He also sent a request letter to Bishop Jean-Claude Combaz of Nagasaki for a Japanese
priest who spoke some English to be sent to the United States to replace Father Breton. He
offered a stipend of $500 a year and expenses for travel between the United States and
Japan.83
Father Kress may not have known that there was another group of people who had
shared the same problem. It was in 1921 when Apostolic Nuncio to Brazil Archbishop
Enrico Gasparni discussed with the Japanese Embassy in Rio de Janeiro the issues of
Japanese immigrants to Brazil. For the Japanese immigrants to Brazil, Catholicization was
a quite reasonable method to assimilate to the new environment. They were willing to
82
“Excerpt from the history of the College of St. Ignatius, 1925-1926”
Letter from Kress to Bishop Combaz, 10 June 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 11, Folder 1. Dev.
Houses—Los Angeles: Japanese Mission: Reports and Correspondence, MMA; Letter from
Kress to Walsh, 10 June 1921. MFBA, B-17: Box 11, Folder 2. Dev. Houses—Los Angeles:
Japanese Mission: Reports and Correspondence, MMA.
83
94
unify with Brazilians who had welcomed them through acceptance of Catholicism which
their Brazilian friends embraced. Also, those immigrants to Brazil included 170 Japanese
Catholic families (eight hundred people) who were offspring of kakure-kirishitan, the
hidden Christians, descendants of the martyrs under the persecution of Christianity in
medieval Japan. Their forefathers survived through centuries as Christians while having
no priests or hierarchical leaders. They were the people who had lived in Nagasaki before
their departure to Brazil. However in Brazil, “the promised land” for them, they were to be
lost lambs again with no priest to minister to them in their language. Since the first wave
of immigrants arrived in Brazil in 1908, the priests in the parishes of São Paulo had
recognized that there had been certain numbers of Japanese people who came to the church
every Sunday. Some came walking all the way more than a dozen miles from their homes.
Although those Japanese were a good model of the faithful, it was quite difficult for the
priests to communicate with them since they did not speak Portuguese.84
When one of the leaders of the first Japanese immigrants, Ryoichi Yasuda and his
colleagues came to a church in Pindamonhangaba to ask for preparation for baptism, the
problem was same for the priest who was chosen to take care of them. Lourenço Hubbauer,
C.S.S.R., a 47-year-old German Redemptorist to Aparecida, a sacred center for the worship
of the Virgin Mary in Brazil, faced extreme difficulty in saying the words of the Lord
which would never reach the Japanese brethren through the language he was able to
command. He asked for catechism books written in Japanese through the Propaganda Fide.
84
Pedro Onishi, (tr.) Hajime Mizuno, supervised by Nippaku Shiboku Kyokai [Pastoral Nipo
Brasileira], Domingos Nakamura Chohachi Shimpu: Brajiru nihon imin no shito [Father
Domingos Chohachi Nakamura: an apostle for Japanese immigrants in Brazil] (Nagasaki:
Seibo no Kishi sha, 2007), 25-28.
95
The Morning Star School (Gyosei Gakuen) in Tokyo under the guidance of Marianist
fathers and brothers sent him Japanese books in religious education. The Catholic Young
Men’s Association, which was then under the leadership of future Rear Admiral of the
Imperial Japanese Navy Shinjiro Yamamoto, sent forty books for adults and children’s
books for Catholic education. The Franciscan Mission Center in Sapporo (in Hokkaido,
the Northern Island of Japan) sent their periodicals and several books. Father Hubbauer
himself tried to collect Japanese books to teach catechism to those Japanese in Brazil. The
church in Japan was completely in accord with the mission project of the Propaganda Fide
and supportive of the mission in Brazil.85
Those efforts resulted in thirty-two baptisms of Japanese in July 1921 after a twoyear period of preparation for the sacrament. When Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop
Gasparni asked Father Hubbauer about improvement in the situation of the Japanese
mission, Father Hubbaur was convinced through his two-year experience that the mission
needed Japanese-speaking priests. Receiving this response from Father Hubbauer, the
apostolic nuncio began the discussion with Kumaichi Horiguchi, ambassador from Japan.
Horiguchi and his Belgian wife were Catholic. They concluded that they should have two
Japanese priests dispatched from Japan financially supported by the Japanese government.
This request was sent to the Ministry of Education through the formal channel of the
85
Ibid., 28-32.
Tadashi Yamamoto, Chichi—yamamoto shinjiro den [A biography of my father: Shinjiro
Yamamoto] (Tokyo: Chuo shuppan sha, 1993), 150-156. The Association was founded by
his younger brother, Saburo Yamamoto in 1916 (Taisho 5) with other Morning Star School
students.
96
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan. The Ministry of Education contacted the
Archdiocese of Tokyo for fulfilling this request.86
Nevertheless, the request was not granted. Archbishop Jean-Pierre Rey of Tokyo
regretfully responded that the number of the priests was not sufficient for the church in
Japan to send two to Brazil. The words of Archbishop Rey were true. The data of 1921
shows that there were thirty-seven priests who had Japanese nationality while seventy-nine
had foreign nationalities. Father Kress in the United States did not know this either. 87
In the case of the mission in Brazil, they did not reconcile themselves to this
difficulty. Bishop Giardini, apostolic delegate to Tokyo in 1922 asked Bishop Jean-Claude
Combaz of Nagasaki to send at least one priest to Brazil. Nagasaki had the largest number
of priests in Japan at the time, and it also had a seminary which had opened in 1875.
Although Bishop Combaz transmitted the apostolic delegate’s request to the parish priests,
there had been no answer sent to him until an old parishioner of Urakami and Okuura in
Amami Island did. Father Chohachi Nakamura was too modest to respond the bishop
immediately. Also, he thought of himself—at age fifty-eight—as too old for the mission.
Born as an offspring of kakure, he was baptized and named Dominic by a French
missionary in Nagasaki and survived through the most difficult persecution against
Christianity in nienteenth century Japan. He wrote to Bishop Combaz after he saw there
had been no priest who had volunteered for this mission: “I am already an old man and
may not be a good help, but if you are pleased, I am willing to go to Brazil.” After
86
Ibid., 32-38.
Ibid., 38-42.; Cathopedia 92 (Tokyo: The General Secretariat of the Bishops’ Conference
of Japan, 1992), 487.
87
97
working for both Catholics and non-Catholics in Amami Island for twenty-six years and
receiving full respect from them, Dominic Chohachi Nakmura was sent to Brazil knowing
that he would have no chance to return and took a journey to devote himself to the
Japanese in Brazil until his death in 1940 at the age of seventy-five.88
It was quite an exceptional and fortunate case that a mission field outside of Japan
gained a native Japanese Catholic priest. Father Kress was not satisfied with the offer of
his own superior general who tried to arrange for a French priest of the Paris Foreign
Mission Society, who was excellent in Japanese language proficiency according to Father
Walsh who had met him in Hong Kong. When Kress was eager to have the cooperation of
a native Japanese priest with him, the Church in Japan did not have enough native priests
to take care of their own people. Kress needed to wait for their own American
Maryknollers who would return from the Japanese mission with language skills in the
1930s.
88
Onishi, Domingos Nakamura Chohachi Shimpu, 38-42, 45-49.
In Brazil, he became called Monsignor Domingos Chohachi Nakamura and his devotion
was recognized by Pope Pius XI and invested as a Knight of St. Gregory the Great through
the hand of Admiral Stephen Shinjiro Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1938.
Father Domingos Nakamura was admired so deeply as Bishop of Assis issued a special
command to the mayor of the city at the funeral of Nakamura. The bishop requested the
mayor to take special care of the cemetery for Nakamura since there might be a chance to
open his tombs in future for the research of beautification. He is addressed as
“Monsignor” because the Propaganda Fide appointed him to be a bishop of Kagoshima,
where the very first mission to Japan arrived in the sixteenth century. The letter of the
appointment reached in Brazil only a week after his death. Ibid., 8, 167-169, 180.
Chapter Three: Bridging between the Homes, Bridging between the Nations
The international environment turned extremely tense in the Pacific Basin through
the 1930s. When the Japanese garrison seized Mukden (currently Sheng Yan, China) in
1931, the disintegration of U.S.-Japanese relations became clear. The Japanese army
detonated a small quantity of dynamites close to the railroad owned by Japan’s South
Manchuria Railway near Mukden, in order to occupy Mukden with a pretext of responding
to Russian pressure from the north and to the increasingly successful unification of China
by Chiang Kai-Shek. With reinforcements from the Japanese colony in Korea, its army
had occupied all of Manchuria within three months. The Chinese withdrew and allowed
the Japanese to establish the state of Manchukuo.
The Mukden Incident of 1931 warned the United States that its Open Door Policy,
with its equal access to China by all countries, would be troubling to Japan. The tension
between the United States and Japan became decisive at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on
July 7, 1937 as the clash between the Chinese and Japanese armies resulted in war between
the two countries. Since the United States judged that the Open Door Policy was broken
by Japan by this incident, the oil embargo was enforced and the pressure against Japan
increased.
On the other hand, civilians tried to establish peace in the region through this decade
of the 1930s. In the view of the Catholic Church, the Northeast region of China which
Japan occupied was critical because it was a buffer against Communist Russia. American
missionaries fought to protect the inviolable faith and values in this fortress against
Communism.
98
99
In these mission experiences surrounded by the extremely difficult international
conditions, however, those American Catholic missionaries gained the understanding and
affections of their mission subjects. The Japanese missions in the United States opened a
new era when they had their own missionaries who returned from Asia. They had learned
not only the customs and language of Japan but also their mentality. Those missionaries
returned from Japan and Manchuria bringing more than what a Maryknoll priest, Kress,
was eager to have in the California Mission. However, the first missionary who took
charge on the West Coast with this experience in Japan was not a Maryknoller. He was a
member of the Society of the Divine Word that had taken over the mission of San
Francisco from the Society of Jesus.
When the Jesuits left St. Francis Xavier Japanese Mission in San Francisco in 1925,
Archbishop Hanna appointed William Stoecke, S.V.D., a priest of the Divine Word
Missionaries, who had been stationed in Akita, to staff the Japanese mission begun by the
Jesuits. In Japan, since their arrivals in 1907, the Society of the Divine Word had taken
care of several parishes under the archdiocese of Nagasaki, as well as the dioceses of
Nagoya and Niigata. Stoecke served the parish of Akita under the diocese of Niigata
where Joseph Reiner, S.V.D., had been appointed as the bishop in 1913. Ordained in
1908, Stoecke received the first assignment to work for the newly opened mission in
Akita.1 In 1918, he became pastor and took charge of an orphanage in Nagaoka, a part of
1
Akita has become well known later for Our Lady of Akita, Marian apparitions which were
reported in 1973 by Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa, a Handmaid of the Holy Eucharist, and
approved by Bishop John Shojiro Ito of Niigata in 1984 and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Ito was not a member of the
Society of the Divine Word.
100
the prefecture of Niigata. After World War I, he was sent to the United States to collect
financial support for the orphanage in Nagaoka and for the entire Divine Word mission in
Japan in 1920. His mission in Japan was praised for the successful five years of his stay.2
Stoecke arrived at the mission in San Francisco on November 15, 1925. One year
after that, on November 1, 1926, John Zimmerman, S.V.D., joined St. Francis Xavier
Mission as an assistant to Stoecke. This transition occurred during the fiftieth anniversary
year of the foundation of the society.
The Japanese mission in San Francisco was strikingly different from the one in Los
Angeles by Maryknoll due to the nature of their European identity. First of all, the Divine
Word missionaries in the early twentieth century in the United States were mostly German.
Second, the women religious who assisted those priests were also Europeans. Finally, their
education was focused on Japanese language and religion, not on Americanization. This
fact reflected the character and the ethnic identities of those missionaries.
The Society of the Divine Word was founded by Father Arnold Janssen in 1875 in
Steyl, the Netherlands, a village just across the border from Germany.3 Twenty years after
the foundation of the society, Janssen dispatched the first group of the Divine Word
missionaries to the United States. This first group of missionaries settled in Techny,
Illinois where they opened St. Mary’s Mission Seminary in 1906 in order to train men for
the foreign mission. It was the first seminary in the United States specifically for the
purpose of foreign missions while Maryknoll founded their seminary as the first one
2
Ernest Brandwie, In the Light of the Word: Divine Word Missionaries of North America
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 203.
3
Jansen was canonized on October 5, 2003 by Pope John Paul II.
4
101
among American societies for foreign missions in 1915. The members’ native language
was predominantly German. A large part of the communication among Stoecke,
Zimmerman and Techny was written in that language.
The Society of the Divine Word was also one of the first groups to work for the
African-American mission before they began the Japanese mission on the West Coast. In
other words, the Divine Word missionaries in the United States worked for the “home
mission” before they began the “foreign mission at home” for the Japanese. These
experiences were similar to the one by Jesuits in America who had been specialists in the
Native American mission. The Society of the Divine Word was also one of the earliest
institutions to train African-American seminarians. However, there seems to have been a
gap between the mission by those European missionaries and the idealism of the “home
mission.” The enthusiasm of those European missionaries was poured into evangelization
and civilization through Christianity. It was not necessarily Americanization of those
people. A contemporary document by a Daughter of Mary and Joseph describes that the
San Francisco mission was “quite in contrast to the Home Mission described in a recent
issue of the Extension Magazine [which featured home mission and] the unheralded and
often unheard of little settlement of the Japanese.”5 In contrast to their previous missions
for the Africans and Native Americans, the San Francisco mission did not contain any
factor of Americanization through Christianization.
4
Ibid.
“St. Francis Xavier Mission for Japanese – San Francisco.” n.d. “Morning Star School”
Folder at the Daughters of Mary and Joseph.
5
102
Although the ethnic identities of the Helpers of Holy Souls who had assisted the
missionaries in San Francisco since the Jesuit period are not revealed on any document, the
members of the Daughters of Mary and Joseph who later joined the mission to teach
children at elementary school were invited from Europe. When Stoecke planned to begin
an elementary school for Japanese children in San Francisco and looked for teaching staff,
James Lyons, S.J., advised Stoecke to write to Mother Modwina of the Daughters of Mary
and Joseph. Modwina received the letter from Stoecke in October 1929 which requested
her to visit him in San Francisco. After the communication with Mother General Andree
in Brussels, Modwina told Stoecke that the Daughters of Mary and Joseph would be
delighted to undertake the direction of the new school starting in July 1930. Mother
Modwina and Sister Mary Ignatius were transferred from Culver City to San Francisco.
They had been sent from England earlier through the request of Lyons. In this plan, four
women religious were sent to San Francisco from England in early 1930. Sisters Mary
Philomena McCarthy and Mary Benedict Walsh joined St. Francis Xavier Mission in San
Francisco with Modwina and Mary Ignatius. Two others, Mother Flavia Murphy and
Sister Mary Francis O’Connor were sent as replacements for Modwina and Mary Ignatius
in Culver City.6
Agnes Doi from San Francisco remembers that she went to Catechism and sewing
classes led by the Helpers of Holy Souls everyday after public school. She is the mother of
Sister Joanne Doi, M.M., and the wife of Vincent Doi, the first child who received infant
6
Alice Nugent, D.M.J., “St. Francis Xavier Mission—Morning Star in San Francisco,” (No
date for publication) : 40-41. “The Japanese Mission directed by the Daughters of Mary and
Joseph” written by a DMJ member under no name and date, perhaps shortly after 1960.
103
baptism from Albert Breton in the Japanese Mission in Los Angeles. Born as a Nisei, the
second generation, of Japanese Catholic parents in 1908, Agnes had been a member of the
St. Francis Xavier Mission since its foundation in San Francisco. She does not remember
the time of the transition of the mission since it was already around the time she graduated
from public school and left the community. However, her early memory at the mission
was only those sisters’ peaceful education for the girls. It was not necessarily an
Americanization program. Japanese language was taught by Japanese women and sewing
was taught by the Catholic sisters for those Japanese girls. Children like Doi received
American education in public schools.7
A year before the birth of Doi, the school board of San Francisco tried to segregate
Japanese children after the great earthquake. The powerful labor unions of San Francisco
had prevented Japanese from joining the unions and their agony had been elevated
especially when the competition in the labor market became harsh. They hated the
Japanese since their rivals were employed at lower wages and were contracted for longer
hours than the unions had negotiated for the members. The school board of San Francisco
was heavily influenced by the unions of the city. With the Gentlemen’s Agreement
between the United States and Japan in 1907 and 1908, the U.S. government did not allow
the school board of San Francisco to implement the segregation. The state of California,
however, later passed the Alien Land Law in 1913 which prohibited “aliens ineligible for
citizenship” from owing land or property. It is not difficult to imagine that Japanese
7
Interview with Agnes Doi, Los Angeles, CA, September 2008.
104
children of the age of Doi had the least sympathetic education for the Japanese or Asians in
public schools.
Sister Antoinette Yae Ono, M.M. is a year younger than Agnes Doi. After spending
her early years in San Jose, where she had yet to encounter Catholicism, she eventually
converted to Catholicism and later became a Maryknoll sister during World War II. She
told that many white children of her age called out to her, “Jap! Hey Jap!” for no reason.
While she was still in an elementary school, her father was killed by a car whose driver
was never identified. It occurred on the way back to San Jose from San Francisco after he
picked up his wife who had visited her family in Japan. He was hit while he tried to repair
a punctured tire on the shoulder of the road. He had no chance to see many photos and
things which his wife brought back for him from his hometown. Yae’s recollection
suggests that the Onos always thought the case was not investigated seriously because the
driver was American and the victim was Japanese.8
In contrast to the Japanese mission in San Francisco, Maryknoll in Los Angeles
began the mission school to educate Japanese children both in English and Japanese and to
teach them both Japanese and American cultures immediately after they took over the
mission from Breton. One of their points of emphasis, especially by Father Kress, was
Americanization of those Japanese children. The San Francisco mission did not start a
full-time school until 1930.
The priests of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Maryknoll, were all
American born citizens and most of the first members were Irish Americans, including the
8
Interview with Sister Antoinette Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, September 2008.
105
founders of the society and the first missionaries sent to Los Angeles for the Japanese
mission. While the women religious had more ethnic variation, the majority of their
members were also Irish women. Maryknoll was literally an American mission society led
by Irish Catholics.
How did this ethnic difference between the Los Angeles mission and the San
Francisco mission influence their policies on education? The discussion of schools
required by different ethnic Catholic groups introduced in Jay P. Dolan’s work gives some
insight into the case of the Japanese missions by Maryknoll and the Society of the Divine
Word. For the ethnic groups who brought Catholicism from their native lands, there had
been arguments about whether their children should have received their education at public
or parochial schools. Since the First Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852, the American
Catholic Church had the opinion that parochial schools would be “indispensable for the
security of faith and morals among Catholic children.”9 Several ethnic groups responded
to this argument. Among them, the Irish and the German showed some clear contrast.
There was the division of liberals and conservatives among the Irish prelates and
priests. Leading prelates, John Hughes, Bernard McQuaid, and Michael Corrigan, were the
advocates for Catholic schools. Archbishop John Ireland supported compromise, and
Father Edward McGlynn favored public schools. It was quite parallel to the controversy
over the immigrants and Americanism in the late nineteenth century. The Irish-American
9
Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the
Present (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 268.
106
commitment to parochial schools was not monolithic. Nevertheless, the split among the
prelates and priests based on their ethnic background was clear.10
Throughout the nineteenth century, the parochial school argument among American
Catholic leaders emerged along with the public school movement which Catholic leaders
feared might force their children to become Americanized. Germans and French
Canadians were the strongest supporters of parochial schools because they believed that
schools would be critical in preserving language and ethnic values, specifically represented
by faith. They were part of the foreign-language-speaking groups and fortunately had
sufficient women religious as teachers. Those ethnic groups also had major ethnic
enclaves where large populations of their people were concentrated and the schools for the
children were clearly needed along with their ethnic values. In other words, these two
groups of the Germans and the French Canadians had both reasons and resources to
operate parochial schools effectively.11
Those patterns did not fit in with other ethnic groups such as the Irish, the Italians,
and the Mexicans. In the case of the Italians, they were generally alienated from the
official Church religion and their support for parochial schools was never as enthusiastic as
other ethnic Catholic groups. The pattern of the Mexican settlement into small rural towns
or villages did not attract them to have parish-oriented schools or give them successful
financing to support the parochial school system.12
10
Ibid., 277-278.
Ibid., 278 -281.
12
Ibid., 278-282.
11
107
The Irish were much more supportive of parochial schools than the Italians and the
Mexicans. They had Catholic communities based on parishes where they often had large
enough populations to conduct the activities of the parishes. Nevertheless, the Irish did not
have parochial schools as early and as numerous as their German counterparts did.13 In
contrast to foreign language speaking groups, the purpose of parochial schools for the Irish
was genuinely to protect the Catholic faith because they did not need specific language
education for this purpose of preservation. Other groups argued the necessity of parochial
schools as an instrument to preserve their language, culture, and traditions which would
eventually protect the faith. It was a stark difference between the Irish and the other ethnic
Catholic groups in terms of the necessity of parochial schools.
The arguments among the Irish prelates and priests between liberals and
conservatives became intense as Pope Leo XIII sent Archbishop Francesco Satolli to the
United States as his delegate in 1892. The conservatives like Bernard McQuaid
condemned the nation’s public school system as too secular and they assertively
encouraged Catholic schools. They disliked compromise which the liberals, represented by
John Ireland, sought because they worried that the independence of the faith at schools
would be endangered. In 1891, Ireland arranged with the school boards of Faribault and
Stillwater for leasing the parochial schools of his diocese to public schools. He did so in
order to supervise the secular education by the public schools. Also, Ireland’s plan to
13
Ibid., 278.
108
require English as the language of instruction both in public and religious institutions
alienated German Americans.14
Both of those reactions represented the Irish Catholic tradition in the United
States. While John Ireland pursued his philosophy of attempting “to build a bridge
between the American and the Roman Catholic cultures,” Dolan states that McQuaid
erected “walls to protect” Catholic children from the secular world.15 Nevertheless, both of
those Irish groups were strong in commitment to support religion in education although the
methods they sought were remarkably different. How were these differences reflected in
the Japanese mission in the United States?
The Irish Maryknollers tried to found a full-time school soon after they began the
mission in Los Angeles. As argued in the previous chapter, this Japanese mission by
Maryknoll held the characteristics of a “home mission.” It was especially so for the
immigrants’ children. Americanization of the people was one of the major purposes of this
religious mission and education of those children. Therefore, unlike the parishes for the
European Catholic immigrants, the Maryknoll missionaries pursued the Japanese
children’s Americanization at their parochial school while watching over those youths
carefully. In bilingual education for other ethnic Catholic groups, language was a critical
instrument to protect their faith. However, a bilingual education for the Japanese had a
different function. Maryknoll’s bilingual education for the Japanese specifically attracted
the immigrant parents. There was also an opportunity for those missionaries to evangelize
the generation of the immigrants, the parents of the school children, while using their own
14
15
Ibid.
Ibid., 273.
109
language. This part of the mission for the parents was not necessarily Americanization, or
“home mission.” Rather, the mission which used their native ethnic language had
characteristics of universalism and “foreign mission.” It enlightened those people through
the use of the Japanese language. Thus, the Irish-American missionaries for the Japanese
in Los Angeles held a double-faced attempt of “home mission” and “foreign mission”
while bringing both of those liberals’ and those conservatives’ thoughts into their
education. Also, Americanization through religious education was probably the most
significant uniqueness to the Irish ethnic in the United States while no other ethnic
Catholic was able to pursue it, mainly due to the issues of language. From the beginning of
their mission, Maryknoll took this ethnic advantage in their mission for the Japanese.
On the other hand, European priests and women religious who worked for the
Japanese in San Francisco emphasized the ethnic traditions to seed the Christian faith.
This mission did not include Americanization through Christianization. The significance
of having parochial schools was different for the Irish and the Germans. This difference is
shown in the data about how soon the school was built after the formation of the parish,
which indicates that German parishes were in clear contrast with the Irish parishes.
Among the sample German parishes in The American Catholic Experiences, two thirds of
them founded a school within two years and 86 percent of them within ten years. Among
eighty-seven Irish immigrant parishes, only 27 percent of them had a school within two
years while 46 percent of them took more than ten years to found a parish school.16 Thus,
16
Ibid., 278.
110
the commitment to have parochial schools between the Irish and the German is discussed
based on the idea of preservation of faith and ethnic tradition.
The gap between the Irish and the German was not clearly parallel to the case of the
Japanese missions. In contrast to the German parishes where they needed to have
parochial schools soon, the San Francisco mission by the Divine Word missionaries led by
German priests took five years to found a full-time school after the transition of the
mission from the Jesuits. Since the beginning of the mission by the Jesuits, it took
seventeen years to have such a school. Before the Morning Star School was founded in
1930 by those missionaries in San Francisco for the Japanese, Japanese Catholics in San
Francisco sent the children of this small Japanese parish to public schools. They focused on
religious education only in their after-school system. Ostensibly, the missionaries’
thoughts on schools between the Irish ethnic Maryknoll and the German ethnic Divine
Word Society were opposite to the discussion about how soon those two ethnic Catholic
groups had their parochial schools. However, the purpose of the education at the Morning
Star School in San Francisco was genuinely religion through the languages of the students
and their parents. Those missionaries sent the Japanese children to public schools where
the school system would Americanize the children. There was no argument for the
protection of children from secularization in public schools because most of the children
were originally “pagans.” The purpose of the school within the San Francisco mission was
neither to Americanize the people nor to preserve the Catholic faith, but to seed the faith
among them in their native language. Because the value of their native language and
Catholicism were not necessarily considered as connected, the timing to have the school in
111
the San Francisco mission was more similar to some of the Irish parishes than the German
parishes.
There was no indication that the San Francisco mission concentrated on
Americanization of the Japanese children in the beginning. At the opening of the school,
Father Stoecke invited the Daughters of Mary and Joseph from Europe. They spoke and
taught English. Yet, they did not focus on American values as much as the Maryknollers
did in Los Angeles and Seattle. This difference between the two Japanese Catholic
communities would give some distinctions between the futures of Nisei among their
students. For example, both the Los Angeles and Seattle Catholic communities produced
several significant leaders in the Japanese American Citizens League while San Francisco
had virtually none at the time that World War II broke out. This argument will be
developed in the next chapter.
Archbishop Hanna of San Francisco placed the cornerstone of the Morning Star
School in June 1929. The plan was a full-time elementary school with eight classrooms for
about three hundred students. For this purpose, $60,000 was the expected cost. Stoecke
began looking for women religious to teach at this school. Mother Angel of the Helpers of
the Holy Souls had worked with this San Francisco mission with her colleagues since the
Jesuits started the kindergarten. However, their work was restricted to welfare work. This
meant that they were not able to teach beyond the level of kindergarten.17
Stoecke thought it would be difficult to have enthusiastic American women religious
in such an environment as San Francisco where racial hysteria was intensified against the
17
Alice Nugent, D.M.J., “St. Francis Xavier Mission-Morning Star, San Francisco” (1995).
112
Japanese. He asked the Department of Labor in terms of legal provisions to have two
women religious of Japanese nationality for their planned school in a letter of March 9,
1929. Stoecke requested five-years admission for these two women religious from Japan
to work at the new school. The reply from the Department, however, refused his proposal.
It stated that
… ministers of a religious denomination and professors of a college, academy,
seminary, or university are accorded a non-quota status under the Immigration Act of
1924, and immigrants of this status are also exempt from the provisions of that Act
under which aliens ineligible to citizenship are, with a few exceptions, denied
admission to the country for permanent residence. I judge, however, that the two
Japanese sisters to whom you refer could not qualify either as ministers or
professors, and therefore, could be admitted only as temporary visitors.
The Department of Labor also suggested that the extension of a stay of more than
one year would be difficult. Although several cases in which the extensions of temporary
stays beyond one year had been granted in the past, the department had strict examinations
of those persons. The letter continues by saying that
It has been pointed out to me that if aliens could be admitted for a rather extended
period to perform work in the United States and then could be replaced by others for
a like period, the restrictive provisions of the immigration law would be of little or
no effect, and I have no administrative authority to modify the law so as to make
such a situation possible.
The Daughters of Mary and Joseph apparently recognized that this was a major
reason why Stoecke specifically liked to have a European order of women religious in his
plan for the Morning Star School.18
18
Letter from Stoecke to James J. Davis, Secretary of the Department of Labor. 9 March
1929. Letter from Davis to Stoecke. 21 March 1929. St. Francis Xavier Mission. Archives
of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Divine Word Missionaries, Parishes, 1925-1961;
Nugent, “St. Francis Xavier Mission-Morning Star, San Francisco.”
113
It was a new mission opportunity for the Daughters of Mary and Joseph as well.
Responding to the request by James Lyons, S.J., and Stoecke, these English women
expanded the mission area from Culver City to San Francisco. They had taught in a
parochial school at St. Augustine’s in Culver City and in England. It was on July 31, 1930
that four women religious traveled by boat from Wilmington Harbor, England to San
Francisco, a month before the Morning Star School was due to open.19
The transition of the mission work from the Helpers of Holy Souls to the Daughters
of Mary and Joseph in 1930, however, became a painful experience for everybody in the
mission. It is reminiscent of the transition of the mission members in Los Angeles ten
years earlier. Stoecke became so “cautious and conciliatory” in the years of working with
the Japanese people that he did not prepare a clear arrangement of the transition from the
Helpers of Holy Souls to the Daughters of Mary and Joseph. Rather, the school would
seem to begin with two orders--Mother Angel and the Helpers of Holy Souls for the
kindergarten and the Daughters of Mary and Joseph for the elementary school. It was
confusing for the newly invited women religious to the mission because they intended to
teach both in the kindergarten and the elementary school as one teaching religious order.
Their bewildering behavior against the Helpers of Holy Souls made the Japanese parents
suspicious. They became anxious that those new teachers would displace Mother Angel
and her colleagues, long-time friends who unsparingly devoted themselves to the Japanese
children and parents, from the community. Although this tension may have been what
19
Nugent, “St. Francis Xavier Mission-Morning Star, San Francisco,” 39-42.
114
Stoecke had intuitively expected before the Daughters of Mary and Joseph came, his
indecisive behavior on the issue even protracted the solution.20
The difficulties of the Daughters of Mary and Joseph began with the house which
Stoecke prepared for them at 1911 Pine Street. It required tremendous work to prepare it
for habitation with the lack of running hot water and the absence of most basic furniture.
However, it was minor compared with the controversy. From the fear that they would lose
the most sympathetic missionary represented by Mother Angel, the Japanese held many
meetings to discuss “the futility of operating a Catholic Japanese elementary school.” As
modest contributors to building the school and auditorium, the Japanese believed that the
auditorium was intended for their social gatherings and the school was to serve as an
institution “where their children would study Japanese language and customs each day
after their regular classes in the public schools.” Their donation was modest because they
were not enthusiastic in support of the new school because the new school might entail
relinquishing the role of Mother Angel and the Helpers of the Holy Souls who had worked
for them for seventeen years.21
At the opening of Morning Star School, an enrollment of three hundred students was
expected. On the opening day, August 11, 1930, however, only fifteen students showed up
at the school. On the other hand, Mother Angel’s kindergarten classes were filled with
sixty children. The petition which about sixty Japanese families signed for attesting to the
seventeen-year devotion of the Helpers of Holy Souls was presented to the archbishop.
20
“The Japanese Mission directed by the Daughters of Mary and Joseph.” Provided by the
Daughters of Mary and Joseph. n.d.; Nugent, “St. Francis Xavier Mission-Morning Star, San
Francisco.”
21
Nugent, ibid.
115
The Japanese families left the Japanese language school and even refused to attend Sunday
Mass in the mission chapel. The Josephite Daughters even thought that both the Fathers of
the Divine Word and the Daughters themselves might not be accepted at the mission any
longer.22
The disputes and meetings continued for almost a year. After this time period, a
compromise was agreed upon between the two societies. Mother Angel and the Helpers
limited their connection with the Japanese to religious instruction in their own convent.
Observing this consent, the Japanese families, both Catholic and non-Catholic, joined
together to send their children to the Morning Star School.23
Stoecke seemed to hesitate about the definite discontinuation of the service by the
Helpers of Holy Souls because of their success in child care at the kindergarten. He could
not accept even a temporary decline in the numbers in the enrollment of children which
had always been more than sixty. From the beginning of the mission taken over by
Stoecke and the Society of the Divine Word, the motto was “through the children to the
parents.” He also invited to the Church the Japanese children, who attended public schools
and wished to learn Japanese language at the mission. In 1931, Stoecke stated that there
were 135 pupils who joined the mission through this system. At the same time, he explains
that the mission founded Morning Star School in the previous year for “a better moral
training” under better influence by the Church for the Japanese children in their area. They
received forty-five pupils within a year at the new school as “a hopeful beginning.”
Stoecke had converted adults mostly on their death beds. About forty per cent of those
22
23
Ibid., 46-48.
Ibid.
116
people in hospitals or sanatoriums who were mainly patients of tuberculosis were baptized,
according to Stoecke. Although the parents of the school children could not yet afford to
defray all the expenses at the school and the mission held a heavy debt all through the
years, Stoecke found hope in the children at the mission who constituted the majority of
220 Japanese Catholics in San Francisco.24
The Jesuits who left San Francisco formed a Japanese mission again about the time
of Christmas 1929--this time in Spokane, Washington where Pius Moore had begun his
first mission for the Japanese at Gonzaga College. At Mount Saint Michael parish, two
Jesuit scholastics, Paul W. O’Brien and George H. Dunne, recognized the need for
religious education for the Japanese children of the Hangman’s Creek settlement and
quickly organized the mission. Augustine Dinand, S.J., a former missionary in San
Francisco provided cooperation with them. The mission would later be called St.
Theresa’s Mission for the Japanese. 25
The mission originally began for a Japanese family’s eight children. When O’Brien
and Dunne began their studies in philosophy at Mount Saint Michael’s in 1929, they took
charge of a Sunday catechism class in one of the nearby parishes. This Sunday school was
for Euro-American children in Dogtown. Through this trip, they became interested in the
Japanese children of the Iwatas and stopped at the children’s home to visit them every
Sunday. After they invited those children to the Christmas party held at the Sunday school
24
William Stoecke, S.V.D., “St. Francis Xavier’s Japanese Catholic Mission.” ca. 1931.
Archives of the Society of Divine Word.
25
“Spokane Japanese Mission” Province News (California), A6, no.4 (December 1930): 58.
117
and the parents willingly permitted their children to attend the party, six of the eight Iwata
children who were old enough attended the Sunday school regularly.26
Upon the moving of the Iwatas to Hangman’s Creek, farther out on the other side of
the city than Dogtown, the Iwatas requested O’Brien and Dunne to have a Sunday school
for their children at the new location. Regarding the Iwatas, Bishop Charles D. White,
D.D., of Spokane arranged for Mrs. Arthur Clausen to teach the children since the location
was too far a distance for those two scholastics to commute regularly. Bishop White, as
well, had been concerned about the Japanese in his diocese. Mrs. Clausen was a woman of
great zeal who had had considerable experience among the Japanese and willingly took
charge of the mission. For the following several months, she continued the work almost
alone.27
Within a year, the number of children in this mission counted twenty-three. The
Jesuits’ Province News tells that Hotsuka Iwata, then thirteen years old, the oldest sister of
the Iwata children was a good “apostle” to invite practically all of the children in the
district to the mission. Her efforts and the success of the mission, however, became a
source of the attack from the Methodists, who had had no competition in the Japanese
work in Spokane for many years. The Methodists sent a Japanese woman from Los
Angeles to Spokane in order to persuade those Japanese who were under Catholic
instructions to be invited into the Methodist mission so that they would be in “the unity
with the other Japanese of the city.” She told them that the Catholics and Methodists hated
26
“From Spokane to Shanghai,” The Oregon Province Jesuit Seminary News 2, no. 2 (April
1932): 1
27
“Spokane Japanese Mission”: 58-60.
118
each other and that they could not afford to antagonize the Methodist Japanese of the
city.28
Harassed by the thought of division or schism among the Japanese, the parents in the
Catholic mission prepared a meeting in serious anxiety to decide what to do about the
Methodists. A day after a long discussion of O’Brien, Dunne and Iwata as a leader among
the Japanese of the district, the Japanese unanimously decided to continue supporting the
Catholic mission and to have nothing to do with the Methodists.29
This crisis, rather than being destructive, provided a firmer foundation for the
mission. The Japanese requested O’Brien and Dunne’s regular visit to their district and the
arrangements were made for those two scholastics to have a car in order to commute
between Mount Saint Michael and Hangman’s Creek for teaching in the Sunday school
every week. The father and two sons of the Iwatas renovated the house for the use of the
Sunday school and also remodeled the interior. An organ and piano were also purchased.
Within this first year, the mission developed significantly, including some cultural
exchanges with the Dogtown Sunday school for the white children. They had Bishop
White as a guest of honor at the entertainment at the Dogtown Sunday school on October
19, 1930, for which those Japanese children arranged and prepared the entire program.
After those events, the children were brought to Mount Saint Michael for benediction of
the Blessed Sacrament where Augustine Dinand, S.J., read prayers for them in Japanese,
which they repeated after him.30
28
Ibid.
Ibid.
30
Ibid.; “Spokane Japanese Mission” Woodstock Letters LV, no.1 (February 1931): 173-174.
29
119
The Spokane mission by the Jesuits created a good association with Maryknoll in
Seattle. The local Catholic newspapers carried the frequent communication between the
St. Theresa mission in Spokane and Father John C. Murrett, M.M., of the Maryknoll
Seattle mission.31 While the Japanese mission in Spokane was small and experimental, the
presence of the Maryknoll mission which had a stable foundation in a nearby community
became of assistance to St. Theresa’s. Also, their connection began creating a network of
Japanese Catholics on the Northwest coast. When O’Brien and Dunne along with Dinand
planned to baptize the Japanese children on All Saints Day in 1930, Bishop White advised
them to wait a few weeks until Francis Xavier Chujo, a Japanese Maryknoll catechist in
Seattle would be available to come to Spokane to talk with the children’s parents in their
own language. Chujo had been baptized by Augustine Dinand, S.J., on June 6, 1921, half a
year after they first met on Christmas night in 1920. A devout Catholic, once wishing to
join the priesthood although his health did not allow him to continue to study, Chujo
became a leading figure among the Japanese laity in Seattle. A good catechist for their
Japanese colleagues, Chujo was also an editor of the Japanese paper Shinri (Truth),
published by the Seattle Maryknoll priests, which was also available for the Japanese
parents in Spokane. Those twelve children in Spokane, who waited for Chujo to talk with
31
“Japanese Mission Folks Do Honor to Maryknollers: St. Theresa Group Assembles at
Station-Will Sail with Jesuits,” The Inland Catholic 1, no. 37 (12 August 1932): 2; “Friend of
Local Japanese Mission Carries Light of Faith to Far East People,” The Inland Catholic 3,
no. 4 (24 December 1933): 3; etc.
120
their parents, were baptized on Sunday, December 21, 1930 at Our Lady of Lourdes
Cathedral. 32
At the baptismal ceremony, Bishop White addressed the children before the
administration of the sacrament before a hundred people who witnessed the ceremony.
Not only did he impress upon them the deep significance of Baptism, the duties which it
would impose upon them including life-long fidelity and obligations, but the bishop also
spoke of his friendship with Bishop Januarius Hayasaka of Nagasaki, Japan, with whom he
studied for six years in Rome. Father Verhagen, pastor of the cathedral, assisted by Father
Cronin, pastor of St. Augustine’s, and Augustine Dinand of Mount Saint Michael
administered the baptisms. Twenty-four men and women of Spokane, who had become
interested in the mission for the Japanese, acted as sponsors. After the ceremony, about
thirty girls of the choral class and about thirty boys and girls of the drill class of Our Lady
of Lourdes parochial school had an entertainment presentation for the celebration of those
newly baptized Japanese. After their performances, the Japanese children took part in the
rest of the program while many of the girls were wearing Japanese kimonos as they had
during the reception of the sacrament. It was a small, but historical and inter-ethnic event
in the Diocese of Spokane at the end of the year 1930. Six of those children at St.
Therese’s Japanese Sunday school were confirmed by Bishop White in May 1932. 33
Later, in the Christmas season of 1934, there was another report that the mission children
32
“Spokane Japanese Mission”; “House Diary, 1925-1934” Folder 9:2, Mount St. Michael’s
Collection. Special Collection Department, Foley Center Library, Gonzaga University.
33
“Spokane Japanese Baptized.” Province News (California), A6, no. 6 (February 1931): 8788; “Japanese Children Given Confirmation” The Inland Catholic 1, no. 25 (20 May 1932):
5.
121
of St. Therese’s were guests at a play and program given in the auditorium of St. Patrick
School by members of the Italian Sunday school of Hillyard and the Minnehaha Sunday
school, both of which were taught by Jesuit scholastics of Mount Saint Michael.34
This small mission was what the bishop of Spokane dearly cherished during the
decade before World War II broke out. As young scholastics, O’Brien and Dunne left
Spokane at the end of April 1932. After teaching the Japanese children for two and a half
years, those two missionaries left Spokane for Los Gatos, California for their preparation
for the mission in China. They were to teach at Gonzaga College in Shanghai while
studying the language and the customs of their new mission field.35 While the Sunday
school was taken over by the Sisters at the Holy Names Academy on January 8, 1933, the
mission was active with the Jesuits. Augustine Dinand was the one who continued to
celebrate Mass in the Japanese language for this mission. 36 On Easter Sunday of 1934, this
tiny mission had an “extraordinary double blessing” by two bishops, Bishop White and
Bishop John Ross of Hiroshima, Japan, who “lifted their hands simultaneously in apostolic
benediction above the bowed heads of the gathering kneeling amisdt the pines of St.
Therese’s Japanese Mission.” Bishop White invited Bishop Ross while en route from
Rome to Japan.37 Hotsuka Iwata, the eldest daughter of the Iwatas, wrote as a junior at
34
“Japanese Little Folks See Santa: Christmas Program Follows Mass Said At St. Therese’s
Mission.” The Inland Catholic 3, no. 6 (5 January 1934): 5.
35
“From Spokane to Shanghai”; “Young Jesuits Given Farewell: Gatherings at Academy and
Japanese Mission Honor Two Missionaries,” The Inland Catholic 1, no. 22 (29 April 1932):
5.
36
Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S. J., A Chronicle of the Catholic History of the Pacific Northwest:
1743-1960. (Catholic Sentinel Printery, 1962), 382.
37
Edgar Dowd, S.J., “Rome to Japan: via Hangman Creek” The Inland Catholic 3, no. 20 (13
April 1934): 1. Observing the Japanese military aggression in China, Bishop Ross delivered
122
Marycliff High School that Bishop White’s friendship with Bishop Hayasaka of Nagasaki
as classmates in Rome had provided him special interests in the Japanese within his
diocese. Being overjoyed with the request by the two young Jesuit scholastics, O’Brien
and Dunne, to permit them to work for the Japanese in Spokane, Bishop White supported
the mission whole-heartedly.38
In Seattle, the pastoral environment for the Japanese mission was very different from
the Diocese of Spokane represented by Bishop White who showed a special favor to the
mission. In 1930, Bishop Edward John O’Dea of Seattle presided the groundbreaking and
dedication with attendance by the Japanese Consul Suemasa Okamoto for the new “L”
shape building which was a combination of the Our Lady Queen of Martyrs parish church
and the Maryknoll school. Under the supervision of John Murrett, M.M., and Hugh
Lavery, M.M., the dual ethnic parish for the Japanese and the Filipinos had noteworthy
progress through the first half of the 1930s. Later, Our Lady Queen of Martyrs parish had
Leopold Tibesar, M.M. who returned from the mission for the Japanese in Manchuria.
This became a significant transition for the Seattle mission to bring the sense of the
“foreign mission” into the field of the “home mission.” However, a funding problem
perennially plagued this small mission through the decade of the 1930s.
One of the first problems which Hugh Lavery, M.M., encountered after his
assignment from Los Angeles to Seattle in 1932 was this financial problem. Although
his message to these Japanese “who are showing the way of true liberty to the insular
Japanese still shackled with Shintoism and blinded with modern materialism.”; Edgar
Dowd, S.J., “Via Hangman’s Creek.” Jesuit Missions VIII, no. 8 (September 1934): 200201.
38
Hotsuka Mary Therese Iwata, “How Santa Claus Brought Day to the Japanese Children of
Spokane.” The Inland Catholic III, no. 1 (1 December 1933): 7, 12, 14.
123
Lavery first tried to seek support through the American Board of Catholic Missions
(A.B.C.M.) in Chicago, there were several issues laid in front of him. One was related to
the nature of this Maryknoll mission in Seattle. Another overwhelming confrontation for
Maryknoll missioners came along with their own bishop consecrated in 1933 for Seattle,
Gerald Shaughnessy.
It was ironic that Lavery and his colleagues received such statements by “Monsignor
Ryan39” in November 1932 as “the Japanese work [was] not home mission work and no
allotment should [have been] given by the A.B.C.M. for that purpose but should [have
been] given for the Filipinos” and that the Home Mission never intended money for certain
ethnic or racial groups.40
While the initial mission of Albert Breton on the West Coast had the nature of a
foreign mission and Maryknoll was certainly established to aim for mission activities in
foreign lands, the amalgamation of the two ethnic groups of the Japanese and the Filipinos
into one Maryknoll mission in Seattle meant that it was destined to have the nature of
home mission which aimed to Americanize those two ethnic groups through
evangelization. Although this combination of two groups provided many hopeful
interpretations for the future of the mission of ethnic minorities in the United States, the
difference in cultures, generations, and economy between the two groups often became a
source of hardships within the mission. Both of the pastors of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs,
Lavery and William Killion, M.M., attested to those differences. There were more funerals
39
He is possibly James H. Ryan.
Letter from Hugh Lavery, M.M., to James A. Walsh (Superior General). 30 November
1932. Development House Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 1, MMA.
40
124
for the Filipinos since there were more elderly people among that group. Among the
Japanese converts, the greater proportion of the congregation were children and middleaged adults.41 There were only a thousand Filipinos in Seattle in 1934 while the census of
1930 shows that there were 8,500 Japanese in the same city.42 Also, Lavery observed that
most of the Filipinos were easily “manageable” for the missioners while the Japanese were
not. It was partly because of the differences in incomes and job opportunities between two
groups in the 1930s.43 The immigrants’ children who studied in English in the same
classrooms had no language problem while the parents needed separate mission activities
in the parishes. The report of the Seattle Visitation in the Council Memo of Maryknoll in
1940 states that the Japanese already resented the presence of the Filipino children in the
classrooms when a native Filipino priest, who was successful to increase the attendance of
the Filipino people at Mass, zealously tried to receive twenty-five Filipino children who
wished to enter the Japanese school.44 Due to these differences between the two existing
ethnic groups in one mission along with generational issues, Our Lady Queen of Martyr
mission in Seattle could not provide itself a clear status whether it was a home mission or a
foreign mission. It was a problem especially when they needed the support from A.B.C.M.
41
Letter from William Killion, M.M., to Gerald Shaughnessy. 19 January 1934.
Development House Collection (seattle): Box 33, Folder 1, MMA.
42
Letter from Hugh Lavery to James A. Walsh, 14 May 1934. Development House
Collection (Seattle): Box 33, Folder 1, MMA; U.S. Census of 1930, National Archives and
Record Administration (NARA).
43
Letter from Hugh Lavery to James Drought. 5 November 1935. Development House
Collection (Seattle): Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
44
Council Memo: Seattle Visitation, March 20-22, 1940. Development House Collection,
Seattle: Box 33, Folder 3, MMA.
125
More than the problem above, the most troublesome issue which Seattle
Maryknollers confronted was Bishop Gerard Shaughnessy who was not supportive of this
dual-ethnic mission. Different from his predecessor, the late Bishop O’Dea who was
straightforward, vocal, and approachable for those Maryknoll missioners in Seattle,
Shaughnessy who became bishop in 1933 was “firmly strict and exclusively scholarly.”45
Responding to the petition for financial support by Hugh Lavery, Monsignor Eugene J.
McGuiness of A.B.C.M. advised Lavery as well as James Drought, vicar general of
Maryknoll, to request their local bishop to represent them at the conference in Chicago.46
This process was taken in San Francisco for the St. Francis Xavier Mission for the
Japanese by the Society of the Divine Word.47 It was because allocations by A.B.C.M.
should be made “not to works but to the Ordinaries.” Also, the Japanese mission in Seattle
was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Seattle, not of Maryknoll. Although James
Drought, the Vicar General, urged the reconsideration of the process to A.B.C.M. while
explaining national parishes were eliminated from this status at the promulgation of the
Code in 1918, his appeal was not accepted although McGuiness stated that George William
Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago was ready to allocate funds for the Maryknoll mission after
this process was followed. McGuiness also advised Maryknoll to send any article written
45
Shaughnessy indirectly criticized that Lavery told him of the departure of Lavery for Los
Angeles and the assignment of Leopold Tibesar informally in the letter to Lavery on 5
November 1935. Lavery reported this letter to James Drought, Vicar General, stating that
“you can see why you must keep an eye on our Bishop” with his own letter on 10 November
1935. Development House Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
46
Letter from Eugene J. McGuiness to James M. Drought, 4 April 1935. Development
House Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
47
Letters from James E. Walsh, Superior General of Maryknoll, to Leopold Tibesar, 15
October 1936 and 5 February 1937. Development House Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder
2, MMA.
126
about the work in Seattle “with several pictures” so that he would be able to make an effort
to put it in Extension Magazine or show to appropriate personnel on any occasion. This
advice was repeated in the conversation between James E. Walsh, Maryknoll’s new
superior general, and Bishop William D. O’Brien, the president of Catholic Church
Extension Society in July 1937.48
Nevertheless, Bishop Shaughnessy did “not want to even apply for [the mission] to
obtain an allotment.” Between Seattle and Ossining, NY, those priests confidentially said
that “the Bishop’s professed sympathy for the Japanese work actually contributed not a
little to his appointment to Seattle.”49 Although Drought tried to handle the issue carefully
and strategically, this financial problem the bishop caused was not solved even after the
assignment of Leopold Tibesar, M.M., to Seattle in 1936.
Lavery advised the assignment of Tibesar when Lavery received another assignment
from Seattle to Los Angeles. Tibesar had been a missionary for the Japanese in Manchuria
in the late 1920s. Although the first Maryknoll missioners who were sent to Japan--Patrick
Byrne, Everett Briggs, and William Whitlow--left for Japan after they received permission
by the Holy See in 1933, Tibesar was among the earlier group to Manchuria where the
Japanese were a minority. Although Tibesar returned to the United States because of his
health problem, he confided his wishes to continue the Japanese mission in the United
48
Letter from James Drought to Eugene McGuiness, 26 March 1935; Letter from McGuiness
to Drought, 4 April 1935; Letter from James E. Walsh to Tibesar, 19 July 1937; Letters from
William D. O’Brien to J. E. Walsh, 27 July 1937 and 10 August 1937. Development House
Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
49
Letter from Lavery to Drought, 11 March 1935; Letter from Drought to Lavery, 26 March
1935. Development House Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
127
States to his colleagues in Los Angeles. Lavery took up and revealed his position to
Drought.50
The financial problem of Seattle was not solved substantially. However, the efforts
of Tibesar, who succeeded Lavery, James Drought, and Bishop James E. Walsh moved
Cardinal Mundelein for the exceptional donation of $2,000 to their Seattle mission through
the Catholic Church Extension Society and A.B.C.M. in 1937. Mundelein limited it while
honoring the will of local Ordinaries and the process to provide all the allocations through
them.51
James M. Drought, vicar general of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of
America, was one of the most significant figures among Maryknoll as a sympathizer of the
Japanese mission. Drought, a native of New York, was ordained in 1921 by Archbishop
Patrick Hayes of New York at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and assigned to Kongmoon, China as
a Maryknoll missioner in 1924. In 1934, Drought was appointed as vicar general and
treasurer of the society. He was specifically concerned with the military and political
environment of the Far East in the 1930s. Since the Japanese aggression in China, begun
with the Mukden Incident in September 1931, Drought had gradually been drawn to
thoughts for a diplomatic solution led by the cooperation between the U.S. and Japanese
governmental officials. His ideas were oriented as political and diplomatic rather than
religious in terms of the international complications. As a young vicar general of the
society, appointed when he was 31 years old, Drought found that Maryknoll’s own
50
Letter from Lavery to Drought, 3 April 1935. Development House Collection, Seattle:
Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
51
Letter from William D. O’Brien to James E. Walsh, 10 August 1937. Development House
Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
128
Japanese mission in the United States would be able to mollify the hostility of the Japanese
government against the United States. When Drought discussed with Tibesar the
possibility of establishing a new facility for Japanese tubercular patients, he was conscious
of the Japanese government upon which this plan would provide “the favorable
impression” that Maryknoll was deeply concerned about and interested in the Japanese
people in the United States.52 It was critical for Drought that both Japanese missions in
Seattle and Los Angeles would bring success. It was critical because this success of the
mission would reflect upon him as the representative of the society with good will for the
Japanese, and because it would also enable him to act as a peace-seeking negotiator in
backdoor diplomacy which was pursued in reality on the eve of the outbreak of World War
II.
From this perspective, the assignments of the Maryknoll missionaries in Seattle and
Los Angeles in the 1930s functioned extremely well as those parishes had two of the most
significant leaders in Maryknoll missions for the Japanese in the United States--Leopold
Tibesar, M.M., for Seattle and Hugh Lavery, M.M., for Los Angeles.
Under the financial pressure of the decade, Leopold Tibesar worked hard for the dual
ethnic community of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs parish. While Tibesar delivered several
impressive sermons to interpret the connection of the common Catholic values between the
Japanese and the Filipinos, he specifically focused on the Japanese work because of his
language proficiency while William Killian, M.M., worked for the Filipinos in Seattle.
Only within a year after his assignment to Seattle, the school enrollment increased to a
52
Letter from Drought to Tibesar, 10 June 1938. Development House Collection, Seattle:
Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
129
record high number of 206. Tibesar reported that “all the other schools complain[ed] of
new lows in Japanese pupil enrollment” in Seattle and that they felt “doubly blessed” in
their efforts in increasing the numbers of children in all of the nursery, kindergarten and
first grades at the mission. 53
Tibesar’s knowledge and understanding of both the language and culture attracted
the Japanese to the parish. Tibesar also had some good fortune to have influential Catholic
lay leaders and such families who would be instrumental in working for the mission while
assisting him. James Yoshinori Sakamoto was one of them. Born in 1903 in Seattle, he
was from the oldest group among the Nisei (the second generation or American born)
Japanese and attained adulthood right after World War I. This generation observed the
reaction to the Germans in American society in the 1920s and held their own perspectives
on what the Nisei should do there. Also, some part of this group, although it was not a
large part of the population of this generation, were interested in national and international
issues while receiving a better education than other Japanese who were in the United States
during these same decades and holding middle class values. In the case of Sakamoto, these
values brought him into his career as both the editor of Japanese American Courier and as
one of the first presidents of the Japanese American Citizens League. Sakamoto nurtured
his “dualism” in his loyalty to the United States and his sympathy to Japan and in the roles
53
Letter from Tibesar to James E. Walsh, 9 October 1936. Development House Collection,
Seattle: Box 33, Folder 2, MMA.
130
as a social leader among the Nisei Japanese and as a lay leader of Japanese Catholics in
Seattle.54
Sakamoto’s parents immigrated from Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan, one of the
major regions which sent emigrants to the United States. His father arrived in 1894 and
worked as a farm hand and sawmill laborer. Several small businesses in which his parents
later engaged included a restaurant, a hotel and a used furniture shop in Seattle. Sakamoto
was educated in the public schools of Seattle. Fluent in both Japanese and English, he
attended school in Princeton, New Jersey after his graduation from Franklin High. His
experiences on the East Coast characterized what he later focused on in his life after
returning to Seattle. Sakamoto worked as an English editor for the Japanese American
News, a Japanese immigrant newspaper published in New York City and held this position
for three years. This experience subsequently led him to the editorship of his own
publication, the Japanese American Courier. While writing for the Japanese American
News, Sakamoto tried boxing in professional matches. After a number of fights, including
a few at Madison Square Garden, he had a serious injury in 1926 which caused a detached
retina in both eyes and his eventual total blindness. 55
In the ethnic hostility against the Japanese in the 1930s, Sakamoto continued to call
the Nisei for both assimilation to American society and understanding of Japan. He
espoused the Nisei to be “a bridge of understanding between the United States and Japan.”
For this reason, Sakamoto believed the assimilation of the Nisei would be the fundamental
54
Yuji Ichioka, “A Study in Dualism: James Yoshinori Sakamoto and the Japanese
American Courier, 1928-1942.” Amerasia 13, no. 2 (1986-1987).
55
Ibid.
131
factor for the Nisei to play their own role in American society. While breaking down the
various political, economic, social and racial barriers that the Nisei faced, disproving the
negative stereotypes of the Nisei as unassimilable and forever foreign, he thought that
Americanism should be the key to the full acceptance of the Nisei into American life. He
used the Japanese American Courier to spread those of his messages to the Nisei.56 It was
the first newspaper written in English for the Japanese in the United States. The target
readers of this newspaper were Nisei, American-born children of the Japanese immigrants.
Along with other Nisei leaders, Sakamoto established the Japanese American
Citizens League in 1930. Those leaders aimed for the organization to be the principal
vehicle by which the Nisei would assimilate themselves into American life. Throughout
the thirties, he was an active leader and a national president from 1936 to 1938. The
organization was this group’s version of “a citizens’ movement” “to assure and pledge the
loyalty and devotion of Americans of Japanese ancestry” to the United States and to
strengthen “the fabric and ideals of democratic government.” In accordance with this idea,
Sakamoto and JACL distrusted Communism as “an alien organization” with “un-American
principles.” Sakamoto also deplored the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In
the AFL-CIO conflict in the middle of the 1930s, Sakamoto always sided with the AFL
because he identified William Green, the president of the AFL, as “a conservative labor
leader who pursued a policy of being non-partisan in politics.” Sakamoto was willing to
56
Ibid.
132
support Republican and Democratic candidates depending upon their position in any given
labor issue.57
On the other hand, Sakamoto thought that “the two great nations” of Japan and the
United States stood “on opposite rims of the Pacific basin,” and “the responsibility of the
coming era” rested “upon the shoulders of these two nations.” The role of the Nisei was
crucial in “linking chain of understanding” between the two countries. Like some other
Nisei leaders like Clarence Arai who was among the first born Nisei, Sakamoto thought
“the second generation” would be “a diplomat of good-will, whose duty [was] to bring
about a better understanding between the East and the West, thereby eradicating the evil of
prejudice from the minds of the people,” and “the second generation should consecrate
their lives to this special task so that the Pacific Era will be an era characterized with
everlasting peace.”58 Sakamoto also cited Japanese Ambassador Katsumi Debuchi who
expected the Nisei “to know more about the native country of [their] parents than the
average American, … to study about Japan, about things Japanese, about the national spirit
and ideals which [were] back of the marvelous progress achieved by that island nation in
the last half century” and “to be the most effective of the connecting links between Japan
and America.”59
Although the international environment in the 1930s made Sakamoto’s dualism
untenable, these two sides of his thoughts made connections stronger between the Issei
(the first generation, ie. immigrants) and the Nisei than between Japanese and Americans.
57
Ichioka, “A Study in Dualism”: 51-56.
Japanese American Courier, 7 April 1928.
59
Japanese American Courier, 1 January, 1931.
58
133
His full acceptance of American values and loyalty to the U.S. government were also
parallel to his obedience to the Catholic Church and full support of Father Tibesar.
Sakamoto intuitively understood Tibesar’s mission strategies to the Issei and the Nisei
respectively. As one of the first missioners to work among Japanese in North East Asia, he
recognized a different role of the missioners to evangelize those Japanese in Manchuria
from the domestic mission within the United States. What Tibesar aimed was to pursue a
“foreign mission” to the Issei and a “home mission” to the Nisei. As a lay leader to
support Tibesar, Sakamoto played a role to bridge between two generations which resulted
in assisting Tibesar both in his foreign mission and home mission in Seattle.
In Los Angeles, Hugh Lavery, M.M., recognized the importance of the
evangelization of the Japanese in the United States by American missioners. Beginning
his work as an assistant of Father Kress in Los Angeles, he took over the directorship of
the mission after the death of Kress in 1936. For five years before World War II broke out,
Lavery made the foundation of the mission further more stable and tried to expand along
with the idealism which differed from the leadership of Kress. Lavery was concerned
about the change in the Japanese population on the West Coast and the inevitability of
difficulty of the Maryknoll mission in Asia in the pre-war international environment of the
1930s. Moreover, he tried to seek the significance of the Los Angeles mission in the
context of the entire Maryknoll mission for Asia. He thought their mission in Los Angeles
would be the most effective method to show one of the peaceful fruits of the U.S.-Japan
relations to the Japanese government. Through the expansion program of the Los Angeles
134
mission starting in 1937, Lavery tried to make the Maryknoll mission in L.A. the most
functional instrument of peace between two nations.
In the 1936 report to the Council of Maryknoll, Lavery refers to the population shift
of the Japanese on the West Coast. The mild climate and business expansion of Los
Angeles in the 1930s attracted the Japanese. Observing the declining population of
Japanese in San Francisco and Seattle, Lavery cites the example of Seattle where the
Japanese population dropped “from nine thousand to less than seven in the past five
years.”60 Their Los Angeles mission had grown to be not only the largest but also the most
important Asian mission at home. Lavery also commented that their mission surpassed not
only Maryknoll’s Seattle work, but also the San Francisco mission of the Society of the
Divine Word as well as the Paulist mission for the Chinese in Los Angeles. The total
number of Japanese Catholics in the diocese of Los Angeles was almost 400 including
about 175 adults and 225 children. The Maryknoll church had about 185 regular attendants
at Sunday Masses while Lavery encouraged Japanese Catholics to go to “their
neighborhood parish rather than come to [Hewitt Street site] from great distances
throughout the city.”61 Different from other Japanese missions on the coast, the Maryknoll
mission in Los Angeles was not erected as a parish.
Maryknoll had sent their mission to Manchuria in 1925 even before Manchukuo, a
Japanese puppet state, was established in 1932 and obtained diplomatic recognition from
the Holy See. While Maryknoll chose China as the very first destination of their foreign
60
Hugh Lavery, “Report on the 1936 Chapter from the Los Angeles Mission” attached to the
letter on 6 March 1937 to Tom V. Kiernan. Development House Collection, California: Box
12, Folder 2, MMA.
61
Ibid.
135
mission, they encountered the Japanese in Manchuria and the necessity of their
evangelization in the area intensified international tensions over the interests in China.
One of the most interesting examples was written by Leopold Tibesar who was
among the first Maryknoll missioners in Manchuria. Tibesar met Yosuke Matsuoka, who
was then the vice president of the South Manchurian Railway and later known as a Foreign
Minister during the early stage of World War II, numerous times in Manchuria. Later,
Matsuoka declared Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933 and advocated
for the alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for the Tripartite Pact in 1940.
Although Matsuoka was known as a Methodist as he was baptized in the United States
while he was a student, Matsuoka sent his children to Catholic schools in Tokyo. While it
was not clear that his own desire was to convert to Catholicism, Tibesar wrote that “[his
children] were then attending Catholic schools in Tokyo and he told me of their desire to
become Catholics and of his own willingness that they should enter the Church when they
come of age.”62 He converted to Catholicism on his deathbed in 1946.
Having the rich information from returning missioners like Tibesar, some Maryknoll
missioners in the generation of Lavery focused on seeking their own mission to make an
instrument for the international peace of this era. Their primary purpose was still
evangelization and conversion of the people. However, those missioners found the impact
they might have provided to the international environment of the 1930s through their own
mission. Lavery modestly wrote:
62
Letter from Leopold H. Tibesar to James E. Walsh, 8 November 1940. Development
House Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 3, MMA.
136
We all aware of the great difficulties mission work in Japan encounters. Missioners
have worked hard for years and yet the number of conversions are few. However,
there is no country among the non-Christian nations as important as Japan. She is
leading in culture, economics, and politics. Her influence in the Far East is supreme.
One need not be a prophet to foresee and predict that she will lead the way in the
Orient more and more each year. It is certain that anything we do for their people
especially in the United States will assist our work not alone in Japan but also in the
whole Orient. Although it may seem an exaggeration to say so, at least to come, I
consider our Japanese work will in the near [and] distant future be a lever to the
success of all our work in Asia.63
Lavery thought one of the immediate plans which should have been included in the
expansion program of Maryknoll’s Los Angeles was to add the ninth grade to the
Maryknoll school for Japanese children. It was the summer of 1937 when Maryknoll in
Los Angeles received the announcement that the archdiocesan high school would accept
only five Catholic girls from the Maryknoll School. There were thirty-eight graduates in
total at the graduation that year at Maryknoll. Ten were boys and twenty-eight were girls.
Among those girls, fifteen students had planned to enter public schools while Lavery
received the requests of thirteen girls who wished to continue to receive Catholic
education.64 In the same letter conveying this situation to Ossining, the headquarters of
Maryknoll, Lavery also complained that Catholic communities outside of Maryknoll
missions on the West Coast had less sympathetic attitudes toward the Japanese.
This week the Archbishop informed me that he will not accept any more than 4 of
our children for his school and the only reason given is because they are Japanese.
Fr. Moran, the principal of the High School, has been influenced by a few snobbish
Sisters and so called Catholic mothers into believing that the Japanese are a
detriment to the High School.
63
Lavery, “Report to the 1936 Charter from the Los Angeles Mission.”
Letter from Lavery to Bishop James E. Walsh, 14 July 1937. MFBA Development House
Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
64
137
However, the Vicar General [Monsignor Cowley] told me that our girls are the best
ones there, never cause any troubles, always pay their bills, and are among the very
best scholastically. He said that last year one of our girls won the highest prize over
all other girls in a total of 750 and was done out of the prize through one of the
sisters. The whole thing is that our children are Japanese and hard workers and this
has created a little jealousy.65
Lavery continues that “[t]he Catholic schools are the only ones that [were] weak
kneed” whereas all the public schools accepted the Japanese and every college and
university had Japanese students in Los Angeles. This idea of segregation led by Catholic
communities was what Lavery needed to avoid as a hazardous sign of disturbing the efforts
by the missioners in creating peace and friendship between the Japanese and American
Catholic communities. Although the request was rejected several times by the Council,
Lavery strongly insisted on the necessity of a high school conducted by Maryknoll itself.66
Tibesar’s agreement was also introduced in Lavery’s letter. Both Lavery and Tibesar
believed that it would be more important in the L.A. expansion program to have higher
grades in the Maryknoll school, ideally to have an entire high school, than to pursue any
other plan, even more so than building a new chapel building. Lavery added:
If the news gets out that the Catholic High will take only five or six children the
Japanese will class the Catholic church with their other enemies. They surely will be
disappointed in it and in its representatives. Our boast about what we intend to do
for the Japanese both here and over there will mean little. They have met with
enough race prejudice from other sources. Where they least expect it is from the
Catholic church. The work here will receive a set back. When the news reaches the
65
Ibid.
Bishop James E. Walsh, Superior General, wrote Lavery about the council’s decision to
decline to have a high school in Los Angeles. Walsh to Lavery, 22 July 1937; 27 July 1937;
3 August 1937; etc. MFBA Development House Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2,
MMA.
66
138
consulate here, as all these things do, then the officials over in Japan as well as the
public are not going to look upon our new work in Japan with very much favor.67
This perspective concerning the Japanese government in the late 1930s must have
appealed at least to James Drought, vicar general at Maryknoll, who shared the ideas to use
the Maryknoll Japanese mission as an instrument for peace between the two nations.68
Finally, the Council sent a letter to approve Lavery’s plan to have the ninth grade at
Maryknoll School in Los Angeles on September 3, 1937, shortly before the fall semester
began. The ninth grade was to be conducted at the Maryknoll sisters’ site on South Boyle
Avenue, not on the school site on Hewitt Street.69
Throughout the expansion program of the Los Angeles mission by Maryknoll,
Lavery and the members of the Council assured each other the uniqueness of this mission.
One of the most significant factors repeatedly indicated in their communication was that
their work was not erected as a parish, unlike Seattle and San Francisco. As this fact was
frequently referred to in the budgetary discussions; they could not expect such diocesan
support in finance as its spiritual assistance.70 However, it also meant that the Maryknoll
mission had held a certain amount of freedom to conduct their work with their own
idealism.
67
Letter from Hugh Lavery to James E. Walsh, 29 July 1937. MFBA Development House
Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
68
Drought later suggested a movement of Maryknoll Sanitorium for Japanese from
California to New Mexico. This idea was declined by Lavery as the site suggested by
Drought was too distant from the center of the Japanese residences.
69
Letter from JWB to Lavery, 3 September 1937. MFBA Development House Collection,
California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
70
Some of the examples: Letter from Hugh Lavery to Tom V. Kiernan, postmarked on 5
February 1937; Partial approvals from the Council, signed by Tom V. Kiernan, M.M. to
Lavery by the Council, 6 March 1937. MFBA Development House Collection, California:
Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
139
Under the circumstances, Lavery insisted on keeping the school and mission site on
Hewitt Street, only a couple of blocks from the center of Little Tokyo. It was somewhat
closer to the business section of the Japanese in Los Angeles than to the residences. When
Lavery submitted his plan of the expansion of the mission in 1936, he recognized that their
location was “equi-distant from all Japanese residential sections.” It was important for
Lavery that Maryknoll expand the mission in their location on Hewitt Street because the
Japanese business section of Little Tokyo would remain “stationary” while their residential
sections continually shifted due to the competition with African Americans for those
locations. Lavery observed that there was incessant development of Little Tokyo for the
seven years of his mission work in Los Angeles. Lavery also estimated that there were
almost one thousand Japanese children in their mission field. Encouraging the Japanese to
go to their own parish churches, Lavery tried to make the Maryknoll mission a community
center of Japanese people in Los Angeles. Twenty years after Albert Breton began the
mission when it was impossible for a Japanese Catholic to be in a pew of a local church,
the missioners of the 1930s began seeking assimilation of Japanese Catholics while
preserving a spiritual basis that had been founded for the Japanese.71
Even in the ethnic hostilities against the Japanese in the 1920s and the 1930s, St.
Francis Xavier School had grown successfully. The school accepted only Japanese
students and required them to take Japanese language classes while educating them in all
other subjects in English by American citizens. The school was comparable to the
contemporary public schools while including kindergarten, elementary, and junior high
71
Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, postmarked on 5 February 1937. MFBA Development
House Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
140
schools. The school brochure printed in the 1930s in the Japanese language emphasized
that the Maryknoll school was an exceptional institution in California, able to give
Japanese children education both in English and Japanese.72 This pamphlet in Japanese
was clearly intended to attract the Issei, Japanese immigrant parents who sought the
possibility to provide education both as American citizens and as Japanese descendants.
While the Maryknoll’s strategy satisfied Japanese parents’ desire to educate the
children with both American and Japanese cultural values, there seemed to be some gaps
between the intensions of the missioners and the Japanese parents. The focus of St. Francis
Xavier school was to nurture good American citizens with their own ethnic values. The
Field Afar, the periodical by Maryknoll, reported the voice of one student who said that
“Our fathers and mothers want their boys and girls to go to the sisters’ schools because
they feel that the teachers there know how to make good citizens of us.”73 Although the
missioners sought Christian egalitarianism in their activities with the local Japanese in Los
Angeles, they were also proud of raising “good citizens.” This focus seemed to be on
assimilation or acculturation of the Japanese to American values.
However, “Many Japanese parents wished to send their children to the Maryknoll
school simply because it gave them a Japanese education” said a Nisei (second generation)
72
The school pamphlet, printed in Tokyo with date unknown. Regarding the numbers of the
students (425 students) and some of the school events which it introduced, including Shirley
Temple’s birthday party for which the school girls celebrated the actress in Kimono,
Japanese dress while having Temple at the school, it is thought to have been distributed in
the late 1930s. MFBA Development House Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
73
The Field Afar (June 1927): 168.
74
woman in an interview.
141
Julia Nagao stresses that the Japanese education at the school
strongly attracted Japanese parents. She pointed out that more Japanese parents would
have needed to send their children to Japan for education if there had been no school like
the Maryknoll one in Los Angeles. Although her late husband was a graduate of the
Maryknoll school in Los Angeles and converted there, she did not go to the Maryknoll
school and was not baptized before she met him. She was the one who returned to the
United States after having her education in Japan. Among the Nisei, those people are
called Kibei which means the returnees to the United States from Japan after completing
their education. In her case, her parents eventually went back home to Yamaguchi, Japan
and Julia went to school there. In the late 1930s, she followed after her siblings who had
begun working and studying in the United States and became a Kibei, a returnee.75 More
typical cases of Kibei than Mrs. Nagao include ones in which the immigrants’ children
alone were sent to the parents’ relatives in Japan for education. In contrast to what
Maryknoll emphasized, Nagao stressed the importance of their education to strengthen
enculturation with Japanese values.
Ronald Takaki argues that Japanese parents wished to give their children a Japanese
education because they worried about their future in America which would be dominated
by discrimination. In case they were forced to return to their homeland, they wished to be
able to take their children educated in the Japanese language, or to give them the option of
moving to Japan. For this reason, 84 percent of the Nisei were registered as Japanese
74
Interview with Mrs. Julia Asae Nagao whose late husband was a graduate of St. Francis
Xavier School in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, 3 October 1998.
75
Interview with Mrs. Nagao, Silver Spring, MD, September 2008.
142
nationals by their parents in 1926. According to Takaki, over 50 percent of the Nisei in the
United States had dual citizenship in 1940, in other words, American by birth and Japanese
by registration. To prepare for this unwelcome crisis, many parents actually sent their
children to Japan to be educated and to learn not only the Japanese language, but also to
experience Japanese culture.76 Also, Tad Ohta, a Kibei and Nisei librarian at the Library of
Congress, explained that their parents expected their children to find their future marriage
partners in Japan.77 Unlike the Issei, who met partners in the system of “picture brides” in
which both parties of a man and a woman exchanged photos from both shores of the
Pacific for arranging the marriage, the Nisei children were expected to meet a partner in
Japan or among Japanese children in the States. As observed in other ethnic groups such
as Italians and Jews in America, this was another factor of enculturation that the Japanese
parents pursued.
The Maryknollers were proud that St. Francis Xavier School had an excellent
reputation in the Japanese community in Los Angeles. First of all, the graduates of the
Maryknoll school had the benefits of attending public high schools in the United States
without any special exams since St. Francis Xavier was approved as a school which
completed the school programs comparable to the contemporary public schools in that
region. Also, when their students transferred to other public schools, they would begin in a
higher class. When students transferred from other schools to St. Francis Xavier, many
were required to take supplemental classes before joining the other students. Everyone
76
77
Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 216.
Interview with Mr. Tadeus Yoneji Ohta, Washington, DC, 17 September 1998.
143
whom the author met in the Maryknoll community in Los Angeles between 1998 and 2008
testified to and appreciated the esteemed reputation of the school.78
Responding to the efforts of the Maryknoll missioners and the school staff, the
Japanese parents of the school children enthusiastically offered financial support to the
school. According to both the school’s 1925 brochure and the late 1930s pamphlet,
religious affiliations of the students did not change drastically. Among all the students
enrolled, 90 percent were Buddhist and 10 percent were Catholic or other Christian faiths.
The school pamphlet emphasized that they would never enforce the students’ religious
conversions. Nevertheless, it is important to note that those parents were people of means
as they donated large sums to the school for better facilities. Although there is no data
about the income level of those Japanese parents of the Maryknoll school students, several
photos remain in the Maryknoll Mission Archives that indicate that most of the children
did not seem to be from the lowest income class since the kimonos, ethnic dresses, that
they wore for formal occasions were more than decent and some of them were exquisite. It
was totally different from the Maryknoll school in Seattle which was always in financial
difficulty with almost no expectation of support from the parents. In the autumn of 1925,
when the Maryknoll School of St. Francis Xavier counted 280 students, it faced a lack of
funds to purchase more property despite the evident need for larger facilities. When this
condition was brought to the attention of the parents of the school children, they agreed to
meet the greater part of the cost of adding a third story to the school building, a sum of
78
School pamphlet; Interviews with Mr. Harry Honda, Mrs. Nagao, Mrs. Chie Tsukamoto,
Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Doi who sent their daughter, Sister Joanne Doi, M.M., to the school in
the 1970s.
144
more than fifteen thousand dollars. Again in 1937, Father Lavery was able to expect the
generosity of the parents, more than 90% of whom were “pagans.” 79 Lavery reported to
the Council that one of the reasons why the Japanese people were giving so generously was
“because they expect[ed] there was to be a convent for the Sisters.”80 The parents’ support
also revealed the dedication of the women religious to the students through the school
activities.
While most of the students were the children of Buddhist parents, the Maryknoll
school required them to have a twenty-minute religion class every day. The school
explicitly respected and never forced the students’ conscience in this exposure to
Catholicism. Nevertheless, one of the happiest events for the Maryknoll sisters was the
baptism of several students during the annual Easter and Christmas Masses. It was
important for those children to have approval for conversion from the parents. In some
cases of the children’s baptisms, their parents joined in conversion so that all the family
members became Catholic though these never became major events in number within this
school community. Although there were some conversions every year, less than 10 percent
of the school’s enrollment was Catholic through the years of the 1920s and the 1930s.81
There might be more people who wished to convert but considering their status in a
climate of American racial controversies, they took the option not to change any cultural
values they held. Rather than making decisions to convert, the Japanese stayed on the
79
The Field Afar (September 1925): 256; The Field Afar (October 1925): 287. Letter from
Lavery to Kiernan, postmarked on 5 February 1937; Letter from Lavery to James E. Walsh, 8
February 1938.
80
Report of the Development on LA mission by Lavery, sent on 25 July 1938. MFBA
Development House Collection, California, Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
81
School pamphlet.
145
boundary, ready to move to either side. Holding onto both cultural heritages, the Japanese
were always ready to move into American culture or to go back to their Japanese tradition.
The conditions surrounding them in the 1920s and the 1930s were too unstable for the
Japanese to decide which cultural values to emphasize and embrace fully. Their
appreciation of the Maryknoll community was not reflected in the numbers of baptisms but
more on the financial support when needs arose. Many of the parents, Issei (the first
generation) Japanese, more easily crossed the boundary of religions when they shared a
common purpose or goal to achieve for their children. Although they did not necessarily
cross the boundary in the context of religion, they were never indifferent to the education
by a Catholic group. When those parents appreciated the language and high quality of
their education, the parents were motivated by ethnic rather than religious concerns. At the
institution which had pursued to assist students’ assimilation through languages, this
paradoxically revealed that the parents’ intentions were in the children’s enculturation
within Japanese values.
In addition to this environment observed in the reactions of the Japanese parents,
Lavery’s embracing of Japanese civilization, culture, and traditions was always considered
in the project of the school development. James Drought, the vicar general, however,
sometimes warned Lavery that his program tended to deviate from the council’s discipline,
rather than toward the parochial development of the Japanese mission in Los Angeles. It
was not what the Council wished. Therefore, the Council did not approve two major points
in Lavery’s development program of the mission. First, they did not permit “the profuse
use of Japanese decorations on the exterior of the building” while approving the immediate
82
146
construction of the rectory (for $13,000) and the auditorium (for $10,000). Lavery was
proud of its “combination of the Japanese style with the local” in the mission church at St.
Francis Xavier’s as it had more Oriental flavor than the church in Otsu, Japan where
Patrick J. Byrnes, then the provincial in Asia, served.83 In summer 1938, the Council made
a decision that they would not approve the request of the establishment of a tenth grade for
the Japanese school at St. Francis Xavier which Lavery repeatedly proposed to Ossining.
As noted earlier, Lavery’s concern was the atmosphere of discrimination within the Church
in Los Angeles against the Japanese.84
Both Bishop James E. Walsh, superior general, and James Draught, vicar general,
wrote to Lavery about their concerns with the parochial development of the mission in Los
Angeles. Walsh raised the Council’s judgment that “this Japanese Mission Chapel [was] to
serve primarily for [their] school children and as a contact for [their] mission work among
the Japanese, but that it [was] not to be erected as a distinctly ‘National Parish.’” Walsh
emphasized that “human contacts rather than material institutions” would be more
important. He also stated:
[W]e must bring Christ to the people and not expect them to come to us, a natural
result from over emphasis in institutional work. In addition to this, there is the long
tradition in this country of “national parishes” which before the Great War kept many
of our foreign Catholics alienated from the common life of the church in this country
82
Letter from Thomas V. Kiernan (for Drought) to Lavery, 27 July 1938. MFBA
Development House Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
83
Letter from Lavery to James E. Walsh, 19 October 1937. MFBA Development House
Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
84
Letter from Lavery to Drought, 17 June 1938; 14 July 1938; Letter from Drought to
Lavery, 22 July 1938. MFBA Development House Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2,
MMA.
147
with the result that many of them felt that if they could not attend a particular parish
they were freed from their ordinary obligations as Catholics.85
Drought also discouraged Lavery from pursuing the development of his scheme as a
parish for the Japanese. Drought believed that “educational and social opportunities
through American agencies” for the Japanese would be “distinctively” helpful to their
evangelization. Especially under the political difficulties and antagonism to the Japanese
of the time, Drought believed that their mission would eventually win appreciation by the
Japanese due to the Catholic interest in their welfare. He expected that the work of the
mission church would “well be advertised among the Japanese all along the coast and in
Japan.” In order to win local priests’ cooperation, Drought insisted that the Japanese
should not be “welded into a national group.” Drought persuaded Lavery while stating,
“[i]t is not assimilation as Americans that we would look for, but assimilation as Catholics
that we would demand.”86
Although the members of the Council in Ossining maintained that the assimilation
not only as Americans but also as Catholics would be one of few solutions for the Japanese
to survive amid the racial discrimination which intensified in the late 1930s, the Catholic
Foreign Mission Society of America had contained a serious contradiction to their
idealism. In the summer of 1938, Lavery inquired of Drought about the vocations of two
Japanese-American boys at the Los Angeles mission. One was expected for the brothers
and the other for the priesthood. The latter, who was perfectly bilingual, was an honor
85
Letter from Walsh to Lavery, 10 February 1938. MFBA Development House Collection,
California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
86
Letter from Drought to Lavery 10 February 1938. MFBA Development House Collection,
California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
148
student at the Jesuit High School, presumably George Minamiki who joined the Society of
Jesus after World War II ended. Lavery emphasized this boy’s language proficiency
because it would be a crucial instrument for their mission work in Japan.87 However, it
was impossible for Maryknoll to accept these vocations even though Drought showed
strong interest in them. The first Society Chapter prevented Asians from applying for
vocations even if they were American citizens. Both Drought and Kiernan in the Council
suggested that Lavery consult with Bishop Patric J. Byrne so he might advise Lavery about
any possibility for them to train and work under the local ordinary and contribute to
Maryknoll missions as externs. While Drought suggested the possibilities for those young
men to help the Maryknoll mission on the West Coast, Honolulu, or among the Japanese in
South American countries, Lavery expressed a strong complaint with the question of what
could be “the objection to a young man, exceptional in every way, an outstanding leader,
one who knows the language perfectly and an American by birth.” The Council members
who encouraged Lavery to guide the Japanese to assimilate as Catholics had no answer
until January 1939. The Council considered as an exceptional solution to this issue to
accept this young Japanese student in their Preparatory School while intending to send him
eventually to Mountain View, the usual canonical steps for Maryknollers to be ordained.88
This young applicant, Minamiki, pursued the priesthood as a Jesuit after World War II and
taught at the University of Notre Dame. However, it was a significant step for future
87
Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, 8 August 1938. MFBA Development House Collection,
California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
88
Letter from Kiernan to Lavery, 16 August 1938; Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, 23
August 1938; Letter from Drought to Lavery, 27 September 27 1938; Letter from Kiernan to
Lavery, 11 January 1939. MFBA Development House Collection, California: Box 12, Folder
2, MMA.
149
Japanese applicants for vocation that Lavery tried to persuade the Council and Bishop
Byrne during this pre-war time.
The major concern of Lavery in the Los Angeles mission was how to nurture the
American born Japanese [Nisei] in their Catholic schools in the critical years of the 1930s
before World War II broke out. While focusing on the assimilation of those school
children through Americanization and Catholicization, he also respected the parents’
values brought from Japan. Through this process, his thoughts on the role of Maryknoll’s
L. A. mission as a bridge between the United States and Japan in the most intense years
were gradually solidified. This acculturation and enculturation process for Lavery, other
mission members represented by women religious, school children, and the parents was
blended into the development project of the mission in the late 1930s submitted to the
Maryknoll Council by Lavery.
Through the years, the fruits of Lavery’s efforts for the mission development project
after he took over the mission at the death of Kress included the establishment of
functional support of the society by the parents of the students, called Fu kei Kai (meaning
the society of parents), which collected dues every month to be used for school needs, and
a variety of extracurricular activities under the leadership by Brother Theophane Walsh.
The former was a voluntary society which was organized for school emergencies such as
the necessity of the maintenance of the school bus. The society became more functional
for the development of the mission which was projected to enrich the school. In the latter,
Brother Theophane became a significant instrument of Lavery while being much closer to
the children in several activities such as a Boy Scout troop. In the summer of 1940,
150
Brother Theophane accompanied a group of fifteen Japanese second-generation Boy
Scouts from several regions of the West Coast while organizing a tour to Japan for eight
weeks. He worked for the Boy Scouts not only within Maryknoll but also for Catholic
troops in Los Angeles. The tour was planned in which those fifteen Japanese Nisei boys
accompanied by Brother Theophane would be hosted by fifteen other Japanese Nisei boys
who had left the Los Angeles mission for Japan. The parents paid for the trip of Brother
Theophane in appreciation of his long term work for the Nisei boys and the Council
approved this plan. Since those young Nisei in the Maryknoll mission had no chance to
see Japan unlike Kibei Nisei (who became returnees to the United States from Japan after
having their education in Japan) but since they were educated in both cultures of America
and Japan within the United States, this trip became a significant occasion for those boys to
understand their parents’ nation. It was further more significant because it was shortly
before two nations entered the war. 89
In one respect, this was another option of Lavery’s acculturation and enculturation of
those Nisei at the Maryknoll School at the very end of the pre-war period. In another,
Lavery’s idea was to place the Los Angeles mission under Maryknoll’s entire missions in
Asia. In a report to the Council, Lavery stated:
I still feel that what we do for the Japanese here we are accomplishing much for all
peoples in the Orient… We are all aware of the great difficulties mission work in
Japan encounters, Missioners have worked hard for years, still the number of
conversions are few. However, there is no country among the non Christian nations
as important as Japan. She is leading in culture, economics, and politics. Her
influence in the Far East is supreme. It is certain that anything we do for their people
especially in the United States will assist our work not alone in Japan but also in the
89
Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, 12 August 1938; Letter from Lavery to James E. Walsh, 23
March 1940. MFBA Development House collection, California, Box 12, Folder 2-3, MMA.
151
whole Orient… I consider our Japanese work [in Los Angeles] in the near [and]
distant future to be a lever to the success of all our work in Asia… The provinces of
China will not unite through their own initiative. Japan alone is destined to make
that country one great unit for trade, commerce and the spread of the faith. Japan is
in the process of forming a new civilization in the Orient: the blending of East and
West. We must therefore go along with these people for the spread of God’s
kingdom in Asia. Working with this nation we can do great things for the faith. The
more we concentrate our efforts in assisting the Japanese anywhere, the greater will
be our success not only in converting them, but also in bringing into the fold the
Chinese and Koreans.90
Lavery also expected that they would see plenty of Japanese vocations for women
religious after they founded the mission in Japan while they did not have more than a
couple of Japanese Maryknoll sisters in Korea and Japan in the late 1930s.91 Although
amid some optimism for the faith and thoughts of religious missions among Asians, Lavery
could not ignore the international influence of Japan in the 1930s whose interests
conflicted with those of the United States. While Lavery did not dwell on this
confrontation between the United States and Japan, he repeatedly emphasized the
importance of Nisei, insisting, “Our future lies among the second generation Japanese.”92
Therefore, Lavery could not relinquish the plan to add a high school to St. Francis Xavier
and establish a Japanese parish in Los Angeles so that the Nisei youths with a committed
spirit nurtured by the Maryknoll School should work for building a bridge between the two
nations and that the success of the Los Angeles mission would be a role model for the
entire Asian missions by Maryknoll including China and Korea. As of the end of 1940,
90
Hugh Lavery, “Report to the 1936 Chapter from the Los Angeles Mission” 6 March 1937;
Report from Lavery to the Council on the Development Project in Los Angeles, sent on 25
July 1938. MFBA Development House Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 2, MMA.
91
Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, ca1939. MFBA Development House Collection,
California: Box 12, Folder 3, MMA.
92
Letter from Lavery to James E. Walsh, 11 April 1940. MFBA Development House
Collection, California: Box 12, Folder 3, MMA.
152
Lavery continued to insist on the plan of adding a high school and the founding of a parish
to the council which was not achieved before World War II began.93
The vicar general, James Drought more carefully watched the confrontation between
the United States and Japan. Drought, whose first assignment as a Maryknoll missioner
was in Hong Kong and later in Kaying, China in the 1920s, had held special concerns over
international relations in Asia in the 1930s. He was appointed as a vicar general in
September 1936 after the death of the Maryknoll’s founder and first superior general,
James A. Walsh. Drought was one of the twenty-seven co-signers who pledged “amity
with Japan” in a message to Prime Minister Koki Hirota who took office after the
assassinations in an attempted coup d’etat on February 26, 1936 by the radical
ultranationalist faction of the Imperial Japanese Army. The message, carried in New York
Times by Carl W. Ackerman who represented “27 men prominent in nation”, was written
to state that the antipathies were decried as a “perverse heritage of passing generation” and
envisaged “a new era in the relations between the United States and Japan, based upon
policies arising from the ‘common sentiments’ of both nations.”94 Along with the first
superior general at Maryknoll, James Anthony Walsh, who died in April 1936, Drought
was among those 27 “prominent men”95 in financial, educational, journalistic, and church
93
Ibid.; Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, 27 December 1940. MFBA Development House
Collection, California, Box 12, Folder 3, MMA; Lavery, “Japanese Friends in Nippon
[Japan].” 11 November 1940. Drought Papers: Box 10, Folder 1, MMA.
94
“Amity with Japan Pledged to Hirota: 27 Men Prominent in Nation See New Era in
Relations in Cable to Premier” New York Times, 15 April 1936, 16.
95
Those co-signers included: Carl W. Ackerman (Dean of the School of Journalism,
Columbia University); Isaiah Bowman (President of John Hopkins University); Harry
Woodfurn Chase (President of New York University); William H. Crocker (President of the
Crocker National Bank, San Francisco); Robert J. Cuddinhy (Owner of the Literary Digest);
153
circles in America who have been considered moderate and conservative noninterventionists.96 Drought began to collect the information about leading figures among
Japanese Catholics from Lavery in Los Angeles and Tibesar in Seattle, specifically after
the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, a battle between the Republic of China’s National
Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army in Wanping, China, which marked
the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War. During the visit of Admiral Shinjiro Stephen
Yamamoto, a leading Japanese Catholic, of the Imperial Japanese Navy in Los Angeles in
November 1938, Lavery was required to send a detailed report to Ossining about the
background of the people around Yamamoto.97
After observing the defeat of Republican Wendell L. Wilkie in the 1940 presidential
campaign against Franklin D. Roosevelt on November 5, Drought seriously considered a
possible involvement by Maryknoll to reduce tensions between the United States and
The Rev. James M. Drought (Seminary of Maryknoll, Ossining, New York); Leon Fraser
(First National Bank of New York); Douglas Southall (Richmond News Leader); James W.
Gerard (Former Ambassador to Germany); James G. Harboard (Radio Corporation of
America); Clark Howell (Atlanta Constitution); Archbishop John T. McNicholas, O.P.
(Archbishop of Cincinnati, OH); Bishop William T. Mannning (Episcopal Bishop of New
York); William Cardinal O’Connell (Boston(; Judge John F. O’Connell (Chcago); The Rev.
John F. O’Hara (President of the University of Notre Dame); Evans Woodllen, Jr. (Fletcher
Trust, Indianapolis); William Allen White (The Emporia Gazette); Judge Francis Wilson
‘Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court); Richard M. Tobin (Former Consular to Hague);
Frank A. Vanderlip (Former president of the National City Bank of New York, the president
of Japan Society); Bishop James A. Walsh (Superior General of the Foreign Mission Society
of America); Grove Patterson (Chair, American Press Institute); William F. Russell (Dean of
Teachers College of Columbia University); Walter Dill Scott (President of North Western
University); Arthur J. Sinnott (Newwark EveningNews); Bishop George Crag Stewart
(Episcopal Bishop of North Illinois).
96
Hiroaki Shiozaki, “Nichibei-kaidan zenshi [a history before the US-Japan negotiation]”
Shigaku Zasshi 84, no. 7. (1975): 39-64.
97
Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, 21 November 1938. Drought Papers, Box 10, Folder 1,
MMA.
154
Japan. Drought thought that Wilkie would pursue the traditional isolationism and was
anxious that the victory of Franklin Roosevelt would lead the United States into the
European War against Germany which would make Japan, a partner of Germany since the
1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, also an enemy of the United States. Through his missions and
frequent trips to Maryknoll’s mission fields in Asia, including Japan, China, Manchuria,
Korea, and the Philippines, Drought considered the significance of the relations between
the United States and Japan and that it was most urgent to avoid the possible
commencement of war between the two nations. At the end of 1940, he decided to join
Bishop James E. Walsh to visit Japan for a religious purpose and to use this occasion for a
political purpose.
In accordance with the 1939 Religious Organizations Law in Japan, Christian
churches were required to comply with the conditions set by the Ministry of Education in
order to receive official recognition or legal status. Indicating that it would only recognize
native Japanese leaders in those religious organizations, the Ministry directed that all the
Catholic dioceses and prefectures apostolic be directed by bishops and prefects of Japanese
nationality. Since the Prefecture Apostolic of Kyoto was established on June 17, 1937
from the four prefectures of Kyoto, Nara, Mie, and Shiga, which had belonged to the
Diocese of Osaka and was entrusted to the Maryknoll fathers, Monsignor Patrick Byrne,
M.M., had directed the prefecture. The new law required the prefect to have a Japanese to
be at this post and Father Paul Yoshiyuki Furuya took the role. 98 Religiously, the leaders
of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America at Maryknoll were expected to join to
98
“Diocese of Kyoto.” Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan, accessed 30 November
2009, http://www.cbcj.catholic.jp/eng/ediocese/kyoto.htm.
155
celebrate Father Furuya and the Prefecture of Kyoto. Bishop Walsh permitted Drought to
pursue his personal enthusiasm to work for the betterment of U.S.-Japan relations and
decided to accompany him on the trip to Japan although the vicar general would normally
have remained at home during the absence of the superior general.99
Early in November, Drought received the letters of reference by Carl W. Ackerman,
the Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University, who issued the message to
Japanese Premier Hirota which Drought joined in signing, to several influential Japanese
including Kensuke Horinouchi of the Foreign Office of Japan, and Shingoro Takaishi of
Osaka Mainichi Shimbun (a major newspaper in western Japan). He also had same kind of
letters by Lewis Strauss of Kuhn Loeb and Co. to K. Yamagata of the Foreign Office of
Japan.100 At the same time, Drought wrote to the Post Master General of the United States,
Frank C. Walker as follows:
Because of the recent policies of the Governments of the United States and Japan, the
tension of antagonistic sentiment has tightened among people in both countries. In
consequence, certain difficulties have developed to impede our Catholic missionary
work in the Japanese Empire.
In an effort to ameliorate the difficulties, though we can hardly hope to remove the
cause, Bishop Walsh, the Superior of Maryknoll and myself are leaving for Japan
tomorrow.
It would be extraordinarily helpful if we could have from yourself a personal letter of
introduction to Mr. Matsuoka, the Foreign Minister of Japan. I do not desire at all
any letters from our State Department if such formal introduction would give a
diplomatic color which I am anxious to avoid. I do not know what the practice of
99
R. J. C. Butow, The John Doe Associates: Backdoor Diplomacy for Peace, 1941. (CA:
Stanford University Press, 1974), 71-72.
100
Letters from Carl W. Ackerman to Kensuke Horinouchi, 7 November 1949; from
Ackerman to Shingoro Takaishi, 7 November 1940; from Lewis Strauss to K. Yamagata,
Esq, 8 November 1940; to Okubo, Esq, 8 November 1940. Drought Papers: Box 10, Folder
1, MMA.
156
Mr. Roosevelt may be; specifically, I do not know if he would ever give a letter of
personal introduction. I should say, however, that our effort, which may yield so
much during years to come for the spread of our Catholic Faith, would be sharply
facilitated if Mr. Roosevelt would commend us personally to the Premier of Japan.101
Drought tried to begin with Frank Walker, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Frank Murphy to have
connections with Catholic influential figures in both the States and Japan. He specifically
appreciated the connection with Frank Walker who was appointed postmaster general by
Roosevelt. Drought had expected it would be an indispensable door to open
communications with Roosevelt. Walker was one of the most prominent Catholics in the
Administration.
Although Drought asked Walker to introduce himself to Yosuke Matsuoka, the
Foreign Minister of Japan under the administration of Fumimaro Konoe who became the
Prime Minister in July 1940, Leopold Tibesar in Maryknoll’s Seattle Mission strongly
advised Drought to meet with Matsuoka. While Tibesar was in the mission in Manchuria,
he had some contact with Matsuoka.
It occurs to me that, should you see Mr. Matsuoka, the Foreign Minister, in Tokyo, it
might not be a bad idea to suggest a discussion of points outstanding between the
United States and Japan… I met Mr. Matsuoka several times while I was in
Manchuria. He was then Vice-President of the South Manchurian Railway. His
children were then attending Catholic schools in Tokyo and he told me of their desire
to become Catholics and of his own willingness that they should enter the Church
when they come of age.102
The connection of Yosuke Matsuoka with Catholicism in such an early period has
been virtually unknown. He converted from Protestantism to Catholicism on his deathbed
101
Drought to Frank Walker, 8 November 1940. Drought Papers: Box 10, Folder 1, MMA.
Leopold Tibesar to James E. Walsh, 7 November 1940. MFBA Development House
Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 3, MMA.
102
103
in 1946.
157
Matsuoka had been infamous in that he was the one to announce Japan’s
departure from the League of Nation in 1933 after the League criticized Japanese
operations in Manchuria and was a major advocate of a Japanese alliance with Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy. He later advocated the Tripartite Pact in 1940.
Bishop Walsh and Drought arrived in Yokohama, Japan on November 25, 1940.
Monsignor Byrne and Admiral Shinjiro Yamamoto welcomed them there. During this trip
through December 28 in Japan, Walsh and Drought left Tokyo area for only three days,
from December 7 to 9 while they were in Kyoto and Nagoya. During all the other days,
they were scheduled to meet important figures from various fields including several
meetings with Japanese diplomats. Some of the important people they met included
Yosuke Matsuoka, Taro Terasaki, Setsuzo Sawada, and Tadao Ikawa. 104 Terasaki was the
head of the American Bureau of the Foreign Office of Japan. Both Terasaki and his wife
were Catholic. Setsuzo Sawada was another diplomat who later negotiated with the Holy
See for earlier termination of World War II. His wife was a devout Catholic, and all of his
children were raised as Catholics while Setsuzo himself was a Quaker. His third son,
Kazuo, later became a priest in the Archdiocese of Tokyo. One of the reference letters
from Lewis Strauss of Kuhn Leob and Co. was addressed to Paul Tadao Ikawa (or
Wikawa) who had been a bureaucrat at the Ministry of the Treasury and left the office in
1936 to be one of the trustees of Sangyo Kumiai Chuo Kinko [the Central Bank for
103
Kimitada Miwa, Matsuoka Yosuke: sono ningen to gaikou [Yosuke Matsuoka: his
personality and diplomacy] (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1978).
104
Takashi Ito, Hiroaki Shiozaki (eds.), Ikawa Tadao: Nichibei koshou shiryou [Tadao
Wikawa: Documents on Japanese American negotiations] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha,
1982).
105
Industrial Workers].
158
He was a member of the Episcopal Church. Soon after their
arrival, Drought wrote to Ikawa on November 29:
Mr. Strauss considers you with most cordial esteem and feels confident that you will
be readily inclined to foster, with us, the speedy resumption of amicable relations
between our peoples; founded, this time, on a realistic appreciation of the true facts
and circumstances underlying the Far Eastern situation.106
Beginning on December 6, Drought met with Ikawa five times during the stay.
Ikawa could not ignore Drought as he had a reference letter from Lewis Strauss of Kuhn
Loeb and Co. which had provided a loan to Japan at the opening of the Russo-Japanese
War begun in 1904. Ikawa had worked for Korekiyo Takahashi, the former Minister of the
Treasury, who successfully gained the loan from Kuhn Loeb and Company. The Japanese
government could not ignore this letter either. Ikawa reported to Premier Fumimaro
Konoye after their second meeting that Drought had met Ikawa privately while he seemed
to be trying to find out if Japanese officials might be interested in having a plenipotentiary
conference between the U.S. and Japanese representatives. Ikawa also attached Drought’s
detailed analysis written about the “Japanese position and policy in the Far East, with
particular reference to the United States.”107 The significant points in this confidential
communication would be later compiled in the “Confidential Memorandum
‘Understanding’” by Drought again. They included the following: the attitudes of both
105
Letter from Lewis Strauss to Paul T. Wikawa, 8 November 1940, Ibid., 70-71.
Letter from Drought to Ikawa, 29 November 1940, Ibid., 71-72.
107
Letter from Ikawa to Fumimaro Konoye, 12 December 1940, Ibid., 74-113.
106
159
Governments toward the European war; the relations of both nations concerning the China
Affair; and the economic activity of both nations in the Southwestern Pacific area.108
In summary, the analysis by Drought stated that the U.S. government would
intercede between Japan and China if the Japanese government accepted the conditions
suggested by the United States. Those conditions included the withdrawal of Japanese
troops from China and the cooperative development of the Chinese market between the
United States and Japan after securing the independence of China. The U.S. government
also offered the termination of the moral embargo of 1937 on exports of aircraft to Japan
and even granted loans to Japan for the development of China.
As items of bargaining strength in a conference designed for the settlement of all our
outstanding differences, we need to keep in reserve, and make no present concessions
on, our military and political position in China, opening the Yangtse Valley, the
Open Door, our intentions relative to the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines,
American airways and communications development in the Far East; our Axis
alliance and any other European relationship. Nor should we answer, one way or
another, Mr. Stimson’s statement of December 1st concerning American rights and
interest in the Far East. Actually, with our position established, we can ultimately,
though not quickly, concede the Open Door as an American diplomatic victory since
it would involve no real competition in our trade. 109
The U.S. government recognized that the Japanese government could not achieve in
conclusion in military action in China after the Sino-Japanese War begun in 1937 and that
this strategy would save Japan from a severe economic depression. On the other hand, this
plan would provide the United States with advantages in joining the market in China.
Above all, Roosevelt thought it necessary to secure peace with Japan while considering a
108
Draft of “Memorandum ‘Understanding’” by Drought, Early April 1941, Ibid., 239-245;
Draft of “Memorandum ‘Understanding’” by Ikawa, Early April 1941, Ibid., 245-254; Draft
of personal opinions by Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura to Washington, 17 May 1941,
Ibid., 259-263.
109
Analysis by Drought attached to the letter from Ikawa to Konoye, 12 December 1940.
160
possibility of joining the European War against Germany because Japan might attack the
States under the Tripartite Act. Great Britain, too, expected the stabilization of the Pacific
region as it urgently needed U.S. military assistance. Drought’s plan also stated that the
plenipotentiary conference between the two nations represented by President Roosevelt
and Premier Konoye would be indispensable after both parties confidentially understood
those points.
On December 27, a day before their departure to the United States, Ikawa took
Drought and Bishop Walsh to visit General Akira Muto of the Japanese Imperial Army
who then served in the Military Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of War. After this meeting,
Ikawa wrote to Muto that those two priests were deeply impressed with Muto’s reactions in
their meeting and that they confirmed firmer determination to pursue the plan.110 Muto
agreed with Drought’s plan and worked hard at aiming to prevent the nation from the
opening of the war between the United States and Japan. He was the one who had the
responsibility to expand the war front at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937. The war
with China was never as easy as Muto had expected. The plan Drought brought in seemed
to Muto a way out of a quagmire in which the Japanese Imperial Army had bogged down.
Although it is ironic that Muto was hanged in 1948 after being convicted at the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East for atrocities against civilians and prisoners
both in China and the Philippines, he tried to argue for the recovery of peace in the Pacific
along with Drought’s plan.
110
Ikawa to Akira Muto, 31 December 1940, Ibid., 121.
161
General Muto convinced Colonel Hideo Iwakuro to secretly work for this project
with Ikawa and two American clergymen. A month after Bishop Walsh and Drought left
Japan, Ikawa provided the information about the ship to the United States to Colonel
Iwakuro and the process for travel.111 Then he was suddenly appointed to be a military
attaché to the United States after Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, Ambassador to the United
States, required an army staff member who was familiar with the second Sino-Japanese
War as an advisor. While it was rumored that General Hideki Tojo relegated Colonel
Iwakuro, Ikawa was delighted with this news and expected him to work for the plan which
Drought proposed. It was hopeful for Ikawa who could not easily travel to the United
States because he did not have any governmental position in 1941 and more than anything
because Yosuke Matsuoka, the Foreign Minister, and a high-ranking staff member of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs had detested Ikawa who began intimate contact with Drought
while disregarding those professionals in diplomacy. All of the four—Walsh, Drought,
Ikawa and Iwakuro—were amateurs in foreign affairs although they were influential
notably in diplomatic fields in both countries through the year of 1941 until the final
proposal, well known as the “Hull Note,” by the U.S. government to Japan was delivered
on November 26, 1941. Through the negotiations, Walsh and Drought represented Japan
to the U.S. government while Ikawa and Iwakuro did the same to the government of Japan.
As Drought had Frank Walker, a close friend to Cordell Hull, Ikawa had Prince Konoye,
and Iwakuro had General Muto who became his direct contact, though secretly, with the
government. Those four who worked in maneuvering a plan aiming to have a
111
Ikawa to Hideo Iwakuro, 29 January 1941, Ibid.,128-129.
162
plenipotentiary conference between the United States and Japan were coined “John Doe
Associates,” a sobriquet devised by Stanley Hornbeck, the former chief of the State
Department Division of Far East Affairs and a special adviser to Secretary of State Cordell
Hull.112
On January 23, 1941, at 10:45 A.M., Post Master General Frank Walker arranged a
meeting of President Franklin Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Walker himself,
Bishop Walsh, and Drought at the White House. Drought wired to Ikawa, “VISIT
ACCOMPLISHED ENCOURAGING PROGRESS EXPECT DEVELOPMENTS.”113 He
also sent a letter to Setsuzo Sawada, a Christian diplomat and former Ambassador to Brazil
in early February stating as follows:
You will appreciate that it is impossible for me to write of the circumstances or the
character of our activities since returning. The very nature of our mission compels
secrecy. Moreover, we are not at liberty to disclose in correspondence the scope of
our extended conversations with President Roosevelt and Mr. Hull, the Secretary of
State. I can only say now that I entertain the liveliest confidence in their good will
and in their deep desire for a constructive peace that will bring blessings not only to
this country but to the Far East. You may assure the Foreign Minister that we
carefully explained that Prince Konoye and Mr. Matsuoka were animated by a desire
for a realistic peace based on justice and the equity of life opportunity.
Mr. Roosevelt is not an enemy of Japan, and if in some respects he may not
understand fully the purposes and policies of your Government, it must be admitted
that he is not alone responsible for this. As we left further developments in the hands
of the President, we automatically have restricted ourselves from any further action
in private or in public. Until it is proved otherwise, the best policy for the present is
to await some decisive favorable action by Mr. Roosevelt. This would be more
effective than reams of propaganda.114
112
Butow, The John Doe Associates, 19.
Ito, Ikawa Tadao, 126.
114
Letter from Drought to Setsuzo Sawada, 12 February 1941. Drought Papers: Box 9,
Folder 13, MMA.
113
163
Drought emphatically told Roosevelt that there were the civil and military authorities
in Tokyo who were interested in bargaining with the United States if a settlement to the
fighting in China was secured and the war in Europe was prevented from spreading to the
Far East. Drought stressed that it would be important to hold the conference between the
U.S. president and the Japanese premier and that this speedy settlement between two
nations might destroy the power of the extremists in Japan. Also, Drought explained to the
president that it would be possible to make the Tripartite Act a dead letter, and to hold
security and peace in the Pacific.115 Roosevelt seemed to be interested in Drought’s
analysis since the president asked Drought to learn the Japanese reactions on the same
issue.116 Drought seemed to have elaborated on the idea of American involvement in the
War in Europe in the discussion with William W. Wiseman whom he met at Kuhn Loeb
and Company in New York. Wiseman had been a partner of Kuhn Loeb since 1929 while
working as a British intelligence agent during the time of World War I. Although Ikawa
often mentioned that Drought, an Irish-American clergyman, hated the British, he
concluded that the plan should be supported not only by the American government but also
by Great Britain. Wiseman and Drought had been good friends while often having
political discussions and Drought was a spiritual teacher of Wiseman’s daughter, Sheila.117
The newly appointed Japanese Ambassador to Washington, Admiral Nomura, was another
one who supported Drought’s plan toward the plenipotentiary conference. Ikawa’s memoir
about Nomura reveals that Nomura’s efforts made negotiations between Roosevelt and
115
Butow, The John Doe Associates, 8-10.
Ikawa’s Memoir on Drought, in Ito, Ikawa Tadao, 389-390.
117
Ibid.
116
118
164
“John Doe Associates” go smoothly and harmoniously. Later, upon his departure for
Japan after the Pacific War broke out, Nomura sent Drought sincere and deep appreciation
for the peace efforts.119
The discussions aiming for the plenipotentiary conference seemed to go forward
favorably until June 1941. Iwakuro met Bishop Walsh and Drought for the first time at St.
Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on March 31, 1941. Ikawa needed to visit New
York for economic reason in order to hide his role to work for the plenipotentiary
conference. Although there was no clear indication who mediated between Ikawa and an
American company, Ikawa successfully received a reference letter from Ford Japan and he
joined the other three members at the cathedral. This letter helped him travel to the States
for an economic purpose, not for a diplomatic purpose. They concluded that they would
prepare a “Preliminary Draft of ‘Agreement in Principle’”120 for Japan to be at the table of
the conference. For this purpose, John Doe Associates that considered they had to provide
Japan the chance to “solidify her legitimate political and economic position in the Far East,
win full American support for that position, put an end to the British role in Asia, settle the
China Incident advantageously, and avoid giving direct challenge either to Britain or
Germany.”121 Iwakuro suggested that Walsh and Drought not include Japan’s withdrawal
from the Tripartite Act as it would raise the extremists’ hatred against their plan and
Drought realistically agreed on the point. “The Draft Understanding” was written by
118
Ikawa’s Memoir on Admiral Nomura, Ibid., 381-382.
Letter from Kichisaburo Nomura to Drought, 14 May 1942. Drought Papers: Box 10,
Folder 2, MMA.
120
Ito, Ikawa Tadao, 166-181.
121
Butow, The John Doe Associates, 153.
119
165
Drought in early April of this year. Ikawa revised and wrote the Japanese version. The
Draft focused on the concepts of the United States and of Japan with respect to
international relations and the character of nations; the attitudes of both Governments
toward the European War; the relations of both nations toward the China affair; naval,
aerial, and mercantile marine relations in the Pacific; commerce between both nations and
their financial cooperation; economic activity of both nations in the Southwestern Pacific
area; and the policies of both nations affecting political stabilization in the Pacific.122
Before their meeting, Ambassador Nomura had meetings with Secretary of State Hull
on March 8 and with President Roosevelt on March 14 to support the plan by the John Doe
Associates.123 The environment around the plan toward the plenipotentiary conference
between the leaders of the two nations seemed hopeful especially in the United States as
the John Doe Associates observed the reactions by Roosevelt and Hull. However, their
concern was on the Japanese side, specifically on the possible objection against the plan by
Minister of Foreign Affairs Matsuoka. Drought’s memorandum on May 1 begins with the
statement that Prince Konoye must refer the resignation of Matsuoka to the Emperor. The
memo continues that an open cable was sent to Premier Konoye to be advised that
“Matsuoka should cooperate with the rest of the Government and cease acting out of
vanity.” He also noted that the emperor had officially been informed of the
“Understanding” and that the “Super Cabinet” in Tokyo discussed and approved the
proposed “Understanding” on May 3. Since the Army and Navy of Japan as well as Baron
Hiranuma (Kiichiro, former Prime Minister) cabled the States that their position regarding
122
123
Ito, Ikawa Tadao, 239-245.
Ibid., 239-245.
166
the “Understanding” remained completely unchanged, Drought believed that the Japanese
in Washington were thoroughly confident that the “Understanding” would be approved.
He understood that all could carry on favorably but for Matsuoka.124 The John Doe
Associates had some other enemies among diplomats on both shores of the Pacific--not
only Ikawa from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but also Drought received clear
criticism from the Department of State. Those powers against the John Doe Associates
procrastinated over the execution of the conference while this maneuvering and supports
for it from various sources delayed the opening of the Pacific War.125
The plenipotentiary conference was held nowhere. Through the arrangements
between the United States and Japan on revisions of the “Understanding,” the perception
gaps became clear specifically in terms of the American involvement in the peace in China
with Japan in which the Japanese government demanded more concessions from the
United States than in the original “Understanding.” Against the proposed revision by Japan
on May 12, Hull “began suspecting” the Japanese were not pursuing a political solution.
This suspicion caused Hull to order a bureaucratic examination of the “Understanding” by
the staff of the Department of State. Ikawa later regretted that this reaction by Hull
disclosed the peace efforts by the John Doe Associates to the staff of the State Department
who had been kept in the dark about the talks. They resented those amateurs who had
secretly worked on those diplomatic affairs. Soon, Hull contacted Nomura that they would
terminate further negotiations with Japan about the “Understanding.”126 In Japan as well,
124
Drought Memo, 1 May 1941. Drought papers: Box 9, Folder 13, MMA.
Butow, The John Doe Associates, 14-17.
126
“Ikawa’s Memoir: Collapse of the negotiations,” Ito, Ikawa Tadao, 432-433.
125
167
the pressure by the political powers around Matsuoka against Premier Konoye and
Ambassador Nomura rose. Ikawa analyzed that the Department of State at this time
concluded by terminating the talks for peace efforts since it continuously received
information on strengthened relations between Germany and Japan through the channel of
Matsuoka.127
Besides those reasons behind the scenes, the direct cause of the breakdown of the
negotiation is considered Japan’s invasion of French Indochina in July 1941. In reaction to
Japan’s invasion, Roosevelt ordered all Japanese assets frozen, suspension of all trade with
Japan, and an oil embargo against Japan to be imposed. Ikawa and Iwakuro left the States
for Japan. In an atmosphere of anticipation over the Pacific war on both shores in August
1941, Walker and Drought still continued to collect information on Roosevelt’s will to
have a conference with Konoye while informing Ikawa that the president wrote to
Ambassador Nomura that he would be ready to start the negotiations again and to have a
conference with the Japanese Prime Minister. This time, Konoye strongly expected the
conference with Roosevelt.128
Through the end of August, Bishop Walsh in Kyoto and Ikawa worked in Japan
while discussing with Drought and Walker through a number of telegrams. Receiving a
wire from Drought to report on what Walker was discussing with Roosevelt for the
conference, Ikawa had a meeting, which ran for three days, with Prince Konoye and his
personal staff in preparing for the conference. Bishop Walsh wired Roosevelt, and Ikawa
127
128
Ibid.
“Ikawa’s Memoir: After Returning to Japan until the Opening of the War,” Ibid., 460-472.
168
wired Hull respectively to let them know about the enthusiasm of Konoye on the
conference.129
The work environment for Drought, however, seemed to drastically change in a few
days after these communications. Drought wired Bishop Walsh on August 31, “VERY
SORRY ADDITIONAL COMUNICATIONS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE EXCEPT
THROUGH PROPER PERSONS.”130 On September 11, another wire from Drought says
“NO NEED PAUL [Ikawa] RETURNING.”131 After the reception of these telegrams from
Drought, the John Doe Associates in Japan tried to seek a way to continue the maneuvering
for the conference. Although Bishop Walsh tried to fly to Washington for further
negotiations, Drought stopped it. On October 2, Drought’s telegram says “I AM NO
LONGER CONSULTED STOP SUGGESTION SHOULD BE MADE THROUGH
JOSEPH [Grew. US Ambassador to Japan].”132 The suspicion against Drought by the
Department of State seemed to be extremely heightened at this point. It was no longer
possible for Drought to work through this unofficial diplomatic channel toward the
conference of the leaders of both countries as a member of the John Doe Associates. On
November 26, the day the Hull Note--officially Outline Proposed Basis for Agreement
between the United States and Japan--was delivered to Japan as the final proposal before
the Pacific War broke out, Drought left Washington for New York.133
129
Telegrams from Walsh to Roosevelt, 29 August 1946; from Ikawa to Hull, 29 August
1946, Ibid., 336-337.
130
Telegram from Drought to Walsh, 31 August 1946, Ibid., 338-339.
131
Telegram from Drought to Walsh, 11 September 1946, Ibid., 340-341.
132
Telegram from Drought to Walsh, 2 October 1946. Drought Papers: Box 10, Folder 3,
MMA.
133
Butow, The John Doe Associates, 302-309.
169
On December 7, 1941, the Pacific War broke out with the attack on Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii by the Japanese Imperial Navy. The peace efforts of the John Doe Associates did
not succeed, although the contacts between Bishop Walsh and Walker began again in 1945
for another bilateral conference for post-war relations between the United States and Japan.
In the following year, after the war began, Drought wrote to Cordell Hull in a
registered letter which was marked “personal” in order to complain that the Department of
State did not issue him a passport to China.
Some weeks ago, I learned, through the State Department, that my application for a
passport was denied because of my association with the Japanese officials during the
course of the ‘exploratory conversations’ which were carried on from March to
December 1941.
The President and the Secretary of the United States are well aware that it was by
their own encouragement and direct request that I participated so actively in the
successful maneuver of delay, and in the unsuccessful effort for Pacific peace.
Actually, no other citizen of our country accomplished as much; no one else was in a
position to do so, since with the exception of the stupid documents of November and
December 1941, I myself composed most of the communications, as a test of
Japanese good faith, and in an effort to meet the requirements of the President and of
yourself. We even informed you months in advance, and as late as November 15,
1941, of the projected suddenness of the attack.134
After he stopped the communication as a “John Doe,” Drought anticipated the breakout of
the war as early as mid-November. While seeking a more personal effort for peace with
Japan, he quickly turned to Maryknoll’s own mission within the country which had been
significantly involved in peaceful relations with the Japanese. Drought needed to arrange
their missions on the West Coast for emergencies. He anticipated “the projected
134
Registered letter from Drought to Hull, 23 July 1942. Drought Papers: Box 10, Folder 2,
MMA.
170
suddenness of the attack.” He also anticipated the drastic change in the environment
surrounding their missions in Seattle and Los Angeles.
Chapter Four: New Mission in the Foreign Land at Home
The worst has happened, and we feel a special sympathy and solicitude for you and
your flock in the incidental problems and difficulties that may follow in its turn. We
want you to know that we are deeply conscious of the natural embarrassment in
which your good people will now find themselves, and we are anxious to take every
possible means of aiding you and them in this period.
The true story of this happening will never be fully understood by the people of
either nation, for the real causes go back to conflicting policies that seemed right to
both sides. There was a mutual desire for peace, and there were earnest - even
desperate - efforts to make peace. But it is a fatality of the present situation that the
failure to make peace means war, since no nation can safely stand still today, as
would be possible in normal times…
… it is very probable that the extremist fringe will agitate and cause embarrassment,
just as the same fringe in the Japanese Empire will agitate against our missioners.
During this first period, therefore, you can do a lot for your people by acting as the
calming influence…
I realize that advice of this kind is adding very little practical help in the problems
you and your people have to face, but at least we want you to know that we are aware
of your difficulties, and that we stand ready to help and support you in solving them.1
(Letter from James E. Walsh, Superior General to
Leopold Tibesar, M.M. and Hugh Lavery, M.M.
12 December 1941.)
On December 7 (December 8 in Asian time zones), 1941, Japan attacked United States
and British bases in Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific nearly simultaneously. Among
them, there was an unannounced attack against the U.S. Naval Base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
on the morning of the same date. While it was intended as a preventive attack to keep the
U.S. Pacific Fleet away from influencing the war which Japan was planning in Southeast
1
Personal and Confidential Letter from James E. Walsh to Leopold Tibesar. 12 December
1941. Development House Collection, Seattle: Box 33, Folder 4, Maryknoll Mission
Archives (MMA). Same letter was sent to Hugh Lavery on the same day. MFBA (Maryknoll
Fathers and Brothers Archives) Development House Collection, Los Angeles: Box 12, Folder
4, MMA.
171
172
Asia against Britain, the Netherlands, as well as the United States in the Philippine Islands, it
resulted in the U.S. entry into the war. The Pacific War broke out.
A night after a quiet retreat day of December 6, the Maryknoll sisters in Los Angeles
heard the news of the Japanese attacks from their colleague over the phone and “prayed
fervently that our Sisters would be safe and our work with the Japanese here would not be
handicapped.”2 In Seattle, the sisters listened to the radio during the day and anticipated the
declaration of war on the next day, December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
They heard the news of the formal declaration of war between the United States and Japan in
literal darkness—the black-out of the electricity which continued for three nights beginning
on December 8, 1941. Until the school closed for the Christmas holiday, the Maryknoll
missionaries in Seattle made all efforts to open school everyday although the school bus was
often delayed.3 Although trying to maintain life as usual, both of the missions received many
Japanese visits in anxiety for the following weeks. Also, several groups of Japanese in the
missions held meetings to discuss surviving the most intense situation of life on the West
Coast ever.
Later that week and the following week, on the 12th and the 16th of December, two
groups were organized in Seattle. The first was conducted by the Japanese American
Citizens League (JACL) for planning about organizing the second generation Japanese under
the civilian defense program. Alumni and sodality officers of the Maryknoll mission in
Seattle represented the group at the meeting. On the next night, the alumni of the school met
2
Maryknoll Convent Diary, Los Angeles, 6 [sic.] December 1941. MSA (Maryknoll Sisters
Archives) Collection, MMA.
3
Maryknoll Seattle Diary, 7 December 1941. MSA Collection, MMA.
173
to form their plans in conjunction with the plans made “to take an active part in civilian
defense.” Eighty-five members were present and heard the vice-president of the JACL in his
urgent appeal to them “to do all they possibly could to prove their loyalty to the land of their
birth.” All the members there signed up and were more than eager to do their part.4
The latter was another defense rally that met in the Maryknoll school hall.
Representatives from all Japanese clubs and churches in the area came to pledge their
allegiance. James Sakamoto was appointed as the chairman and “many prominent American
citizens, judges, etc. expressed their faith in the second generation Japanese.”5 Jimmie
Sakamoto had been also the second president of the Japanese American Citizens League.
The Japanese American Citizens League quickly reacted in Los Angeles, too.
Immediately after the war broke out, the Southern District Council of JACL organized the
Anti-Axis Committee to “meet the critical problems created by this war, and to mobilize and
coordinate the efforts of citizens so that they may do their utmost to help America win the
war.” On the date of December 12, 1941, they sent letters to ask American citizens in
various fields to take leadership roles in the relationship with Japanese to serve on the
Advisory Board of this committee. Hugh Lavery received one of those letters. The letter
also states: “[w]e are also supervising the activities of our alien Japanese so that they may
use their maximum energy toward the governments war effort.”6 Lavery asked the General
Council to comply with this request. Instead of himself, Lavery recommended Father
Francis J. Caffrey for this post. Caffrey was newly assigned to the Los Angeles mission and
4
Maryknoll Seattle Diary, 12 December 1941. MSA Collection, MMA.
Maryknoll Seattle Diary, 16 December 1941. MSA Collection, MMA.
6
Letter from Fred Tayama to Hugh Lavery, 12 Devember 1941. MFBA Development House
Collection, Los Angeles: Box 12, Folder 4, MMA.
5
174
it would be necessary to have a stronger connection with the Japanese work promptly. The
Council agreed with Lavery’s suggestion.7
Lavery had become interested in the JACL shortly before this time. Founded in 1929,
including a Seattle-born James Sakamoto as one of the founders, the group addressed issues
of discrimination which were targeted specifically at persons of Japanese ancestry. It fought
for the civil rights of Japanese Americans led by Nisei (the second generation) Japanese
Americans. On the other hand, it stressed that their Nisei fellows be loyal to the American
government. Lavery recognized that they would fight not only for their generation who had
been legally limited in pursuing their rights on the West Coast despite their American
citizenship, but also for the generation of their parents who had been categorized as “aliens
ineligible for citizenship.” While there had already been over one hundred statutes which
limited the civil rights of the Japanese on the coast, both the JACL and Lavery considered
that the fragile legal status of the immigrants must be corrected. For religious purposes,
Lavery thought it extremely important since the Maryknoll missions would survive in
successful conversions of Issei (the generation of immigrants). He shared this perspective
with the late superior general, James A. Walsh, who observed that the Nisei and the
following generation after becoming fully Americanized would not need their mission in
future. For Nisei as well, many of whom reached the age they left their parents in the
beginning of the 1940s, the legal status of their parents became a source of concern and they
were expected to fight for those legal rights. The issue of the Issei was critical for both
7
Letter from Lavery to Bishop James E. Walsh, Superior General, 13 December 1941;
Letter from Bishop Walsh to Lavery, 16 December 1941. MFBA Development House
Collection, Los Angeles: Box 12, Folder 4, MMA.
175
Maryknoll and the JACL. Lavery suggested to Drought, the Vicar General, that Maryknoll
should nurture a good relationship with this group.8
The JACL included numbers of alumni of Maryknoll schools both in Los Angeles and
Seattle among its influential members. Although it was a political organization for the civil
rights for a minority group, it seemed to have a great affinity for the principles of the
Maryknoll missions. Both of them embraced egalitarianism and loyalty. Maryknoll’s school
pamphlet proudly stated that they had educated Japanese children as good American citizens
while teaching cultures of both the United States and Japan. Children knew that they were
sent to the school because their parents thought this principle was ideal for the Japanese
families in the United States. They nurtured loyalty to both God and to the nation. This
aspect was specifically emphasized at Maryknoll missions compared to the Divine Word
mission in San Francisco where the missioners were not American citizens.
On the other hand, all the missionaries stressed the equality in Christian love to the
children who had been under the pressure of ethnic discrimination. Many of those Japanese
who believed that American democracy should protect their rights joined the Japanese
American Citizens League. While embracing egalitarianism, they also showed strong loyalty
to the nation and its government. They wished to fight as a group in unity. It is also
noteworthy that most Maryknoll graduates did not have a Japanese education in Japan, but
only in the United States.
8
Letter from Lavery to Sam (a member of JACL and alumnus of Maryknoll School in Los
Angeles), 27 October 1941; Letter from Lavery to Drought, 4 November 1941. MFBA
Development House Collection, Los Angeles: Box 12, Folder 4, MMA.
176
There were alumni who did not like their thoughts of egalitarianism to be tied with
political methods. Those alumni did not join the league. Nevertheless, this affinity between
Maryknoll’s education and the JACL’s nature exposed that a large part of the Nisei within
the Maryknoll’s mission communities sided as pro-American during the wartime when the
Nisei were harshly divided between pro-American and anti-American/pro-Japanese. This
conflict was carried into the internment camps and their history after the war. At Maryknoll
missions, those Nisei, who grew up as American citizens not only legally but also fully in
their spirits, were the fruits of “home missions” which the missionaries like Lavery and
Leopold Tibesar wisely split from “foreign missions” of their parents’ generation. This
tendency of the mission to Americanize Nisei was also what the first group of Maryknoll
missioners such as William Kress seeded in their schools in the 1920s.
Large numbers of Nisei lost their jobs within a month after the beginning of the war.
Those who had worked for the city’s civil services in Los Angeles were unemployed by the
end of the second week after the declaration of war. In the midst of anxiety of the Japanese
people in their own communities, Maryknoll missionaries tried to seek ways to use the
environment positively for their missions. In the letter of December 13, Lavery wrote Bishop
Walsh, superior general of Maryknoll, that he had no intention to close the school. There
was no change in the school program either. St. Francis Xavier School in Los Angeles
continued Japanese language education. Since all the Japanese language schools in Los
Angeles had closed “as a precautionary measure” by the time he wrote to the superior
general, Lavery expected the preservation of this program would had even more significant
meaning for the Japanese families in the neighborhood. In order to maintain the school as
177
usual, Lavery consulted with the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles. Lavery confirmed that this
official appreciated the mission work by Maryknoll in Los Angeles and agreed that it should
be the last thing for Maryknoll missionaries to think about closing the school.9
On the other hand, both Lavery and Tibesar tried to maintain good connections with the
FBI. Both of them had “good Catholic friends” among their agents. It was fortunate for
those missionaries to find that many of the agents were Catholics and graduates of Catholic
colleges in the East. Lavery found that two of the staff had been married in the Maryknoll
church in Los Angeles. The communities in Los Angeles and Seattle strongly expected that
the FBI would advise the missionaries as how to best proceed with their Japanese people.
Sisters’ diaries stated that several Maryknoll friends were arrested after the breakout of the
war.10 Similar to the case which later became known as the case of Gordon Hirabayashi
against the United States, young leaders in the Japanese communities were detained as they
allegedly broke the curfew. Other arrestees included Issei who had no citizenship in the
United States. In December 1941, “[q]uite a number of parents and near relatives of [the
children at Maryknoll] were among those taken to the Camp in Montana to remain there until
the war [was] over for safe custody.”11
Since the summer of 1941, the U.S. government had solicited Maryknoll several times
to introduce any Japanese speakers to work for them in translation. Before the war began,
9
Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 13 December 1941. MFBA, Development House
Collection, Los Angeles: Box 12 Folder 4, MMA; Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 27
January 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection,
MMA.
10
Maryknoll Convent Diaries, Los Angeles; Seattle Diary, December 1941 to February 1942.
MSA Collection, MMA.
11
Maryknoll Children’s Home Diary, 17 December 1941. MSA Collection, MMA.
178
James Drought insisted on never considering rendering any political assistance with any of
the Japanese graduates of the Maryknoll School. The General Council did not approve that
local missionaries would help the FBI with this sort of request.12 When they were asked
again in February 1942 by the United States Army Intelligence, Drought needed to take a
shift to assist the government. Sounded by R. J. Bonner, M.M., who originally received this
request from the Army Intelligence, Drought requested that Lavery provide information
about any Nisei who would manifest his political loyalty to the United States. Drought
believed that Maryknoll School graduates should be responsible for this task as they had
proudly educated “good American citizens” among the young people of Japanese ancestry.
Lavery replied with information about a Nisei, who did not have dual citizenship, but only
US, and had all of his family members including his parents and two siblings in Los Angeles.
At this time, the cooperation with the government became critical for the entire Japanese
communities Maryknoll had covered.13
The Japanese American Citizens League’s reaction was similar to that of Maryknoll.
They stated:
Our Committee [the Anti-Axis Committee] was organized to meet the critical problems
created by this war, and to mobilize and coordinate the efforts of citizens so that they
may do their utmost to help America win the war. We are also supervising the
activities of our alien Japanese so that they may use their maximum energy toward the
governments [sic.] war effort.14
12
Letter from Caffrey to Drought, 23 July 1941; Letter from Drought to Caffrey, 28 July
1941. MFBA Development House Collection, Los Angeles: Box 12, Folder 4, MMA.
13
Letters from R. J. Bonner to Drought, 3, 10 and 21 February 1942; Drought to Lavery, 12
February 1942; Lavery to Drought, 15 February 1942; Drought to Bonner, 19 February 1942.
MFBA Development House Collection, Los Angeles: Box 12, Folder 5, MMA.
14
Letter from Fred Tayama to Lavery, 12 December 1941. MFBA Development House
Collection, Los Angeles: Box12, Folder 4, MMA.
179
For three months after December 7, the group of the Nisei represented by JACL consisted of
a “pro-American” faction while some of the extreme opposite became “anti-American.” This
split, although the causes should be explained by various factors in the pre-war era, became
obvious with the opening of the war between the United States and Japan. Through the 1930,
numbers of Japanese parents sent their Nisei children to their relatives in Japan so that those
boys and girls could have their elementary and middle school education in Japan. Those
Nisei were educated under the education system of the Imperial Japanese government
controlled by the military to enforce strong patriotism. They became pro-Japanese Nisei. On
the other hand, the Nisei who received all of their education in the United States had no
chance to connect with the militaristic education system of Japan. Rather, they nurtured
loyalty to the American government in public schools and private ones like Maryknoll
schools. Kibei, the returnees to the United States from Japan after their education, and Nisei
had thus embraced totally opposite patriotism before the war. Naturally, the Kibei faction
condemned the JACL which sided with the U.S. government even though both of them
shared the thought to protect their Japanese communities in the Pacific Coast region.
Maryknoll tried to maintain the life of the mission quite as usual. Sisters helped the
children celebrate the feast day of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas the same as in
previous years. Some infant baptisms and first holy communions were celebrated as well.
Nevertheless, it was inevitable that the life around the Japanese in their communities began
to gradually change. Many of the Japanese stores were ordered to close. Some of the tuition
checks were returned by the bank. The Japanese were not allowed to draw more than $100 a
month for living expenses. In a month, numbers of young Nisei were unemployed. Lavery
180
had discussions with those Japanese Americans, including forty men who had been in civil
service. A curfew was set for the Japanese and those who broke the curfew as well as those
who were suspected of espionage were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Most
tragically, “Dr. Honda,” an uncle of the Maryknoll school nurse committed suicide by
slashing his wrists after he was held by the FBI. Lavery wrote about the issue of Nisei’s
unemployment to Ossining in his frequent reports of the local situation to the General
Council:
There have been groups of Californians who have for years been doing their utmost in
every way to down the Japanese. They disposed them of every thing possible and are
partly the cause of the war between the two countries. These same people are now
trying to work up the populace to a condition of hysteria against all Japanese. The
masses are opposed to this thing. What the mayor says here is entirely untrue. These
discharged men, all Americans, came to me last evening and told me how they were all
“pressured” into signing papers forcing them to take a leave of absence. Those who
refused to sign were discharged anyhow.15
There was another hardship for the Japanese which was exposed in the publication of a
telegram intercepted by the Department of Defense and published in 1978. It revealed that
the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yosuke Matsuoka, sent a secret telegram on
January 30, 1941 to the Japanese embassy in Washington, in which Matsuoka commanded
the Japanese and Japanese Americans to engage in intelligence activities. Also, Matsuoka
directed the embassy to be very careful so that no Japanese American would face any harm
from the American government. However, this telegram was immediately deciphered by the
U.S. Navy, and the Japanese in the States were subjected to an investigation by the FBI.
James Drought may have known this information when he declined to provide Japanese
15
Letter from Lavery to Walsh, 27 January 1942; Maryknoll Los Angeles Convent Diary;
Children’s Home Diary; Seattle Diary, December 1941, MSA Collection, MMA.
181
graduates of Maryknoll schools to the government’s intelligence work in early 1941.
Although this investigation only disclosed the loyalty (or at worst, passive loyalty) of the
Japanese to the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally agreed to the
evacuation of the Japanese in the West after consultation with General John L. DeWitt, head
of the Western Defense Command and with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.16
Even in the first report to Congress by U.S. Representative John H. Tolan from
California, public sentiment on the West Coast was described that it remained calm a month
after the declaration of war. The same report admits that “public anger towards Japan
following the attack on Pearl Harbor was not extensively nor intensively reflected towards
residents on the Pacific Coast of Japanese extraction.” The Maryknoll General Council
report condemns that it was the press which emphasized the arrests of the Japanese by the
FBI and instigated the hostility of the residents in the West against the Japanese. Although
Owen J. Roberts, an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court became one of only three
who voted against Franklin D. Roosevelt’s orders for Japanese American internment camps
in the case of Korematsu vs. the United States, the fact finding commission which
investigated the attack on Pearl Harbor led by Roberts issued the report on January 25, 1942,
which caused the public opinion to stirred because the impression taken by the Coast public
was “to the effect that considerable Japanese espionage and sabotage preceded and
accompanied the attack.” Later the accusations of sabotage were denied by the FBI and
16
Department of Defense, The “Magic” Background of Pearl Harbor, (Washington, 1978);
Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore , 385-389; United States Commission on Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission
on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (Washington, D.C.: The Commission,
1983), 55, 70-71; Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA; Japanese Americans and
World War II, (New York, 1971), 45-46.
17
responsible Hawaiian authorities.
182
Examining those various cases, therefore, the
governmental accusations against the Japanese were only reactionary hysteria.
On January 29, 1942, U.S. Attorney General Robert H. Jackson announced the decision
to evacuate all enemy aliens, not only Japanese, from “certain strategic areas on the Coast.”
February 24 was set as the deadline for the evacuation. On February 2, 1942, Senator Hiram
Johnson of California called a meeting of all Congressmen and Senators from the three
Pacific Coast states, Washington, Oregon and California, and two committees were formed
as a result. One was to “consider the impregnable defense of the Coast” and the other was
“to deal with enemy alien sabotage in that area.” On February 13, those political leaders of
the three states on the West Coast addressed a letter to the president in order to suggest “the
complete evacuation of all undesirables from the Coast area” and the second committee
submitted a proposal for the removal of all Japanese.18
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066
which commanded the evacuation of the Japanese in the restricted military zone in the
coastal states, based on existing legislation from World War I, including the Sedition Act of
1918. The order gave the War Department the authority to determine defense areas from
which could be removed any person, citizen or not, and charged the War Department with
the execution of this order. On March 18, the President signed another proclamation,
Executive Order 9102 which created the War Relocation Authority, the U.S. civilian agency
responsible for the penetration, relocation, and internment of Japanese Americans. Although
17
Confidential Report to the Maryknoll Council on a Survey of the Japanese Evacuation and
Resettlement in Western States, May 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5,
Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
18
Ibid.
183
Germans and Italians were arrested on an individual basis under the Sedition Act of 1918,
those “enemy aliens” were not mentioned to include foreign-born American citizens. In the
cases of the Germans and the Italians, only non-citizens were the subjects of internment. A
total of 11,507 Germans and about 250 Italians were interned during the war under the
Justice Department’s Enemy Alien Control Program.19 There had been 92,000 Japanese,
315,000 Germans and 695,000 Italians among about the 1,100,000 enemy aliens.20 The
Japanese had a different experience. The Japanese Issei (immigrants) were the subject of
“the aliens ineligible for citizenship.” In addition, their children and grandchildren who were
American citizens were included in this program. As a result, 112,000 Japanese, including
both Issei and American born Nisei were evacuated. Sansei, the third generation, who were
American citizens with no chance of having dual citizenship were also sent to the camps.
The Executive Order was issued based on the recommendation of General John L. DeWitt of
the U.S. Army who reported to President Roosevelt that any sabotage by Japanese Americans
confirmed by the FBI and the military only proved "a disturbing and confirming indication
that such action [would] be taken."21 On March 2, DeWitt himself issued “Military
Proclamation No. 1” which designated the coastal part of the three states of California,
Oregon and Washington as “Military Area No. 1.” DeWitt’s order stated that “any person of
Japanese ancestry, now resident in Military Area No. 1, who changes his place of habitual
residence must file a 'change of residence notice' at his local post office not more than five
19
Tetsuden Kashima, Judgment without trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during
World War II, (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2003), 124.
20
New York Times, 4 January 1942.
21
David Stafford, Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets, (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook
Press, 1999), 151.
22
days nor less than one day prior to moving."
184
A few days later, General DeWitt announced
that the Army had obtained the land near Manzanar, California for construction of “a
reception center” which was expected to be used as “a more permanent resettlement
elsewhere for persons excluded from military areas."23 Most of those lands which the
government acquired for the evacuation program of Japanese Americans had been the
reservations of Native Americans.24 The government’s plan for the evacuation of Japanese
on the West Coast thus proceeded. In examining the FBI investigation of the Japanese,
Ronald Takaki condemns those actions which were enforced as “a military necessity”
because there was no military threat to warrant the establishment of these camps. He stated
that it was a tragedy for both the Japanese and for the U.S. Constitution.25
According to a Maryknoll General Council report, the plan of the evacuation by the
government was not entirely determined immediately after it was issued. The missionaries
knew that the census of 1940 would be used for determining the districts from which the
Japanese would be gradually removed. The local missionaries strongly opposed
indiscriminate, entire evacuation of a minority group which had committed no crime. They
tried to seize opportunities to make their objections known to the government officials. On
the other hand, they also realistically prepared for the government’s action against the
Japanese which they recognized as a result of local antipathy and the national mood.
Drought, Lavery, and Tibesar projected Maryknoll’s own plan based on free-will in order to
22
"Army To Ban Aliens From Coast," Oakland Tribune, 3 March 1942.
"Army Takes Over Jap Center Site," Oakland Tribune, 8 March 1942.
24
Letter from Tibesar to Bishop Walsh, 24 March 1942. MFBA Development House
Collection, Seattle: Box 32, Folder 1, MMA.
25
Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 392.
23
185
control an exodus of Catholics and sympathizers to some acceptable inland location—a
voluntary evacuation program.
Maryknoll missionaries compiled an occupational census of adult Japanese to be used
as an aid to “intelligent resettlement.” As a result, about 23,000 Japanese in Los Angeles
signed up. It was practically the entire adult population of this area. During February 1942,
the missionaries gave no assurance about whether the plan would be used for employment or
resettlement. Most of signers, however, naturally appeared at Maryknoll while expecting the
voluntary registration for relocation.26 On March 3, Drought endorsed what Lavery began in
Los Angeles. Drought wrote:
Council has already communicated to you its desire that you not only do what you can
do under the law for the assistance of your people, but that, if possible, you should
accompany them into what will be their exile. We are completely satisfied that you can
do nothing to affect the national policy, the determination of which is entirely within
the competence of the civil and military authorities of the country. But in the working
out of that policy it would appear that there is very much that we can do.27
Drought was delighted with a variety of Lavery’s ideas which had been suggested to the
General Council since the war broke out. Although Drought was once devastated by the
political conditions between the two nations, Lavery’s advice encouraged him to work again
for the Japanese in the United States in their Catholic missionary capacity as Drought held
much “hope” for the post-war peace relations between the two nations. Drought worked hard
while contacting the local hierarchy in order for those local bishops to let the newly
established War Relocation Authority permit the voluntary relocation assisted by the
Maryknoll missionaries. Drought and Bishop James E. Walsh, former “John Does,” showed
26
Galen M. Fisher, “Our Japanese Refugees” The Christian Century, 1 April 1942: 424-427.
Letter from Drought to Lavery, 3 March 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany:
Folder 5, Box 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
27
186
continuing concern for all factors, including the nation’s law, the local hierarchy, the
evacuees, and Maryknoll’s place in American society in these evacuation issues. They tried
to be realistic about facing a number of issues in the war.28
Bishop Walsh sent Tibesar a telegram on March 5 and encouraged both Tibesar and
Lavery to assist the Japanese to their utmost capability which the General Council in
Maryknoll had approved.29 The General Council, most specifically Bishop Walsh and
Drought, became strong supporters of the evacuation plan which Lavery proposed. They
endorsed that the team of local missionaries would take the initiative of each plan for the
Japanese on the West Coast under the guidance and approval of the local ordinaries. The
volunteer evacuation plan, especially guided by the strong leadership of Father Lavery in Los
Angeles was originally a scheme suggested by Brother Theophane Walsh who had been a
longtime friend of the Japanese in the Maryknoll mission in Los Angeles. Starting as a
school bus driver in 1923, he became an indispensable figure within the mission specifically
as a leader of the societies for Japanese youths, such as a Boy Scout troop and the Catholic
Youth Organization. Everyone in the Maryknoll Japanese community and the people around
Maryknoll knew him. Brother Theophane, even before the evacuation was officially
proclaimed, felt convinced that evacuation would be more serious than a rumor. He asked
Lavery to let him make a survey among the Maryknoll alumni and school parents “to see just
how many would be willing to voluntarily evacuate under [Maryknoll’s] leadership.” He
stated that their word was quickly passed among the Japanese “in true Oriental fashion” that
28
“The Question of Japanese-American Internment” Maryknoll News, November 1981: 5.
Telegram from Bishop Walsh to Tibesar, 5 March 1942. General Council Topical
Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
29
187
they were undertaking such a survey for the people around the Maryknoll mission. Soon
after that, as Lavery requested and for which the superior general gave a direct sanction, the
survey which Brother Theophane began was broadly expanded so that “any Japanese who
wished to enroll” should be included. With the result of the survey, they contacted the Tolan
Committee. Brother Theophane saw a member of the committee to obtain suggestions
because the Maryknoll missionaries in Los Angeles believed almost all of the people who
responded to the survey wanted to go with them.30
The Maryknoll Sisters also wrote about the survey. On the night of March 3, 1942, a
large meeting of the Japanese people was held at the Maryknoll School to decide how many
would like to evacuate in a group under Maryknoll leadership. On the next day, the sisters
discovered that all the Japanese in Los Angeles and in every other city within a radius of 50
miles wanted to go register with the Maryknoll group.31
General John L. DeWitt of the War Relocation Authority officially permitted this
voluntary colonization and Maryknoll’s St. Francis Xavier School became an official center
of the registration for the relocation of the Japanese residents in Los Angeles. Recognizing
that Maryknoll had those statistics, the army officials asked the missionaries to help them in
obtaining over 1,000 volunteers for the initial work at Owens Valley Evacuation Center.
Immediately after they agreed, Maryknoll began to take registrations for those who wished to
work there. The first group of the registrants included twenty-one young women who would
30
Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 27 January 1942; Drought to Lavery, 30 January 1942;
Theophane Walsh to McCarthy, 19 April 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5,
Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
31
Los Angeles, Maryknoll Sisters’ Diary, 3 and 4 March 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
188
work as stenographers, nurses, and female doctors. Others would be carpenters, cooks,
waiters, and cabin staff.32
In mid-April 1942, the War Relocation Authority built the Santa Anita Reception
Center in Arcadia, California which was used for a temporary camp for the Japanese
residents in Los Angeles before the more permanent camp was prepared for the large
population in Owens Valley. There were already 5,000 Japanese people who had moved
earlier than most of the other Japanese. Maryknoll priests, brothers and sisters made the 240mile journey each way to Arcadia for Mass every Saturday and Sunday for the residents in
Santa Anita. Since there was no entertainment specifically in this very first period of the
evacuation to the temporary center, Maryknoll also arranged a showing of motion pictures.
Some of the congregation of the Japanese Catholic Center in Los Angeles in 2008
remembered that they hung a huge cloth outside in the camp and they projected the movie on
that cloth. One of the residents, Asami Kawachi, wrote a letter of appreciation addressed to
Caffrey, specifically for much younger children since the pictures Maryknoll prepared
included “the cartoon of Oswald Rabbit and the Indians.” The people who joined in this
appreciation were not only the Japanese Catholics who were granted spiritual assistance but
also Japanese with various backgrounds who received cultural and emotional assistance
when they were deeply anxious at the beginning of the encampment.33
32
Confidential Report to the Maryknoll Council on a Survey of the Japanese Evacuation and
Resettlement in Western States, May 1942; Theophane Walsh to McCarthy, 19 April 1942.
33
Letter from Lavery to Drought, 34 April 1942; Letter from Asami Kawachi, Santa Anita
Assembly Center, 27 April 1942; Interview with the members of Fujinkai [Women’s Club] at
the Japanese Catholic Center in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, September 2008.
189
When the registration officially began for most of the residents in Los Angeles, Brother
Theophane practically arranged all of the work of registration in the auditorium of the
Maryknoll School. He arranged the system of documents, files, and desks so that the work
would flow smoothly. For this registration work, Maryknoll had about fifty young men and
women working voluntarily along with Brother Theophane and the Maryknoll sisters “at top
speed in order that this first movement would be successful.”
Toward the end, just before the departure, we worked 48 hours with less than three
hours sleep. In 96 hours some of us had only 9 hours sleep. But I have never seen
such willingness, and cheerful cooperation from any group than that shown by these
young people, who were anxious to show the army officials that they were willing and
eager to cooperate with them in this, if it would help in some small way toward
National defense.34
While Brother Theophane praised their assistance, he also lamented that those youngsters
were never adequately appreciated publicly because the local papers opposed the Maryknoll
project of voluntary evacuation. The very first group of eighty-six left the schoolyard for
Owens Valley by bus. Brother Theophane admired the army officers and men in charge of
the departure of those initial groups of evacuation in that they “were splendid in their
treatment of the people under care” and that they were the “cream of the crop.” For the first
Holy Week and Easter after the war broke out, Maryknoll missionaries traveled to Owens
Valley. Lavery and Brother Theophane were there for Palm Sunday and Clement went for
Easter Sunday.35
Maryknoll decided that their voluntary evacuation program should be operated under
the government’s program and should include non-Catholics as much as possible. In the
34
35
Theophane Walsh to McCarthy, 19 April 1942.
Ibid.
190
initial confusion, Tibesar had proposed a plan “to have the Government help the people get
back as far as the mid West [where was] a large Catholic population [and] many of German
ancestry.” He specifically suggested that St. Louis would be the best place for this plan.
John Martin, a Maryknoll missionary in St. Louis replied to Tibesar that there was “no
general public animosity” and “local ordinary would be sympathetic.” Although Drought
admitted that Tibesar’s plan would work well for a Catholic group of Japanese, it should be
concerned that the Germans in St. Louis might be affected in that they were forming “a
block” with another ethnic group of enemy aliens.36
There was another reason why the General Council of Maryknoll did not approve
Maryknoll’s own colonization program by Tibesar. Bishop Walsh and Drought were asked
by Lavery and Tibesar to advise whether the General Council would permit them to include
non-Catholic Japanese in their evacuation project. They reported that there had been more
than 10,000 in Los Angeles and 1,000 in Seattle who expected Maryknoll missionaries to
accompany them. In Los Angeles, the report indicated there had been 540 Catholic Japanese
besides this number. Maryknoll in Ossining certainly liked to have all of those “pagans” who
requested the missionaries to accompany them. They expected those reported numbers would
have an impact on their work and it would be helpful when Maryknoll requested the War
Relocation Authority to approve them for their activities based on spiritual assistance for the
people in the camps. The number in Los Angeles increased to 15,000 when Maryknoll
submitted the request to W.R.A. regarding their activities within the internment camps. The
36
Letter from Tibersar to Thomas V. Kiernan, 24 February 1942; Telegram from John
Martin, M.M., to Tibesar, 16 February 1942; Drought to Tibesar, 3 March 1942. General
Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
191
voluntary relocation program potentially had the largest ever opportunity of the Japanese
mission. Drought stated in the letter to Caffrey, “Certainly it is a unique opportunity to
manifest our solicitude for them in their serious trouble.”37
Therefore, the General Council determined the two principles that Maryknoll would
cooperate in a government plan and not operate a colonization plan of their own and that they
would seek to help “the maximum number of Japanese people, Catholic, pagans, and all
sorts, alike.” 38
We have given careful consideration and must instruct you both [Tibesar and Lavery]
sponsor maximum number all sorts of people in your plan accompany evacuees as all
alike need our help and we must not withhold it. Make plain we undertake no financial
responsibility which must be supplied by government and/or people themselves. With
this precaution no reason to restrict numbers you sponsor and register to accompany
you. Advisable Bishop [local ordinary] suggest your name government authorities for
some official position sponsorship these refugees. You then cooperating government
plan in that capacity. If any colonization plan of our own has been projected we do not
favor. Cannot envisage details like finding place running settlement creating work
financing. Please understand our desire is accompany all as spiritual director under
government plan not operate separate plan. We realize your people may object some
government plan details feel better under your complete charge but we cannot attempt
colony of our own.39
While they were enthusiastic in their voluntary evacuation plan, Maryknoll tried to be modest
and very careful not only with the government but also with the local ordinaries. Bishop
Walsh and Drought repeatedly advised the local missionaries to have approval from their
37
Letter from Tibesar to Martin, 20 February 1942; Letter from Tibesar to Bishop Walsh, 5
March 1942; Telegram from Bishop Walsh to Lavery, 3 March 1942; Council Memo
addressed to Dillon Meyer of War Relocation Authority; Letter from Drought to Caffrey, 13
March 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection,
MMA.
38
Letter from Bishop Walsh to Lavery, 5 Marcy 1942.
39
Telegram from Bishop Walsh to Tibesar, 5 March 1942. General Council Topical
Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
192
archbishop or bishop in their work so that all of their activities would be visible under the
hierarchy.40 Through the frequent communication with the archdiocese, Lavery advised
Archbishop Cantwell to apply to the Government to get Lavery officially appointed to
accompany the Japanese and act as their spiritual sponsor. Cantwell fully approved his offer
to accompany them. The General Council recognized that the evacuation would include the
children and consequently St. Francis Xavier School in Los Angeles would be closed upon
their removal from the city.41 Bishop Shaughnessy of Seattle, too, granted approval to
Tibesar, who planned to accompany the Japanese in Seattle to Camp Minidoka in Hunt,
Idaho, wrote that he fully sympathized with those missionaries to the Japanese and would
support them in this capacity.
While working for the Japanese communities in Los Angeles and Seattle, Maryknoll
missionaries were concerned about the other mission on the West Coast--San Francisco.
Since both of the priests of the Society of the Divine Word, William Stoecke and John
Zimmerman, were not American citizens, but Germans, they were unable to support the
Japanese fully with the government in the same way as the Maryknoll missionaries had tried
to do. The members of the Daughters of Mary and Joseph who assisted those Divine Word
priests were Irish with no US citizenship. In this initial phase when there was anxiety that no
40
Letter from Drought to Caffrey, 17 February 1942; Telegram from Drought to Lavery, 28
February 1942; Telegram from Bishop Walsh to Tibesar, 5 March 1942; etc.
41
Memorandum written by Bishop Walsh, 5 March 1942.
193
one would be able to provide spiritual support while accompanying the Japanese Catholic
community in San Francisco, Maryknoll tried to include this group within their mission.42
Archbishop Mitty of San Franciso also recognized this problem. Consequently, he
made Father James T. O’Dowd, Superintendent of Schools of the Archdiocese of San
Francisco, responsible for the San Francisco Japanese mission in this emergency and had
given him complete authority to speak for him and the priests of the Society of the Divine
Word. O’Dowd was also named as liaison by the National Catholic Welfare Council for the
work of the Japanese evacuation on the Pacific Coast with those missionaries. Recognizing
that Stoecke and Zimmerman, along with the women religious of Daughters of Mary and
Joseph, desired to work for the Japanese and to reside within the camp to help them, O’Dowd
tried to stress the importance of the work of the Japanese school to the government officials.
The local missionaries trusted him as a fine negotiator as he had had good experience in
dealing with Protestant and civil officials. Archbishop Mitty described O’Dowd as “able and
a fighter.” O’Dowd began acting as liaison officer with the War Relocation Authority “in so
far as the Catholic interests of the Japanese [were] concerned” in late March or early April of
1942.43
In late April when the evacuation began and was gradually proceeding, O’Dowd
reported to Caffrey in the Los Angeles mission about the agreements in the discussions with
42
Confidential Report to the Maryknoll Council on a Survey of the Japanese Evacuation and
Resettlement in Western States, May 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5,
Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
43
The first draft of the Confidential Report to the Maryknoll Council on a Survey of the
Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement in Western States. n.d.; Letter from James T.
O’Dowd to Caffrey, received on 29 April 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5,
Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA. Letter from John J. Considine, M.M., to Tibesar, 17
June 1943. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 4, MFBA Collection, MMA.
194
E.R. Fryer, Regional Director of the War Relocation Authority along with Colonel Haas of
the U.S. Army and Harvey Coverly, Assistant Regional Director of WRA. Under the
responsibility of O’Dowd, there were more than 2,000 Japanese who registered to migrate
with Stoecke although they submitted the names of 246 people as Catholics due to the gap in
the numbers between Catholics and non-Catholics. The first issue which O’Dowd confirmed
with those officials was that “[t]he War Relocation authority wishe[d] to conserve normal
family life of the Japanese people” and “that in the evacuation program, family groups
[would] not be separated.” This first line had been specifically considered by all the
missionaries who took charge of the registration of the Japanese for evacuation. The WRA
representatives told O’Dowd that they were trying to transfer the Japanese people while
maintaining them as normal as possible. Therefore, Japanese people of certain regions would
remain together in the reception center and in the final evacuation settlement in order to
continue the religious, educational and social life normally. The issues concerning the
schools were not determined yet. O’Dowd tried to persuade the WRA to establish the
Morning Star School in the center designated for the Japanese of San Francisco, but he
received no exact answer. It was the same reaction to the Maryknoll missioners who had
desired to continue their schools of Los Angeles and Seattle in the camps. 44
The mass relocation order was finally announced at the very end of April. It was
posted as: “Pursuant to the provisions of Civilian Exclusion Order No. 27 / this
Headquarters, dated April 30, 1942 / all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and nonalien / will be evacuated from the above area by 12 o’clock noon, P.W.T., Thursday May 7,
44
Letter from O’Dowd to Caffrey, received on 29 April 1942.
45
1942.”
195
Through the repeated postponements of the evacuation, the Japanese communities
had tried to be prepared for this moment. Since the middle of March when Lavery was told
that the Japanese evacuees would be permitted to carry only limited belongings, he arranged
for the school to be used as storage for those Japanese evacuees after receiving the superior
general’s approval. Anticipating the school’s closing in Los Angeles with the evacuation of
the Japanese children, the missionaries held the property of the Japanese in the school
buildings. The school in Seattle where the Filipino students remained became partly used as
storage. 46 It was a relief for those who were able to have a space for their property in those
schools since most of the Japanese lost their belongings while they were in the camps. The
evacuees were allowed to carry only two pieces of luggage with them into the assembly
centers. While there were some people who had Euro-American friends in their
neighborhood who offered to hold their property, most of the Japanese who did not have such
connections with their neighbors had to give up.47
For the Maryknoll community in Los Angeles, the date of the departure was May 16,
1942. The Maryknoll diaries stated:
We witnessed a real exodus from this house this morning. We had rising at 4:30 with
Mass at five, so that both Communities might attend . . . Father Swift gave a nice little
talk to the two Sisters (Srs. Susanna Hayashi and Bernadette Yoshimachi) telling them
that this was a new mission to which they were going and that their prayers and good
example would do much good among the people at the Camp. . . The house seemed
like the “Deserted Village” when we returned home from the station.48
45
Commission on Wartime Relocation. Personal Justice Denied, 111.
Letter from Tibesar to Bishop Walsh, 28 March 1942; Telegram from Lavery to Bishop
Walsh, 17 March 1942; Telegram from Bishop Walsh to Lavery, 20 March 1942. General
Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 11, MFBA Collection, MMA.
47
Interview with Mrs. Chie Tsukamoto and Harry Honda, Los Angeles, CA, September
2008.
48
Los Angeles Sisters Diaries, 16 May 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
46
196
The “exodus” included most of those whom Lavery and the Maryknoll missionaries had
interviewed for registration since early January. Those Japanese people expected at least
that they would not be sent to the camps separated from their families as long as the
registration was done with Maryknoll. Sister Antoinette Yae Ono was one of those who
registered there. She was born and had grown up in San Jose. One sister among her seven
siblings had been baptized a Catholic and lived in Los Angeles when the war began. In early
1942, Yae Ono arrived in Los Angeles so that she would register with her mother and this
Catholic sister.49 It was ten days after Holy Week when Lavery baptized Ono on April 15,
1942, a month before she went to Camp Manzanar with this large group of the Japanese.
Influenced by her elder sister, Mine Ono, Yae had considered conversion for a while.
Anxious about life in the camp where the status of the Catholic mission was yet uncertain for
the laity including the availability of priests, she decided to convert in Los Angeles. Yae
said, “it was a good chance.” The Maryknoll sisters’ diary on the day of her conversion
explained that Yae’s sister was very interested in entering Maryknoll. “But she did not
become a sister,” said Sister Yae. “Mine got married and became a mother.” Although Mine
did not enter any Catholic community, Yae joined Maryknoll from Manzanar in August
1944.50
There were more baptisms in Los Angeles before the evacuation. Lavery baptized
more Japanese people in early 1942 than in each of the previous years. While thirty-four
49
Interviews with Sister Antoinette Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, October 1998 and
September 2008.
50
Interviews with Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, October 1998 and August 2008: Los
Angeles, Maryknoll Sisters’ Diary, 15 April 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
197
Japanese in Los Angeles were baptized in 1940 and thirty in 1942, thirty-five Japanese were
baptized in the first four months of 1942 in Los Angeles before the evacuation was officially
ordered on April 30 and enforced in May.51 Since the baptismal records in Camp Manzanar
and other camps were separated from the Los Angeles records, this record in Los Angeles
held only the names of those baptized before the evacuation. Under extremely unstable
conditions, and worrying when they had to leave the city and the church, these Japanese
naturally chose to convert before evacuation, just as Yae Ono decided. Although there is no
record of the number of baptisms on Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday in early April of
1942, it was the last opportunity for the Japanese to have mass conversions before leaving for
the camps.
Until the evacuation, Lavery was also busy issuing baptismal records to their school
children. Those children had to obtain the records to show that they had English names, even
though their birth record showed only Japanese names. Since the war began, all were
required to have their birth certificates with them at all times for safety’s sake.52
Some boys sought the way to escape evacuation by entering the military. On May 7,
1942, Bobby Uchida, “who not in the least wishes to go to camp,” went out to see if he could
enlist in the Marines. Since his name appears in the convent diary on the evacuation day,
Uchida apparently failed to join the military. On the other hand, several students left Los
Angeles to join the army. It was another option for the Nisei who grew up entirely in the
United States while expressing patriotism for the United States under the program of the
51
Registers at the Maryknoll Japanese Catholic Center (St. Francis Xavier Chapel) in Los
Angeles.
52
Maryknoll Sisters’ Diary, 3 and 4 March 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
198
Maryknoll school. Uchida’s case of failure in not being accepted in the Marines was to be
discussed again within the camps when there were complaints that the Navy did not accept
American citizens with Japanese ancestry.53
Among those people who headed for Camp Manzanar from Los Angeles, there were
two Japanese women religious. In preparation for the relocation, Lavery called three
Japanese sisters to ask their preference. They had the following three options: to be sent to
Ossining, New York which was outside of the military restricted zone and they would be able
to be sponsored by the headquarters of Maryknoll; to go back to Japan; or to go to one of the
camps with their fellow Japanese and provide their services to those people as they had done
in Los Angeles. One of them left for New York because of age and health reasons. The
other younger women religious, Sisters Susanna Hayashi and Bernadette Yoshimachi, then
replied to him with no hesitation that they would go to the camp to offer their spiritual
assistance to their Japanese friends in a camp.54
The Maryknoll Sisters who could not go to the camp with those two Japanese sisters
worked for the orphans in their home before the evacuation began. They did not wait for the
Army orders and tried to send their thirty-three orphans to foster homes outside the West
Coast evacuation zone. They were anxious that those orphans would not be adequately taken
care of under unknown condition without enough women religious. After most of those
children were sent out from the West, only seven of their orphans were sent to Manzanar.55
53
Los Angeles, Maryknoll Convent Diary, 7 May 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
Los Angeles, Maryknoll Convent Diary, May 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
55
Renee Tawa, “Children of the camps.” The Denver Post. 17 April 1997.
54
199
The preparation for the evacuation which the Maryknoll Sisters in Seattle had observed
was almost the same story:
Closing the month, we quote from the editorial in our Catholic paper. . .: ‘Last week we
were privileged to be present at the tenth annual Commencement Exercises of the local
Maryknoll School where the children bade “au revoir” to their Bishop, to their Pastor,
and to their teachers and friends, until they return from an exile which has been forced
upon them by the conditions of a dreadful war. . .’ Since September, we have been
able to adopt eight babies through the Holy Childhood with money contributed by the
pupils. They made their offerings like the children of other Catholic Schools of the
Diocese, and they gave much more money than some of the larger schools. Not once
did they or their teachers say; ‘We have our Missionary work to support, so let us keep
our money for our own missionaries.’ No, they were truly Catholic in their attitude
towards the mission work of the Church, and we know that the hard days ahead will
really be happy for them because they will continue their Catholic spirit of doing and
accepting everything as God’s holy Will.56
Before this note was written in the Sisters’ diary in Seattle in April 1942, the
Maryknoll Sisters had witnessed the school children’s air raids drills, the evacuation of the
husbands of many Maryknoll lay women, as well as the donation of the property of the
Japanese who were evacuated such as Mrs. Shibata’s treasured doll set which was displayed
in every Japanese home on Girls’ Day (March 3 every year) and had been handed down from
generation to generation for the girls of the family. During the Lenten season of 1942, the
Maryknollers in Seattle gradually recognized that the reality of the Japanese evacuation was
approaching. On Easter Sunday, April 3, when the church “was crowded to the doors for
both Masses,” the Maryknoll Sisters saw that there were many strangers and many were old
friends who had not been there in years. They observed that “war and evacuation [had] made
them realize who[m] their best friends [were] and so they [came] to us.” Also, in April, they
gradually closed their programs—the school after the final commencement, the activities of
56
Seattle Maryknoll Diary, April 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
200
the Girl Scouts after their farewell party. Moreover, the Maryknoll Diary tells that there
were a small number of baptisms given almost every two weeks.57
Those Maryknoll sisters in Seattle recognized the lay leadership of the Nisei and wrote
in their diary that on February 28, “[a]n important series of conferences opened . . . in Seattle
regarding the evacuation of the Japanese.” While Tibesar sat in on them but under advice did
not take any active part in it, Jimmy Sakamoto whose Catechetical advisor was Tibesar, was
the only Japanese among them who was happy having a thought that he could take some
significant role in the evacuation as “he [had] many American friends.” Although the
Maryknoll sisters expressed that there was “very little hope” remaining for “our people” in
their diary, Jimmy Sakamoto was expected to take a major role in leading the evacuation.58
When most Japanese around Maryknoll in Seattle finished their registration on April
26, the Maryknoll sisters realized that the camp would be run by the Japanese themselves,
under the direction of Jimmy Sakamoto. Sakamoto had a scheme to start a new city in the
camp with W.R.A. assistance in Eastern Washington. Up to this time, their discouragement
had held out a hope that their Japanese friends would gain many privileges including church
services under the leadership of Sakamoto. They also recognized that Tibesar would be able
to have a pass to go into the camp everyday even though he was not permitted to live within
the camp itself. Tibesar arranged to live at the Catholic rectory in Puyallup which was
“within a few blocks of the encampment.”59
57
Seattle, Maryknoll Diary, From January to April 1942, MSA Collcation, MMA.
Seattle, Maryknoll Diary, 28 February 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
59
Seattle, Maryknoll Diary, 26 April 1942, MSA Collection, MMA; Letter from Tibesar to
Bishop Walsh. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection,
MMA.
58
201
On May 16, on the same day as Jimmy Sakamoto finally left for Camp Minidoka,
Idaho after his work until the last minute, the Maryknoll missionaries in Los Angeles sent
their people to Camp Manzanar in California. More than 12,000 Japanese arrived at
Maryknoll to start together for the camp. The total exodus consisted of 112,000 Japanese.
While anticipating the coming days with no break to work for those Japanese people in this
new mission, Lavery and Tibesar asked Ossining for prayers for their parents. Lavery’s
mother was very ill. Tibesar’s father was eighty-four years old. They thought they might
have no chance to see their parents once they went to those camps with the Japanese.60
The long-awaited evacuation day arrived at last—Saturday, the 16th and Our Lady’s
Day! Rising Bell at 4:25 A.M. Mass at ‘425’ o’clock to allow plenty of time to get to
the train which was supposed to leave from the old Santa Fe station at 6:30. After
wishing Srs. Susanna and Bernadette God-speed on their new adventure and trying our
best to keep holy envy out of our voices and looks, we went over to see the Home
children and Mr. Naide off…
Our Sisters were able to get seats on the train. Only 2,000 were expected to go, but due
to changes of address 10,000 more showed up so all could not be accommodated, and
busses had to be furnished and it was long after 9 o’clock before the train finally
pulled-out for Camp Manzanar.
Truly an epoch-making day for Maryknoll History with two such ideal missionaries’
voluntarily going forth to start a new kind of pioneer life with their own people.
Unlimited possibilities for Evangelization are theirs. Though we are on this side of the
Government Fence and can’t get through to help them, our extra prayers and sacrifices
can.61
The residence of those Japanese-American women religious within the camp provided
several significant opportunities for Maryknoll. Since mid-January of 1942, the General
Council of Maryknoll along with local missionaries (Lavery and Tibesar) and O’Dowd in
San Francisco had repeatedly negotiated with the War Relocation Authority so that the
60
61
Ibid.
Los Angeles, Maryknoll Convent Diary, 16 May 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
202
European/Euro-American priests would be permitted to reside in the camps and that Catholic
schools could be established in each camp where Catholic children lived. These two issues
which were restricted by the War Relocation Authority meant a significant lack of the
ordinary community life for Catholic residents.62
Those missionaries lived in towns close to the camps under the jurisdiction of those
local ordinaries. In many cases, they were allocated accommodation by parish priests in
those towns. In the case of Tibesar who went to Camp Minidoka in Idaho, Bishop
Shaughnessy of Seattle arranged with Bishop Edward J. Kelly of Boise to have Tibesar take
up residence near the camp in the summer 1942. However, the commute to Camp Minidoka
from Puyallup everyday and the work for the camp mission overburdened Tibesar and he
became ill. Another Maryknoll priest for Seattle, John Walsh was sent to assist Tibesar.
Later in 1943, James Sakamoto, after having close communication with the WRA authority,
received permission for Tibesar to reside within the camp due to health concerns.63
The WRA policy on religion within the reception and assembly centers received by
Maryknoll in Los Angeles included the following points:
1. Japanese evacuees will be permitted to promote religious services within the various
centers and to request such Caucasian assistance for coordinating religious activities as
may be necessary.
3a. Permission will not be granted Caucasian religious workers to reside within the
confines of the various Centers.
62
Letter from James T. O’Dowd to Caffrey, received on 29 April 1942; Letter from Lavery
to Walsh, 27 January 1942; Telegram from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 19 March 1942, etc.
63
Letter from J. J. McGovern, Center Manager of Puyallup Assembly Center, Wartime Civil
Control Administration to the Project Director of Minidoka War Relocation Authority, 7
August 1942; Camp Minidoka Diary, October 1943 by L. H. Tibesar, M.M. General Council
topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA. A note by Sister Mary
McCormick on “Maryknoll in Seattle,” Spring 1995. MSA Collection, MMA.
203
3c. It is of prime importance that only Caucasian workers who have a constituency
among those located at assembly or reception center be permitted access, and then only
by the request of the Japanese occupants.
3d. Permission will not be granted for transfer of Japanese religious workers from one
reception or assembly center to another for the purpose of carrying on activities of this
nature, except where there is a religious constituency within a center without a director
or leader. . .
3e. Any materials intended for release in religious publications other than routine
matters will be cleared by the Press Relations representative of the center involved. . . .
3f. Japanese will not be spoken in connection with religious services or activities
except where the use of English prevents the congregation from comprehending the
services. The use of Japanese in this respect will be only with the sanction of the
Center Manager.
5. Due to the fact that educational and recreational programs are being coordinated at
all reception and assembly centers, no attempt will be made to include any educational
program within the scope of religious activities.64
Closely examining their policy in a very short time, Maryknoll issued a twenty-page
“Addenda on Japanese Evacuation” to oppose the WRA policy and to urge the local
ordinaries’ understanding in the hardship of the mission in those centers. In this document,
they discussed the above issues exclusively with constitutional and legal aspects. They
charged that Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution was violated in assembly and permanent
camps “by the prohibition of the free exercise of religion therein in that ministers of religion
[were] forbidden to reside in the camps in order that their religious work might be more
conveniently and successfully fulfilled,” that Amendment IV of the U.S. Constitution was
violated in “that citizens of Japanese parentage have been seized . . . without the issuance of
64
WRA, “Policy: Religion Within WCCA Reception and Assembly Center” attached to the
letter from Ira K. Evans to Caffrey, 18 May 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany Box
5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
204
warrants which must be supported by oath or affirmation,” and that Amendment XV was
eventually violated in the depriving of “the right of these citizens to vote in the States in
which they [would] be incarcerated and its [sic.] because of their race and color and the
servitude to which the Government [reduced] them.” In the same document, it was also
claimed that “Catholic services” were reduced “to the nature and scope determined by the
Protestant concept and definition of religious worship.”65
The council members of Maryknoll complained that the WRA rules were contrary to
the government’s statements, that the relocation centers were to be democratic and selfgoverning communities. They insisted that religious freedom be guaranteed so that people
would be able to pursue ordinary community life. Also, they maintained that religious bodies
should have a Constitutional right to evangelize. Representing Catholic communities, they
demanded that there should be a Catholic parish in every camp, except where no Catholics
were to be found. The prohibition of ministers of religion, as well as other Caucasians, from
residing in those camps, was supported by the dictum that “Daily Mass, the observance of
ordinary Catholic functions such as Benediction of the Blessed sacrament, Sodality meetings,
etc., [would] have no place in the camps administered by the government.” Thus, they
concluded that the Catholic parish was the only unit of religious action which would
satisfactorily fulfill the spiritual needs of the Catholic evacuees and a parish where at least a
priest regularly stationed should be located in every camp.66
65
“Addenda on Japanese Evacuation,” General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder
10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
66
Letter from Milton S. Eisenhower (WRA administrator) to Bishop Walsh, 8 April 1942;
Letter proposed for WRA setting forth the right to speak for Japanese Catholics, the
hierarchical structure and Maryknoll’s program, addressed to Dillon Meyer, War Relocation
67
205
The report about three major Catholic “parishes” for the Japanese submitted by
O’Dowd to E.R. Fryer, the regional director of the WRA, emphasized the significance of
them among the Japanese communities before the evacuation while indicating the numbers of
the Japanese people around those missions.
Before evacuation, there were two hundred pupils enrolled in Seattle’s mission school
which had been established in May 1920. The mission’s nine teachers were well qualified
with their A.B. or normal school diploma. Five of those teachers also had certificates from
the State of Washington and eight of those sisters had worked with the Japanese for over five
years. More than half of them were engaged in this mission for over ten years. Specifically
noted was that three of those teachers had taken a course in “Oriental Psychology” in order to
be able to have a better understanding of the “mentality” of those Japanese people. There
were 300 members in the Seattle Catholic community in total.
The enrollment of St. Francis Xavier School in Los Angeles which was established in
1920 as an elementary school counted 460 pupils. The pupils continued their study there
until eighth grade. The school had the standing of a junior high school when the ninth grade
was added in 1937. The pupils of this school were required to take the examinations which
Authority. ca. middle of July 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10,
MFBA Collection, MMA.
67
In the communication with those governmental officials, the local representatives of those
missionaries often used the term “parish” while the mission in Los Angeles was not
established as a parish. When those reports were attached to the local ordinaries, they
explained that they used this term because those governmental officials who were better
accustomed with Protestantism could comprehend the Catholic conditions better with the
word “Parish.” Letters to Archbishops Cantwell of Los Angeles, Mitty of San Francisco,
Shaughnessy of Seattle, Bishops Armstrong of Sacramento, Gercke of Tucson, Scher of M.
F. and Buddy of San Diego. 1 July 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5,
Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
206
were obligatory for all the Catholic schools in the Los Angeles area. Thus, those pupils
consistently maintained a high average and the school won a high reputation. In addition to
the school activities, the mission had scout troops organized for both girls and boys. Also,
the social, recreational, and educational activities of the Japanese children and adults were
supervised by the Maryknoll staff.
The Morning Star Institute in San Francisco, established in 1918 as a kindergarten and
added eight grades of elementary school in 1929, had an enrollment of 114 pupils when the
Japanese were ordered to evacuate. They conducted even more classes than the school for
the Japanese community including adults such as music, sewing, cooking, woodwork, drama,
and first aid classes. The teachers of the Morning Star Institute also directed the scout
troops.68
The Catholic missionaries for those Japanese were proud that they had provided “the
best Americanization program among the Japanese in this country.” They wrote about their
deep anxiety to the local ordinaries and the W.R.A. that “the government under wartime
condition and for a questionable military expediency and on a seriously doubtful legal and
constitutional basis” was to undertake a program which destroyed “for the duration of the
war, and perhaps forever,” the utility of “three Catholic Japanese parishes” which supported
the best program to Americanize people. 69
68
Letter from O’Dowd to E.R. Fryer, 12 May 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany:
Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
69
Report to the Maryknoll Council on a Survey of the Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement
in Western States, May 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10,
MFBA Collection, MMA.
207
At last, the Catholic communities of Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco sent
32,000 evacuees in total through their voluntary relocation program. Under the restricted
access by the priests for those Japanese evacuees in this very beginning phase of the
resettlement, those two women religious, while obedient to their local ordinaries and
superior, were the only figures who represented the Catholic community among the residents
in Camp Manzanar.
Those two sisters played significant roles in education, which was what Japanese
parents had been most anxious about before they went to the camp. With a teaching
certificate, Sister Susanna Hayashi immediately started a small class for the children. Sister
Bernadette Yoshimachi took the part of administration of this “school” and later herself had a
meeting for catechetical training which eventually enrolled hundreds of Japanese in
Manzanar. Although Sister Susanna was older, Sister Bernadette has been remembered as
more charismatic among the young evacuees of that time. A busy woman herself, “Sister B.”
never accepted the excuse that the students were busy. “Because they were unable to be busy
there.” Julia Nagao and Sister Yae Ono, who were in their twenties when they were in Camp
Manzanar, recollected the memory of Sister Bernadette with joy and smiles.70 They also
represented the Catholic group at the meetings for religious activities in the camp. All other
religious groups, including Buddhists, Shintoists and Protestants, sent male leaders to those
meetings. Female representatives looked very unusual because the camp was totally a
“Japanese community” in every cultural sense which had embraced male leadership.
70
Interview with Mrs. Julia Nagao and Sister Antoinette Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, 30
October 1998.
208
Yae Ono, then newly baptized, soon became an efficient assistant to the two women
religious at Camp Manzanar. She was one of the most important young leaders in the
Japanese community in the camp. While teaching the children as a teacher and catechist, she
well knew the children and youths around this Catholic community. Ono tells that the
children enjoyed everything in the camp. Most of them were able to live with their parents
and friends although the community around them was totally different from the one before
their evacuation. Ono also visited Catholic patients in a hospital in the camp. While a
Catholic girl was hospitalized, Ono went there every day to see her until the day of her death.
Ono remembers that the girl was able to distinguish all the sounds of footsteps which came
through the hallway full of sand from storms. “She knew who would come to see her.” Ono
appreciates all the stories of those children in the camp while receiving them as gifts of God.
There was, of course, a lot of hardship for them. They knew their family lost privacy
because three or four families lived in a barrack separated only by curtains. Since there were
bathrooms and “mess halls” between two rows of the barracks, it was especially hard for
children who needed to go there at night. It was never close to walk for those children and
there was not enough light. 71
One of the children whom Ono took care of in this Catholic community complained to
her. “I want to go back to America!” While Ono tells that this story has always made her
laugh, the boy’s voice provocatively represented the segregation of the Japanese both
physically and psychologically from American society. It was true that the world around this
boy was not America at all. Rather, it was Japan in the United States, fenced in and
71
Interview with Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, September 2008.
209
separated by barbed wire. Those Japanese children lost their chances to socialize with the
children of other ethnicities. More seriously, the internment provided a significantly unique
pattern of intermarriage to the second generation Japanese. Due to the Gentlemen’s
Agreement of 1907 and 1908 which prohibited any new arrivals of male laborers from Japan
and the Johnson Reed Act of 1924 which banned all immigration including female Japanese,
most of the Nisei (the second generation) were younger than thirty-five years old when they
were evacuated. The main body of the Nisei were in the range of the age close to marriage
when they lost contact with other ethnic groups. Because of this generation pattern of Nisei
with the timing of the evacuation, the second generation of Japanese had much less
opportunity for inter-ethnic marriage than any other ethnic groups in the United States.
On the other hand, the internment also provided young Japanese people the opportunity
to know Japanese people from other communities. It was a re-networking of the
communities of the Japanese in the United States. On a personal level, Julia Nagao met her
future husband in Camp Manzanar. She met Philip Nagao who had a reputation as one of the
best graduates of the Maryknoll School in Los Angeles among the Catholic community.
While emphasizing the charismatic woman religious, Mrs. Nagao said, “Sr. B. recognized
Philip was with a non-Catholic girl. That was the reason why I joined her catechetical class.”
Father Leo Steinbach later baptized her in the camp and Julia became a devout member of
the Catholic Japanese group in the Maryknoll community.72 On the group level of renetworking, the enlistment of Nisei Japanese into the Army from the camps, the youths’
departure from the camp with the Student Relocation Program and their participation as
72
Interviews with Julia Asae Nagao, Ossining, NY, Silver Spring, MD, and Washington, DC,
October 1998 to September 2008.
210
young Catholic Japanese in the Catholic Youth Organization is discussed later in this chapter
and the following chapter.
The Maryknoll missionaries and O’Dowd also expected those youngsters to lead the
Catholic communities in the absence of the priests while they were not able to have access to
the camp. Ono joined the Maryknoll graduates to help the Catholic Church, which was
placed in one of the barracks in Camp Manzanar. She has a clear recollection of her
colleagues at the church in the camp, including George Minamiki, Philip Nagao, as well as
Vincent Doi. “We were in the church and talked for long time. We talked about anything.
We laughed a lot.”73 Those young Catholic members in Camp Manzanar began publishing
the newspaper, entitled Manza-Knoll. This newspaper succeeded the Alumni newsletter at
St. Francis Xavier School, which had been called The Challenger started in the late 1930s.
This newspaper held the information of the camp in both English and Japanese languages so
that all the evacuees would be able to read it. Their newsletters were sent to other camps and
exchanged with the newsletters in other camps such as Heart Mountain Sentinel in Camp
Heart Mountain and Maryknoll in Camp Hunt in Idaho. They announced the events in the
camps as well as the moving of the people from one camp to another. Those mimeographed
newsletters provided another network for the Japanese in the camps.
From March through November 1942, Lavery and Drought arranged for the expatriated
Maryknoll priests from Japan to go to the camps. They collected the information about the
Japanese Catholics in each camp and sent those missionaries while providing them
appropriate training time in Los Angeles under the guidance of Lavery and Father Francis J.
73
Interview with Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, September 2008.
211
Caffrey. In October 1942, Maryknoll priests who served were as follows: Hugh Lavery for
Manzanar, California; Clement Boesflug for Poston, Arizona; Harry Felsecker for Cody,
Wyoming; William Whitlow for Tule Lake, California; Leo Steinbach for two camps in
Arkansas; and Leopold Tibesar for Minidoka, Idaho. Later, Maryknoll rearranged those
assignments. Divine Word Father William Stoecke would work for Topaz, Utah although he
had not yet been able to work in the camp due to his citizenship in the fall 1942. Ossining
confirmed that all those priests would be under the direction of Lavery beside Tibesar and
Stoecke.74 Because of the restriction set by the WRA, all of them commuted to the camps
from the towns nearby. They resided in those towns under the jurisdiction of local
ordinaries. They also assisted the Japanese not only spiritually but also materially. They
visited the camps every day and often brought home products or food.75
From Seattle, some sisters occasionally visited Camp Minidoka to assist Tibesar.
Sisters Consolata, Rose Carmel, Rosarie and Thomas Mari were among those who visited the
camp to “[have] religion classes, [prepare] children for First Holy Communion, [hold] choir
practice, and [have meetings with the women.”76 In Camp Manzanar as well, two JapaneseAmerican sisters occasionally had sisters’ assistance from Los Angeles.
On the 27th, Srs. Martina and Jane had the unexpected joy of being driven up to Camp
Manzanar by Father Caffrey to see our Sisters. They left Wednesday morning and
returned the following evening. In that short time at Camp, there were two severe
74
Kiernan, “Council Memo: Japanese Evacuation” dated on 25 March 1942. General
Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection, MMA; Letter from Lavery
to Kiernan, 17 September 1942; Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, 13 October 1942; Letter
from Kiernan to Caffrey, 14 November 1942; Letter from Kiernan to Caffrey, 18 November
1942. MFBA Development House Collection, Los Angeles: Box 12, Folder 5, MMA.
75
Interview with Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, 1 October 1998.
76
A Note by Sister Mary McCormick on “Maryknoll in Seattle,” Spring 1995. MSA
Collection, MMA.
212
sand-storms which seem to be common occurrences there. Our Sisters are pretty well
acclimated now and have a one-room apartment to themselves. They are treated with
great respect by the officers as well as by their own people. Word flew around that
they had visitors and soon the entire Maryknoll group came crowding around eager for
news.77
Maryknoll sisters, both in and out the camps, gained first-hand information and
experiences with their Japanese friends while assisting the works of priests. During the
Catholic Mass, the W.R.A. took the opportunity to create propaganda, such as to show that
the Japanese were not deprived of any of their rights and privileges. When the Army arrived
equipped with cameras and bright lights to take movies of their congregation attending Mass,
those women religious witnessed this while they assisted Father Steinbach saying Mass.78
Almost at the same time as the mass evacuation was processed, a program of the
relocation of Japanese Nisei students began being discussed. There had been 458 Nisei who
had been enrolled at the University of Washington on December 7, 1941. Prior to the
evacuation, fifty-eight of them were relocated to the regions out of the military restricted
zone. The Federal government, through the War Relocation Authority, became concerned
that the Japanese-American citizens be enabled to complete their education “in preparation
for useful service and fuller assimilation into [the] national life.” John J. McCloy, Assistant
Secretary of War endorsed this view along with the U.S. Office of Education. On May 4,
1942, Milton S. Eisenhower, WRA Director, formally requested Clarence E. Pickett,
Executive Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee to undertake the formation
of a representative committee to organize and administer a plan for the transfer of those
students to other colleges and universities in “non-restricted parts of the country.” This
77
78
Los Angeles, Maryknoll Convent Diary. 27 Mary 1942, MSA Collection, MMA.
Maryknoll Sisters’ Diary, 31 May 1942. MSA Collection, MMA.
213
student relocation was what Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife, and Clarence Pickett,
her close friend who was a Quaker, originally discussed. The National Japanese American
Students Relocation Council had already begun to work together with the organizations such
as the West Coast Student Relocation Committee, the Western College Association, the
Association of American Colleges and the Church Boards and Committees, to set the activity
to “be integrated through a single channel with which the government [could] effectively
cooperate.”79 The major parts of their activities were to find the colleges and universities
which would accept Japanese students, to coordinate with those schools for scholarships, and
to arrange for the transportation of the students. In case the Committee had the necessity to
interview the applicants, the staff members from the offices of Berkeley, Los Angeles,
Seattle, and Portland visited the camps to consult personally with those students. Only the
immigrants’ children who had American citizenship were able to apply for this program.
The Kibei who had partially received their education in Japan were not granted travel
permission by the government. Although this restriction was cleared through the special
screening process, the Kibei were not the subjects in the original program.80
The first student to receive a release and travel permit under the program left Tule Lake
Relocation Center for the Medical School of St. Louis University on July 4. Before July 25,
79
Letter from Robbins W. Barstow, Director of the Japanese American Student Relocation.
17 June 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection,
MMA.
80
National Student Relocation Council, “Report of Progress, West Coast Section, Berkeley
Office, up to July 25, 1942”; Letter from O’Dowd to Caffrey, 22 December 1942. General
Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection, MMA. The official website
of the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund introduces about the original
discussion between Eleanor Roosevelt and Pickett, accessed 29 September 2009,
http://www.nsrcfund.org/whoweare/mission.html.
214
1942, the Committee had already sent approximately seventy-five students for relocation to
colleges and universities in the East. The Committee also received 1,169 questionnaires
from thirteen assembly centers and permanent camps. The centers in Santa Anita, Pomona,
and Manzanar, where Catholic students in Los Angeles were relocated, had not yet sent
approximately six hundred questionnaires. This resulted in the religious preference of the
applicants as follows: Protestant 69 percent, Buddhist 17 percent, No affiliation 11 percent,
and Catholic 3percent. 81
Although the newly formed “National Japanese American Student Relocation Council”
led by the Quakers quickly released the lists of the colleges and universities which they
confirmed to be able to admit Japanese American students, the Catholic missionaries found it
problematic as they included no Catholic institution. Drought immediately contacted the
American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) and the National Intercollegiate Christian
Council (YMCA and YWCA) to discuss the Catholic program of the students’ relocation to
the East. Since Francis Caffrey, Maryknoll missionary to Los Angeles, had already joined
the West Coast Committee of the National Student Relocation Council, both groups agreed
that the Catholics would add the schools to their lists while having their own surveys
regarding the availability of Catholic colleges to have Japanese students. While the
American Friends Service Committee would be the agency to submit the lists of schools and
arrangement of students officially to the government, they assured Drought that the list
including Catholic institutes would be scanned by governmental agencies as originally
planned. Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, stated in a letter to John McCormack, U.S.
81
National Student Relocation Council, “Report of Progress, West Coast Section, Berkeley
Office, up to July 25, 1942.”
215
representative from Massachusetts, that he also agreed with them on the necessity of the
Catholic program of student relocation while recognizing their work in Seattle, San
Francisco, and Los Angeles “answering the religious needs of the Japanese for a great
number of years” although “Catholic Japanese church organizations were fewer in number in
comparison to the Protestant.”82
James O’Dowd, Superintendent of Schools in the Archdiocese of San Francisco,
suggested that those Catholic student relocations be made through the U.S. Bishops’ National
Catholic Welfare Council (NCWC) in Washington. Drought agreed with him on this view.83
The specific requests from Maryknoll to the NCWC included approval by the missionaries in
the camps also to send female students and non-Catholic students to those Catholic colleges
in the East. They tried to collect the information about the availability of the schools for
those Nisei students before the new academic year began and to send those students by the
beginning of the fall semester. 84 As of July 10, the following schools responded to the
Catholic program of students relocation: fifty students by Providence College, Providence,
Rhode Island; ten students by St. Ambrose College, Davenport, Iowa; one hundred or more
82
Letter from David E. Henley, the American Friends Service Committee, to Drought, 14
July 1942; Letter from Marian Brown Reith, the National Intercollegiate Christian Council,
15 July 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection,
MMA; Letter from Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, to John William McCormack, a
member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts, 20 July 1942. Attached
copy to the letter from McCormack to Charles F. McCarthy, M.M., 5 August 1942. General
Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection, MMA.
83
Letter from Drought to Caffrey, 14 August 1942; Letter from O’Dowd to Drought, 18
August 1942; O’Dowd to Caffrey, 2 September 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany:
Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection, MMA.
84
Letter from Drought to Joseph R.N. Maxwell, President of the College of the Holy Cross,
11 July 1942; Letter from Samuel K. Wilson, S.J., President of Loyola University, Chicago,
to Drought, 13 July 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA
Collection, MMA.
216
students by DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois; a few students by University of Detroit,
Michigan; ten students by University of Dayton, Ohio; two students by St. Louis University,
Missouri; two students by Holy Cross College, Worcester, Massachusetts and ten students by
Niagara University, Niagara Falls, New York. Also, Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois and
Fordham University, New York answered that they would receive students on the same level
as other students.85 Several universities declined. The president of one of those schools
noted that they had observed the harassment against a medical student of Nisei due to his
race soon after the war broke out and judged that his neighborhood was not ready to accept
this program.86 In some cases, schools hesitated or were not able to accept Japanese students
because of the influence of the military. The University of Notre Dame was not able to have
those students because the Navy took over half of the university facilities. While Catholic
University in Washington had expressed its desire to cooperate, it could not provide a clear
answer during the summer. Tibesar consulted with his former classmate in anthropology,
Monsignor John Montgomery Cooper at Catholic University about this relocation. However,
influence by the Navy has been indicated in the case of Catholic University.87
On September 10, Lavery reported that the Catholic community in Camp Manzanar
had a list of ten Catholic students and seventeen non-Catholic students who desired to be
85
Council Memo, dated on 10 July 1942; Letter from Thomas V. Kiernan to John Provinse,
WRA, 11 July 1942; Letter from Drought to Caffrey, n.d. General Council Topical
Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection, MMA.
86
Letter from Joseph P. Zuercher, S.J., President of the Creighton University, Omaha,
Nebraska, 13 July 1942. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA
Collection, MMA. Other colleges that did not accept the Japanese students included
Marquette University and Manhattan College. Letter from Drought to Caffrey, n.d.
87
Interview with Julia Nagao, a wife of the late Philip Nagao, an applicant to the graduate
program of Anthropology at the Catholic University of America.
217
relocated for education. The missionaries closely examined those applicants over a twomonth period. Lavery asked for the endorsement for non-Catholic applicants by the superior
general of Maryknoll again since NCWC’s assistance for those non-Catholic students had not
come in a timely manner. Lavery emphasized the significance of non-Catholics in his
community. There were “three non-Catholics to every Catholic” at Mass on Sundays in all
camps. Also, he suggested that “[n]early all [of the] chief helpers at camp on Sundays [were]
non-Catholics.” They set up the altar, cleaned the barrack for the church, and prepared the
breakfast for the missionaries, and did “ten things to one that the Catholics perform[ed].” He
expected those young non-Catholics in the church would be sent to Catholic colleges in order
for them to have further religious instruction along with their college education. His was a
unique and important viewpoint as a missionary. Soon after that, he had a good example of a
female student who arrived at Webster College on October 22. George F. Donovan, the
president of Webster College in Missouri, wrote to Lavery that “Ms. Kiyoko Hosoura”
desired to take instruction in Catholicism and to attend religious exercises “although it was
made quite clear to her that she was not obligated to do so since she [was] not Catholic.”
Donovan continues that she deeply appreciated what the Maryknoll Fathers did for her.
Donovan hoped and prayed that “at the end of her residence here, she [would] be a tribute to
the interest the Maryknoll Fathers had very practically placed in her.” He also rejoiced that
the faculty and students received Hosoura in a very hospitable manner and that everyone at
the college recognized it was “a practical test of American democracy and of Catholicism as
taught and carried out each day at the College by [the] faculty members and [the] students.”88
88
George F. Donovan, President of Webster College, 28 October 1942. General Council
218
By November 11, the West Coast Committee of the National Student Relocation
Council officially included O’Dowd and William J. Dunne, S.J., the president of the
University of San Francisco as officers. The total of scholarship funds by religious
denominations counted $40,000 in the end of January 1943. Along with Presbyterians,
Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, United Lutherans, Church of the
Brethren, United Brethren, Evangelical Reformed, Free Methodists and Buddhists, Catholics
provided $3,000 for each of six students (three male students and three female students)
through Maryknoll.89
Philip Nagao, then twenty-one years old, and George Minamiki, twenty-two years old,
were at the top in the list of those Catholic students. Philip Nagao had been studying at
Loyola University in Chicago as a student of Anthropology before the war began and desired
to study at either Loyola or Catholic University. George Minamiki, who later became a
Jesuit professor of Japanese studies at the University of Notre Dame, graduated from Loyola
University with his B.A. degree, summa cum laude. Minamiki applied to the program in
order to earn a teaching certificate. 90 After the screening and clearance of all the documents,
Nagao left Camp Manzanar for Chicago in order to resume studies at Loyola University in
anthropology. Mrs. Nagao relates that many people headed for Chicago because the Quakers
Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection, MMA.
89
Letter from Thomas R. Bodine to the “Friend of Student Relocation,” 11 November 1942;
27 January 1943; O’Dowd to Caffrey, 22 December 1942. General Council Topical
Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection, MMA.
90
“College Students at Manzanar Applied for release for Eastern Colleges.” n.d. General
Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 6, MFBA Collection, MMA.
219
sponsored many of those students. “They provided wonderful supports. They did wonderful
jobs.”91
James Drought had sought available loans for those students who desired to study at
colleges in the East so that the Catholic missions would be able to send as many students as
possible from the camps. The sudden death of Drought on May 3, 1943, thus, astounded all
the members who worked for the Japanese missions. It has been predicted that Drought
would not live long after he survived a plane crash in the Mediterranean Sea in 1936.
Nevertheless, he enthusiastically worked until the very end of his life. On April 30, only
three days before the death, Drought tried to comprehend the situation of the scholarships
which those students had acquired in order to secure external student loans. 92
Besides the issues of the student loans, in the first year of the operation of the mission in
those camps, Drought had also searched for the funds to cover the expenses of the missions
for the internees. Maryknoll had nine priests, four brothers and two sisters who cared for
twelve camps in May, 1943. In addition, Drought and Lavery discussed about the
rearrangement of the Japanese-speaking Maryknoll priests to the camps because most of the
Japanese had been interned into permanent camps from temporary ones by this time.93
91
Interviews with Julia Nagao, Ossining, NY, Silver Spring, MD, and Washington, DC,
October 1998 to September 2009.
92
Letter from Drought to Laver, 30 April 1943; Telegram from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 4
May 1943; Telegram from Bishop Walsh to Lavery, 4 May 1943; Letter from Lavery to
Bishop Walsh, 6 May 1943; Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, 10 May 1943. General Council
Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 4, MFBA Collection, MMA.
93
Telegram from Bishop Walsh to Howard J. Carroll, Assistant Secretary of the National
Catholic Welfare Conference, 4 May 1943. General Council topical Miscellany: Box 6,
Folder 4, MFBA Collection, MMA.
220
Requiring the repeated confirmation of the information, the death of Drought initially
slowed down the communication and process of the arrangement of the finances both for
students and mission work in the camps.94 However, the immediate communication
established by John J. Considine, M.M., who succeeded in Drought’s position of vicar
general with O’Dowd caught up this process by the middle of June 1943. The report which
O’Dowd created in January 1944 explains that the Bishop’s War Emergency and Relief
Committee “made a contribution of $500” to the National Japanese American Student
relocation Council from April to August 1943. While estimating that it would cost $320 to
relocate each individual student, they worked for securing the approval of the General
Secretary of the NCWC for $500 in five monthly installments for each student beginning in
January 1944. The report indicated that Father Stoecke was active in recommending worthy
students in Camp Topaz, Utah, and in submitting pertinent data concerning them. Also, two
Jesuits--Raymond Buckley in San Francisco and Edward Rooney in New York--assisted
O’Dowd as the Catholic Representatives of the National Japanese American Student
Relocation Council in submitting data concerning students known to them. Monsignor
George Johnson and James Cummings of the Education Department of the NCWC were
some other figures who made the preliminary investigation for placement in Catholic
colleges. In addition to the support of the student relocation program, this report tells that the
94
Bishop Walsh to Bryan J. McEntegart, 22 May 1943; Letter from John A. Donavan,
Secretary of the Chancery Office of the Archdiocese of Detroit to Lavery, 17 May 1943;
Letter from McEntegart to Considine, 1 June 1943; Letter from Considine to Lavery, 2 June
1943; Letter from Considine to Lavery, 17 June 1943; etc. General Council Topical
Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 4, MFBA Collection, MMA.
221
Bishop’s War Emergency and Relief Committee granted $10,000 in total toward the
missionary works by Maryknoll and the Society of the Divine Word.95
There was another large relocation of the Nisei from the camps. It was through
military enlistment. Since several small riots occurred within those camps from the winter of
1942 to 1943, the loyalty of the interned Japanese became an issue of discussion. The
tension between the Nisei leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League and a group of
Kibei (the returnees of Nisei after their education in Japan) caused the Manzanar Riot of
December 1942. Outraged by the rumor that the shortages of sugar and meat were the result
of black-marketing between the camp administrators and the JACL leaders, six masked men
beat Fred Tayama, a JACL leader. Reacting to the arrest of Harry Ueno, the leader of the
Kitchen Workers Union, and his removal from Manzanar to imprisonment at another camp,
more than 3,000 internees gathered and marched in the administration area. Although Ueno
was returned to the jail in Manzanar, two young Japanese were shot and killed by military
police during this rally. The arrestees included two Catholic Issei who had been baptized in
the Maryknoll’s Los Angeles mission. One was Ted Ichiji Akahoshi, then a fifty-eight-yearold Issei graduate of Stanford University and manager of the Wholesale Produce Merchants
Association in Los Angeles prior to the war. The other was Kozo Fred Ogura, a fifty-fiveyear-old Issei block leader of Block 1 in Manzanar. Ogura was in the exporting business and
was later employed by Signal Oil Company. He was known as a very active member of St.
95
Report to Michael J. Ready, General Secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Council
concerning the religious interests of the Catholic Japanese on the Pacific Coast written by
O’Dowd; Attached letter to Considine from O’Dowd, 27 June 1944; Letter from Considine to
O’Dowd, 15 July 1944. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 7, MFBA
Collection, MMA.
222
Francis Xavier Catholic mission. Akahoshi and Ogura had been close friends since pre-war
times in Los Angeles.
Maryknoll could not hide the shock of their arrests and waited for Caffrey’s report
about the details of this incident.96 The reason for their arrests was still questionable and no
document at Maryknoll clearly explains it. The Oral History Project at the University of
California suggests some possible reasons why Akahoshi and Ogura were imprisoned. The
first was that Akahoshi and Ogura were placed among other prisoners “purposely to watch
(spy) [them]” because they had been trusted by the WRA administrators. This research tells
that Akahoshi was a very good friend of Ned Campbell, the Assistant Project Director in the
camp while Ogura had been recognized “to have a constructive attitude and to work for the
good of the entire camp community” by those administrators. Another explained that there
had been a bitter conflict between Akahoshi, an Issei and the first chairman of the Block
Leaders Council, and Tayama, a Nisei and the leader of the JACL group in the camp, for
several months prior to the riot.97 While the first interpretation suggests the close relations
between those two Japanese Catholic Issei and the Camp administrators who had good
relationships with Japanese American Citizens League, the latter insists that the conflicts
between the generations of Issei and Nisei were similar to the conflict between Nisei and
Kibei. Due to the lack of testimonies, their imprisonments were still in question. Maryknoll
96
Letter from Caffrey to Drought, 14 December 1942. MBFA Development Houses, Los
Angeles: Box 12, Folder 5, MMA.
97
University of California, Japanese American World War II Evacuation Oral History
Project: Part IV Resisters, accessed 31 January 2010,
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft1f59n61r&doc.view=content&chunk.id=d0e230&toc.d
epth=1&brand=calisphere&anchor.id=0,
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft1f59n61r&doc.view=content&chunk.id=d0e4389&toc.
depth=1&brand=calisphere&anchor.id=0.
223
in Ossining, while being deeply anxious about their arrests, may not have received a clear
report on this issue.
The riot triggered the question of the loyalty of the Japanese internees in the camps,
specifically of the Nisei, American citizens. Starting in February 1943, all the people in the
internment camps were asked by the U.S. government to fill out a loyalty questionnaire.
The Leave Clearance Application Form included the following two questions: "Are you
willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?"
and "Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully
defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear
any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign
government, power or organization?" Many of the Japanese thought the first question meant
whether they had an intention to sign up for the draft. The second question was problematic
especially for the Kibei, returnees from Japan. Since they were educated in Imperial Japan,
they had already sworn allegiance to the Emperor of Japan although most of them had
American citizenship. Many respondents believed it was a trap, and they rejected the
premise by answering no. This response of “no” caused the respondents to be sent into
Camp Tule Lake which was used as a Federal Prison, different from other internment
camps.98
The questionnaire was used for the military enlistment while the government observed
the success of the 100th Infantry Battalion which consisted of the discharged Japanese
Americans in Hawaii from the Hawaii Territorial Guard after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
98
John Okada, No-No Boy (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1978).
224
Those Japanese Americans of Hawaii petitioned to be allowed them to assist in the war after
the United States officially declared war. Whereas their loyalty was questioned, those
Japanese Americans performed well in the training and the government decided to form a
Japanese American combat unit. In the loyalty questionnaire required of the internees of the
camps, more than 75 percent of Nisei males answered that they were willing to enlist in the
U.S. Armed Forces and swear allegiance to the United States. Thus, eight hundred men from
those camps joined 3,000 men from Hawaii to form the 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat
Team, also known as the Go For Broke regiment whose famous saying included
“Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.”99
Since those Japanese-American soldiers included Maryknoll School graduates and
other Catholics, the government asked Maryknoll to send a military chaplain who was able to
say Mass in Japanese. Nevertheless, they decided not to send a priest. The General Council
agreed that those Nisei soldiers were all American citizens, loyal to the government, and able
to pursue all operations in the English language. Therefore, they believed that those soldiers
would not need a special chaplain who spoke Japanese.100 It meant that they also believed
that those soldiers were equal in every aspect to other American soldiers in the U.S. military.
While not sending any Japanese-speaking chaplain, Maryknoll maintained that those soldiers
were fully loyal American citizens. The 442nd Combat Team has been known as the most
decorated unit in U.S. military history with a casualty rate of 314 percent and 9,436 Purple
Hearts divided among some 3,000 original in-theater soldiers. In the same aspect, Maryknoll
99
Ibid.
Telegram from Caffrey to Bishop Walsh, 23 February 1943; Letter from Bishop Walsh to
Tibesar, 6 March 1943. General council topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 4, MFBA
Collection, MMA.
100
225
blamed the Navy that some Japanese Nisei who applied for the Navy from the camps were
not accepted due to ethnic discrimination.101
Following the students who left the camp for the National Japanese American Student
Relocation Program and the soldiers who joined the Army mainly for battles in the European
theater, other adult Nisei of working age who had sponsors in the East began leaving the
camp in late 1943. For the young Japanese Nisei in Camp Minidoka, James Sakamoto wrote
hundreds of reference letters in spite of his blindness. Some belonged to their Catholic
community in Seattle while others were connected with the Catholic community through the
registration for evacuation.102 Manza-knoll had a notice of the moving-out of those young
people in each issue from 1943 through 1945. For the Catholic community among the
Japanese who left the camps, Chicago became a major center since several young Catholic
leaders had left for Chicago at the request of the Student Relocation Program. Those leaders
included Philip Nagao, one of the first editors of Manza-Knoll, which means “Maryknoll in
Manzanar” published by the graduates of Maryknoll School in Los Angeles in Japanese and
English.103 Vincent Doi from the Maryknoll community in Los Angeles met his future wife
Agnes in Chicago. Agnes came from Topaz, Utah, where the Catholic community of San
Francisco was evacuated under the leadership of William Stoecke, S.V.D.104
While observing those young leaders who left for Chicago and their desire to assist
other Japanese people’s relocation and settlement in that city, Maryknoll missionaries
101
Letter from Bishop Walsh to Tibesar, 6 March 1943.
The James Y. Sakamoto Papers, 1928- 1955. The University of Washington.
103
Philip Nagao is reported to have moved to Chicago in Manza-Knoll 2, no. 17 (27 August
1944); He returned to resume his study at Loyola University in Chicago. Interview with his
wife, Julia Nagao, Washington, DC, 1 October 1998.
104
Interview with Vincent and Agnes Doi, Los Angeles, CA, September 2008.
102
226
concluded that they would need a hostel for the newcomers from the camps to stay
temporarily until they found more permanent residences and occupations.105 Receiving
approval from Bishop Bernard James Sheil of Chicago, Marykoll sent Brother Theophane
Walsh to assist those young Catholic Japanese. After they met at various places, mainly at
the CYO School of Social Studies, the group found a further need to provide means for social
gatherings and study clubs. Observing this work by Brother Theophane, Bishop Sheil “gave
his enthusiastic approval to the plan to invite Japanese to the CYO Clubs in Chicago.”
Bishop Shiel assisted those Japanese while including them in the CYO Clubs so that they
would interact with other CYO groups in Chicago. 106 In the late summer of 1944, Philip
Nagao returned to Camp Manzanar and told the internees that it would be possible for the
young internees to move to Chicago for education and that educational funds would be
available.107
Later in April 1945, the group formally opened the Catholic Youth Organization Nisei
Center under the guidance of Bishop Sheil.108 With the assistance of the Chancery Office of
Chicago, Maryknoll received an annual subsidy of $8,000 from NCWC to carry on these
new activities for the Japanese.109 Also, Tibesar wrote that Bishop Sheil had trusted the
CYO work by Brother Theophane and that he was “exceedingly well informed on race
105
The necessity of the hostel in Chicago was discussed even before the death of Drought on
May 3, 1943. Letter from Lavery to Kiernan, 10 May 1943; 18 May 1943. General Council
Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 4, MFBA Colelction, MMA.
106
Letter from TJM to Tibesar, 23 October 1944. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box
6, Folder 7, MFBA Collection, MMA.
107
Manza-Knoll 2, no. 18 (19 September 1944).
108
Theophane Walsh, “Catholic Youth Organization Nisei Center.” 1946. Media File: Box
5, Brother Theophane’s personal files, MFBA Collection, MMA.
109
Letter from Considine to Tibesar, 19 December 1944. General Council Topical
Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 7, MFBA Collection, MMA.
227
questions.” Bishop Sheil was deeply concerned about the Japanese situation in the United
States and intimately communicated with Brother Theophane. Maryknoll stated that they
“loaned” Brother Theophane to Bishop Sheil for him to assist the work of the Bishop’s
program at the C.Y.O. in Chicago. 110
While several groups were formed for the young people who were connected with the
Center such as a fabric stenciling club and leather craft club, a class in journalism played a
role in resuming the monthly publication of the Maryknoll School Alumni newsletter, The
Challenger. Away from their hometowns, it began as the new center for networking among
Japanese Catholic outside of the camps. Through those activities, interactions between the
Japanese and other CYO members of Chicago were nurtured through the assistance of the
various departments of Chicago’s C.Y.O. They included the Sheil School of Social Studies,
the Athletic Department, and the Social Service Department.111
In the ending phase of the war and post war conditions, the Nisei Center became more
and more important as it provided help in job placement, housing, counsel in vocational and
academic work, especially to veterans who were returning to the Midwest. It was a center for
those young men who were seeking new homes and those servicemen who were trying to
resettle in the United States.112 In the beginning of 1945, Tibesar moved to Chicago to direct
the Nisei Center. He also considered exploring this center to take care of the Japanese in St.
110
Letter from Tibesar to Considine, 12 March 1945: Theophane Walsh to Considine, 21
March 1945; Theophane Walsh to Considine, 13 April 1945; Tibesar to Considine, 25 April
1945; Tibesar to Kiernan, 3 August 1945; Kiernan to Tibesar, 8 August 1945. Media Files,
the Catholic Youth Organization, Nisei Center,, MFBA Collection, MMA.
111
Ibid.
112
Ibid.
113
Paul, Detroit, Dubuque, and St. Louis.
228
The CYO Nisei Center also provided English
classes for the mothers of the Japanese soldiers who were still in Europe and the Pacific with
the U.S. military. Fifty-four students of the English classes included “[f]ive Gold Star
mothers” and several other parents of the soldiers.114 The Catholic New World interpreted
that the priority of the Nisei Center work was “[r]ehabilitation of Japanese families in the
Chicago area” while opening from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. everyday. In early 1946, there
were 1,500 young people who attended the discussions at the Nisei Center. About 250 Nisei
assisted in job placements and over 250 servicemen and discharges received aid in their
housing and occupational problems.115 Moreover, The CYO Nisei Center and Chicago
Resettlers Committee assisted Issei to file “first papers for citizenship” upon advice from an
officer of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Chicago. 116
Between April 1945 and April 1946, more than 4,000 Japanese/Japanese Americans
were accommodated in various meetings, classes, and service groups, according to Brother
Theophane’s report. Since the Center had only fourteen beds and Brother Theophane stated
“this seemed to be sufficient … as a temporary basis” for the service men and veterans who
did not stay more than a few days at a time, people resettled quickly after receiving service at
the Nisei Center. Some of the assisting staff of the Nisei Center went back to the West Coast
and they conducted the same service in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle after the
113
John Considine, “Plan of Work for Father Tibesar” 13 December 1944. General Council
Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 7, MFBA Collection, MMA.
114
“Mothers Go Back to School at New CYO Nisei Center.” Catholic New World. 21 April
1945.
115
“Open New Nisei Classes: Center Aids Returned GI’s.” Catholic New World, 1 February
1946.
116
The Challenger 2, no. 1 (September 1946).
117
Japanese were released from the camps.
229
The C.Y.O. in Maryknoll’s Los Angeles mission
and St. Vincent de Paul in Maryknoll’s Seattle mission became their office for this work.
One of the most important leaders of the Catholic community in the camp, Yae Ono,
was called by Lavery while they sent off many young Japanese Nisei from Camp Manzanar
in 1944. Although Ono converted to Catholicism in Los Angeles when she registered for the
internment at Maryknoll, only a month before the relocation to Camp Manzanar, she was
responsible for many Japanese converts in the camp. It was her vocation. Lavery sent Ono
to Ossining, New York, for training to become a missionary. On August 28, 1944, a twentysix-year-old Nisei woman, Antoinette Yae Ono, left for Maryknoll to be a woman religious.
She was to be assigned to Kyoto, Japan after the war ended.118 Lavery expected her
leadership would become important for the post-war mission, not only in the community in
California, but also and even more so in Japan. She had a role to expand their mission
network to Japan again.
There were two other candidates of Maryknoll Sisters in the camps. One was Stephany
Nakajima who was interned in Camp Minidoka. The other was Mary Nagashima, who was
an eleven year-old girl and had been transferred to several camps with her parents, and
finally baptized in Camp Heart Mountain. Due to her age, Nagashima entered the Maryknoll
order much later. However, when Father Roy Petipren of Maryknoll in Camp Heart
Mountain, Wyoming, baptized her, her mind was already made up. She also observed the
activities of two Japanese-American women religious in Camp Manzanar. Nagashima
117
Theophane Walsh, “Catholic Youth Organization Nisei Center.”
Interview with Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, September 2008; Catholic Register, 22
September 1944; Gary Stern, “Internment Horrors Recalled: Thousands lost years in
Japanese-American camp during WWII.” The Journal News. 15 May 2004.
118
230
emphasized how happy she was when her father agreed with her conversion. Even as a
young girl, she recognized the difficulty in receiving consent from her Buddhist parents
about conversion.119 When she retired from her position of teaching English at Sophia
University, Tokyo, Japan, she confided that she had been strongly attracted to missionary
work as an ambitious adventure and decided to join the community.120 Catholic Northwest
Progress states while observing the early activities of Maryknoll Sisters in Seattle from the
1920s and the 1940s, the Maryknoll Sisters were respected as “Career Women.”121
Nagashima shared this perspective while witnessing their services in the camps.
Under the extremely difficult condition of World War II and the internment for
Japanese in the United States, Catholic missionaries explored many more opportunities of the
mission to Japanese than the pre-war era. “Sister B.” (Bernadette Yoshimachi)’s catechetical
class nurtured 101 candidates for baptism on Easter in 1943.122 It was the largest record
number of Japanese conversions at one time. The Catholic Register of March 19, 1944
reported that there had been three hundred Catholic Japanese and one hundred converts
during the past year.123 When all the Japanese who had been interned were permitted to
leave the camps and return to the cities in the spring 1945, there were still more than two
119
Interview with Mary Nagashima, M.M., Ossining, NY, 30 October 1998.
Mary Nagashima, M.M., “Guzen wa Kami kara no Omegumi [Coincidences were given
as the grace from God],” Kaze no Tayori, no. 20. (Tokyo: Campus Ministry of Sophia
University, 1997): 2-5.
121
“Career Women in Christ’s Service,” Catholic Northwest Progress, Sunday, 5 April
(published year was not noted on the copy remained at MMA.)
122
Registers at the Maryknoll Japanese Catholic Center (St. Francis Xavier Chapel) in Los
Angeles.
123
Catholic Register, 10 March 1944.
120
124
hundred people at the sisters’ Catechetical meeting.
231
Although Bishop Walsh and Drought
were once overwhelmed with almost no idea about how to help the Japanese in the initial
phase of the war, local missionaries, specifically Lavery, provided most of the thoughts to
expand their mission under the unusual conditions. Encouraged by Lavery’s ideas, Bishop
Walsh and Drought took the leadership in Ossining to support those activities by local
missionaries. Ossining gave Lavery strong authority to lead the mission of the entire camp
affairs.125
Also, the General Council elaborated on the principles of this war-time mission with
“the higher and broader vision of post-war missionary work of the Church in Japan” and
persuaded local bishops to support them.126 Along with Hugh Lavery and Leopold Tibesar,
Maryknoll’s own expatriated priests who spoke fluent Japanese worked at all the camps
where Catholic Japanese were found. They included Maryknoll priests, Swift, Whitlow,
Steinbach, Boefslug, Roy Petipren, Silvio Gilbert, Everett Briggs, and Michael McKillop,
who worked for the Los Angeles mission and the Japan mission after the war ended.
William Stoecke, S.V.D. provided the same service as the Maryknoll missionaries. For the
sacraments of Confirmation, those camps received the visits of local ordinaries.127 It was also
noteworthy that the NCWC recognized the importance of this mission through the Student
Relocation Program and cooperated with the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The assistance
by the Archdiocese of Chicago to organize the CYO Nisei Center expanded their mission
124
Manza-Knoll, August 1945.
Letter from Kiernan to Caffrey, 18 November 1942. Development House Collection, Los
Angeles: Box 12, Folder 5, MFBA Collection, MMA.
126
“Council Memo, a draft of a “proposed follow-up letter to the bishops.” General Council
Topical Miscellany: Box 5, Folder 10, MFBA Collection, MMA.
127
Maryknoll, Hunt, Idaho (mimeographed newsletter). 24 October 1943.
125
232
opportunity not only back in the Pacific regions but also in the Midwest and the Atlantic
Coast.
In early 1945, Lavery made a note of Maryknoll activities in internment camps for
three years as “Ten-Thousand-Mile Parish.” He was proud of sending Maryknoll priests and
sisters to all internment camps while cooperating with O’Dowd and Stoecke for the Japanese
community from San Francisco. Manzanar California, Poston Arizona, Tule Lake
California, Rohwer Arkansas, Rivers Arizona, Amache Colorado, Heart Mountain Wyoming,
Hunt (Minidoka) Idaho—Maryknoll missionaries were sent to all of them, only excepting
Topaz Utah where Stoecke accompanied the Japanese. Among those camps, Lavery
observed Manzanar and Minidoka had the largest numbers of Catholics and conversions to
Catholicism. Lavery also stated that “[t]he trials of the people brought them nearer to the
Faith.” When he wrote this note, Lavery clearly maintained that he was expecting that soon
there would be a great many more conversions among the Japanese Americans than ever
before.128
In a sense, Lavery still underestimated the influence of the Catholic mission during
World War II. With the work of the CYO Nisei Center in Chicago by Brother Theophane
Walsh, this mission work expanded even to the East Coast. They provided Nisei their
services as a vehicle of Americanization, while normalizing the steps of assimilation of the
second generation Japanese Americans from an exceptionally unusual condition which
separated them physically and psychologically away from the mainstream American society.
128
Hugh Lavery, M.M., “Ten-Thousand-Mile Parish,” The Field Afar (January-February
1945): 6-8.
233
When Lavery sent Yae Ono to Ossining, their mission work began covering the
reconstruction of the post-war Japan.
Not only the missionaries themselves, but also the lay leaders in their communities
created the network among the Japanese Nisei, through publications from the camps and the
C.Y.O., as well as through various programs such as the student relocation. Receiving the
support of the C.Y.O. in Chicago, those Nisei assisted the resettlement for other Nisei and
Issei parents. The war and the internment were challenges. Nevertheless, all the members of
the Catholic missions, priests, sisters, brothers, laymen, both Catholic and non-Catholic,
participated in opening a new page of the mission while always embracing harmony and
hope to explore the possibilities of the work. All the members and friends of the Catholic
communities for the Japanese overcame the hardship of the war-time with harmony and hope
which they had nurtured in the missions from the pre-war era.
Chapter Five: Our Home in America, Our Home in the Mystical Body
“Wa” is a Japanese concept which Maryknoll Japanese Catholic Center has adopted to
symbolize the history, achievements and aspirations of Saint Francis Xavier Japanese
Mission… “Wa” stands for harmony, unity and peace. It blends naturally with the
spirit of the Japanese American community which continues to infuse its cultural
heritage to enrich the greater American scene. (Harry Honda 1987)
The monument quietly stands at the cemetery site of Camp Manzanar. It reads Ireito
which means the tower for soul consoling. This is one of only two structures which
remained after the camp was closed. The other is the former Manzanar High School
auditorium. All other buildings were removed within a few years after the site was returned
to the State of California. The monument has always been decorated with strings of a
thousand cranes of origami, simple paper folding crafts left on pilgrimages. Those origami
are always folded in wishes and prayers for peace for both the dead and the living. It is a
custom from Japan.
“Each year, Japanese Buddhists in Los Angeles make a pilgrimage back to the camp
and pray at the tower for their compatriots who died in the dust of Manzanar,”1 Peter Ryozo
Kado, who erected this tower, stated in the 1960s. This tradition of the pilgrimage continues
even today. However, the tower was not erected only for Buddhist Japanese. This is proven
by the fact that the stonemason, Ryozo Kado, was not a Buddhist, but a Catholic. Emotional
complexity must have been there in the mind of Kado at the erection of this tower. It
seemed, however, converged into gratitude for several different kinds of grace of God within
1
Ryozo Kado, “Autobiography of Ryozo Kado.” ca. 1960. Unpublished documents filed in
the personal collection of Sr. Danforth, Maria del Rey, M.M. Maryknoll Mission Archives
(MMA): V, 20.
234
235
Kado, a good Catholic, who built this tower shortly before his departure from Camp
Manzanar. Kado’s perspectives would provide a completely different appreciation about the
life of Issei in the western states from the majority of narratives of Japanese Americans of his
age. It was shared more with other Japanese Catholic Issei and Nisei who have been
discussed in this thesis.
It was early in 1943 when a plan to build this memorial tower in the cemetery was
proposed. Upon his arrival in Camp Manzanar in April 1942, Ryozo Kado had been
assigned as a gardener by the officers due to his work during the pre-war days in Los
Angeles. He had been well-known among Los Angeles Catholic families for his work on
more than a dozen of the grottos of Lourdes and shrines for the saints. The first request for
building a shrine for Our Lady of Grace and a Lourdes Grotto came to Kado in 1929 by Mrs.
August Luer who had been attracted by the beauty of Kado’s work based on his affection for
the beauty of nature, specifically of rock and mineral. At the same time, Mrs. Luer
introduced Kado to her daughter, Mrs. Charles Von der Ahe whose husband had a chain of
twenty-five supermarkets in Los Angeles. For the Von der Ahes, Kado made a shrine to St.
Anthony. Through the work for both families, he learned about Catholicism. Above all, the
warm kindness which both families provided to Kado gave him “the first insight into the
‘family spirit’ in Heaven where Saints help us and we help the Souls in Purgatory and all of
us live in blissful obedience to God.”2
Kado was instructed by Father George Gilbert at Loyola High School. Late in 1929, he
was baptized by Father Hugh Lavery at the Maryknoll mission in Los Angeles. Lavery chose
2
Ibid., IV, 5.
236
Peter for Kado when he took his Catholic name because “he, like you (Kado), was a rock
man.” Although Kado did not like Peter very much as a name, he thought the idea of the
rock man was good.
A rock is so stable. Like Truth it lasts for ages. When I see a glacial rock, scarred and
worn, dragged and pushed and shoved for thousands of miles by an ice block, and
deposited a hundred thousand years ago right where I see it now, I think of God and
His Truth, quite untouched by time. 3
While Kado’s wife, Hama, was not ready for baptism then, Kado did not urge her and
tried only to show her as best as he could that the faith was making him a better man. Four
years later, his children were baptized and Hama was ready in 1936. His baptism and that of
his family changed his life.
Up to then, I was an artist, providing beauty for the eye, peace and joy to the mind…
Now I saw that in using the wonders of God well, I was giving direct praise to Him as
well as delighting mankind.4
Later, in October 1954, Kado was granted the title of Landscape Architect by the State
of California Board of Landscape Architects, which waived the usual requirement of four
years’ college work, two years practical experience, and an examination from Kado.5 Since
the first encounter with the shrine for Our Lady of Grace and the faith of the Luers, Kado had
found and watched the works of God in nature which he had embraced through his job.
While he was not able to have American citizenship by immigration regulations, most of the
requests to build the shrines in gardens came to Kado from white American families. Before
the war began, his resumé counted fourteen Lourdes Grottos, shrines to St. Anthony, to the
Miraculous Medal, to St. Therese, and outdoor Stations of the Cross at the Carmelites at
3
Ibid., IV, 6.
Ibid., IV, 6-7.
5
Ibid., VII, 20.
4
237
Alhambra, and another Stations of the Cross for St. John’s Major Seminary in Camarillo.
His clients of the Grottos included St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, St. Francis Xavier Mission of
Maryknoll, Immaculate Conception Church, and Marymount College.6 Under the most
severe ethnic discrimination in pre-war Los Angeles, Kado had built good friendships,
mutual respect, and faithful trust with American neighbors through his faith in Catholicism
and the work. His words were always filled with appreciation to people and praise to God.
Even after the war began, his attitude did not change.
He moved into a brand new house with his family on December 1, 1941, six days
before the Pearl Harbor Attack. Kado’s business was successful and the waiting list of
people who wanted Kado’s gardens and shrines impressed even himself. The
communication of those American friends may have worked as a litmus test to ask Kado
which side he would stand on between the United States and Japan. It seemed, however,
more ritualistic for Kado than a simple test. A conversation with his wife was a part of it.
Kado wrote, “Remember, we were both Japanese citizens; Orientals could not become
American citizens in those days.” Nevertheless, he knew himself to be certain and said to
Hama, his wife, “Our children were born here. . . They are American citizens even if we
cannot be. America has given us our home. We stand with America.” To his friends as
well, Kado stated that he loved Japan, but in the war between two countries, he would side
with America.7
It is our sincere desire to serve the United States of America. It is a great pleasure and
joy to see our second generation serve in the first line of defense. We have many
children, born in this country, under our care. We will do everything in our power that
6
7
Ibid. IV, 2-V, 3.
Ibid. V, 1-6.
238
these citizens will be mentally and physically fit to serve their country. I wish to ask
all our friends to help guide those of our second generation still in their youth. We—
every one of us of the older generation—will respect the American policy, obey every
detail of the United States rules and regulations and we declare wholehearted loyalty to
this, --our country.”8 (underlined by Ryozo Kado.)
Kado said that he accepted the United States wholeheartedly for their children to be
good American citizens. It was true to him. Not only to be a part of the United States, he
had to wish their children to be hopeful about the future, and more than anything, faithfulness
both in God and country. Kado maintained that America was his home due to his children’s
citizenship. He was probably too humble to recognize his position as someone who was at
home in America. For it was he who had founded his own community with the American
people who recognized Kado as a true friend. Through his sincere attitudes of working, his
affection for nature in the United States, his success in several gardening contests, and
sometimes in arguments with media leaders about discriminatory designations against the
Japanese in the States, Kado strengthened good relations with Americans. This created his
place in the United States. Above all, his sincerity in work and with people was completely
equivalent to his faith in God.
People on his “waiting list” did not decline to ask Kado for their gardens and shrines
until all the Japanese in California were determined to be sent to relocation camps. He was
able to receive a permit to go to work and to travel as needed much farther than regular cases.
While most of Japanese were permitted to go only within 5 miles, Kado was able to travel to
Long Beach and Pasadena, 25 miles and 30 miles away from his home respectively. He
continued to work for those clients until his departure on April 7, 1942. His friends and
8
Ibid. V, 8.
239
clients helped the Kados at his departure. One family cleared a section of the barn and kept
the furnishings of the Kados there. Some friends in the nursery business bought Kado’s
nursery stock even though they did not need any more. Sherman Beahm, one of those
friends, took on Kado’s original hybrids, cared for them and gave him the credit when the
plants could be sold. The Beahms wrote to the Kados every month all during the wartime.
Also, Thomas Joseph McGucken, then Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, wrote a
recommendation letter for Kado while the bishop had expected to keep Kado in any
institution in Los Angeles. This letter may have helped the officers at Manzanar to assign
Kado the position of gardener.9
Kado was delighted to be in charge of the gardens in the camp. He thought it was a
trust which the officers had given him. Although most Japanese in Manzanar only found the
terrible desert, Kado found good water from Mount Whitney and thanked God for its endless
supply. With the assistance of young people of sixteen and seventeen years old, he installed
a pumping system and used the clear water for all purposes. He was proud of having “lovely
gardens and even a small farm” for melons and vegetables within six months. Although
Kado noticed resentfulness in people as well, he focused more on mutual support in blocks in
the camp. Kado found the generosity of people in his work for making beauty spots even on
Saturdays and Sundays. “It was nothing uncommonly generous; most people in camp joined
hands to help one another.” Kado tried to console angry young men by beautifying their
block’s common spaces such as dining rooms. Also, Kado and his son, Louis, joined a
volunteer group to help newcomers to get settled since he felt that others had done the same
9
Ibid., V, 6-13.
240
for his family. His wife, Hama, volunteered in the hospital as a nurse’s aide. Kado
appreciated that those things “did as much for [their] spirits as they did for the general
good.”10
Kado was specifically pleased with the existence of Maryknollers in Camp Manzanar.
“Big, jolly Sister Bernadette with snapping black eyes and wide smile” and “delicate Sister
Susanna tripping along beside her” walked down the main road while working for their
people in the camp. Kado also described about Father Hugh Lavery, who was not permitted
to live in the camp and Father Leo Steinbach, an expatriated priest from Japan who served as
chaplain and commuted from Lone Pine, a town six miles from the camp, every morning to
say Mass. All the stories about Maryknollers portrayed by Kado were filled with fun and
joy. Kado marveled at how people adapted to different ways of life in the camp. At the
same time, he borrowed his wife’s words to admit that camp life “had it all over ordinary life
in at least one point” which was in housekeeping. Things were much simpler there. Kado
was thankful to the Maryknollers who enabled those people to accept their new life more
smoothly than they would have done without them.11
Kado worked to serve everyone relating to Camp Manzanar. The biggest project for
him was “a huge natural rock archway to give [the] Center an impressive entrance.” He tried
to make it so people arriving felt “they were welcomed to a place we took pride in.” Kado
also took care of the lawn at the hospital so that sick people would recuperate with beautiful
nature. Kado worked for beauty spots for each barrack. Finally, he worked for the dead and
the people who prayed for those souls through Ireito, a soul-consoling tower. It was his last
10
11
Ibid., V, 14-17.
Ibid. V, 17-19.
241
work at Manzanar as he was to leave the camp for Ossining, New York with his family
sponsored by Maryknoll in September 1943. Although he would be leaving soon, he
“wanted to leave in the camp some service to those who would never, never leave it.”12
A similar situation happened to Kado when he organized the Holy Cross Cemetery in
Los Angeles after he returned there in the 1950s. It was when he wanted to have a final
critique of the Pieta shrine whether it was as it should be that he encountered the family of a
victim of a train wreck. The victim’s sister was a Maryknoll woman religious and she had
known Kado since he resided in their headquarters after he left Manzanar. She had been a
novice then. She suggested that the family put her brother near the shrine. Although the
sister introduced Kado to her sister-in-law, the widow of the victim, Kado hesitated to break
in on their grief. However, Kado gazed upon the widow with deepest sympathy. He quietly
stood close to the grieving family as if he had intuitively known how the faith would be a
savior for those people.
She felt better to know that her husband would rest close to the Most Sorrowful of
Women. I never spoke them to her, but the words came to my mind. “I made that
shrine for you and for people like you.”13
For the sole consoling tower in the cemetery of Manzanar, Kado worked with his son
until late each night. They decided to finish the tower before they went East. While building
the tower, Kado stood close to “the compatriots who died in the dust of Manzanar.” Also, he
felt sorry for the American officers during these last weeks of his stay in the camp. He
believed that they did the best they could for the Japanese in the camp and said, “Any effort
toward good will on our part brought forth a similar effort on theirs.” Kado appreciated that
12
13
Ibid. V, 19-20.
Ibid. VII, 7-11.
242
those American officers left the Japanese to govern themselves for the most part in the life of
the camp.14
Overall, the thoughts Kado held at the end of his days in Manzanar were filled with
compassion and appreciation. While most of the former internees later raised a voice of
resentment against the U.S. government for their unjust and unconstitutional decision to
detain the Japanese, Kado suggested the opposite perspective.
Looking back now, we all can see that there was wisdom in the ruling which uprooted
thousands of Japanese on the West Coast and made them virtual prisoners of war.
After all, tempers are not normal during a war. Someone who had lost a son or
husband in the war might well take revenge on an innocent Japanese family in the next
block. By removing us from the crowded cities, we were protected from such
incidents. Then too, rugged as life was in the camp, we did not have to buck prejudice
stirred up to war-time pitch.15
The appreciation of the life in the camp has been shared by other Japanese Catholics.
Yae Ono emphasizes the fact that young people were laughing a lot in the camp although
many would imagine a depressing life there. Ono, who joined Maryknoll from Camp
Manzanar, had maintained taciturnity for forty years because people on the East coast did not
know anything about the discrimination against Asians out West. Ono stated that they knew
nothing about those internment camps when she arrived in Ossining in 1943. Since the late
1980s when she approached her eighties, she has spoken about her experiences in the camp.
Many of the Nisei Catholics, who have deeply sympathized with the parents’ generation who
were not allowed American citizenship and lost their property during the internment, have
referred to the unconstitutionality in the government’s decision of mass relocation of an
ethnic group. Ono seems to agree with them. On the other hand, Sister Ono emphasizes
14
15
Ibid. V, 20-21.
Ibid. V, 21.
243
laughter in the camp. When she heard Japanese children screaming in the camp, “I don’t like
Japan! I want to go back to America,” she laughed. When a Catholic girl in the hospital said
she was able to distinguish the sound of everyone’s footsteps, she thought it was funny.
When all the neighbors of a block had stomachaches after having dinner at the block’s “mess
hall” and they found everyone in the hospital was a friend, they laughed. Sister Ono was
clear to state that God gave them laughter in the end. God gave them energy to laugh. Then,
they forgot the hardship and took another step forward.
Ono also learned to “live without.” Due to the limitations of the personal belongings
which the internees were permitted to carry into the camps, they gave up many things which
they wanted to have. Everybody said, “You need to bear. Gaman, gaman.” Nevertheless,
Ono maintains that people would find what to do even though they had nothing. “God helps
you. And we can always end up laughing. Many times, we ended up laughing.”16
Mrs. Julia Nagao laughs whenever she talks about the charismatic Sister B(ernadette).
As a Nisei woman, she also criticizes the decision by the government. In the meanwhile, it
seems she has cherished the memories at Manzanar. For her, the camp was the place where
she met her future husband and embraced her Catholic faith. She was grateful to Father Leo
Steinbach who commuted everyday from Lone Pine to Manzanar and baptized her. Father
Hugh Lavery was “a holy man.” She also appreciates the Quakers who assisted Philip Nagao
in being sent to Loyola University in Chicago from the camp. The same as Ryozo Kado, all
of her personal stories in the camp have been spoken with joy and appreciation.17
16
Interview with Sister Antoinette Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, September 2008.
Interviews with Mrs. Julia Asae Nagao, Ossining, NY, Silver Spring, MD, and
Washington, DC, October 1998 to September 2008.
17
244
Chie Tsukamoto, a Nisei born in Hawaii, moved to Los Angeles with her family before
the war and attended Maryknoll School. Father Hugh Lavery baptized her. Since her family
was relocated to Arkansas, they headed for Camp Rohwer in Desha County by train. Her
mother was pregnant with her due date only a couple of months ahead. Although Tsukamoto
was still young then, she clearly remembers the people on the trains. In the South, the
Tsukamotos knew there was segregation. Therefore, they decided to take their seats in the
back of the train. Then, someone in the train said, “No, no, no! That is the seat only for
black people. You step in front.” That was the seat for white people. After they changed
trains at Kansas City, the train was very crowded. There were several soldiers in uniform.
Though they, of course, should have known that the family was Japanese, one young soldier
stood up, offered the seat, and said to Chie’s mother, “You sit there.” Tsukamoto was deeply
impressed with his attitude and found the nature of human beings to depend on how they
were raised. There was a more important thing in them than hostility.18
Their stories seemed totally different from the experiences which other Japanese in the
States have explained. Using popular and secular sayings derived from Buddhism, those
people often described the life in the camps as “we were on the first street of Hell” which
means they encountered some extreme hardship and took the first step to ruin. No single
Catholic wrote or talked about their experiences like this. They have accepted their own past
even if it involved difficulties. They accepted their new home, America. Providing positive
perspectives to it, they made it possible to use their energy to go forward rather than to stay
in resentment. Encounters with Catholicism assisted them to take this path. This may
18
Interview with Mrs. Chie Tsukamoto, Los Angeles, CA, September 2008.
245
remind the readers of a description of Catholicism as the “Gospel of acceptance” by Jay P.
Dolan.19
In the case of Japanese Catholics, the immigrants’ acceptance focuses more on
hardship based on their unique ethnic experiences than on financial difficulties. As Kado
stated, many Issei accepted America for their children. Considering it further, Kado
accepted America as his own home since it gave their children citizenship. They fully
entrusted God with the hardship where their will did not work (shikata ga nai) and there was
no way other than bearing it (gaman). Both represented Issei culture which they carried from
Japan. Obedience in the faith made sense to those Issei Catholics. For those Issei, the
missionaries’ assistance was most helpful to make religious acceptance and social/cultural
acceptance interchangeable. For Nisei as well, Catholicism provided a smoother connection
in acceptance of both of the values of their parents and their home, America. As discussed in
the previous chapters, the Maryknoll mission specifically served well on this point with their
identity an “American mission” and their knowledge and respectfulness to Japanese tradition.
They were also fortunate to have good role models of Japanese among missionary women
religious.
After finishing the work of the erection of the soul-consoling tower, Kado left
Manzanar and headed for New York with his family in September 1943 as scheduled. They
moved into the property of Maryknoll in Ossining where the Kados gained the trust of
Mother Mary Joseph, the founder of the Maryknoll Sisters, and managed the landscape for
three years. Kado was attracted by the panorama of rock with beautiful green on the Hudson.
19
Jay P. Dolan, Immigrant Church: New York’s Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865,
(IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992).
246
Even today, visitors enjoy the breathtaking view of Maryknoll which holds perfect harmony
of shrines for the saints, oriental gardening, and the nature of the Hudson. Starting with the
statue of St. Joseph, Kado created the shrine for Our Lady of Grace which is located in front
of the Mission Bell where Maryknollers have departed for missions, a traffic circle inside
which is a Japanese garden, and a shrine to the Good Shepherd. Since that time, all the
missionaries and visitors to Maryknoll have been surrounded by this harmony which Kado
helped to create between the nature and humans, between the western and the oriental, and
between the divine and the earthly.20
In August 1944, considering the Japanese life after the camp, Maryknoll Father
Leopold Tibesar conducted a survey on relocation of the Japanese from the camps. For
grasping the Japanese situation all over the States, Tibesar traveled extensively. In Seattle,
the first destination after he left Camp Minidoka, Tibesar met Bishop Shaughnessy of Seattle
who coincidently visited the Maryknoll convent at the same time as Tibesar did. They
discussed the issues of the Japanese after the war. Tibesar mentioned the relocation
assistance of the Catholic Youth Organization, the Nisei Center in Chicago, where Brother
Theophane Walsh worked hard for the Japanese. Shaughnessy “thought for a moment and
said, ‘That’s good.’ It’s better for them to seek new homes back East. Public sentiment is
increasingly against them out here.” This time, Tibesar completely agreed with Bishop
Shaughnessy. The survey which Tibesar submitted to Ossining after his trip basically
supported their idea of this time.21
20
Ryozo Kado, “Autobiography,” VI, 1-19.
Leopold Tibesar, M.M., “Relocation Survey.” General Council Topical Miscellany: Box
6, Folder 7, MFBA (Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Archives) Collection, MMA.
21
247
Although there were several cases in which young Nisei were not necessarily happy
after leaving their parents in the camp like Tule Lake which functioned as a prison for
suspicious Japanese, Tibesar found many who were better off in the Midwest and the East.
In Quincy, Illinois, a Nisei daughter of a Japanese family was in training to become a nurse.
In the previous year, Tibesar had tried to resettle some families there in vain. Tibesar asked
the Head Nurse of St. Mary’s Hospital the reason for “their former refusal and their present
change of policy.” She replied to Tibesar that they watched another Catholic hospital where
the Nisei worked better “than the white girls” and that was good enough reason for the St.
Mary’s staff. In Detroit, Mount Carmel Mercy Hospital had eleven Japanese as employees.
Tibesar reported they “declared themselves satisfied to work where they were and having no
intention to return to the Coast ever.” The most interesting people Tibesar met on this trip
were “a very happy group of seven of our people.” They were three Issei and four Nisei who
worked for the St. Joseph Children’s Home. Three of those Nisei were teaching and they
were “quite delighted with themselves.”22
Tibesar met fifty more Japanese Catholics in Chicago, mostly from Los Angeles. He
was struck by the fact that most of these young people of working age were not married yet.
Tibesar reported that Chicago seemed to have the largest population of relocated Japanese of
any city. There were 6,000 Japanese, and most of them were young. Although pay was still
low for the Japanese in Chicago, there were plenty of job opportunities. Tibesar thought the
mission for the Japanese who resettled in the Midwest and the East would be important. And
that center should be Chicago. Through the communication with Ossining, Tibesar was
22
Ibid.
248
assigned to the CYO Nisei Center in Chicago in early 1945 and the center had a more formal
function under the direction of Tibesar who obediently cooperated with Bishop Sheil, the
supporter of their activities.23
Tibesar found serious difficulties in the resettlement of the Japanese back to the West.
During this trip, he visited Spokane where Japanese Catholic families began returning and
the Jesuits were enthusiastic about assisting them. Spokane was a hometown for those
Japanese who returned from the camp. Father Francis Altman, S.J., the president of Gonzaga
University took the leadership role and worked with Fathers Edward S. Flajole, S.J. and John
Hurley, S.J. Although those priests were zealous in taking care of the Japanese, they were
not able to hear confessions in the Japanese language. Moreover, there was still
discrimination against the Japanese. Many hotels, restaurants, and barber shops were
refusing Japanese customers. While Tibesar appreciated the efforts of the Jesuits, he
assessed the difficulties of the Japanese return to their hometowns on the West Coast in
stating:
If the West Coast were to be opened tomorrow for the relocation of Japanese people
they would find just as difficult and perhaps more so to find not only housing but also
employment. . . We feel quite sure that discriminatory legislation would be framed
against the Japanese people out there in no time. It has commenced to show its head in
Spokane already. Property titles are being challenged and process is started in cases in
which Issei hold property in the name of Nisei.24
In 1944, Tibesar suggested to Ossining that they should consider Chicago as the center
of the new Japanese mission after the war. He believed that many opportunities for
conversions existed. He heard “one good soul” ask him whether “it would be alright to go to
23
24
Ibid.
Ibid.
249
confession to [Tibesar] in writing as she could not go out there at all.” In Chicago in 1944,
Tibesar encountered the same request as Leo Hatakeyama did in 1911 in Los Angeles and
found the necessity of the mission there. Tibesar decided to make Chicago a base of
operations and to cover the area “from St. Paul to St. Louis, North and South, East to
Cleveland and South to Cincinnati, with an occasional run to New York and Washington.”25
In December 1944, Maryknoll decided to send Tibesar to Chicago so that the mission
which had been organized by Brother Theophane Walsh would become more formally
functioning. Bishop Sheil had already been favorable about the CYO Nisei Center and
Maryknoll received an annual subsidy of “some $8,000 from the American Hierarchy” to
continue these activities.26
World War II ended on August 14 (August 15 on JST), 1945 and the internment camps
were declared to be closed on December 1 of that year. After the survey of Tibesar which
was held a year before and while Tibesar worked in Chicago in 1945, Maryknoll had
accumulated “the sentiment” to close the Japanese missions on the West Coast. Father John
F. Walsh at the Maryknoll mission in Seattle also reported “the deep and strong local
sentiment against [the Japanese.]” Walsh wrote about James Sakamoto, the leader among the
Seattle Japanese Catholics and supporter of Tibesar in cooperation with War Relocation
Authority, who returned to Seattle with his family. Sakamoto “visibly faded in mental
outlook each day” he had been in Seattle. This condition of difficulty at once deterred
Mother Mary Joseph of the Maryknoll Sisters from removing the women religious from
25
Ibid.
Letter from John J. Considine, M.M., Vicar General, to Leopold Tibesar, 19 December
1944. General Council Topical Miscellany: Box 6, Folder 7, MFBA Collection, MMA.
26
250
Seattle. After that, she reconsidered the issue and reached the decision that “the Sisters
[would] surely be a ‘port in a storm’ for these poor Japanese especially at this time.”
Although Bishop Shaughnessy had some questions regarding Maryknoll as he did not receive
the original proposal of the removal of those women religious, he eventually showed his
gladness that Maryknoll would remain in Seattle and work for the Japanese there. 27
However, the conditions after the war—after the relocation—forced all the missionaries to
confront the issues of how to reorganize the mission to the Japanese. It was not able to be the
same as the pre-war mission. Although the war lasted for less than five years and the
internment period for most of people was about three years, Nisei, the second generation,
grew up and left the camps as well as their communities while being college students or
working. They had their own sponsors away from their hometowns.
While Tibesar focused on the Japanese who headed for the East, Father Hugh Lavery
was considering the Japanese who returned to the West. After sending the young Japanese to
the East from Manzanar with their reference letters, Lavery observed discrimination against
the Japanese also occurred in the East. The cases Lavery received included the cold behavior
of Catholic priests in some cities in the East against them. He was anxious about their
spiritual welfare and anticipated certain numbers of them would return to the West.28
In September 1945, the General Council of Maryknoll shifted gears not to revive a
Japanese Center or mission such as they had carried on before the war in Los Angeles. They
considered that Japanese should settle down in their local parishes, “to become acquainted
27
Letter from John F. Walsh, M.M., to Bishop James E. Walsh, Superior General, 4 August
1945. MFBA Development House Collection: Seattle: Box 33, Folder 5, MMA.
28
Letter from Hugh Lavery, M.M., to Considine, 12 January 1945 Development Houses,
Japanese Relocation, General, MFBA Collection, MMA.
29
with their pastor[s] and to send their children to the parochial school[s].”
251
The General
Council tried to make a transition of the mission, from permanent mission to the ethnic group
to temporary welfare for those people in order to settle down in their own parishes.
Therefore, they would be able to rent some places for use as hostels for the Japanese who
returned to Los Angeles while the General Council did not allow the purchase of any new
facilities for this purpose.30
Nevertheless, Lavery could not help raise questions. The Japanese mission had a
completely different character from any other ethnic Catholic mission in the United States.
The Maryknoll mission successfully included the non-Catholic population of the Japanese in
Los Angeles, even more successfully in the registration of the people for internment. When
the General Council explained to Lavery about sending those people to their own parishes,
they did not count the fact that eighty-five percent of those Japanese Maryknollers in Los
Angeles, strong supporters and loyal friends to the mission community, were not Catholic.
Even for their Catholic Japanese, the parishes in Los Angeles were still so unfriendly that
“the Chancery [was] also concerned” about the hardship against those people. Lavery also
thought that there were still enough Japanese who consulted with Maryknoll missionaries
about baptisms, weddings, confessions and funerals. Confessions by Issei, the immigrants,
29
Letter from TMJ to Lavery, 5 September 1945. Development Houses, Japanese
Relocation, General, MFBA Collection, MMA.
30
Letter from Bishop James E. Walsh to Lavery, 20 September 1945. Development Houses,
Japanese Relocation, General, MFBA Collection, MMA.
31
remained specifically as a problem.
252
Father Leo Steinbach, M.M., supported Lavery while
stating:
It is interesting to know that I have found that our many conversions are mostly the
result of the work you have been doing in the past, especially in the school. When I
hear that Maryknoll is not too keen about Japanese work anymore I am forced to
wonder if the Council realizes there are opportunities now such as we never had before.
I am already noticing and have also been told by our Issei Catholics that Japan’s
surrender has jolted their faith in Buddhism. For many years the seeds of faith have
been sown in L.A. at a great cost. Now when the harvest is ripe is no time to cut down
on our mission activities among these folks. It is rather the time to increase the work.
Issei have come to the conclusion that they should remain in this land.32
Sister Susanna Hayashi agreed with those missionaries while writing about the
importance of the mission for the Japanese who returned to Los Angeles. Although the
catechetical classes by Sisters Susanna and Bernadette resulted more than 100 baptisms a
year, Sister Susanna already heard about the difficulty of those Catholic Japanese who had
returned to Los Angeles. They could not find any room in the Catholic schools for EuroAmerican children when they tried to find places to send their children.33 Although all of
those missionaries understood the importance of assimilation and amalgamation of the
Japanese into their parish communities as the General Council emphasized, they realized it
was too early to pursue.
The General Council of Maryknoll partially accepted their appeals. They ordered the
local missionaries to maintain the mission so that it would remain only for the spiritual
service for Issei. It would be possible to include social services for these older generation.
31
Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 20 September 1945. Development Houses, Japanese
Relocation, General, MFBA Collection, MMA.
32
Letter from Leo Steinbach, M.M., to Lavery, arrived in Los Angeles on 19 September
1945. Development Houses, Japanese Relocation, General, MFBA Collection, MMA.
33
Letter from Sister Susanna Hayashi, M.M., to Sister Columba, 10 September 1945.
Maryknoll Sisters Archives (MSA) Collection, MMA.
253
The service for Nisei should aim at their participation in their own parishes. They did not
include educational service which they performed during the pre-war period.34
The emerging necessity that those missionaries encountered in November 1945,
however, overturned this decision in Ossining. More than five hundred Japanese returned to
Los Angeles including three hundred Catholics. They were all “Maryknoll friends” whom
Lavery and Maryknoll missionaries assisted for the registration for internment. Although
Ossining did not intend to reopen the former school compound on Hewitt Street which the
Diocese purchased after the Japanese internment, the bishop of Los Angeles advised Lavery
to consult on the issue with the Chancery office. Bishop James E. Walsh, the superior
general of Maryknoll, gave approval to Lavery to use their former mission church if
Monsignor Cawley of Los Angeles permitted its use.35
Lavery gratefully reported to Ossining on the favors which Monsignor Cawley showed
to the Japanese mission. Monsignor Cawley permitted the use of their former compound on
Hewitt Street and the right to use whatever collections the mission received. He also
suggested that everything the Japanese mission needed would be entirely free. Any Japanese
child might attend the school “with free tuition and free books.”36
Lavery also stated that “displaced Japanese on the Coast” had showed greater interest
in Catholicism during the war. When they returned to Los Angeles, according to Lavery’s
34
Letter from Bishop Walsh to Lavery, 7 November 1945. Development Houses, Los
Angeles, MFBA Collection, MMA.
35
Telegram from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 27 November 1945; Telegram from Bishop
Walsh to Lavery, 29 November 1945. Development Houses, Japanese Relocation General,
MFBA Collection, MMA.
36
Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 13 December 1945. Development Houses, Los
Angeles, MFBA Collection, MMA.
37
report, there were “twice the number of Catholics that existed before the war.”
254
Non-
Catholics were also his concern. The chapel on Hewitt Street held 200 in the congregation at
their first Mass in four years. It was a missa cantata. Holy Communion was shared with 125
Japanese.38 Through Easter 1946, their catechetical class held ninety-nine people under the
instruction of Sisters Susanna and Bernadette as well as Mine (Minnie) Ono, an elder sister
of Yae Ono. Lavery expected at least forty or fifty of them would be baptized soon.39
Father Leo Steinbach was assigned to the mission in post-war Japan. Since he
conducted the Mass for most of the baptisms within Camp Manzanar, this news of his
assignment encouraged people to donate great amount of old clothes, food, and “unsolicited
funds” for people in Japan within a couple of weeks. Not only Japanese, but also Americans
came to him and did the same. One American woman unknown to Steinbach left $3,000.
Lavery began feeling the change of the people’s general attitude toward the Japanese.40
Bishop James E. Walsh visited the Pacific Coast houses from March 25 to April 14,
1946. He observed that 23,000 Japanese had already returned and resettled after the war
while there were 30,000 more Japanese who might have possibly returned to Los Angeles.
There were two different opinions among the missionaries whether the entire 60,000
Japanese in the West would return or not. Although the General Council of Maryknoll still
thought they would focus mainly on social work for the Issei, the needs became clearer.
37
Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 29 November 1945. Development Houses, Los
Angeles, MFBA Collection, MMA.
38
Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 13 December 1945. Development Houses, Los
Angeles, MFBA Collection, MMA.
39
Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 9 March 1946. Development Houses, Los Angeles,
MFBA Collection, MMA.
40
Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 13 December 1945. Development Houses, Los
Angeles, MFBA Collection, MMA.
255
Contrary to their expectations that those Japanese would not return, Bishop Walsh considered
that the Issei were sentimentally attached to the West Coast and the Nisei needed to be close
to their parents in order to protect them. While Walsh thought that the Nisei must have
preferred to find better opportunities in Chicago and the North Central area and they should
eventually head for the Midwest, the life of the Issei required some more time before moving
forward.41
Along with the directives of the General Council which emphasized the social services
in Los Angeles, Lavery began a Day Nursery with the Maryknoll Sisters. Although they did
not have their own facility in which to open the service, several children already came to
their sisters everyday. Lavery suggested that their Los Angeles House extend the service for
not only Japanese children but also American, Filipino, and Chinese children. During the
war and the internment of the Japanese, Maryknoll sold their school compound to the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles to be used for Mexican children after acquiring the consent of
Lavery and the Japanese parents in the camps. St. Anthony’s Church and rectory, only three
blocks away from the Maryknoll Sisters’ House was also used for the Mexicans. Lavery,
however, expected this church would be turned over to Maryknoll soon. This church had
once been located in the heart of a community for the Mexican immigrants. In the middle of
the 1940s, many of them already left the area and the church had been abandoned.42
41
James E. Walsh, “(Father General’s) Visitation, Pacific Coast Houses-1946.” Development
Houses, Los Angeles, MFBA Collection, MMA.
42
Letter from Lavery to Bishop Walsh, 15 June 1946. Development Houses, Los Angeles,
MFBA Collection, MMA.
256
Bishop Walsh recognized that the Japanese came to the Church on Hewitt Street “for
miles from all over the city, passing by their own parish church and a dozen others.”43 The
necessity of the new mission emerged in Los Angeles while Lavery reported to Bishop
Walsh that the pastors of Los Angeles generally had “a good attitude towards the Japanese
Catholics who live[d] in the confines of their respective parishes, with few exceptions,
treat[ed] them with courtesy and a certain measure of welcome when they [came] to a parish
church.44 It was still a center of the Japanese in Los Angeles whose residential area became
much larger than during the pre-war time. Maryknoll in Los Angeles after the war was not
only part of the neighborhood of Little Tokyo, but also at the center of greater Los Angeles
where the returned Japanese spread. Maryknoll’s experiences in assisting Japanese
resettlement in Chicago at the CYO Nisei Center helped the missionaries in Los Angeles
because both of their works were quite similar during this post-war time. Bishop Walsh
advised Lavery to refer to the report of Brother Theophane Walsh at the CYO Nisei Center.45
Also, the area surrounding their Hewitt Street site became more ethnically diversified.
Maryknoll on Hewitt Street became the intersection of ethnic Americans. At the same time,
it became a hub to assist the people of post-war Japan both spiritually and materially through
the work of Maryknoll missionaries who were assigned to work for the mission in Japan.
Thus, Maryknoll in Los Angeles already began new missions in 1946, even three years
before Archbishop James Francis McIntyre ordered the reopening of the school.
43
James E. Walsh, “(Father General’s) Visitation, Pacific Coast Houses-1946.”
Ibid.
45
Letter from Bishop Walsh to Lavery, 12 July 1946. Development Houses, Los Angeles,
MFBA Collection, MMA.
44
257
A Divine Word missionary, Father William Stoecke closed the service in Camp
Topaz, Utah on September 9, 1945. He returned to San Francisco with his Japanese people
of the Catholic mission. Since the first Sunday of October 1942, Stoecke worked for all the
Catholics in the camp, including the service men. In addition to Mass every Sunday and on
Holy Days, Stoecke held Mass practically every morning there. Stoecke delivered sermons
both in English and Japanese with his concern for the spiritual needs for the Issei. Until
August 1945, he continued to assist at weekly meetings “particularly for the older folks” and
instructed Christian doctrine for children on Saturdays. To Archbishop Mitty, Stoecke also
reported that Bishop Duane Hunt of Salt Lake City, celebrated the Sacrament of
Confirmation with twenty Japanese Catholics. Although the number was not as large as
Manzanar, Stoecke administered twenty-five baptisms in Camp Topaz. Four funerals and
three weddings took place according to the Catholic ritual. He also heard more than nine
hundred confessions and almost 2,000 Holy Communions were received. Stoecke heard
another three hundred confessions and distributed 450 Holy Communions in Sugarville, the
nearest city outside of the camp.46
With this report and the telephone conversation with the Chancery Office of San
Francisco on September 19, 1945, Mitty learned about Stoecke’s willingness to return to “the
old Jap[anese] mission.” The archbishop immediately replied with words of gratitude and a
blessing to Stoecke for his service in Camp Topaz. Although the mission always had
financial problems, the archdiocese continued to support this small mission. In the summer
46
Wiliam Stoecke, S.V.D., “Report of the Activities of the Catholic Church in Topaz from
1942 – 1945” submitted to Archbishop John Joseph Mitty of San Francisco. Divine Word
Missionaries Parishes: 1925-1961. Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
258
of 1948, the Sacred Penitentiary officially granted the small chapel of the Japanese mission
by the Divine Word fathers “the privilege of the Portiuncula Indulgence,” a plenary
indulgence originally available at the beginning of August at the Church of Santa Maria degli
Angeli, near Assisi, Italy, then later extended to all Franciscan and other designated
churches.47
During five years after World War II ended, the St. Francis Xavier Mission in San
Francisco had developed differently from the pre-war period. In 1949, the Morning Star
School had children of “eight or nine different nationalities” and their parents and family
members attended the Mass in the church. The sermons were no longer delivered in
Japanese. Stoecke still believed it was a unique mission specifically for the Japanese. He
explained, “We are a mission and not a parish. We must serve all of the Catholic Japanese in
the Archdiocese.” However, the mission for ethnically diversified families under the
direction of “a German-born, Holland educated, Japan experienced priest” who came to San
Francisco was truly universal—catholic. This fact provided the San Francisco mission a
totally different character from the Japanese mission by Maryknoll.48
After Stoecke had the celebration of his silver jubilee as a pastor at the Japanese
Mission in San Francisco on October 29, 1950, at which Monsignor Henry Lyne presided,
with the reading of the blessings of Pope Pius XII and the attendance of Mitty, the Society of
47
Memo left at the Chancery Office of San Francisco, 19 September 1945; Letter from Mitty
to Stoecke, 20 September 1945; Letter from Nicholas P. Connolly, Assistant Chancellor of
San Francisco to Stoecke, 12 June 1948. Divine Word Missionaries Parishes: 1925-1961,
Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco,.
48
Barbara East, “S.F. Mission is Home For Many Nationalities: St. Francis Xavier, Founded
for Japanese In 1925, Now Has Wider Field.” San Francisco Examiner, Sunday, 20
February 1949, p.3.
259
the Divine Word began to prepare for the installation of a new pastor at the St. Francis
Xavier Mission.49 Aloysius Kappenberg, then superior general of the society in Italy
assigned Joseph Guetzloe, S.V.D., to work among the Japanese in the United States.50
Guetzloe was born in Bottrop near Essen, Germany in 1912, the year the St. Francis Xavier
mission was founded. He entered the seminary of the Divine Word in Steyl, Holland and
was ordained to the priesthood in St. Augustine, near Bonn, Germany in 1939. He spent ten
years as a missionary in Japan. In 1940, he started his mission in Japan while engaging in
pastoral work at Atsuta Parish in Nagoya for four years and at Christ the King Cathedral of
Niigata for five years. Guetzloe’s last assignment before coming to San Francisco was pastor
in Yonezawa in the prefecture of Yamagata under the diocese of Niigata, Japan where he
stayed in 1949. He also helped found a monthly magazine, St. Mary’s Association, and
translated two books from German into Japanese.51 Unlike the Maryknoll priests, Guetzloe
was not expatriated from Japan during World War II because he was German.
In the preparation for this transition, Guetzloe arrived in San Francisco in the
beginning of November 1950 and began the work for the Japanese there. The Society
proposed their intension to appoint Guetzloe as pastor of St. Francis Xavier Mission, San
Francisco, effective on January 1, 1951 and asked for the archbishop’s approval.
49
Letter from Mitty to Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, D.D., Apostolic Delegate to the United
States of America, 29 September 1950; Letter from Mitty to Cicognani, 10 October 1950;
Letter from Mitty to Stoecke, 26 October 1950; Letter from Leo T. Maher, Secretary of the
Chancery Office of San Francisco to Monsignor Henry J. Lyne, 18 October 1950; Letter
from Maher to Monsignor Thomas F. Millett, 25 October 1950. Divine Word Missionaries
Parishes, 1925-1961, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
50
Letter from William C. Bauer, S.V.D., Provincial, to Mitty, 8 December 1950. Divine
Word Missionaries Parishes, 1925-1961, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
51
Palma Trentacoste, “Three Big Anniversaries at St. Francis Xavier Mission,” The Monitor,
29 April 1976.
260
Kappenberg planned to retain Stoecke in San Francisco as an assistant to Guetzloe. On the
other hand, he planned to withdraw John Zimmerman from the St. Francis Xavier Mission.
Instead, the Society was to keep Father Louis Benoit, S.V.D., who joined the mission after
the war in San Francisco although Benoit was assigned to the Eastern Province in the end.52
Archbishop Mitty’s approval of the appointment of Joseph Guetzloe arrived soon after this
proposal with the archbishop’s emphasis on his hope that the Society would allow Stoecke to
remain in San Francisco. The archbishop’s appreciation for Stoecke’s service was noted, as
he had “the respect and confidence not only of the Japanese people but of the clergy of the
Archdiocese of San Francisco.”53
Guetzloe received the formal appointment letter written of Mitty dated December 20,
1950. At the same time, the replacement of Stoecke was formalized. On January 7, 1951,
Monsignor Harold E. Collins, who was delegated by the archbishop of San Francisco,
formally installed Guetzloe at the St. Francis Xavier Mission. After the Rite of Installation
was celebrated, Monsignor Collins sent the copy of the Attestation of Installation and the
Profession of Faith, as well as the Oath against Modernism signed by Guetzloe, to the
archbishop on January 9.54
52
Ibid.; Letter from Bauer, S.V.D. to Mitty, 16 December 1950; Letter from Mitty to Bauer,
S.V.D. Divine Word Missionaries Parishes, 1925-1961, Archives of the Archdiocese of San
Francisco.
53
Letter from Mitty to Bauer, S.V.D., 12 December 1950. Divine Word Missionaries
Parishes, 1925-1961, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
54
Letter from Nicholas P. Connolly, Assistant Chancellor of Archdiocese of San Francisco to
Guetzloe,13 December 1950; Letter from Connolly to Monsignor Thomas F. Millett, 20
December 1950; the Formal Appointment of Guetzloe signed by Mitty and Connolly, 20
December 1950; Letter from Connolly to Stoecke, 20 December 1950; Letter from Connolly
to Guetzloe, 26 December 1950; Letter from Connolly to Monsignor Collins, 26 December
1950; Letter from Monsignor Collins to Mitty with the copy of Attestation of Installation and
261
Mitty was zealously involved in the work for the Japanese. Considering the
International Conference for the signing of the Treaty of Peace with Japan in San Francisco
held on September 4, 1951 and that there was found no Catholic among the names of the
signatories representing the United States, Michel Francis Doyle, a leading Catholic lawyer
in Philadelphia, suggested that Mitty preside at a special Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San
Francisco in order to mark the opening of the conference. The archbishop was delighted with
this suggestion and immediately and enthusiastically prepared for this Mass while scheduling
it at 9:00 a.m. on the day of the treaty signing. In four days, after the letter with this
suggestion was written, the Department of State arranged to deliver the invitation of this
special Mass to the delegates to the conference.55 This Mass was “reminiscent of one held at
the formation of the United Nations” in San Francisco in 1945 in which Mitty set a moral
keynote for the new organization.56
This group of fifty Japanese delegates to the conference included four Catholic
members. Seiichi Motono, a special adviser to Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, stated that
the joyful prospect of a welcome end to six years of preparations and hope for independence
also carried “a heavy burden of new cares” for Japan “geared to impending economic
problems and to the threat of resurgent Communist activity.” At that time, Prime Minister
the copy of Profession of Faith, and the Oath against Modernism, signed by the new Pastor, 9
January 1951. Divine Word Missionaries Parishes, 1925-1961, Archives of the Archdiocese
of San Francisco.
55
Letter from Michael Francis Doyle to Mitty, 23 August 1951. The letter head for the
Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was used for this purpose; Two letters
from Mitty to Doyle, 27 August 1951; The Chancery Archives of San Francisco holds one of
the replies to attend to this Mass dated on 31 August 1951 by Danilo Brugal, Consul General
of Dominican Republic. Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
56
“Mass will Precede Treaty Conference: Rite Tuesday at Cathedral; Delegates Due:
Archbishop Mitty to Offer Prayers for World Peace.” The Monitor, 31 August 1951.
262
Yoshida was strongly influenced by Catholicism although he did not convert while he was in
office. Yoshida’s late wife had been a Catholic. Yoshida was later baptized on his deathbed
after he made his quip famous among Japanese Catholics that he would be a Heaven thief,
tengoku-dorobo. His daughter, Kazuko Aso, the best known Catholic first lady of Japan was
in San Francisco with Yoshida and her husband. Kazuko Aso is the mother of Taro Aso,
former Prime Minister of Japan from September 2008 to September 2009. Taro Aso is a
Catholic, too. Besides Motono and Mrs. Aso, there were two more Catholics--Kumao
Nishimura, director of the Bureau of Treaties, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and John Akira
Matsui, private secretary to the prime minister.57
Responding to the interview by The Monitor, Motono expressed gratitude for
American Catholic aid to Japan.
In goods, services, in your financial support of the missionary orders working so
tirelessly in Japan, you have created a debt that my people can repay only from the
heart. . . And it is more vital than ever that such Catholic aid continue. It will not only
help to ease the struggle of economic independence, but will serve to offset the coming
barrage of Communist propaganda.58
In this same article, The Monitor introduced some more leading Japanese Catholics, such as
Chief Justice Kotaro Tanaka while holding full expectation for the foundation of a new
friendship between the two countries in the post-war era along with Mitty in cooperation with
Catholics in both nations. Mitty who had received the reports of the Rehabilitation
Committee of the Catholic Church in Japan during the occupation became one of the most
enthusiastic and cooperative leaders among the American hierarchy.
57
James Kelly, “Japanese Fear Reds at Home, Delegate Says: Catholic Adviser to Premier
Hopes U.S. Garrison Stays.” The Monitor, 7 September 1951.
58
Ibid.
263
The Rehabilitation Committee of the Catholic Church in Japan, led by Bruno Bitter,
S.J., the rector of Sophia University, Tokyo, was formally founded in March 1946 with the
approval of Archbishop Paul Marella, apostolic delegate to Japan.59 Although it was a
private body which was established by direction of the Catholic hierarchy in Japan, it acted
as liaison between General Headquarters of SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied
Powers) and the Catholic Church, “its institutions or activities in Japan.” Its members
included Patrick J. Byrne, provincial of Maryknoll, John P. Higgins, Edward J. Lambert,
John G. Liebert, O. C. Morland and J. van Overmeeren, S.J. The purpose of this committee
was the rehabilitation of Japan with funds and goods which were collected and distributed
through Catholic churches. 60
Those members, however, had much bigger “hopes” for their missions. It was to
convert more Japanese to Catholicism supported with the assistance of more American
Catholics. Rather than all brands of “materialisms,” such as “communism, socialism,
pragmatism, birth control (propagandized also by the Christian Literature Society), etc.,” the
committee members believed that “the thinking and serious among [Japanese],
notwithstanding their physical hunger and exhaustion, refuse[d] to give up the search for new
religious and spiritual foundations.” While European missionaries were still heroically active
in various fields in rehabilitation of Japan, American Catholic literature was made known,
and they expected that “perhaps Japan [might] be brought nearer to Catholic America” and
59
Letter from Paul Marella, apostolic delegate to Japan to Bruno Bitter, S.J., the rector of
Sophia University, Tokyo, 27 March 1946. Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of
San Francisco.
60
“Private Report of the Rehabilitation Committee of the Catholic Church in Japan. Tokyo,
Japan, 7 July 1946.” Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
264
that “a really Catholic phase of Christianization of Japan [might] begin.” They concluded
that this phase had to be characterized by the contribution of American Catholics. They did
not believe it was overestimating to state:
From all over the country, including the most backward and reactionary inland towns
famed for their Buddhist or nationalistic prejudices, reports pour in on the increase of
attendances at services, the number of applications for instructions, visits to the priest
and to bible and catechism classes. Increases of more than ten times are often
mentioned. The shifts of population from the big towns into rural areas have brought
with them the new problem of looking after scattered Catholics in inaccessible villages
and the care for the converts they are attracting in regions never yet visited by a
Catholic priest. One missionary covers, on his bicycle and his meager rations (half a
pound of bread a day, and nothing else) daily an area of over 20 miles, with occasional
lengthier visits in an overcrowded train. Another Father recounts that he has to handle
50 individual instructions a week, besides his other work, Sunday sermons, visits to the
sick (and there are many), parochial associations etc. The case of the Maryknollers in
Kyoto, freshly returned from the States and already so occupied with daily catechism
that they have simply no breathing space, is a case in point. The ice is broken in
classes that were, so far, taboo for Christian infiltration. Big provincial businessmen,
journalists, doctors, are being gained. Inroads are made among the farmers. At Tokyo,
a princess of the Imperial family, regularly comes for instruction to a convent. At
Matsue (Hiroshima Vicariate) the daughter of the High Priest of the second important
national Shinto Shrine has been received into the Church and her father, a nationally
known figure, is under instruction. Three cases of conversions of Buddhist bonzes
have become known so far.61
With this report, the committee requested the support of the NCWC for the
rehabilitation of Japan, specifically in spiritual assistance. Their letter addressed to the
NCWC also maintained that the Occupation Forces recognized “the unique opportunity”
which the Church held then in Japan and that “[t]his unprecedented opportunity for
Christianity was stressed by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, General Douglas
MacArthur, in an interview with the apostolic delegate, Archbishop Marella, on November
28(, 1945).” They stated that their outlook was shared with Francis Joseph Cardinal
61
Ibid.
265
Spellman who had visited briefly in Japan as military vicar of the Armed Forces. While
surprised to see that there was no resentment against Americans in Japan despite the
complete devastation of the country, they concluded that “Divine Providence [had] destined
America to take the lead in this supreme moment in the spiritual development of Japan.” Just
as Cardinal Spellman’s stay in Japan encouraged native Christians and the struggling Church
in Japan, the committee emphasized the necessity of the participation of the American
Church for the restoration of Japan, especially its sending of enthusiastic missionaries from
the States. American experiences of the Catholic mission to Japanese both in Japan and the
States were considered most helpful in occupied Japan. The letter concluded that “through
the response of American Catholics to the challenge of this passing hour, the landing of
General MacArthur on the soil of Japan may well have as a consequence what the landing of
St. Francis Xavier well nigh four hundred years ago one promised---a Christian Japan.”62
Receiving such correspondence from Japan, Archbishop Mitty of San Francisco was
one of the bishops who was most involved in the foundation of friendship with the Church in
Japan because San Francisco had one of the largest populations of Japanese in the States and
had a Catholic mission for this ethnic group, as well as the city’s being still the entry port for
most of ordinary Japanese who came into America. In November 1948, Archbishop Paul
Marella, apostolic delegate to Tokyo, invited Archbishop Mitty to join the project of an
international Catholic pilgrimage to Japan for celebrating the fourth centenary of the landing
of St. Francis Xavier from May 28 to June 6, 1949. Although Mitty’s schedule was already
62
The letter to the Administrative Board of the N.C.W.C. signed by 33 influential American
Catholics who assembled in Tokyo on 24 January 1946 at a meeting sponsored by the
Rehabilitation Committee. Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
266
filled, and he was unable to respond to it, Mitty was deeply concerned about the plan and
enthusiastic enough even to ask Marella to postpone the schedule until he was able to
participate. Marella was not able to change the plan for him. From Maryknoll, Father Leo
Steinbach participated in it as one of the project members.63
In April 1950, Bishop Paul Aijiro Yamaguchi of Nagasaki sent a letter of appreciation
to Archbishop Mitty for San Franciscan Catholics’ aid to the people in his diocese. The
National Council of Catholic Women of the Archdiocese of San Francisco sent clothes for
the atomic bomb victims and more special packages for the children of the city. Although
Mitty could not find a solution for the request that Yamaguchi asked for the reconstruction of
two large Catholic churches which were destroyed by the atomic bomb because most of the
projects from the United States were limited to relief, Mitty continued his involvement in the
rehabilitation of Japan. Archbishop Yamaguchi later visited the United States in 1951 in
order to ask the U.S. hierarchy to understand the situation of the Church in Nagasaki.64
When a Catholic Radio Station was erected in Tokyo in 1951, contributions by San
Francisco were sent to the Society of St. Paul in Tokyo. Mitty sent a celebratory message for
the opening of the radio station, then known as “Radio for Free Asia” and Father Joseph
Guetzloe, the Divine Word missionary for the Japanese in San Francisco read Mitty’s
message in Japanese. The message was recorded in San Francisco and sent to Japan for
63
Letter from Archbishop Paul Marella, Apostolic Delegate to Tokyo, to Archbishop Mitty
of San Francisco, 18 October 1948; Telegram from Mitty to Marella, 2 November 1948;
Letter from Mitty to Archbishop, 2 November 1948. Japanese Folder, Archives of the
Archdiocese of San Francisco.
64
Letter from Archbishop Paul Aijiro Yamaguchi of Nagasaki to Mitty, 10 April 1950;
Letter from Mitty to Yamaguchi, 15 April 1950; Letter from Yamaguchi to Mitty, 14
February 1951; Letter from Mitty toYamaguchi, 14 Mach 1951. Japanese Folder, Archives
of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
267
playing over the new station. The radio station later came to be called Bunka Hoso, Nippon
(Japanese) Cultural Broadcasting, Inc., whose largest stockholder is still the Society of St.
Paul in Tokyo today.65
Mitty also supported the programs to send Japanese Catholics to the United States. For
example, Mitty helped to arrange the visits of two of the women religious of St. John the
Evangelist who were to study further their specialty in tuberculosis work in 1954. In the
following year, he also arranged for Dr. Paul Manji Iijima, a journalist of the largest national
paper Asahi, and his wife who were sent to the States for the Leaders Exchange Program.
Dr. Iijima was a Commendatore of St. Gregory the Great.66
In addition to other members of the U.S. hierarchy, Mitty corresponded with various
leaders for accepting Japanese immigrants to the United States again. Specifically for the
Catholics, it was related to the concern shared with Pope Pius XII about one of the
worldwide problems of overpopulation and birth control. In the United States, the Japanese
American Citizens League requested the approval of U.S. hierarchy for H.R. 199 which
would provide for equality in naturalization and immigration, passed by the House of
Representatives on March 1, 1949. Mitty confirmed with the NCWC that its Legal
Department was of “the opinion that H.R. 199 [was] a good bill and American Church
65
Letter from Paul Marcellino, Superior of the Society of St. Paul in Tokyo, to Mitty, 27
October 1950; Memorandum of Chancery Office of San Francisco from Father Bowe to
Mitty, dated on 25 March 1952. Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of San
Francisco.
66
Letter from Archbishop Peter Tatsuo Doi of Tokyo to Mitty, 5 February 1954; Letter from
Mitty to Doi, 6 March 1954; Letter from Bishop Paul Yoshigoro Taguchi (later Cardinal) to
Mitty, 20 January 1955; Letter from H. Philp Mettger, Board of Director, Governmental
Affairs Institute, 4 March 1955; Letter from Mitty to Mettger, 8 March 1955; Letter from
Mitty to Monsignor Leo T. Maher, 8 March 1955; Letter from Mettger to Mitty, 12 March
1955. Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
268
[would] safely be ‘for it.’” Bishop Paul Yoshigoro Taguchi of Osaka, on the way to South
America “to ask for the land and for the permission for the emigration of the Japanese
people” in 1957, called attention to the issue by the American hierarchy.67
For that assistance, the National Catholic Committee of Japan officially expressed their
appreciation to Mitty in stating:
The tremendous progress of the Catholic Church in Post-War Japan, has been mainly
made possible thanks to the generous support of the American hierarchy. The number
of Catholics has increased from 105,000 in 1946 to 266,000 in 1959, and in Tokyo the
figure went up from 8,500 to 38,000… Impressive as this progress may seem, the real
situation is not brilliant at all. Protestants in Tokyo have passed the 100,000 mark, and
each of our 36 parishes faces an average of 260,000 pagans. The vastness of [these]
unbelieving masses remains a continuous fright for us who have the privilege to work
at the headquarters of the Japanese Hierarchy… [No] one country has stronger ties of
friendship with Japan than the United States. Ever since the first Japanese in modern
times received the Holy Baptism in Baltimore’s Cathedral, these two countries have
been spiritually linked together. This happened, -- we have recently discovered,- on
November 1, 1854, and the name of the young man was Joseph Hikozo Hamada.68
In the same year, Mitty received a letter entitled “An Expression of Gratitude” from
Yamaguchi of Nagasaki who appreciated the support of the American hierarchy to rebuild
the Church of Urakami on the land of the historic martyrs, dedicated on November 1, 1959.
The donation from San Francisco also became a part of the reproductions on silk of the statue
of Our Lady of Sorrows in the church. It was a historic object for Nagasaki
67
Letter from Joe Grant Masaoka, the Regional Representative of Northern California of the
Japanese American Citizens League, to Mitty, 27 April 1949; Letter from Mitty to Rev.
Howard J. Carroll, General Secretary of the N.C.W.C., 28 April 1949; Letter from Paul F.
Tanner, Assistant General Secretary of the N.C.W.C., to Mitty, 4 May 1949; Letter from
Mitty to Tanner, 10 May 1949; Letter from Letter from Rev. John Sasaki to Mitty, with the
script of the speech entitled, “Overpopulation of Japan and Emigration” at the Third
International Catholic Congress on Migration by Bishop Taguchi of Osaka, 28 November
1957. Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
68
Letter from Rev. A.F. Verwilghen, Assistant Secretary General of the National Catholic
Committee of Japan, to Mitty, 1 November 1959. Japanese Folder, Archives of the
Archdiocese of San Francisco.
269
Catholics. Kakure Kirisitan, the hidden Christians of Japan, confirmed that their faith had
been Catholicism when they saw this statue and professed their faith to Monsignor Bernard
Petitjean, who later became the first Bishop of Nagasaki, on March 17, 1865.69
With a hope for the foundation of friendship between the United States and Japan in the
post-war era, Mitty also continued the support for the St. Francis Xavier Mission by the
Society of the Divine Word for the Japanese in San Francisco. In 1955, Father Robert E.
Pung, the newly appointed provincial of the Southern Province of St. Augustine of the Divine
Word Missionaries recognized the between the Society’s support for St. Francis Xavier
Mission and that of the archdiocese. As the result of continuing archdiocesan financial
support for the mission and no word of request from the Chancery Office for a refund, the
mission’s huge debt to the archdiocese was only enlarged. Finding no success in reducing
the debt by the mission in two years, the provincial ordered Guetzloe to make all efforts to
solve the financial problem, once again in 1957.70
It was not the Society but Mitty who tried to arrange the collection for the St. Francis
Xavier Mission with the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in San Francisco in 1952.
He also approved that the mission receive donations from the parishes of San Francisco
where Japanese pupils belonged to any Catholic school. When the mission had no money to
purchase a new school bus and the Superintendent of Schools of the Archdiocese denied
69
Letter from Yamaguchi to American bishops in October 1959; Letter from Mitty to
Yamaguchi, 22 October 1959. Japanese Folder, Archives of the Archdiocese of San
Francisco.
70
Letter from Robert E. Pung, S.V.D., the Provincial of Southern Province of St. Augustine,
Divine Word Missionaries, to Mitty, 23 April 1957; Letter from Pung to Guetzloe, 23 April
1957; Letter from Mitty to Pung, 29 April 1957. Divine Word Missionaries, Parishes, 19251961, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
270
support, Mitty assisted so that Guetzloe would be able to pay for a bus with a budget out of
the Mission.71 In 1951, the Chancery Office had been considering having its own Japanese
Mission with a parish school. They, however, chose to support the St. Francis Xavier
Mission rather than to duplicate the mission. Even in case they needed to assist the Japanese
through the archdiocese, they concluded it would be nothing more than a recreation center, as
a place where they could meet. Despite this decision, the archdiocese became anxious that
the Society might close the Japanese Mission. If it had closed, the archdiocese was prepared
to transfer it to the African American Mission and to reconsider cautiously its own mission
for the Japanese.72
All that Guetzloe was able to explain to the provincial about his financial problem was
the shift of the Japanese population in San Francisco after the war. This change in the
population continued through the 1950s. In terms of the ethnic mission, the St. Francis
Xavier Mission seemed successful through the end of this decade. Following a girl who had
grown up in the mission, Terry Takatsuno, who entered the Carmelite Monastery in Berkeley
in 1951, a young man in the mission entered the Society of the Divine Word in 1952. Seven
years after the installment of Guetzloe, William Stoecke, S.V.D., his predecessor, went into
full retirement in 1958. In the report of the mission of 1958, Guetzloe stated that their
71
Letter from Mitty to Rev. Vincent F. McCarthy, Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 1
February 1952; Letter from Rev. James N. Brown, Superintendent of Schools, Department of
Education of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, 7 March 1952; Letter from Mitty to Brown,
10 March 1952; Letter from Brown to Rev. Leo Maher, Secretary of the Chancery Office of
San Francisco, 6 May 1952; Letter from Brown to Mitty, 12 May 1952. Divine Word
Missionaries, Parishes, 1925-1961, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
72
Memorandum from Leo T. Maher to P.L. Ryan, V.G. in the Chancery Office of San
Francisco, 13 November 1951. Divine Word Missionaries, Parishes, 1925-1961, Archives of
the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
271
Mission School “Morning Star” was “fulfilling its purpose it was built for: Missionary work
in the first place.” There were 220 Japanese pupils out of 350. About fifty out of 220
Japanese were Catholics who were mostly baptized at St. Francis Xavier mission through the
efforts of the school. Most of the Japanese adults with language difficulties were baptized at
the St. Francis Xavier mission. Some others were baptized in Novato, San Rafael, and
Sausalito. Guetzloe observed that those baptized Japanese who attended were receiving the
sacraments “in almost every part of the Archdiocese.” It was the point about which Guetzloe
tried to inform the Society. Guetzloe stated:
There are Japanese Catholics in almost every parish of the Archdiocese. This
development makes parish organizations almost impossible because many attend the
nearby parish which is most natural and the goal of every National Parish to lead and
guide the faithful of other Nations in so far as they are immigrants into the ordinary and
regular cura animarum in their own district parish. (Underlined by Guetzloe.)73
Along with the moving out of Japanese from the center of San Francisco, ethnic
balance in the population of the city also changed after the war. The San Francisco
Examiner in early 1949 reported that Morning Star School had “some eight or nine different
nationalities represented in the children.” Since The Monitor counted thirteen nationalities in
the archdiocese in 1961, the school was already ethnically diversified as early as in the late
1940s. 74 Among them, an increasing number of Filipino children attending Morning Star
School specifically became a cause of trouble for Mother Agnes, the principal of the school
73
Parish Historical Reports, January 1 to December 31, 1951; 1952; 1959; 1960. Collection
of Historical St. Benedicts Parish at St. Francis Xavier, Vol. 1, Archives of the Archdiocese
of San Francisco.
74
Barbara East, “S.F. Mission is Haven for Many Nationalities: St. Francis Xavier, Founded
for Japanese in 1925, Now Has Wider Field,” San Francisco Examiner, Sunday, 20 February
1949, p. 3; James Kelly, “The Church in a Japanese-American Culture: Xavier’s Work Goes
On …,” The Monitor, 21 April 1961.
272
in 1952. She had difficulties in dealing with the parents of those children in the school in the
Japanese mission and asked the Chancery Office about their willingness to have a Filipino
Club at St. Francis Xavier mission in order to ease the problem. The archdiocese was also
concerned about this change in the ethnicity of the population and was interested in whether
the missionaries at St. Francis Xavier would be ready to accept the further responsibility of
organizing a Filipino Club for the entire Archdiocese.75 In addition, St. Francis Xavier began
to have Korean children with the flood of the immigrants after the Korean War. In 1966, St.
Francis Xavier became the official church for Koreans of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Both Japanese and Korean Catholics commuted to St. Francis Xavier “from all over the Bay
area, even from as far away as Monterey.” In order to reach out to the Japanese who were
spread over Northern California and to keep in touch with them, Guetzloe sent them regular
issues of the Japanese Catholic magazine, Friend of the Family. Approximately 250 issues
were mailed every month. In 1967, the schedule of Mass in Japanese at St. Francis Xavier
church was changed to be once in a month. Monthly Mass in Japanese was held every third
Sunday of the month.76
The generosity of the archdiocese was not changed even after the death of Mitty in
October 1961 and the under his successor, Archbishop Joseph Thomas McGucken. The
provincial had been irritated by the fact of no improvement in the financial problems of the
Mission. McGucken understood Guetzloe’s explanation that the mission had always had a
75
Letter from Rev. John T. Foudy, St. Monica’s Church, to Leo T. Maher, Secretary of the
Chancery Office, 9 May 1952; Letter from Maher to Foudy, 20 May 1952. Divine Word
Missionaries, Parishes, 1925-1961, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
76
Palma Trentacoste, “Three Big Anniversaries at St. Francis Xavier Mission,” The Monitor,
29 April 1976; The Monitor, 13 December 1963, p. 22; “Mass in Japanese now at St. Francis
Xavier,” The Monitor, 16 November 1967.
273
deficiency in income because of the fact that most of the participants in the Mission, school
children and their parents, were not Catholic. Also, McGucken agreed with Guetzloe that the
need of the mission would be increased because of the Hart-Celler Act, the Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the quota system by national origins which had
been set by the Immigration Act in 1924.77 The words in the letter of Archbishop McGucken
addressed to Vincent F. McCarthy at the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in San
Francisco which sought any possibility of financial assistance to the St. Francis Xavier
Mission represented his hope in the Japanese mission in his archdiocese:
Since the Japanese have dispersed to various parts of town and the converts of St.
Francis Xavier Mission have been taught to become active in their own parishes, Father
Guetzloe is having a more and more difficult time to maintain his school with five
Sisters and four lay teachers. Last year he received $1,800 through the Propagation of
the Faith. He is also carrying an $80,000 debt. We have not pressed him to pay
interest on it. Since this is our own mission for the Japanese, I wonder if something
could be set aside to help him, or arrangements made for him to augment his income
through local collections. (my underlining.)78
Through the decade of the 1960s, the Japanese Mission continuously received both
spiritual and financial assistance of McGucken. Although this decade was a challenging
transition for the St. Francis Xavier Mission, it celebrated both the Mission’s Golden Jubilee
in 1963 and Guetzloe’s Silver Jubilee of his ordination in 1964. McGucken regretted that he
was not able to attend those celebrations since he was in Rome for the Second Vatican
Council.
77
Letter from Guetzloe to Archbishop Joseph Thomas McGucken, 5 May 1965; Letter from
McGucken to Guetzloe, 21 May 1965. Collection of Historical St. Benedicts Parish at St.
Francis Xavier, Vol. 1, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
78
Letter from McGucken to Right Rev. Vincent F. McCarthy, Society for the Propagation of
the Faith, 17 May 1965. Collection of Historical St. Benedicts Parish at St. Francis Xavier,
Vol. 1, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
274
Guetzloe was busy in the early 1960s with two major celebrations for the Mission.
The celebration of its Golden Jubilee was rather modest, probably because the mission had
not solved the financial problem yet. The mission focused on celebrating the contribution of
lay leaders and lay teachers of Morning Star School. Later in 1975, the mission would
celebrate another Golden Jubilee which celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the mission by
the Society of the Divine Word which took it over from the Society of Jesus in 1925.
After the mission celebrated the Golden Jubilee in 1963, Guetzloe began the
preparation for his own Silver Jubilee in the following year. Guetzloe made several requests
for permission from McGucken who was in Rome. First, Guetzloe wanted to transfer the
date of the celebration from September 10 to October 25, the Feast of Christ the King. The
date of his ordination in September was the beginning of the school semester and in his
former assignment in Niigata, the Cathedral was dedicated to Christ the King. Second, he
anticipated that Mission Chapel at St. Francis Xavier would be too small in order to
accommodate all the guests. Guetzloe asked for permission to use the Morning Star School
Auditorium for the Solemn High Mass. Unlike the celebration for the Mission, Guetzloe’s
additional request of permission to McGucken was the languages to be used in the Mass. He
liked to pray his office in German, his native language, according to the approved text and
English. In addition, Guetzloe asked permission to use an altar facing the congregation with
the new liturgical change in the Second Vatican Council. With the authorization that
McGucken “cheerfully” and “happily” provided to Guetzloe, his celebration was thus
275
prepared to be held to represent the spirit of the Second Vatican Council in the Church in San
Francisco with the newly approved liturgy. 79
Through the time of those celebrations, Guetzloe seemed to accept the difficulty of the
Japanese mission which became even harder than ever. He understood the position of the
mission through a two-fold situation: the non-Catholic Japanese who were still the majority
in the mission and the Catholic Japanese who began to disperse to their own parishes.
Guetzloe explains the reasons why the number of Japanese conversions did not increase
despite the efforts of the missionaries as follows: First, Guetzloe understood that the
Japanese were “immersed in an ancient and highly developed culture.” Second, the Japanese
remained materialistic because even their own religious background, Buddhism, did not
wield an influence on their everyday life. Guetzloe believed it was “ a matter of tradition
rather than personal conviction.” Then, Guetzloe interprets that “Christianity’s stringent
moral code” had little appeal to the Japanese because “their morals [were] external, based on
preserving social standing.” He continues that the majority of the Japanese had “a very
powerful sense of natural virtue,” which was best seen “in their strong family life.” In
addition to those three reasons, Guetzloe pointed out that the Japanese on the West Coast
were near enough to keep them “constantly aware of their own culture and heritage.” They
stuck together and through various societies, tended to preserve their ethnic identity.”80
On the other hand, Guetzloe recognized that the number of conversions remained
modest. He observed that Japanese conversion to Catholicism in the late 1950s and the early
79
Letter from Guetzloe to McGucken, 31 August 1964; McGucken to Guetzloe, 2 September
1964. Collection of Historical St. Benedicts Parish at St. Francis Xavier, Vol. 1, Archives of
the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
80
James Kelly, “The Church in a Japanese-American Culture.”
276
1960s mainly occurred through marriage to a Catholic. The next best case in San Francisco
was attending Morning Star School. He repeated what his predecessor, William Stoecke said
in the 1930s81: “[i]f it were up to the children, I could probably baptize the whole school.
But the non-Catholics are there out of their parents’ respect for high-caliber education.”
Guetzloe added, “[o]f 40 non-Catholics entering the first grade, we’re fortunate to gain10
Baptisms if they’re still with us in the eighth.” Even after the war ended and after their
residence for more than 40-50 years in the States, it was tough for the missionaries to convert
Issei who still clung tightest to their old customs and religion.
A Japanese marriage to a Catholic is represented in the following three cases shortly
after the war: a non-Catholic Japanese to a Japanese Catholic who was a member of the
Japanese missions such as a graduate of the Catholic mission schools. The case of Julia
Nagao’s marriage to Philip Nagao in Los Angeles falls into this category. Another case is a
Catholic encounter of another Catholic during World War II. Agnes Doi of San Francisco
met Vincent Doi of Los Angeles at the CYO in Chicago. Finally, intermarriage could occur
with a non-Catholic Japanese woman to an American soldier who was a Catholic. Certain
discrimination, however, against those women who arrived with the soldier husbands seemed
so dominant among Japanese communities in the States that those wives could be considered
reluctant to join Catholic missions for the Japanese in the States.82 In the 1960s, therefore,
the source of conversions and those who contributed to the Japanese missions was still the
Nisei. Those Nisei were considered the youngest group among the second generation
Japanese as immigration from Japan had been virtually stopped with the Johnson Reed Act in
81
82
Chapter 3 of this thesis: 17.
Ibid., the interview with the Kobuchis, Los Angeles, CA, September 2008.
277
1924. At the same time, the emerging Sansei, the third generation, started joining the
mission.
The parish report of 1963 that Guetzloe submitted mentioned some significant news in
the Mission. On June 4, 1963, the former pastor, William Stoecke died in the Divine Word
Mission Seminary of St. Augustine, Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi. On December 8, the Feast
of the Immaculate Conception, the Golden Jubilee of the St. Francis Xavier Mission in San
Francisco was celebrated. Finally, Guetzloe wrote about the fluctuation of the members:
About 75% of our Japanese Catholics moved out of this district, mostly to Richmond
City district. About 25% moved out of the city altogether. Japanese attending church
regularly on Sundays here at the Mission about 10% only. Pure Japanese Catholics in
San Francisco 300, in the Archdiocese, but no in San Francisco about 100 Japanese
Catholics.83
Guetzloe accepted this difficulty because it was an achievement of the Mission which
had aimed to assist the Japanese until they were absorbed into their own parishes.84 This
hardship of the post-war era was shared with Maryknoll missionaries. All the Catholic
missions for the Japanese experienced the transition after the war ended.
The mission in Seattle did not survive long after the war. The significant figures
among the missionaries were transferred to post-war Japan from Seattle. In 1946, Father
John C. Murrett was sent to Kyoto, Japan, to teach English at Imperial University. Father
Leopold Tibesar was assigned to Tokyo. Tibesar immediately started a Japanese Catholic
newspaper there. In the same year, he founded the National Catholic Charities of Japan and
opened a chapel on the seventh floor rooftop of Mitsukoshi Department Store in Ginza.
83
Parish Historical Report, Jan.1 to Dec. 31, 1963: Parish of St. Francis Xavier Mission.
Historical St. Benedicts Parish at St. Francis Xavier, Vol. 1, Archives of the Archdiocese of
San Francisco.
84
Note about St. Francis Xavier Mission by Guetzloe, dated on 10 May 1962.
278
Americans stationed in Japan paid the rent for the chapel. James Sakamoto, the blind
Japanese Catholic leader who had been always a good assistant to Tibesar, began the work at
the Society of St. Vincent Paul in Seattle. He continued this work until his death in 1955 in a
car accident. In 1947, Father William Swift returned to the Seattle Mission where the
Filipino Catholic Youth Club actively sponsored a variety of cultural events. Our Lady
Queen of Martyrs Church had become a Filipino and Chinese parish while the Japanese were
away. The school of the Seattle Mission which closed on April 27, 1942 never reopened. On
a Sunday in December 1953, Father George Haggerty, the last pastor at the Seattle Mission,
“with head bowed and not looking at the congregation sadly intoned,” “I have an
announcement from the archbishop. His message, which all of us must accept obediently as
Catholics is, as of December 31, 1953, Our Lady Queen of Martyrs ceases to be a parish.”
The facilities of the Mission came to be used as the Peter Claver Center and Filipino Youth
Center after this year.85
The closing of the Seattle Mission was decided and was pursued along with the
observation of Tibesar and the decision of the General Council of Maryknoll in 1945. All of
the Japanese Missions in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles after the war were
measured between the continuing necessity in the support of this ethnic group and idealism to
send the people to their own local parishes. The size of the group of returned Japanese was
one of the factors to determine whether or not to preserve the mission. In Los Angeles, this
policy of Maryknoll to close the Mission and to send the people to their parishes was
reconsidered.
85
Mary McCormick, “Maryknoll in Seattle” (1995). Seattle: General, MSA Collection,
MMA.
279
After Lavery bought the Hewitt Street complex back from the archdiocese in May
1948, the Maryknoll School reopened in 1949 under the order of Archbishop McIntyre.
Sister Judith Tivnan was the first principal after this reopening. The grades from kindergarten
to three were opened to the children who returned from the camp. A grade was added every
year thereafter until all eight grades plus kindergarten were completed. Even after the first
postwar class graduated from Maryknoll School in 1954, the school continued until 1995
with development while playing a significant role in the community which still existed for
the Japanese in greater Los Angeles. In 1953, seventy-four pupils out of 370 of Maryknoll
School in Los Angeles were Catholics. Eighty percent of the school children were still nonCatholic. However, Lavery was hopeful. The Mission had fifty to sixty adult converts
annually in the 1950s. Although the school did not put pressure on pupils and the families
toward conversion, many alumni returned to the Church after they were grown. In 1969, the
school report tells that 211 pupils out of the enrollment of 411 were Catholics. The
Maryknoll School in 1969 was still heavily dominated by Japanese children with the
exception of only four children: two were Japanese-Chinese and two were Spanish-Japanese.
The Nisei who had been embraced in the Mission began sending their children to Maryknoll
School.86
That seemed the peak of the post-war Japanese Mission in Los Angeles. Lavery
answered in an interview in 1953 that non-Catholic parents sent Japanese children to
Maryknoll School not for the language, but for love, and that they expected sound moral
86
“Parish School’s Pupils 80% Non-Catholic,” The Tidings, 25 September 1953. School
Report, 28 September 1953; School Report, 5 September 1969. Los Angeles: School, MSA
Collection, MMA.
87
training with Catholic teachers.
280
The school taught Japanese only for children in higher
grades. The language education was a privilege at the mission school. However, it was no
longer the primary purpose for the Nisei parents to send their Sansei children to the school.
As it is assumed that the majority of Nisei in the United States were born between the early
1920s and the early 1940s from the fact of the legal restriction of the Issei’s entry to the
United States, those Nisei were also considered to have sent their Sansei children to grade
schools between the early 1950s and the late 1980s. The peak of the school enrollment of
those Sansei would have appeared sometime around 1970. This explains the case of
Maryknoll School in Los Angeles in 1969. As the number of Sansei diminished, the
enrollment of Japanese in the Maryknoll School also declined. Instead, other ethnic family
names became included in the list of alumni after the 1970s. Mexican, Filipino and Korean
names joined in the donor’s list at the time of the Diamond Jubilee of Maryknoll Mission in
Los Angeles in 1987.88
In San Francisco, the Morning Star School was closed in 1985. It was three years
before the seventy-fifth anniversary of the St. Francis Xavier Japanese Catholic Mission in
San Francisco. With the Annual Parish Progress Fund which the archdiocese organized in
1975 in order to help all the churches in the city, Guetzloe had finally accomplished “his
dream of paying off” the church’s debt. He cleared the building debt to the archbishop with
the help of this fund and through the contribution of parish members and friends of St.
Francis Xavier Church. The Morning Star School was taken over by a private Montessori
School.
87
88
“Parish School’s Pupils 80% Non-Catholic.”
Diamond Jubilee: Maryknoll Los Angeles: 1912-1987.
281
The Mission faced its closure in the mid-1990s. Shortly before his retirement,
Guetzloe was replaced by Carl H. Seewald, S.V.D., in 1991. With financial problems
occurring again at the Mission three years after Sweewald arrived in San Francisco, the
archdiocese asked about the needs of the parish. Most of the significant lay members who
supported the Mission had already left the community. They were integrated into suburban
middle class communities. With no strong voice to maintain the mission for the Japanese,
the parish was ordered to close, and the main function of the parish was transferred to serve
Catholics with hearing impairment under the name of St. Benedict in August 1994.
St. Francis Xavier Church survives and provides weekly Mass for those hearing
impaired and monthly Mass for the Japanese even today. The community lost their own
church, priest, and all the official documents then maintained at the mission, and the two
communities of the Japanese and the hearing impaired experienced several conflicts.
Nevertheless, the Japanese who remained in the community have become involved in various
activities.89 The main body of the Japanese attendants at St. Francis Xavier Church became
new immigrants who arrived in the States after World War II while most Nisei left the
mission. In some ways, those two groups of the newly arrived Japanese and the hearing
impaired have shared the difficulties in communication. At St. Francis Xavier Church of St.
Benedict Parish, the parishioners have consistently received priests who are hearing impaired
and who speak Japanese. Today, the parishioners are blessed with priests from Graduate
Theological Union in Berkeley.
89
Alec LeMay, “Ninety Years of Japanese Mission,” May 2003. St. Francis Xavier Church,
San Francisco, Japanese Catholic Community. LeMay’s interviews with Ms. Barbara Hori,
Ms. Hiroko Sakamaki and other parishioners explain the stories behind the closure of the
mission.
282
The Japanese Mission in Los Angeles has experienced similar changes to the ones of
their counterpart in San Francisco. Besides Nisei who are now in their seventies, eighties
and nineties, the St. Francis Xavier Japanese Catholic Center in Los Angeles has received a
new congregation. It has included new immigrants after the 1950s, spouses of American
citizens, and business people who stay in the States for several years. Also, it has included
Japanese who had been imprisoned into the internment camps in the States, sent from Latin
American nations.
Hector Watanabe, born as a Japanese Peruvian, was too young to remember the days in
the camp. In June 1944, the Watanabes were arrested in Lima and sent to Kooskia, Idaho.
At the latter location was one of twenty-seven U.S. Justice Department Internment Camps
which were used to incarcerate 2,260 “dangerous persons” of Japanese ancestry taken from
twelve Latin American countries by the U.S. State and Justice Departments. Approximately
1,800 were Japanese Peruvians. The U.S. government held them in order to prepare for
using them in bargaining for potential hostage exchanges with Japan. After the war ended,
1,400 were prevented from returning to their former countries. The U.S. government did not
allow them to stay because they were not immigrants with legal status. Over nine hundred
Japanese Peruvians were deported to Japan. The other three hundred fought the case in the
courts in the United States. The Watanabes were a part of that group. In December 1952,
Hector Watanabe received a letter from the district director of California of the Immigration
283
and Naturalization Service that “[his] parole be terminated and [he was] released from all
obligation.”90
“If you were born in Latin American countries, you know, you would be naturally
Catholic.” Watanabe explains the reason for his membership at St. Francis Xavier in Los
Angeles. “It was good I was too young to remember those days. My parents had to have
very hard time.” His smile with those words to other members at the church was gentle and
quiet. Watanabe admits that the Church is important not only for the faith but also for
socialization with other Japanese. Several other Nisei women also said, “we are here for
meeting people.”91 On the other hand, there was no Sansei figure at the church.
Since most of the Sansei in the community graduated, Maryknoll School was closed in
1994. A Nisei woman, Julia Nagao, testifies that it was good for her and her husband to
move to the East since there was neither prejudice nor discrimination when people met them.
Sansei knew what this meant. Also, they had no responsibility to take care of their
grandparents, Issei. When the Japanese American Citizens League whose main figures were
Nisei launched the campaign of redress in 1978, those Nisei recognized that Issei would not
have much time to fight in the movement. Many had already passed away. In 1994, there
had been the enrollment of only three families at Maryknoll School. After the youngest
group of the Sansei left the community for college or work, the mission in Los Angeles was
renamed and became a Japanese Catholic Center which took care of a new congregation:
90
Harukichi Watanabe, Autobiography of Watanabe, Harukichi. Unpublished. No date.
translated into English in 1995 and 1996; Letter from J. W. Nelson to Yoshio (Hector)
Watanabe, 3 December 1952. Personal Collection of Mr. Hector Watanabe.
91
Interviews with Mr. Hector Watanabe and female members at St. Francis Xavier Japanese
Catholic Center, Los Angeles, CA, September 2008.
284
Nisei, new immigrants after the 1950s, Japanese Latin Americans, and business people and
their families from Japan. The Maryknoll Japanese Catholic Center was dedicated on
September 24, 1994.
Two years after this dedication, the last Maryknoll priests left the Mission. The name
of Maryknoll survived until 2006 when the archdiocese requested to the center that the name
be changed to its original, St. Francis Xavier. St. Francis Xavier Japanese Catholic Center
continued to be blessed with constant services by Japanese speaking priests. Sometimes,
bilingual American priests blessed the center, other times native priests of Japan who were in
the States on their sabbaticals did the same. Although it was an exclusively rare occasion,
Cardinal Roger Mahony officiated at confirmation rites of Sansei-Yonsei (the third
generation to the fourth generation) teenagers and adults in March 2004 at St. Francis Xavier
Chapel. With Nisei leaders and Sister Cecilia Nakajima of the Poor Clare Missionary Sisters
of Japan, the mission in Los Angeles still tries to be “source of outreach to those who share
in [the] ethnic heritage, language and culture [of Japan].” It was an original vision which
Issei sought in the services of the mission in the 1920s and 1930s. The spirits of the mission
still survive in this new congregation.92
For a long time, the mission in Los Angeles held the motto, “Wa,” which means
harmony, unity and peace in the Japanese language. In November 1995, a Maryknoll priest,
Joseph Klecha interpreted that this Japanese value reminded the community that “each
person is a part of the whole and cooperation benefits all.” A motto naturally reflects the
reality which is usually contrary to idealism. Symbolically, Nisei of this Los Angeles
92
St. Francis Xavier Chapel Japanese Catholic Center: History of Our Community, accessed
31 July 2010, http://www.sfxjcc.org.
285
Catholic Community named their newspaper for the school alumni Challenger. What did
“Wa” mean to the Japanese in Catholic communities on the Pacific Coast?
Since the very first missionary, Father Albert Breton of the Paris Foreign Mission
Society began the ministry for the Japanese in the United States in 1912, the Catholic
Mission took care of “families” which contrasted to the Protestant counterparts who mostly
took care of Issei laborers. Because of this nature of Breton’s mission, Japanese works by
Catholics held both vertical and horizontal dimensions.
Vertically, the Mission connected the immigrants and their American-born children,
one generation to another generation. In later years through Jesuits, Maryknollers, and
Divine Word Fathers, it was explained that children often became the source of conversion of
the entire family. Conversions occurred from children to parents, not only from parents to
children. It was contrary to the values in their home country. Whereas the Japanese were in
the midst of the hardship of discrimination among Euro-Americans, they shared the values
which all other Americans embraced. They believed their dreams in the United States should
come true with their American-born children. Despite discrimination, the Japanese had the
same immigrant experiences as other ethnic groups in this way. Religion which was new to
the immigrants helped them to accommodate in a different culture from their own while they
endowed their children with education in language, culture, and religion.
Horizontally, Breton’s mission connected families to families and communities to
communities. Although Breton built the foundation of the mission in Los Angeles, he was
also an itinerant priest for the Japanese in the whole coastal region. He traveled up to
Vancouver beyond the border and down to Phonenix, Arizona. When the Jesuits took the
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reins of the mission in San Francisco, Breton and the Jesuits exchanged information
frequently and both connected closely with a variety of sympathies. When Breton acquired a
car, it was called “Mission Car” which was expected to reach the Japanese faithful in isolated
areas. Those people had connections with the Japanese in urban communities through
Breton.
The Japanese who resided near the Catholic mission in the 1910s also had good role
models. The first Catholic missionaries for the Japanese were not American citizens. Breton
was a French priest whose original mission was pursued in Japan. Father Julius von
Egloffstein, S.J., was not only a German-born priest, but also a convert from the Lutheran
faith. Brother Francis Xavier Eizo Masui was the first Japanese-born member of a Catholic
religious orders in the United States. He had converted to Catholicism in the United States.
In addition to those Catholic missionaries, both American and Japanese women religious
assisted in the work. Some of them had yet to hold full status as women religious. Those
women religious devoted themselves to the people in the mission while they tried to
overcome the problems of language and cultural differences in the States. Lay women also
joined the mission. Several American lay women taught English language and American
culture to the Japanese children who came to the kindergarten in the mission. When
Japanese women came to the mission for catechetical training, the Japanese Catholic women
in the community took care of the work.
Archbishop Riordan of San Francisco and Bishop Conaty of Monterey and Los
Angeles cherished their Japanese work. While they were concerned about ethnic problems
within their dioceses, their positive response was clear in support for Breton and the Jesuits.
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Through the work to found the Catholic Mission in the United States, those in the U.S.
hierarchy connected with bishops in Japan. Thus, the spiritual home for the immigrants and
their families as well as the missionaries, the bishops, and their lay assistants was founded in
a spirit of cooperation and harmony; while challenging the problems of the era, they faced
the difficulties of ethnic tensions.
In the 1920s, however, their harmony faced a crisis. When Albert Breton was ordered
to return to Japan due to lack of priests there, the issues about transfer arose. Although Pius
Moore, a Jesuit in the Japanese Mission in San Francisco and the first American-born
missionary for the Japanese, was eager to take over all the Japanese missions which Breton
covered, Bishop Conaty of Monterey and Los Angeles directed the Catholic Foreign Mission
Society of America, Maryknoll, founded in 1912, to take over Breton’s mission in Los
Angeles. Assuming the competition would be only between the Society of Jesus and the
Paris Foreign Mission Society, Moore stated that American missionaries would have greater
success in edifying Japanese, and the Jesuits would be able to take care of the entire Japanese
mission on the West Coast. It was, however, the Maryknoll missionaries, who pursued what
Moore recommended, not the Jesuits or the Divine Word Fathers, who took over the San
Francisco mission from the Jesuits in 1925.
The clash between Breton and the Maryknoll missionaries after the foundation of the
Seattle Mission in 1920 occurred because of the difference between them in the method of
approach to the Japanese mission. With rich experiences of the mission in Japan, Breton
emphasized paying attention to the Japanese mentality. He was an expert in foreign
missions. Breton certainly respected the ethnic Catholicism of Japan. On the other hand,
288
although Maryknoll was founded to aim at foreign missions in Asia, their experiences in the
1920s were still based on home missions, which meant Catholicization of Native and Black
Americans. Maryknoll priests, then represented by William Kress, had strong enthusiasm for
Americanizing the Japanese through the faith from the beginning of their work. Both parties
did not seem to recognize this difference and their misunderstanding was tragically
unresolved. This clash involved Japanese Catholic leaders who worried about political and
diplomatic problems between the United States and Japan.
It seemed that Maryknoll sisters recognized the situation naturally and smoothly
through their everyday life with Japanese people. One woman religious who was assigned to
Seattle had been excited to devote herself in the adventurous “foreign mission.” When she
knew she would help the Japanese in Seattle, she recognized and became excited again with
another version of “foreign mission” which was aimed at serving them in their home country.
American priests needed a longer time than those women religious to recognize what this
difference meant until their own priests returned from Japan with a variety of ethnic values
which they had embraced in Japan in the 1930s. Those values which the missionaries
brought back to America included “Wa.” Those priests who returned from Japan in the
1930s opened a new door of “foreign mission at home” in the United States.
In contrast to Maryknoll missionaries, the Jesuits and the Divine Word missionaries
who worked for the San Francisco Mission consisted of mainly non-American priests. Most
of them were German-born and their assistants were also European women religious. They
were still a minority in America in the 1920s on both counts--Catholic and German.
Specifically, Germans after World War I shared the experiences of hardship with the
289
Japanese in certain respects. Those missionaries were the role models for the Japanese with
their own ethnic status in the United States. While they taught the faith and languages, their
emphasis was not on Americanization. Rather, they were the symbols of universalism and
true Catholicism. They tried to pursue unity beyond ethnic boundaries.
In the 1930s, each Japanese mission extended the network despite an intensified
international environment which influenced the Japanese in the United States. The San
Francisco mission founded Morning Star School, a full-time bilingual school in 1930. It was
the last Catholic school for the Japanese opened among the three major Japanese missions of
Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. While Maryknoll tried to have a full-time school
soon after their missions began, the Divine Word missionaries focused on Japanese classes
after regular school hours. The mission in San Francisco invited the women religious of the
Daughters of Mary and Joseph from Europe in order to teach Japanese children English
language and religion. The Japanese in San Francisco gained an option of education besides
going to public schools and connecting with other Japanese families through children’s
activities at school.
Two young scholastics of the Society of Jesus began the Japanese Mission in Spokane
in 1929. Since it was a very small mission, the members of the Seattle Mission assisted them
and they gained connections with each other. When Protestant missioners challenged this
small community to leave the Catholic Church to join other Japanese in a Protestant church,
the Catholic congregation in Spokane confirmed their will and had an even firmer foundation
with the Catholics. Receiving a wholehearted embrace from Bishop Charles White, this
290
Mission had the chance even to be blessed by the bishops of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
through the friendship of their own bishop of Spokane.
With the declining population which was supposed to flow into urbanized Los Angeles,
the Mission in Seattle became a dual-ethnic parish of Japanese and Filipinos. This parish
model, as Bishop Shaughnessy ordered, gave Our Lady Queen of Martyr parish a status of
home mission because its purpose would focus on amalgamation of two different ethnic
groups into one parish based on their shared faith. Thus, one of the major roles of the
Japanese Missions for the Nisei, the preservation of Japaneseness, was taken from the
Mission in Seattle. Contradictorily, this shift made the Seattle mission the first in
approaching the achievement of its purpose to send them to their own parishes among the
three major Missions. Although the different natures of their communities, such as the
percentage of Catholics and the age groups, caused tensions between the two groups, they
sought unity beyond ethnicity within a parish. Leopold Tibesar, M.M., who returned from
the mission for the Japanese in Manchuria pragmatically conceptualized the meaning of the
Seattle Mission along with the lines of ethnicities and generations: the nature of foreign
mission for Issei and home mission for Nisei.
On the other hand, the Los Angeles Mission developed with the increasing population
of the Japanese into the area. With the success in bilingual education and the good reputation
among Japanese parents, 90% of the pupils at the Maryknoll School came from Buddhist
families. Although all the mission schools for Japanese did not force their conversion and
the majority stayed within their tradition, those Buddhist parents in Los Angeles never denied
291
the necessity of the school. They were enthusiastic supporters of this Mission School both
mentally and financially.
The purposes and expectations in the school seemed to have some gaps between the
missionaries and the parents at Maryknoll in Los Angeles. While the school stressed its
superiority to nurture “good American citizens” with education in morality, faith, American
culture and English language, the parents hoped the school would provide an education in
Japanese language and cultural values to their children. Those two contrasting purposes,
however, co-existed with each other as Hugh Lavery, M.M., who was in charge of this
mission in the 1930s, agreed to accept “the mentality” of those Japanese parents. The
Maryknoll Mission in Los Angeles was not erected as a parish. Located in the neighborhood
of the heart of Little Tokyo, not in a residential area, but in the business center, St. Francis
Xavier Mission in Los Angeles also functioned as a center of the Japanese community.
Maryknoll brothers operated for school children. The Japanese community around this
Catholic Mission expanded when the children from distant suburban areas were sent to the
school. Their families had interactions through school activities. The General Council of
Maryknoll advised the missionaries to send Catholic children to their own parishes although
it was still too early for many of them to be accepted by their local priests and congregations.
Through the 1930s, Maryknoll School alumni began to include leading figures in
various occupations such as media, law and medicine. Also, some boys graduated from the
school with the vocation of the priesthood while some girls with the vocation of women
religious. Several truly active leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League were
graduates of this school. The compatibility of the values between Maryknoll
292
graduates/members of Catholic Mission and JACL is explained in the statement of James
Sakamoto. He was not an alumnus of this school, but a devout Catholic converted in Seattle
among the older group of the Nisei. As the editor of Japanese American Courier, the first
newspaper written in English targeting Nisei, Sakamoto asked for Nisei to be a bridge
between the United States and Japan while understanding both values. His full acceptance of
American values and loyalty to the US government were parallel to his obedience to the
Catholic Faith.
The missionaries also tried to use their Mission as an instrument to keep the peace of
the United States and Japan while bridging between two countries. While Lavery
emphasized the importance of Nisei who were loyal citizens to the American government
and held a good understanding of Japanese values, James Drought, M.M., vicar general of
Maryknoll, worked for peace seeking negotiations in cooperation with Bishop James E.
Walsh, superior general, and Christians in the Japanese government. Although the
negotiation ended up in failure, the efforts of Drought as a function of “the John Doe
Associates” enabled the missioners to react quickly when the war broke out for the Japanese
in the States and to begin the cooperation again soon after the war ended.
The war that broke out between the United States and Japan on December 7, 1941
created new foundations of cooperation among the people around the Missions. Executive
Order 9066 of President Franklin D. Roosevelt required the evacuation of Japanese from the
restricted military zone in the coastal states. The missionaries tried to take leadership in this
evacuation while submitting to the voluntary relocation program. With the approval of the
General Council and Archbishop Cantwell for this relocation program, Hugh Lavery also
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asked the archbishop to discuss with the government officials the possibility of an official
appointment of Lavery to accompany the Japanese and act as their spiritual sponsor at the
camp. Cantwell gave full approval of this plan. Bishop Shaughnessy of Seattle and Leopold
Tibesar did the same. Those Maryknoll missionaries, thus, established trusting relations with
the FBI and the War Relocation Authority.
In San Francisco, Father James T. O’Dowd, Superintendent of Schools of the
archdiocese was appointed to be responsible for the Japanese mission in San Francisco
instead of William Stoecke who was not able to assist the Japanese with the same power as
Maryknoll priests because of his German citizenship. O’Dowd spoke with the government
on behalf of Archbishop Mitty and was named as a liaison by the National Catholic Welfare
Council for the work of the Japanese evacuation. He also arranged for Stoecke and the
Daughters of Mary and Joseph to work for the Japanese in the internment camp in
cooperation with the U.S. government.
Brother Theophane Walsh originally proposed the registration plan to Lavery. With
the assistance of Maryknoll Sisters and young Nisei graduates of the Maryknoll School under
the direction of Brother Theophane, the registration went smoothly and speedily. Maryknoll
School graduates and members of the Mission community included several significant
members of the Japanese American Citizens League. All cooperated in trying to make the
evacuation as peaceful and acceptable as possible.
Since all the Catholic programs for evacuation were considered so the Japanese would
be able to pursue a normal family life and that family groups would not be separated, the
Japanese including non-Catholics responded and registered with the Catholics. At least
294
16,000 out of 112,000 Japanese internees in total were sent to the camps through the Catholic
evacuation program. Although the mission in Los Angeles had many more baptisms on
Easter before the evacuation in 1942 than in any previous year, the conversion of the
internees were even more promising in Camp Manzanar. It was partly because people came
to know the services of the missionaries. It was also because they had two Maryknoll
women religious who were Japanese and chose the option to live within the camp with their
fellow Japanese rather than returning to their motherhouse in New York. The young laity
also assisted in catechetical classes with those women religious and took the leadership in the
new community of the camp where their old community connected with the Japanese from
other neighborhoods in the re-networking of those communities.
Lavery and Drought also arranged for expatriated priests from Japan to go to the
internment camps where there were Catholics. Those priests who spoke Japanese had new
missions at their homeland. Because those priests were assigned to Japan again after the war
ended, they had chances to connect the communities where they served in Japan and in the
States. In the post-war reconstruction era of Japan, those priests who were loved and
respected in Japanese communities in the States were sent back to Japan for renewing a
spiritual foundation among the Japanese. Not only Japanese congregations but also the
American faithful joined to assist those priests while sending goods for the Japanese people
and seeking peace and friendship between the two countries.
A large number of those young laity left the camps later for college or work in the East
or the Midwest when they successfully gained sponsorship. The Catholic missionaries tried
to include non-Catholics again for sending them to Catholic colleges outside of the military
295
restricted zone. Brother Theophane Walsh founded the basis for the Catholic Youth
Organization Nisei Center in Chicago where many young Nisei relocated from the camps and
assisted them for resettlement under the direction of Bishop Bernard Sheil. His experiences
became the source of know-how regarding the resettlement of the Japanese who returned to
their hometowns in the West from the camps. The Mission in Los Angeles established a
C.Y.O. while the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Seattle took this charge after the war
ended.
The young Nisei who left the camps sometimes returned to the camps to inform the
people about the availability of work and education in the East. They also published
mimeographed newsletters in several camps and Chicago so they shared the information
while exchanging those newsletters among the camps.
On the other hand, the missionaries did not respond to the request to send their priest
as a chaplain for a military unit which was made up exclusively by Japanese Americans. As
the Nisei spoke English and did not need a Japanese-speaking priest for their spiritual
guidance, the missionaries sent those soldiers without a bilingual chaplain so they should be
recognized as equal to any other unit in the American forces.
Some conflict developed among the Nisei based on their differing educational
experiences. Because a large number of Nisei were returnees to the United States after being
sent to Japan to study the language and culture under the government’s educational system
which pursued militarism and nationalism, they had totally opposite patriotic values from
their peers who received their entire education within the United States. Those returnees,
296
Kibei, and the Nisei like the graduates of Maryknoll School were often involved in clashes
on the issues about loyalty to the government.
Finally, Lavery sent one of the most devout assistants of the church in the camp to
Maryknoll in Ossining for vocation. He expected Yae Ono to be an instrument to help the
people in Japan for the reconstruction after the war. Therefore, the network of the Catholic
missions was expanded for the better with new functions under the condition which most of
people would imagine most difficult in the history of Japanese in the United States. All the
people around the mission, Catholics and non-Catholics, priests, brother, women religious
and the laity, the missionaries and the local hierarchy both in the hometowns and for the
camps, the Issei and the Nisei sometimes in conflict with the Kibei, worked together for
reconstructing the communities with faith and good will. Their newly created network in the
internment period was strengthened in mutual cooperation of resettlement after the war. This
network also extended to the community of Catholics in post-war Japan with the presence of
the missionaries who were nurtured within those Catholic Japanese communities in the
States.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act, enabled
Issei to be naturalized in the United States and in 1965 the Hart-Celler Act abolished the
quota system which had been in effect since the Immigration Act of 1924, the Johnson-Reed
Act, so that Japanese became able to immigrate into the United States again. Although the
missionaries expected they would have large numbers of new immigrants, Japan in the 1960s
experienced almost miraculous economic growth and vast opportunities to engage in labor
297
within the country and this situation did not encourage many people to work outside of the
country.
Issei were gone. Sansei left the community. With small numbers of new immigrants,
Nisei are still at the center of the St. Francis Xavier Japanese Catholic Center in Los Angeles.
Although most of them are older than seventy, they are active in searching for new
opportunities of the mission. Since they no longer have a missionary priest who assigned full
time to the Japanese Catholic Center, those Nisei lay people have taken leadership while
having the assistance of Sister Cecilia (Nakajima) from Japan. Nisei, who overcame the
hardship of the middle of the twentieth century with the faith and the spirit of unity,
harmony, and peace, “Wa,” happily welcome new members even though the numbers are
small. They also send a delegation to Washington, D.C. annually for the event, Asians for
Mary, at the National Shrine of Immaculate Conception in early May, Asian Pacific
American Heritage month, and represent the ethnic Catholics of Japanese descent while
joining small congregations of Japanese Catholics in Washington and New York.
Sometimes, those children of Nisei join in the event—Sansei are not converts to Catholicism.
For them, Catholicism is a part of their family heritage. It was never a short history.
“Wa” is a homonym when it is written with another Chinese character. This“Wa”
means a ring or a circle. Harry Honda gave another observation on the Mission’s motto with
this latter meaning:
The circle is peculiar to the Japanese culture. It signifies the attitude that a straight line
between two points does not necessarily represent a short cut or a solution. The
Japanese approaches daily situations with the heart, not the head; that the shortest cut is
meandering or circular. Because the straight line is the route traveled by evil spirits,
the meandering path to the center of a Shinto shrine or the winding course through a
298
Buddhist garden is designed to deflect the direct charges of evil forces. The eye is
forced to see from many angles and perspectives.
The circle is closed. There is no easy way to enter. The Japanese say the only way to
enter is to circle round and round—and before you know it, you will be invited into the
circle. In the same respect, the faith which planted the Catholic missionaries in Los
Angeles is present and it must be cultivated for the many others to discover and be at
home in the Mystical Body.93
This circle included more non-Catholic Japanese than Catholic, as a result. The
number of total baptisms of the mission in Los Angeles from 1912 to today counts only about
3,500. Even in Los Angeles, where the Catholic Mission enjoyed the largest number of
attendants, school pupils, as well as financial support from the members among all the
Japanese Missions in the United States, the mission seemed unsuccessful if based only on the
numbers of conversions. This was destined to be so by the nature of this specific ethnic
mission. The first generation came to the States only from the mid-1890s to about 1910. A
generation grew together in the States and shifted to the following generation. Even though
the intermarriage did not expand so widely among the Nisei as the second generation of
other ethnic groups, Sansei amalgamated to the American society with full American
citizenship, most of the cases with no Japanese citizenship any longer. After the second
generation nurtured Sansei, the Mission completed its original role. In other words, the
Japanese Missions survived for only sixty years while holding the original role to send the
people to their own parishes.
Nevertheless, even non-Catholic Japanese embraced the Catholic values when they
overcame hardships while finding compatibility between those values and Japanese values.
93
Harry Honda, “Wa.” 15 March 1987. Japanese Catholic Center: St. Francis Xavier
Chapel, accessed 31 July 2010, https://sites.google.com/a/sfxjcc.org/japanese-catholiccenter---st-francis-xavier-chapel/about-us/wa.
299
Although earlier historiography explains that the Issei’s Japanese values as expressed in the
phrase, “Shikataga nai” (there is no other way than accepting the difficulty) and “gaman”
(endurance) were passed on to the Nisei, the Japanese in those Catholic communities seemed
to take those ideas more positively—Shikataga nai, because it was God’s will.
Yae Ono, the Nisei woman religious, said, “God always made us laugh, in the end.”
She knew she received the energy to overcome from the teachings of the missionaries.
Ryozo Kado, the Issei landscape architect, told that the unforgivable sin in Japan was
ingratitude and that his gratitude was to God and America. He stated that God gave him the
most and America also gave him much.94 With the assistance of the missionaries, those
Japanese, not only Catholic but also non-Catholic, found their values compatible with the
faith. With their assistance, the Japanese in the Catholic Missions founded a home together
in America while they did so in the Mystical Body.
94
Interview with Yae Ono, M.M., Ossining, NY, September 2008; Ryozo Kado,
Autobiography, VII, 21-22.
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