Fighting US Imperialism Everywhere: Asian American Movement Activists’ Struggles across the Pacific

• In Event: Other Trans-Pacific Alliances: 1960s Protest Movements Crossing Borders in the US and Japan

Abstract

This paper investigates how Asian American activists viewed US foreign policy toward Asia and intervened in international relations in the Pacific Rim as they also attempted to change their communities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. While both the anti-Vietnam War movement and the Black Power movement in United States shaped Asian American internationalism in the late 1960s, significant international issues also influenced how Asian American activists understood their relationships to East Asia, the United States as a global power, and the structure of power in their local communities. These issues included three key events in the 1960s and early 1970s: the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1970; the reversion of Okinawa from the US to Japan in 1972; and the admission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations in 1971. Seeking to forge an alliance with other Third World peoples oppressed by US racism and imperialism, Asian American movement activists intervened in these issues that they considered critical to the domination by US powers across the Pacific. This paper examines how Japanese American and Chinese American activists responded to these issues, and how they confronted traditional powerhouses in their communities, such as the Japanese American Citizens League and the Kuomintang, when they regarded them as allies of US imperialism. In doing so, the paper emphasizes the connections between international politics and community politics in the imagination and political commitments of Asian American movement activists on the cusp of the 1960s and 1970s.

Author

• Go Oyagi, University of Tokyo