Japanese Americans and the Racial Uniform

Citizenship, Belonging, and the Limits of Assimilation

Dana Y. Nakano

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479816392
• Print ISBN:
  9781479816378
• Subtopic: Asian American Studies

Honorable Mention, 2025 AAAS Book Awards: Social Sciences Category

How race continues to shape the citizenship and everyday lives of later-generation Japanese
Americans

Japanese Americans are seen as the "model minority," a group that has fully assimilated and excelled within the US. Yet third- and fourth-generation Japanese Americans continue to report feeling marginalized within the predominantly white communities they call home. Japanese Americans and the Racial Uniform explores this apparent contradiction, challenging the way society understands the role of race in social and cultural integration.

To explore race and the everyday practices of citizenship, Dana Y. Nakano begins at an unlikely site, Japanese Village and Deer Park, a now defunct Japan-themed amusement park in suburban Southern California. Drawing from extensive interviews with the park's Japanese American employees as well as photographic imagery, Nakano shows how the employees' race acted as part of their work uniform and magnified their sense of alienation from their white peers and the park's white visitors. While the racial perception of Japanese Americans as forever foreigners made them ideal employees for Deer Park, the same stigma continues to marginalizes Japanese Americans beyond the place and time of the amusement park. Into the present day, third and fourth generation Japanese Americans share feelings of racialized non-belonging and yearning for community. Japanese Americans and the Racial Uniform pushes us to rethink the persistent recognition of racial markers—the racial body as a visible, ever-present uniform—and how it continues to impact claims on an American identity and the lived experience of citizenship.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface: I Was Born to Write This Book
• 1. Race, Belonging, and the Affective Dimensions of Citizenship
• 2. Contextualizing Japanese America
• 3. The False Promise of Assimilation
• 4. How to Be Cool at Deer Park
• 5. The Racial Replenishment of Ethnicity
• 6. Have Ethnicity, Will Travel
• 7. Ethnic History as American History
• Conclusion: Citizenship, Belonging, and the Racial Critique of Assimilation
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author