Peruvian Japanese: From Undesirables to Rightless Subjects

Abstract

The incarceration of the Japanese from Peru during World War II occurred due to the decades long establishment of a Pan-American regime of anti-Japanese rightlessness. The advent of war facilitated their displacement from Peru, but the Japanese existed as undesirables in the country since their first arrival to Latin America. At the executive level, the U.S and Peru coordinated Japanese removal from Peruvian territory, detaining them in special facilities operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the United States. While their deportation and incarceration took place during wartime, the plan to cleanse Peru of the Japanese population was a response to decades of racial anxiety over the Asiatic race. Considered illegal aliens at the end of the war, the Peruvian Japanese endured a lengthy legal battle to assert their right to citizenship. To this day adequate redress continues to escape the Peruvian Japanese. This thesis adds to the growing scholarship on the violation of the Japanese Peruvian rights that occurred, and the rightlessness they endured.