New Orleans was a major hub for trade and investment for Japan in the early 20th Century era. By 1960, Japan became the city’s largest international trading partner. Greg Robinson (Université du Québec à Montréal) discusses the paradoxical status ethnic Japanese enjoyed in Louisiana because of these transnational commercial links. 

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Throughout the 20th Century era, Japan exerted a strong economic and cultural influence on Louisiana, both in the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans and outside.  As the only large city and commercial center in the Gulf region, New Orleans became a major conduit for Japanese trade and investment early in the century, especially in the mushrooming cotton trade. Relations expanded so greatly that by 1922, Japan opened a consulate building in New Orleans. While trade was cut off during World War II, by 1960 Japan had become the Crescent City’s largest international trading partner. Meanwhile, rice grains from Japan were heavily planted in Louisiana, Japanese flowers such as the Water Hyacinth (plus the Kudzu vine) were transplanted in Louisiana soil, and the Japanese Camellia enjoyed a vogue.

As a result of these transnational commercial links, ethnic Japanese in Louisiana enjoyed a paradoxical status.  While settlement by Japanese American farmers in the state was discouraged, the small elite class of Japanese residents were recognized as “white” within the state’s segregated racial structure, and individuals were offered educational and job opportunities unmatched in most other states. Elite white Louisianians joined with the Japanese consulate and cultural associations in projects, and Japanese art and culture remained valorized, if sometimes treated as exotic, in Louisiana.  World War II and the mass wartime confinement of Japanese Americans upset this larger pattern and led to mass entry of ethnic Japanese, but also to renewed battles over equality.

Bio

Greg Robinson is Professor of History at l'Université du Québec À Montréal, a French-language institution in Montreal, Canada, and a researcher at Center for United States Studies of the Chaire Raoul-Dandurand. A specialist in North American Ethnic Studies and U.S. Political History, he is the author of several notable books. His first book, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Harvard University Press, 2001) uncovers President Franklin Roosevelt’s troubling racial views, and explored his central involvement in the wartime confinement of 120,000 Japanese Americans. The book received glowing reviews from The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Los Angeles Times and diverse national newspapers, and spent four months on Academia magazine’s scholarly bestseller list. His second book, A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (Columbia University Press, 2009), winner of the 2009 History book prize of the Association for Asian American Studies, studies Japanese American and Japanese Canadian confinement together in a transnational context, and reveal. His book After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics (University of California Press, 2012), winner of the Caroline Bancroft History Prize in Western U.S. History, centers on post war resettlement and coalitions for civil rights between Japanese Americans and other minorities. He is also the editor of Pacific Citizens: Larry and Guyo Tajiri and Japanese American Journalism in the World War II Era (University of Illinois Press, 2012) a study of a couple of pioneering Nisei journalists, and coeditor of Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road an anthology volume on a groundbreaking Nisei artist and writer. Professor Robinson has also been active speaker and writer in the public arena and the blogsphere. He writes a regular column, “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great,” for the San Francisco Nichi Bei Weekly. He is an editorial board member and Forward section editor of the Journal of Transnational American Studies.

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