Japanese and Chinese immigrant activists : organizing in American and international Communist movements : 1919-1933

Japanese and Chinese immigrants in the United States have traditionally been characterized as hard workers who are hesitant to involve themselves in labor disputes or radical activism. How then does one explain the labor and Communist organizations in the Asian immigrant communities that existed from coast to coast between 1919 and 1933? Their organizers and members have been, until now, largely absent from the history of the American Communist movement. In Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Activists, Josephine Fowler brings us the first in-depth account of Japanese and Chinese immigrant radicalism inside the United States and across the Pacific. Drawing on multilingual correspondence between left-wing and party members and other primary sources, such as records from branches of the Japanese Workers Association and the Chinese Nationalist Party, Fowler shows how pressures from the Comintern for various sub-groups of the party to unite as an American working class were met with resistance. The book also challenges longstanding stereotypes about the relationships among the Communist Party in the United States, the Comintern, and the Soviet Party. Contents 7 Illustrations 9 Acronyms 11 Acknowledgments 13 Introduction 17 1 Historical Background 31 2 Study Groups, the Oriental Branch, and “Hands Off China” Demonstrations: Issei Radicals’ and Left-wing Chinese Students’ Activism, 1919–1926 45 3 “The Red Capital of the Great Bolshevik Republic” 75 4 Advancing Bolshevism from Moscow Outward and Back and Forth across the Pacific 86 5 From East to West and West to East: Ties of Solidarity in the Pan-Pacific Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, 1923–1934 111 6 Left-wing Chinese Immigrant Activists: Communism and the Strengthening of the Kuomintang in America 130 7 Chinese Workers in America: Labor Organizing and Rallying for Support of the Chinese People 149 8 Formation of the Oriental Branch of the ILD: Organizing among Japanese Workers and the “Second Generation Working Youth” 180 Conclusion 210 Notes 217 Index 273 About The Author 283