This paper will explore how Nikkei (Japanese emigrants and their descendants) Christian’s incarceration experience during World War II challenged the U.S. national myths about religious freedom. To that end, the paper will examine the evolution of the U.S. incarceration policy within the context of transnational power dynamics with the Japanese empire, and its impact on the religious activity of white American Christian supporters for Nikkei internees and Nikkei Christian internees. The central inquiry guiding this study is twofold: first, how did Nikkei Christian internees experience an infringement on their freedom of worship, and how did these internees strive to safeguard their soul liberty? Secondly, how did the transnational political dynamics functioned to transform the U.S. incarceration policy and its impact on the religious activity of white American Christian supporters of Nikkei and the religious freedom of Nikkei Christian internees?
In his seminal work, American Sutra, Duncan Ryūken Williams persuasively contends that the U.S. incarceration policy promoted the assimilation of Nikkei internees into white American society through Christianization, thereby undermining the religious freedom of Nikkei Buddhists.[i] This paper builds on the Williams’ argument surrounding internment and religious freedom, shifting its focus to the infringement on Nikkei Christians’ freedom of worship and their resistance. While Nikkei Christian internees sought to disseminate their beliefs in conjunction with white American Christians, they appeared to be a more nuanced agency. Nikkei Christians were able to utilize white Christian power to some degree, yet they were not entirely legitimized racially and religiously by white Christians, as exemplified by the violation of Nikkei Christians’ freedom of worship. Indeed, white American Christians urged Issei Christians to cease the Japanese vernacular worship and to join the English worship in white American churches following their evacuation from camps. This represented a substantial departure from the freedom of worship espoused in President Roosevelt’s widely known Four Freedoms speech, particularly its second point, which asserts “the second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.”[ii] At the same time, however, this paper will also discuss how Nikkei Christians safeguarded their spiritual liberty by maintaining their ethno-racial identity and churches. A Nikkei Christian minister, for instance, employed Japanese sermons to reinforce their racial and ethnic identity through a theological lens, thereby resisting assimilation into white American Christianity. Moreover, Nikkei Christian ministers played a pivotal role in shaping the pan-Japanese church within the internment camps, transcending denominational and theological boundaries to ensure the preservation of their ethnic church.
In order to comprehensively comprehend the infringement of Issei Christian internees’ religious liberty, this study will examine the transnational politics between the Japanese and U.S. empires. In his groundbreaking work, Race for Empire, Takashi Fujitani elucidates transnational parallels between the imperial policies of Japan and the United States, demonstrating a striking similarity in the evolution of these policies during wartime, marked by a transition from “vulgar racism” to “polite racism.”[iii] Indeed, the Japanese military began embracing ethnic minorities within Japan, including Koreans, criticizing the U.S. racial exclusive policy on Japanese incarceration. In response to this criticism, the United States armed forces initiated the incorporation of Japanese Americans, thereby effecting a pronounced shift in their own racial policies. Consequently, U.S. political and military leaders adopted a liberal racial policy regarding incarceration, promoting integration of Nikkei into white American society rather than confinement within camps. In pursuit of this objective, the Protestant Commission undertook initiatives to assimilate Nikkei Christians into white American churches by halting the Japanese vernacular worship.[iv]
In order to elucidate the intricate voice of Nikkei Christian internees, this paper will mainly examine Japanese documents located in both United States and Japan. This investigation will entail a meticulous analysis of the Japanese weekly bulletin of the Manzanar Christian Church in the Manzanar incarceration camp, as well as the Nikkei minister’s Japanese sermon in the Manzanar, which was published in Japan after the World War II.[v] Additionally, the analysis will delve into English documents from the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and the Protestant Commission to underscore the transnational political dynamics and its influence over U.S. incarceration policy and its repercussions on the religious activities of white Protestant supporters of Nikkei internees.[vi] By leveraging dual-language transnational archival works, this paper will present novel insights into the infringement of religious freedom of Nikkei Christian internees and their resistance within the transnational political context.
[i] Duncan Ryūken Williams, American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019).
[ii] “President Franklin Roosevelt’s Annual Message (Four Freedoms) to Congress (1941),” National Archives, accessed Mar 6, 2025. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-franklin-rooseve….
[iii] Takashi Fujitani, Race for Empire: Koreans As Japanese and Japanese As Americans During World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
[iv] This historical account challenges the discussion presented by Anne Blankenship. She has placed particular emphasis on the role of the Protestant Commission in ensuring the well-being of Nikkei internees and in mitigating racial injustice against them. In doing so, she has situated the Protestant Commission within the broader historiography of American liberal Christianity in the mid-twentieth century. Anne M. Blankenship, Christianity, Social Justice, and the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
[v] The Manzanar Christian Church bulletins are located in the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records in the Bancroft Library, (CA, Berkeley); For Nikkei’s Japanese sermon, see Junrō Kashitani, Sakunai no Fukuin (Tokyo: Hadano Keikitsu, 1955).
[vi] The records of the WRA are located in the Records of the War Relocation Authority in the National Archives and Records Administration, (DC, Washington); The documents of the Protestant Commission are in the Inventory of the Gordan K. Chapman: Protestant Church Commission for Japanese Service Collection in the Graduate Theological Union, (CA, Berkeley).
This paper explores how Nikkei (Japanese immigrants and their descendants) Christians’ incarceration experiences challenged U.S. national myths about religious freedom within the transnational power dynamics during World War II. Duncan Ryūken Williams’ American Sutra persuasively contends that the U.S. incarceration policy sought to assimilate Nikkei internees into white American society through Christianization, thereby undermining the religious freedom of Nikkei Buddhists. Building on this discussion, this paper shifts to the infringement on Nikkei Christians’ freedom of worship and their resistance, examining Japanese documents of Nikkei Christian internees and English documents about the U.S. incarceration religious policy. In response to the Japanese empire’s criticism of the U.S. racism, white American Protestants, alongside the U.S. empire, sought to integrate Nikkei into white American society, thereby urging Nikkei Christians to cease their Japanese vernacular worship and join white American churches. However, Nikkei Christians safeguarded their spiritual liberty by maintaining their ethno-racial identity and churches.