“Americanization” was the hue and cry of the early 1920s, and the Japanese community was singled out as standing in its way. A federal commission in 1920 recommended outlawing foreign language schools. The Territory exempted the Chinese and Korean and attacked only the Japanese. Launching a full-scale campaign, the oligarchy-dominated daily newspapers charged that the schools were headquarters for “saboteurs,”a “deadly peril,” and a “menace.” Between 1920 and 1924, the Territory passed laws that licensed the schools, placed them under the Department of Public Instruction, and limited attendance to children fourteen years of age or older. A head tax of $1.00 per pupil was levied—a heavy burden for the 153 schools, which had an enrollment of 20,000.

Leading the fight for justice was Frederick Makino, editor of the newspaper Hawai‘i Hochi. Originally from Yokohama, with an English father and Japanese mother, Makino was an excellent journalist who fought for civil-rights causes. Eighty-seven schools joined the Hochi to test the constititionality of the new laws. The school case was long and costly, and families stood to lose their homes, which they had mortgaged to help pay the costs.

The U.S. Supreme Court in February of 1927 declared the Territorial law unconstitutional. Eighty-five percent of the gallant Nisei soldiers who fought for the United States in World War II attended Japanese language schools in the 1920s and 1930s. So much for the “anti-Americanism” charge against these schools.

By Helen G. Chapin