Citizen Aliens: American Xenophobia, Japanese American Migrants, and the Transpacific Borders of Belonging

Abstract Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, thousands of US-born Japanese Americans moved to Japan to escape anti-Asian xenophobia and start new lives. Nearly twenty thousand of these migrants, collectively known as Kibei, returned to the United States on the eve of Pearl Harbor. Dispossessed of their US citizenship, the Kibei lived with the stigma of being too Japanese and were ostracized from their community during the war. The Kibei's wartime struggles in American concentration camps defined their lives as citizens and migrants. This article explores the perspectives of Kibei incarcerees who resisted the popular representation of Japanese Americans as patriotic victims of racism who had proved their loyalty to America. Informed by their experiences in the US-Japan transpacific borderlands, these dispossessed citizens found ways to redefine the meaning of loyalty and citizenship that challenges the liberal US narrative. Furthermore, their stories illuminate the profound impact of the deeply entrenched culture and politics of American xenophobia, as US-born Asian Americans confronted a systemic assault on their birthright citizenship, from Chinese exclusion to anti-Japanese political campaigns throughout the Jim Crow American West. The Kibei's lifelong journeys across transpacific borders of belonging expose the enduring exclusionary regime of US citizenship.