Claiming America, Brokering Empire

This article traces the Japanese American Citizens League’s (JACL) efforts to secure the postwar status of Japanese Americans through its engagements with U.S.-Japan Cold War relations. When Japanese mass protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty raised the specter of Japan’s “fall” to communism, JACL leaders mobilized Japanese Americans’ presumed racial and cultural intimacies to testify to the benevolence of U.S. power abroad and preserve Japan’s position as an outpost of U.S. militarism. Reflecting the interrelationship between racial liberalism and imperialism, JACL’s international advocacy suggests an expanded frame for Cold War civil rights that considers the militarized underpinnings of Asian American inclusion and the centrality of U.S. foreign policy as a terrain of political struggle for diasporic communities.