Intermarriages

Intermarriage is one sign of the assimilation of a foreign population in their new country. Such marriages, however, often encounter numerous difficulties, from discrimination to cultural tensions between the husband and wife. Racial intermarriage involves the added difficulty of different racial backgrounds, which also create instances of discrimination and problems fitting into the community. The marriages of Japanese women and American men constitute one such intermarried population facing particular problems and issues.

When the Japanese started arriving in the United States in the 1890s, anger about the Chinese was simply transferred to the newcomers, and the focus of hostility and agitation against the Japanese was in California, as had been the case with hostility toward the Chinese. This was also where most of the continental Japanese lived, there being another major population in Hawaii. The United States Industrial commission reported in 1901 that the Japanese were "far less desirable" than the Chinese, and further stated:

They have most of the vices of the Chinese, with none of the virtues. They underbid the Chinese in everything, and are as a class tricky, unreliable, and dishonest (Dinnerstein and Reimers, 1982, 51).

As with certain other ethnic groups, most of the Japanese who came to America in the early years were male, and very few Japanese women came during the 1880s and 1890s. Within two decades, however, many young Japanese males began bringing

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hird generation). They held American citizenship because they were born on American soil, and most had been educated in American schools and had been indoctrinated wit democratic principles. A number of the Japanese women married to American men would be issei of a different sort, Japanese war brides brought home by soldiers after World War II ("International Nikkei Research Project," 1999). Until 1948, anti-miscegenation laws prevented intermarraige for the Japanese in America. Traditionally, Japanese women have outmarried at a higher rate than Japanese men. Intergenerational differences for the ratio of intermarriage are significant, and statistics showing an increase in the number of outmarriages among the Sansei reflects a reduction in prejudice and discrimination after World War II (Fugita and O'Brien, 1991, 131-132). Intermarriage for this population has been shown to have a weakening effect on ethnic community involvement. Divorce rates for Japanese women married to American men are higher than for Japanese married to other Japanese, perhaps because of the looser community ties that result (Fugita and O'Brien, 1991, 140). Another reason intermarriage rates have increased over time is that the Japanese American commu

Category: Psychology - I