by Gerald Horne
According to the Allah Temple of Islam, the precursor of what is known today as the Nation of Islam,
The Asiatic race is made up of all dark-skinned people, including the Japanese and the Negro; therefore members of the Asiatic race must stick together; that the Japanese will win because the white man cannot successfully oppose the Asiatics. That the white man is nothing but a devil; that this is the devil’s war and let the devil fight it himself. . . . That the black man owes no respect to the American flag because under the American flag the Negro is oppressed, beaten, and lynched; that the only allegiance a Moslem owes is to the flag of Islam. . . . That the Japanese are fighting to free the colored people. . . . The Japanese flag is similar to our flag of Islam and the likeness is because the Japanese are our brothers. . . . By the end of the year Moslems will have 7,000,000 followers and then with the help of their brothers in the Far East the Moslems will control the United States.45
A harbinger of the Allah Temple of Islam was another group, known as The Development of Our Own, also rooted in Black Detroit. A Negro woman born Pearl Barnett in Alabama in 1896 and eventually known as Pearl Sherrod married a Japanese national, Satokata Takahashi, and under their leadership, TDOO was said to have amassed a membership of ten thousand, including those of African, Indian, and Filipino descent.46 Sherrod, unlike the UNIA, was supportive of Japan’s military incursions into China and sought to financially support this intervention.47
However, her views were hardly singular. The combustible combination of militant Islam, Filipino insurgency, anticolonialism in India, the rise of Japan, and the existence of an independent Ethiopia was becoming an alternative Weltanschauung challenging white supremacy. From Tokyo’s perspective, there was a V-shaped formation attacking white supremacy and European and Euro-American colonialism, with Japan at the point of attack.
Thus, it was William Pickens—not a Muslim but a leading Negro intellectual close to the NAACP—who argued in December 1931 that
Secretary [Henry] Stimson has learned that he must use more respectful and circumspect language when talking about the Japanese “army” than [he] uses when talking about Mexican or Nicaraguan “bandits.” Of course, Japanese nerves are not a bit more sensitive than Haitian nerves, but Japanese guns are bigger and longer and Japan’s warship tonnage is heavy. . . . [Japanese] are in fact just as “colored” as are the people of Liberia, but nobody in Washington is giving “orders” to Japan [despite its intervention in China].48
In sum, the idea was emerging that white supremacy was even more fraudulent than first thought; this seemingly inviolably inflexible doctrine seemed to lack rigidity when confronted with a powerful force. This insight carried grave implications for the future viability of white supremacy in the United States.
Pickens’s view was that “Japan in Manchuria takes [a] leaf from the book of ‘occupation’” developed by the United States in Haiti.49 Sounding triumphant, Pickens claimed that “‘white supremacy’ was slain in Manchuria and its funeral celebration is being held in Shanghai” and “the Japanese killed it.” The “best fighting man on earth today is the trained Japanese soldier.” Pickens was sufficiently perceptive to note that “in the immediate future the resisting Chinese are going to be a far greater threat to white domination in Asia than Japan ever could be.” Repeating a commonly held position among U.S. Negroes, Pickens interpreted the Japanese invasion of China as actually an attempt by Tokyo to toughen fellow Asians so they could better confront white supremacy. “China will no longer be helpless,” he said, “after they get through this ‘training match’ against the Japanese.”50 Pickens was not alone in this view. The Baltimore Afro-American described China as a “kind of ‘Uncle Tom’ of Asia” and asserted that Japan was providing backbone by instructing the Chinese to “stand up straight and be a man.”51
Pickens declared that “if an intelligent American Negro goes to Japan or China, he is lionized,” unlike the routine maltreatment endured in the United States. “No visitor,” he assured, “gets quite the hearty reception that a black American gets from the Orientals.” Pickens wrote about a Negro soldier who had fought in the Philippines and now cowered in “shame and chagrin” at the prospect that a Filipino might ask him, “Why you come here, help white man treat us like you?” Indeed, said Pickens, “When a Moro warrior said that to me, I confess that I felt small.” His conclusion? “Hindered races should make common cause, just as the oppressed classes of all races should make common cause.”52 However, this noble assemblage did not include Chinese fleeing Japanese aggression.
Pickens—neither a leftist nor a Black Nationalist, but a centrist with ties to the NAACP—was probably the most articulate pro-Tokyo intellectual among U.S. Negroes. He was bedazzled by Hawaii, marveling that the “Japanese are the largest single racial element here.” Importantly, “one likes them: they are intelligent, industrious, friendly. There is nothing more agreeable than to go into a restaurant or other shop where Japanese are rendering the services. ‘Can I give you a lift?’ a Japanese woman will say to a strange black man who she sees”; he knew that “people cannot be so friendly in New York—they dare not,” while in Honolulu, by way of contrast, “criminals and dirt cannot flourish here.”53
Months after Pickens’s endorsement of aggression in China, news reports indicated that U.S. Negroes were seeking to enlist in the Japanese air force. Similarly, a Japanese ship set sail for home from Belgium staffed by a Negro crew. “Give us jobs and we will not go to Japan,” was the plea of these prospective pilots. The journalist on the scene saw this as confirmation of the “gradual consolidation of the colored races of the world in opposition to the whites,” though “the instance above is the first in which relations between the Nipponese and Negroes have been disclosed.”54
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What was driving “Nipponese and Negroes” closer together was also an idea that also had arisen in the 1930s: Ethiopia, one of the few independent African nations, would preserve its independence by dint of alliance with Japan. That U.S. Negroes were moved in large numbers to stand in solidarity with Addis Ababa in the face of Italy’s invasion is well-established.55 What is relevant for purposes here is that in 1932 the idea was bruited of a formal alliance—through marriage—of the royal families of Japan and Ethiopia.56 Of course, to even hint at a merger between elite families in Washington and Addis Ababa might have ignited a lynching—or worse. What this suggests is that as Ethiopia gripped the consciousness of U.S. Negroes, alliance with Ethiopia served to further differentiate Tokyo from its European and Euro-American competitors. Even after it became clear that no such betrothal would occur, the rumor continued to resonate. And even after the formation of the Anti-Comintern alliance that linked Tokyo with Berlin and, yes, Rome, in the eyes of some U.S. Negroes this assumed marriage proposal served to distinguish Japan from other imperialist powers. Predictably, many of the pro-Tokyo forces that arose among Negroes were also in fervent solidarity with Ethiopia.
Thus, in 1942 among the U.S. Negroes indicted as a result of their pro-Tokyo stances were those who led a group called—revealingly—the Ethiopia Pacific Movement. According to the indictment, the EPM argued that “Japan is going to win the war and the next leading power in the world will be [the] ‘Rising Sun.’” Thus, “when they tell you to remember Pearl Harbor, you reply ‘Remember Africa.’”57 Then there was the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, organized in 1932 purportedly for the purpose of migration to Liberia. Its leader, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, was also indicted in 1943 for alleged pro-Tokyo activity.58
The ties of intimacy arising between Ethiopia and U.S. Negroes were indicative of a growing identification with Africa, thus buoying Black Nationalism generally. For example, in 1936 a baby named Haile Selassie Stewart was born in Jackson, Mississippi.59 The preceding year, Malaku Bayen, a close relative of the emperor and a graduate of the medical school at Howard University, the capstone of U.S. Negro education, married a U.S. Negro, Dorothy Hadley, formerly of Evanston and Chicago.60 Da
niel Alexander, a U.S. Negro, had been in Ethiopia for three decades by 1930. Born in Chicago, he went there as a missionary and married an Ethiopian woman.61
In August 1919 a high-level delegation from Ethiopia arrived in Harlem to confer with a number of leading African American entrepreneurs and scholars. The visitors were pleased to “express the satisfaction we have felt on hearing of the wonderful progress the Africans have made in this country,” while adding memorably, “we want you to remember us after we have returned to our native country.” Eight years later yet another delegation met with the bibliophile Arthur Schomburg and extended an invitation to “American blacks” to come aid this East African nation with their skills as “mechanics, professional men, farmers” and the like.62
In sum, there was a broad and diverse coalition of forces backing Addis, which was made abundantly clear when a thousand clergy in New York City pledged a Sunday of Prayer against Italian aggression in August 1935.63 The popular cleric Daddy Grace urged his 200,000 followers to pray for His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie.64 That same month 20,000 marched through Harlem, one of the largest manifestations in this Negro community in years.65 The “biggest seller in New York” on that day was the tricolor flag of Ethiopia, according to one observer.66 William Pickens declared that actually there were “at least 100,000” on the march in Harlem, while “other hundreds of thousands observed”; this was, he stressed, “the greatest PROTEST AGAINST THE ITALIAN ATTACK ON ETHIOPIA” to be held “anywhere in the world.” There were “at least five miles” of marchers—the “raw stuff out of which revolutions are made.”67
Also in August 1935, fifty North Carolinians of African descent were reported to have “enlisted for service” in Addis: “most of the recruits were former members of the regular army units.”68 Ethiopia’s consul in Manhattan thanked Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for its energetic fund-raising for Addis’s forces.69 John Robinson, a Negro from Chicago, took his piloting skills to Addis, where he became a leader of Ethiopia’s air force. “Scores” more of “American aviators,” as reported in the Negro press, wanted to volunteer too.70 By April 1936 Robinson was touted in the Negro press as the “head of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force.”71 Robinson’s fellow Chicagoans were in the forefront in supplying Ethiopia with medical supplies.72 The Chicago Society for the Aid of Ethiopia sought to send “10,000 cablegrams” to the League of Nations summit on Ethiopia.73
“Sepia Harlem has gone mad,” observed the Negro press in May 1936. “The announcement that Italy has annexed Ethiopia” was the reason. “Nearly every corner of Lennox and Seventh Avenue” was filled with “great crowds assembled to listen to the roar and splutter,” while “yelling ‘Don’t buy from the Wops [sic].’” A “monster parade” ensued.74
Yet also on the military front, it was reported in the Negro press in 1935 that Japan was to provide “arms” and “ammunition” to Addis: “there are many Japanese in this country,” readers were told.75 In 1933 the Negro press had reported that there was a Japanese “plan” for a “coalition with Abyssinia” and to that end, His Imperial Majesty “has surrounded himself with Japanese agricultural, mineralogical and commercial experts.”76 Also featured in the Negro press was the point that not only “Egyptians” but “Japanese” too were “clamor[ing] to get in [the] Ethiopian army.”77 Similarly highlighted was the assertion that Tokyo was to send Addis “as many airplanes or other necessities as are desired and with no strings attached.”78
William Pickens rationalized that “to protect itself from the great ‘White Peril’, Japan has built up a veritable Frankenstein in its Army,” which now could be deployed in Africa.79 The Red Cross unit maintained by Japan in Ethiopia was singled out for praise.80 To that end, the Associated Negro Press (ANP), a consortium of Negro periodicals in the United States, opined that the “utter domination” of Ethiopia by London “would mean better control of her Asiatic possessions and another threat to Japanese expansion,” while “Japanese control of Ethiopia would menace Britain in India and Africa.”81
In St. Louis, in some ways a central headquarters of pro-Tokyo sentiment among Negroes, Toyohiko Kagawa, a famed Japanese Christian leader, addressed an assemblage of ten thousand on the Italian conquest of Ethiopia; he included a critique of Communists for good measure.82
Just as the 1924 immigration exclusion law in the United States served to polarize relations within the republic between those of Japanese origin on the one hand, and Italians, Greeks, and Poles on the other, the war in Ethiopia exacerbated tensions between Italian Americans and U.S. Negroes.83 This was particularly the case after the Negro press reported that Italian Americans in New York City raised a hefty $100,000 for the invaders, along with sleek ambulances.84
In New Orleans Negroes vigorously protested the sight of Italians marching in favor of the invasion. The protesters included the leading Negro academics St. Clair Drake and L. D. Reddick; reportedly, three thousand gathered alongside them to consider “economic sanctions against local Italian merchants in a sign of protest.”85 Such clashes may have driven Denis Sullivan in London to conclude that an “army of 500,000,000 blacks roused because Italy conquered Ethiopia” now threatens “white civilization.” This led him to believe that not the “Yellow Peril” represented by Tokyo but the “Black One”—which included India—was the main danger.86
This polarization had a religious tinge too, which simultaneously tended to forge a kind of Black Nationalism or commonality between Ethiopians and U.S. Negroes. Thus, said the Negro press, “Wahib Pasha, Turkish military genius”—and a Muslim—“who directed Ethiopia’s defense because he hated Italians” was invaluable. “Abyssinia was not conquered by gas, bombs or other modern weapons but by internal revolution.” Thus, said Pasha, “the majority of the chiefs succumbed to Italian bribery and propaganda”; the Negro commentator continued, “If nothing else, this trait of selling out—so often in evidence in America by Negro misleaders—ought to convince skeptics that Ethiopians and Duskyamericans [sic] are members of the same race.”87
Meanwhile, from Johannesburg the U.S. Negro press reported that “the Italo-Ethiopian conflict” could mean “the coup de grace of white imperialism or the beginning of the revolt of the docile [sic] blacks against the encroachment of the land grabbing whites;” this could occur since “pro-Ethiopian feeling [was] pervading all Africans—literate and illiterate,” not unlike the United States itself.88 The war in Ethiopia was the “cause of many attempts at greater cooperation among Africans” in South Africa, according to the U.S. Negro press; “the war has whetted the appetite for reading. It has spurred the quest for information” and was “encouraging the fight against imperialist oppression,” forging “greater solidarity.” Yes, it was noted with satisfaction, “Black South Africa is becoming one.”89 This polarization tended to place Tokyo alongside Addis, Africans generally, and U.S. Negroes particularly against Italy and its European enablers.
Tellingly, decamping to Ethiopia were—unusually—a number of UNIA members. This was unusual because Garvey himself derided His Imperial Majesty as “misguided.”90 Still, this growing list of migrants included Augustinian Bastian of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Harlem, who had been living in Ethiopia since 1933 and had traveled there in a party that included a number of Virgin Islanders.91 The chief motor mechanic in Addis, James Alexander Harte, had lived there for five years though he hailed from British Guiana.92 His presence did not seem to be happenstance when the fact emerged that back in Guiana, plantation workers went on strike in protest against the invasion and were described as “in a tense mood” because of the conflict.93
This tenseness also gripped U.S. Negroes generally and did not bode well for the United States as tensions simultaneously gripped Tokyo-Washington bilateral relations.
3
Japan Establishes a Foothold in Black America
As mentioned earlier, in 1943 the federal government brought charges that amounted to sedition against a group whose membership was heavily African
American and which seemed to be flourishing in the Midwest and various other U.S. cities. The grand jury and trial transcripts of U.S. v. Pacific Movement of the Eastern World and related records provide a fascinating glimpse of ordinary African Americans and their feelings about Japan, world events in general, and life in the United States in the early twentieth century.
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Policarpio Manansala, also known as Mimo De Guzman, Dr. Ashima Takis, Dr. Itake Koo, and Kenesuka, was born in the Philippines—interestingly—on 4 July 1900. He received a high school education, then joined the U.S. Navy, but received a dishonorable discharge. At that juncture, according to the indictment in U.S. v. PMEW, he became a Japanese agent; in early 1943 he “undertook to organize among the Negro population of the United States a movement for the purpose of spreading Japanese propaganda” at “the instigation of the Black Dragon Society of Japan,” an ultra-patriotic group “working through Satokata Takahashi, a retired major of the Japanese Imperial Army.” The organization through which he worked was the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World (PMEW).
Evidently a number of Negroes assumed he was Japanese. George Young of East St. Louis was born in 1895 in Mississippi and served during World War I in France; by the time of his 1942 grand jury interrogation, he worked as a carpenter. He had joined the PMEW in 1933 but confessed, when asked about De Guzman, “I wouldn’t know a Jap from a Philipino [sic]. All I know is they ain’t white.”1 This rough-hewn attitude was not uncommon among U.S. Negroes, nor was it dissimilar to the approach in Washington, which also tended to group under one rubric the “nonwhite”—including Negroes at the bottom rung of society.
