Preface
In 1918 Samuel Rea, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, declared that in order to become good American citizens, immigrants "must be induced to give up the languages, customs, and methods of life which they have brought with them across the ocean, and adopt instead the language, habits, and customs of this country, and the general standards and ways of American living" (Rea 1918 in Hill 1974: 33). Today, descendants of the immigrants who have streamed into the United States have indeed generally adopted American ways: they speak English, watch the fireworks on the Fourth ofJuly, observe Thanksgiving, and display habits and norms that mark them as "Americans." Japanese Americans are no exception. Contrary to earlier expectations, however, not only do boundaries continue to demarcate ethnic groups in American society, but the issue of ethnicity has grown more important. Resurgent ethnicity is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. All over the world, political integration of different tribes and ethnic groups into new st;ttes and their migration into urban settings, which it was once believed would reduce their differences and unify them, have in fact had the reverse effect of stimulating ethnic consciousness. Especially since the reunification of Germany, many states or societies have been forced to reconfigure according to ethnic group. After World War II some predicted that Japanese American com-