The Birth of an American Form of Buddhism: The Japanese-American Buddhist Experience in World War II

By Justin Whitaker | | Buddhistdoor Global

For many, the story of Buddhism in America begins with the Beat poets of the 1950s or the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Buddhism first landed on American soil at least a century earlier with the arrival of Asian immigrants from across the Pacific. In 1893, the first Jodo Shinshu priests arrived in San Francisco, establishing what would become the Buddhist Churches of America. And, according to scholar and author Duncan Ryuken Williams, it was in the experiences of Jodo Shinshu and other Japanese Buddhists in the Second World War that a uniquely American Buddhism was formed. This began in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, when the American identity of Japanese Americans, particularly those of a Buddhist background, was called into question. Just over two months later on 19 February 1942, in the American rush to war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the incarceration of as many as 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent. In his new book American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press 2019), Duncan Ryuken Williams, professor of Religion and East Asian Languages & Cultures and director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, retells the stories of Japanese Americans during World War II, with a particular focus on the role Buddhism played. He examines what it meant to be American and Buddhist for Japanese Americans in an era of war, and renewed racism and xenophobia.

As Janis Hirohama writes: The entire Japanese American community suffered during the war, but as American Sutra shows, Buddhists were particularly targeted. U.S. government and military authorities viewed Buddhism as un-American and its followers as more likely to be disloyal. Most Buddhist priests were swiftly arrested and detained after Pearl Harbor, and severe restrictions were placed on the practice of Buddhism in both Hawaii and the mainland. (The North American Post) The concern about the Japanese practice of Buddhism fit into an ongoing fear of non-Christian religions in American history, “from widespread suspicion of the so-called ‘heathen Chinee’ [a phrase popularized by American writer Bret Harte in an unsuccessful effort to satirize anti-Chinese sentiment of the time] in the late 19th century, to dire warnings of a ‘Hindoo peril’ early in the 20th century, to rampant Islamophobia in the present century. Even before war with Japan was declared, Buddhists encountered similar mistrust.” (Smithsonian.com)

Williams writes of the experience of Japanese American Buddhists in Hawaii: The early roundup of the Buddhist leadership, whether citizen or not, was a harbinger of a broader persecution of non-Christian religions on the Hawaiian Islands. Under martial law, the misguided presumption that Japanese American Christians were necessarily more loyal to the United States became increasingly apparent, and the historical animus against Buddhism and Shinto intensified. Thus, during the first several years of the war, Buddhists and Shintoists were restricted from practicing their religion, and had to petition the Army’s G-2 intelligence division for permission, most often denied, to meet at their temples and shrines. Several Shinto shrines, such as the Izumo Taisha shrine in Honolulu, were simply confiscated and declared “gifts” to the city and county of Honolulu. On the island of Kauai, the Military Governor’s Office coordinated the closure of the island’s Japanese-language schools with the dissolution of Buddhist temples. Ultimately, 13 of the island’s 19 Buddhist temples were eliminated. (American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War) Life in the camps was difficult. Many of those interned were given just hours to leave their homes with only the possessions they could carry on their backs. Nonetheless, Japanese-American Buddhists worked to preserve their religious identities and practices.