The Distance Between Our Names

A gripping historical account about the harrowing struggles of Japanese immigrants in the US during the years leading to World War II.

In 1872, a new Japanese government’s first diplomatic delegation to the United States was greeted with rapturous welcome in San Francisco. For over ten days of lavish parties, the city’s elite admired the emissaries’ silk robes and noble bearing and began forging what they expected would be a special relationship between ascendant Pacific nations. Three decades later, a young Japanese immigrant disembarked at the very same waterfront to a different reception. “I was baptized with horse dung,” Nisuke Mitsumori recalled. “This was my very first impression of America.” Mitsumori arrived in the first angry days of America’s war on Japanese immigrants, a populist convulsion that became one of the nation’s darkest episodes of ethnic strife. In the early 1900s, Japanese immigrants faced mob violence and property destruction. Exclusionary laws restricted Japanese immigrants’ rights to own property, vote, and marry outside their race. Tensions intensified until 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in camps during World War II.

The Distance Between Our Names is the story of the early battles over Japanese immigration—the less dramatic, more insidious chapter. Esteemed journalist Paul Richter researched hundreds of memoirs, public records, news reports, and oral histories to deliver an urgent account of immigration history. This highly relevant book is enlivened by intimate stories of the newcomers—high and humble—such as the children banned from public schools, farmers struggling in a system rigged against them, the women who were swindled into marriages resulting in lifetimes of hardship, immigrant leaders battling to forestall punitive laws. Taken together, The Distance Between Our Names is a stunning narrative of resilience and struggle, a gripping story of one community’s brave fight for dignity in the face of savage discrimination.