The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 26 (2015)
Copyright © 2015 Miya Shichinohe-Suga. All rights reserved. This work may be used, withthis notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be distributed,
electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.

Japanese Interracial Families in the United States,
1879–1900: What the Census Manuscript
Population Schedules Reveal

Miya Shichinohe-Suga*

Introduction
The historical demographer Steven Ruggles in the early 1990s spearheaded
the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: IPUMS project by creating,coding, and disseminating US census data. Ruggles and his colleague atUniversity of Minnesota, economic and social historian Russell R. Menard,
have stressed the significance of census records as primary historicalsources for investigation into the lives of “ordinary people”:[The] census is our fundamental source of information about Americansocial structure in the past. No other source can compete with respect
to population coverage and reliability. . . . Many Americans in earlier
generations left no surviving trace of their existence except for theirlistings in the census. Thus, we must frequently turn to census data forbasic historical generalizations about the lives of ordinary people.1
This is true for Japanese immigrant families to the United States in thelate nineteenth century, many of whom were unknown settlers and left notrace other than “listings in the census”—that is, in manuscript population*Associate Professor, Tokyo Gakugei University

75

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Miya Shichinohe-Sugaschedules.2 Through these population schedules we can get individual
records that include information not only on names, ages, occupations, and“color” or “race” but also on the neighborhoods in which these families
lived. Indeed, population schedules are crucial in reconstructing andnarrating the basic profile of early Japanese immigrant families.
Conducting research based on population schedules also has its own
limitations. First, the US Census is taken only once every ten years.
Therefore, the census is virtually silent for providing stories about “ordinary
people” during the in-between years. Second, those who were counted ineach census were the de jure population or resident population. People who
were not at their residence by chance when the census enumerators visited
would be counted based on a declaration by the head of the household. This
practice could cause overcounts or other inaccuracies. Another possible
problem is undercounts. Undercounts, estimated to be about 10 percent in
the late nineteenth century, were seen mainly in racial minority populations.3
Third, names were also often “creatively” spelled out because enumerators
wrote them based on oral dictation from respondents.
The theme of this article is family, and it is thus worth noting here how
the US Census defined “family.” The 1850 census defined “family” for the
first time in its instructions to marshals and their assistants.4 That was when
the census started to ask for all the names and personal information of every
person in the “family.” The instructions said:
By the term family is meant, either one person living separately in ahouse, or a part of a house, and providing for him or herself, or several
persons living together in a house or in a part of a house, upon one
common means of support, and separately from others in similar
circumstances. A widow living alone and separately providing forherself, or 200 individuals living together and provided for by acommon head, should each be numbered as one family.5
From 1870 to 1890, with some additions and modifications, “a common
table and roof” remained the key factor in forming a family for the purposesof the census. However, as late as 1910, the census acknowledged thediscrepancy between ordinary and census usages of “family” as follows:
The word “family,” for census purposes, has a somewhat different
application from what it has in popular usage. It means a group of
persons living together in the same dwelling place. The persons

Japanese Interracial Families in the United States, 1879–1900

77

constituting this group may or may not be related by ties of kinship,
but if they live together forming one household they should beconsidered as one family.6
In this article I try to discover some untold stories of early Japaneseimmigrant families at the turn of the twentieth century, not of “a group of
persons living together in the same dwelling place,” as defined by thecensus. With a family defined as a household of people “related by ties ofkinship” and excluding lodgers, boarders, or servants, I will shed light on
the characteristics of early Japanese families, with special emphasis on
interracial marriages, by examining their patterns, demographic distribution,and the race categorization of interracial couples and their multiracialchildren.
Regarding interracial marriage and family, John Kuo Wei Tchen notesthat in the cosmopolitan port city of New York, where no antimiscegenation
law existed, marriages between Chinese and white women were notuncommon.7 Nevertheless, as Emma Jinhua Teng points out, “mixed race”
individuals have often been made invisible in the master narrative due to“numerical minority, that Eurasians disrupt boundaries of colonizer andcolonized, white and nonwhite, rendering them problematic figures in
accepted paradigms of nationalist and ethnic histories.”8 Early Japaneseinterracial families and their children have been even more invisible due
partly to the timeframe of their migrations and marriages.9 The conventional
narrative of Japanese immigration depicts 1884 or 1885 as its starting point,
when the numbers of Japanese, mostly aspiring and indigent students,
started to increase and the contract labor system in Hawaii began.10 However,
the history of Japanese interracial families began long before that, as thisarticle will reveal. Another overlooked factor is that Japanese in New Yorkand the East Coast in general have not been the subject of comprehensive
research, in contrast to the Chinese. Even in her pioneer work on Japanesein New York, Mitziko Sawada sees the Japanese community as a rather
monoracial bachelor society, arguing that “meeting American women,socializing with them, perhaps even marrying one, remained a dream.”11“Japanese” as a census category was officially introduced in 1890, twenty
years after the introduction of the category “Chinese.” But it is a question
whether enumerators in fact followed the official instructions in recording
the racial backgrounds of Japanese fathers or mothers. And was “the logic
of dependent citizenship extended to racial classification,” as argued byTeng, applicable to interracial couples involving Japanese immigrants and78

Miya Shichinohe-Sugatheir children?12 Also, the official category used for people of “mixed race”
was “Mulatto” after 1850, which concerned primarily multiracial children
with an African American parent. With no specific instructions or official
categories, how did local census takers categorize mixed-heritage Asian
American children? Were their racial backgrounds recorded according totheir mothers’ backgrounds or their fathers’, or was there some otherpattern? Because the manuscripts of the 1890 census were lost in a fire at
the US Department of Commerce in 1921, this article explores records from
1870, 1880, and 1900 on the mainland, mostly in California and New YorkState. The following sections will illuminate the characteristics of Japanese
who chose to form international, interracial, and, potentially, not merely
bicultural but multicultural families. We begin our investigation by
examining the fifty-six Japanese individuals and the first international/
interracial couple recorded in the 1870 census.

Japanese Interracial Families: 1870 and 1880
A. Cases from the 1870 Census
The 1870 census expanded “color” categories in the census populationquestionnaires to five groups, by adding “Chinese” and “Indians” to“White,” “Black,” and “Mulatto.”13 As Hochschild and Powell havediscussed, 1870 was the turning point when Chinese and Japanese
populations (and other contemporary “Asian” groups thereafter) began
being classified according to birthplace.14 In other words, it was in 1870 thata new “race” category, which virtually meant nativity or national origin,started to infiltrate the boundary and census nomenclature of “color or race”
for the purposes of “discipline and punish,”15 in other words, to gather
information on the Chinese population to use it for the purpose of exclusion.
The examination of “color” categorization, names, family compositions,passport data, and the like strongly indicates that four out of fifty-fiveindividuals found in the official report were actually not Japanese.16
Meanwhile, another five Japanese individuals, though not recorded as such,
were found in the population schedules. Therefore, the archival crossexamination and database search on population schedules re-counts fiftysix “genuine” Japanese in the 1870 census.17 The general profile of thesefifty-six Japanese is as follows: They were predominantly male (forty-six,or 82.1%), with only ten females recorded (18.8%). The average age was
23.2 years old. Their occupations were, in decreasing order, “student”(twenty-two), “farm laborer” (fourteen), and “domestic servant” (six).

Japanese Interracial Families in the United States, 1879–1900

79

While Japanese of working age in California were either “laborers” or“domestic servants,” most of those outside of California were “students.”
Among the Japanese in California, twenty-two in Coloma in El Dorado
County were settlers of an enterprise known as the Wakamatsu Colony. It
includes the earliest international/interracial couple among Japaneseimmigrants: John H. Schnell and Oyō. According to the population schedule,
John H. Schnell was “29 years old, farmer, born in Hena [Hessen]
Darmstadt.” His wife “Jou,” or Oyō, was reported to have been born inJapan in 1846, “keeping house,” with her “color” being reported as“Japanese.”18 Oyō had married John H. Schnell in Japan and had their firstbaby girl, Frances, there.19 In Japan, John H. Schell worked part time as amember of the Prussian legation, but he was also a military merchant mostly
for the Aizu feudal domain. He came to establish Wakamatsu Colony inorder to make a profit in silk farming for Aizu domain, which was defeatedin the civil war in Japan and lost most of its land as a result.20 In the census,
interestingly, their daughters (“Frances,” two years old, and “Mary,” twomonths old) were both reported to have been born in California anddesignated as “W” (white).21 In addition, as a leader of the colony, in thecolumn for the “value of real estate owned” in the manuscript, John H. wasreported to have owned $38,000 worth of real estate and $3,000 as personal
estate, representing all of the Colony’s assets.22 In addition to this interracial
family, there were at least five other Japanese families in the Colony,
including two other little girls. As noted above, there were only ten female
Japanese in the entire census records from 1870, and as many as eight ofthese women lived as family members in the Wakamatsu Colony.
Furthermore, all of the five Japanese heads of families at the time
concentrated also in the Colony, while all other Japanese throughout theUnited States were students, lodgers, or boarders who were not consideredheads of families themselves. Little is known about what happened to thefamilies of the Wakamatsu Colony following its collapse in 1871, shortly
after the 1870 census taking.23 The Schnell family suddenly returned toJapan to secure money to rebuild the Colony, but supposedly they nevercame back. Some members of the Colony are said to have returned to Japan,
but the census provides little information about the other first Japaneseimmigrants who subsequently scattered elsewhere in the United States.
B. Cases from the 1880 Census
In 1880, the Japanese population was still small: only 148 nationwide.24
The 1880 census started to inquire about the birthplaces of parents. After

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Miya Shichinohe-Suga

engaging in a cross-checking procedure similar to that I conducted for the1870 data, the numbers of “genuine” Japanese re-counted to 164. The basic
demographic characteristics of these Japanese in 1880 are as follows: 141men, 16 women, 7 gender not reported. As for their occupations, 45 werelisted as “waiter” or “servant” and 40 as “student.” More diverse types of
migration began in 1880, when more individual students or skill learners
were sent by the Japanese government or companies.
In addition, the 1880 census recorded twenty heads of families fromJapan, including the heads of eight interracial families. Below is thedescription of these eight families, recorded by local enumerators.
1. “J. J. Gall,” recorded as “W,” age 60, a “restaurant keeper,” and bornin France. “Barra,” “color” originally recorded as “W,” but crossed
out and changed to “J”(Japanese), age 48. Occupation was recorded
as “housekeep.” Their California-born children, “Louisa” (13),“Jho” (11), and “Julia” (6) were reported as “W.” Eureka, Humboldt
County, California.25
2. “Kuni Manzato,” “color” originally recorded as “C”(Chinese) but
crossed out and changed to “Jap,” age 27, “laborer.” His wife
“Caroline” is recorded as “B”(Black), age 21, born in California,
and their 1-year-old son “Grant” as “Jap.” Gold Hill, El Dorado
County, California.26
3. “Louis A. Yeashun,” “color” recorded as “W,” age 29, “pressman.”His wife “Esther D.” was recorded as “W,” age 28, born inConnecticut. New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut.27
4. “Tsuna A. Kuchiki,” “color” was recorded as “J,” age 30, “clerk in
store.” His wife “Emma” was recorded as “W,” age 23, born in
Pennsylvania. The “color” of their daughter “Suma” (2) is reported
as “W.” Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.28
5. “Sam Houssabuso,” “color” was recorded as “W,” age 35, “actor,”and “cannot read or write.” His wife “Mary” was recorded “W,” age
19, from Bavaria (as were her parents). Their daughter “Theresa” (5months old) was recorded as “W.” New York City, New York County,
New York.29
6. “Sarbra King,” age 35. His “color” was originally recorded as “W,”but later changed to “J.” His wife, “Annie,” was recorded “W,” age
23, born in New York, with parents from Ireland. Both were recorded
to have the occupation as “tight rope performers.” New York City,
New York County, New York.30

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81

7. “Thomas Marxedarlia,” age 24. His “color” was recorded as “W”
and occupation as “engineer.” His wife “Carrie” was recorded as“W,” age 19, “artist,” born in New York, while her father was bornin Scotland, and her mother was born in France. New York City,
New York County, New York.31
8. “George Faro,” “color” recorded as “J,” age 26, “works in paper
mill.” His wife “Sarah” was recorded “W,” age 23, and born in
Pennsylvania. The “color” of their daughters “Jane” (6) and “MaryAnn” (4) is reported as “J.” Mount Holly Springs, Cumberland
County, Pennsylvania.32
Unlike John H. Schnell and Oyō in 1870, who married before coming to
the United States, these people were the earliest interracial couples among
Japanese who most certainly got married in the United States. Among them,
the life history of “Kuni Manzato,” or Kuninosuke Masumizu, who was oneof the Wakamatsu Colony survivors, is relatively well known through theaccounts of his descendants. According to John E. Van Sant, Masumizu wasmarried in 1877 to “Caroline,” or Carrie, Wilson, a woman of black andNative American heritage.33
Among the individuals listed above, only “Tsuna A. Kuchiki” appears in
Umi o koeta Nihonjinmei jiten (Biographical dictionary of Japanese travelers
to the Occident).34 Tsunakane Kuchiki was born in 1855 to the Honjō family,
the fudai daimyō (hereditary feudal lord) of Miyazu domain, but subsequently
he became adopted as the heir of the Fukuchiyama domain. After the Meiji
Restoration, he studied briefly under Yukichi Fukuzawa, founder of Keio
University, had a Christian baptism in Tokyo, and went to the United States
to study.35 Because he was already married in Japan, his marriage to theAmerican-born Emma Tyler was bigamous and eventually caused him
serious trouble. He sent his daughter Suma, born in the United States, to his
natal Honjō family in an attempt to resolve the problems he caused by his
bigamous marriage and by selling off the heirlooms of the Kuchiki family
after displaying them at an exhibition.36 Nevertheless, the later whereaboutsof Kuchiki himself, after such a tumultuous period in his life, is unknown.
His name is not found in the census data in the United States after 1900, andno death certificate or record of his returning to Japan has been found. It canbe speculated that he probably died quietly in the United States sometime
between 1880 and 1900.
Aside from Kuchiki of Boston, records of three interracial marriages
between Japanese men and white women are found in the 1880 census data

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Miya Shichinohe-Sugafrom New York. “Sabra King” was married to “Annie,” a second-generation
Irish American, whose occupation, like his, is recorded as “tight rope
performer.” It was thus probably a marriage of an acrobatic team. The wifeof “Sam Houssabuso” is recorded to have been from Bavaria: a firstgeneration immigrant. The third record is of a man named “Thomas
Marxedarlia.” While this is not a Japanese name, it can be surmised that heused an “American-sounding” name for enumerators given that both of his
parents are recorded to have been born in Japan. He was an “engineer” andhis wife was in a creative profession, as an “artist.” Another record of aninterracial family involving a Japanese individual is found in California.
The couple, “Barra” and “J. J. Gall,” is the only case in which the wife isfrom Japan. The Japanese background of the wife seems certain, as she andher parents were all recorded to have been born in Japan. In addition, thecensus taker took the time to correct the record of her racial category from
“W” to “J” for accuracy. The record indicates that she moved to the UnitedStates before her first child was born in California in 1867. Who was this“Barra Gall”? Her age, forty-eight in 1880, and the fact that only ten
Japanese women were recorded in the 1870 census, suggest two possibilities:
she may be one of the survivors of the Wakamatsu Colony who married “J.
J.” from France later; or she may be someone who was simply not reported
in the 1870 census as “Japanese.”
While “Chinese” as a “racial” category was used by 1870, “Japanese”
was not an official category even in 1880. Most probably it had become
customary for enumerators not to ask their interviewees the “color or race”
question directly to avoid confusion or provocation.37 Enumerators in 1880
recorded the racial backgrounds of Japanese based on their own discretionor by “local knowledge and assessments,” as argued by Martha Hodes.38
In the “color” column, while the records of two Japanese-born individuals
in California were corrected from “C” and “W” to “Japanese,” records fromthe East Coast include three cases of Japanese-born individuals recorded as“white.” At the same time, as we will see later in more detail regarding theKuchiki case, another two on the East Coast were recorded simply as “J.” In
her speculative reconstruction of a census taker’s visit to the interracial
family formed in 1890 by Smiley and Eunice Connolly, a Caribbean wellto-do “colored” sea captain and a white woman from Massachusetts, Hodes
indicates that Eunice’s race “would have echoed that of her husband,
illuminating the ways in which the determination of racial classification
flowed through men, from census enumerators to heads of household.”39
However, in the eight cases of interracial families under discussion here, theJapanese Interracial Families in the United States, 1879–1900

83

racial categories of the spouses did not seem to affect each other.
As for the racial backgrounds of the children born to interracial couples,four were recorded according to their father’s racial background: childrenof “J. J. Gall” in California were recorded as “white”; child of Masumizu in
California was recorded as “Japanese”; child of “Sam Houssabuso” in New
York was recorded as “white”;40 children of “George Faro” in Connecticut
were recorded as “Japanese.”
In comparison, in the case of the Kuchiki family of Boston, I would liketo follow Hodes’s approach and speculate on the census taker’s visit to the
Kuchiki family. The father was recorded as “J,” while his daughter wasrecorded as “W.” Having been a former hereditary feudal lord in Japan,
Kuchiki must not have had the look of a laborer, and probably was more fairskinned than many tanned European immigrants who worked outdoors. The
neighborhood he lived in was Beacon Hill, where the majority of theresidents were professionals, such as physicians and lawyers, accompaniedin some cases by African American servants.41 The recording of Kuchiki’s“color or race” could have been white, if it was influenced by the actual
color of his skin, his mannerisms, his class, or the family’s residential
environment. But these environmental clues apparently did not matter, as hewas designated as “Japanese.” It seems that his designation as “Japanese”
simply reflects the fact that he was from Japan. As for the recording of therace of the daughter “Suma,” she was likely recorded as “white,” not merely
based on her mother’s race, but based on her own white appearance (racial
passing).
In this section, I have provided details of the census records of one family
in 1870 and eight families in 1880 and discussed the ways in which the“color or race” of the family members was recorded. In 1880, three of theeight cases of interracial families were found in New York City. Beginningaround this time, New York became home for many Japanese interracial
families in the United States. In the next section, I turn to an examination ofcases mainly in the cosmopolis of New York, while also paying attention tointerracial families in California.

Interracial Families in California and New York in 1900
Prior to the census in 1900, questions regarding “assimilation,” such as“able to speak English. If not, the language or dialect spoken” and a question
on “naturalization,” had been added to the census questionnaires in 1890,
due to a heightened sense of caution because of the rising numbers of new

84

Miya Shichinohe-Sugaarrivals from Europe.42 The 1900 census contained minor changes on thissubject, such as simplifying the questions on language to “can the person
speak English?”43 Meanwhile, the “naturalization” question sought more
information from the respondents. For the 1900 census, enumerators were
instructed to mark “Al” (for alien) in the “naturalization” column if theindividual being interviewed “had not taken any step toward naturalization.”
A person who had “declared [an] intention to become [an] American citizen
and taken out his ‘first’ papers” was recorded as “Pa” (for papers). Those
who presented “the second or final papers of naturalization” were to bemarked “Na” (for naturalized).44
According to the census report of 1900, there were 86,000 Japanese in
the United States, of which 61,111 were in Hawaii, 10,151 in California,
and 5,617 in Washington State.45 The overall numbers had increased
remarkably from 148 in 1880, and even from 14,399 in 1890.46 Females
numbered 14,600, making up 15 percent of the Japanese population. A
database search found 11,212 individuals who were born in Japan and were
married at the time of the census, and whose parents were both born inJapan. On the mainland, states such as California (365), Washington (146),
and New York (61) had such individuals. New York had particularly large
numbers of interracial families compared to the rest of the United States,
even though the numbers of Japanese immigrants in general were smaller
than those in California and Washington. While unmentioned in previous
historiographies, there were some interracial families even in California,
despite the existence of an antimiscegenation law.
A. Interracial Families in California
California, which attracted many immigrants from China and Japan in
the late nineteenth century, amended its existing antimiscegenation law,enacted first in 1880 by adding prohibition of marriage between white and“Mongolian” persons.47 In spite of this law, I found four interracial families
among Japanese immigrants in the 1900 population schedules. However,there was no record of interracial marriage between Japanese and African
Americans or persons of other racial backgrounds in the 1900 census, as
was seen in the case of Kuninosuke Masumizu in 1880. Listed below is theinformation on these interracial families.
1. “Frank Nakayama,” “color or race” reported as “Jp,” age 27, arrived
in United States in 1894, naturalization column recorded as “Al,”“cook.” “Annie P.,” race recorded as “W,” age 30, born inJapanese Interracial Families in the United States, 1879–1900

85

Pennsylvania. Married for one year. San Francisco, San Francisco
County, California.48
2. “James Nakada,” “color or race” reported as “Jp,” age 28, arrived in
United States in 1885, naturalization column recorded as “Al,”“merchant jewelry.” “Sophia,” wife, “W,” age 34, from Sweden,
arrived United States in 1894. Married for seven years. “James,”“W,” age 3, and Benjamin, “W,” age 1. San Francisco, San Francisco
County, California.49
3. “Suzie Cowen,” head, “color or race” reported as “W,” age 33, from
France, arrived in United States in 1885, naturalization column left
blank. “Harry,” husband, “color or race” recorded as “Jp,” age 33,born in Japan, arrived in United States in 1884, naturalization
column recorded as “Al,” occupation “expressman.” Married for
four years. “Harry,” son, “color or race” recorded as “Jp,” age 3. San
Francisco, San Francisco County, California.50
4. “Edward Hatta,” “color or race” reported as “JP,” age 30, arrived in
United States in 1881, naturalization column recorded as “Al,”“garden laborer.” “Jennie M.,” wife, “W,” age 39, from Norway,
arrived in United States in 1886. Married for two years. Oakland
Ward 1, Alameda County, California.51
All Japanese husbands in this list were recorded as “Jp” in the “color orrace” column. It should be noted, however, that people who were born inJapan were all recorded as “Jp,” regardless of their marital status. While we
can interpret this consistent recording pattern to have been simply following
the official protocol, it is worth noting that California had the longest historyof Chinese immigration, and many census takers, as “street-levelbureaucrats,” recorded Japanese and Chinese individuals differently, evenin 1870, before “Japanese” became an official category.52 In other words, it
was local enumerators’ eyes in California that differentiated Japanese andChinese and made such categorizations official at the census office inWashington, D.C.53 At the beginning of the twentieth century, with antiJapanese movements already active in California, it is also meaningful thatthe naturalization columns of Japanese were recorded “Al,” indicating thatthey were “aliens who do not intend to naturalize” [emphasis added]. Whilethe ultimate decision on the eligibility for naturalization was yet to be
determined by a Supreme Court ruling in 1922 (Takao Ozawa v. UnitedStates), the recording of naturalization status in this way seemed toemphasize the immigrants’ position as “aliens” in California.

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Miya Shichinohe-Suga

Meanwhile, the “color or race” columns of the non-Japanese wives of theJapanese immigrants were all recorded as “W.” They were recorded
individually, separate from their husbands’ racial classification. Three ofthem were noted to have been born outside the United States, coming from
France, Sweden, and Norway in their teens. The fourth, “Annie P.,” wasfrom Pennsylvania. Thus, none of them was a California native. Two of thecouples had children, and the race of the children of one of the families wasrecorded according to the race of their mother, while the race of the childrenof the other family followed their father’s. According to the census records,
all four couples married in the 1890s after the 1880 revision of theantimiscegenation law in California. As Peggy Pascoe notes in her detailed
discussion of the highly sensationalized interracial marriage between
Gunjirō Aoki and Helen Emery in 1909, “the enforcement of miscegenation
law relied heavily on local officials, including county clerks, who issued
marriage licenses; justices of the peace, who performed marriage ceremonies;
and district attorneys, who prosecuted sex crimes.”54 The four couples above
may have gotten married in other states and then moved or returned to
California, or they may have been married in California thanks to sympathetic
local officials. Three of the four couples lived in San Francisco, where thewives of Japanese immigrants were mostly absent (probably because theyremained in Japan). Thus, they may have been rather well known in theircommunities. It is important to recognize the continued presence of theseinterracial families in California in 1900, and regardless of their small
numbers, more detailed individual exploration will force a revision of theexisting monoracial narrative to include the stories of interracial families
involving Japanese immigrants.
B. Interracial Families in New YorkIn the 1900 census data from New York State, there were sixty-six
individuals who were born in Japan and who were married to non-Japaneseat the time of the census. Once again, a cross-checking procedure narrows
this number down to sixty-one “genuine” Japanese. We will now explore
what census questionnaires reveal in regard to the attributes of thesemembers of interracial families and the ways in which race was recorded in
New York.
Profile of Heads of Families
The average age of the sixty-one individuals born in Japan was 33.6. The
oldest was “Charles Betisho,” age fifty-four, who arrived in the UnitedJapanese Interracial Families in the United States, 1879–1900

87

States in 1894.55 Among the sixty-one Japanese, all but two were recorded
to have been able to speak English. As for the naturalization column, thirtythree were recorded as “Al”, seventeen as “Na”, and eight were not recorded.
Whether or not the 1870 amendment to the Naturalization Act, which
extended the application criteria of naturalization to “aliens of African
nativity and to persons of African descent,”56 would be applicable to
Japanese was left up to courts’ decisions at the time. It can be speculated
that many interviewees recorded as “Na” in fact presented their second
certificates to the census takers.57 As for their occupations, “steward” wasthe most common occupation (thirteen cases). In general, there was noresidential concentration of people in specific occupations, but stewards
were exceptions. Five out of the thirteen stewards lived in areas near thenaval establishment in Brooklyn, where they probably worked.58 The next
most common occupation was “cook” (six cases), and two more were noted
as “chef.”59
In the “color or race” column, reporting as “Japanese” was the mostcommon, with thirty-five cases (58.3%). Thirteen were corrected from
“white” to “Japanese” (21.7%), and nine were recorded “white” (15.0%).
Two were recorded “Y” (for “Yellow”), and one was corrected from “black”
to “Japanese.” As “Japanese” had become an official racial category in
1890, enumerators in 1890 should have marked all sixty-one respondents“Jp” as they were instructed.60 However, as noted above, nine were recorded
as “white” on the actual population schedules, even without later corrections.
When the numbers with later corrections are included, a total of twenty-two
cases, or 33 percent of the Japanese concerned, were first recorded as“white.”Regarding the determining factors for such recording of racial categories
in New York, I initially speculated that the respondents’ English skills,
occupations, naturalization status, and other signs that indicated their levelsof “assimilation” influenced the ways in which their racial categories weremarked. However, examining the census questionnaires revealed that, firstof all, all but two were recorded to have been able to speak English, aspreviously noted. Second, the occupations of those who were recorded as“white” varied significantly, from “doctor”61 to “journalist”62 to “chef,”63
indicating that there was no correlation between the respondents’ occupations
or class and how their racial categories were recorded. Third, regarding
residential concentration, some respondents lived in areas populated
predominantly by Italians and Chinese, but a correlation between therecording of racial categories and places of residence was not clear either.

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Miya Shichinohe-Suga

Meanwhile, the ratio of Japanese who were marked “Al” was higher amongindividuals recorded as “Japanese” (69%) than among those who wererecorded as “white” (36%). Japanese who had a “white” wife with children
tended to be recorded as “white” themselves slightly more often than theircontemporaries with other types of family structure. This evidence suggeststhat citizenship status and intermarriage were regarded as important signs of“assimilation” and “whiteness” by enumerators.
In addition to these general tendencies, the organization of thequestionnaire sheet itself seemed to matter. On the actual questionnaires in
1900, the “color or race” category is the third question following “name”
and “relation to the head of family.” It is possible that enumerators corrected
the racial categories of interviewees after completing the column on “placeof birth” that appeared soon after the “color or race” column. It is not likely,
however, that they made corrections to the racial categories of the
respondents after a comprehensive review of all the factors, including theanswers to the questions on English skills and naturalization status thatappeared much later on the questionnaire. Considering that the enumerators
at the time were paid only a few cents per questionnaire, which they filled
out by visiting one household after another, it is more likely that the racial
categories were recorded based simply on the value systems of theenumerators and their visual impressions of respondents. All in all,enumerators’ individual perspectives on race, or “local knowledge andassessments,” seemed to matter most.64 One of the enumerators who marked
Japanese as “white” was Joseph Kenney in Brooklyn. He recorded threeheads of households born in Japan, a “doctor,”65 a “steward,”66 and a “navycook,”67 as “white.” In fact, he marked all respondents born in Japan,
whether they were single, had a Japanese spouse, or were in interracial
marriages, as “white.” This example indicates that some local enumerators
considered Japanese to be within the boundary of “whiteness.” In otherwords, these local enumerators, as “street-level bureaucrats,” ignored theofficial categories and instructions, as well as the politics connected to
racial boundaries. That the US census records reflected the “local knowledge
and assessments” of the enumerators who visited these interracial families
reveals the arbitrariness of the official race categorizations and thecomplexity of the boundary of “whiteness.”
Profile of Wives
Let us now consider some attributes of the spouses (wives) of the Japanesemen discussed above. The average age of the wives was twenty-eight. As

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for the places of birth of the wives, thirty-one, or 52 percent, were born in
the United States. All but one of the wives who were not born in the UnitedStates or Japan came from Europe. There were eighteen such wives, making
up 30 percent of all the wives concerned. Only eleven, or fewer than 20
percent of all the wives, were born in Japan, indicating that most Japanesein New York married women who they met there.
The most prominent attribute of the US-born wives, not surprisingly, wasthat they were from New York State. In addition, many Japanese men were
married to women who were born in the United States to parents who
migrated from Europe, including Germany, Ireland, and England, totaling
sixteen cases.68 There were twelve wives who were born in the United States
to US-born parents, slightly fewer than the number of wives with a secondgeneration immigrant background. Foreign-born wives were also mostly
from Europe, with parents born in the same country as themselves: four
from Ireland, two each from England, Scotland, and Canada. Furthermore,
the foreign-born wives’ ages at the time of their arrival in the United States
ranged from 1 to 23, with an average of 13.4 years old. Some of the women
may be considered “1.5 generation” immigrants, depending on their age at
the time of arrival. Nevertheless, even if they arrived in the United States intheir teens, it is hard to imagine that women who came from Englishspeaking regions of the world had as much linguistic difficulty in the UnitedStates as their Japanese-born husbands.
As for the “color or race” column of the wives, twenty-three wererecorded as “white,” six as “Japanese,” and one as “black.” Only one of thewomen was recorded as “Japanese” along with her husband. Except for thiscase, the “color or race” columns of the wives appear to have been recorded
based on their individual backgrounds and not on the basis of their husbands’
racial categories.69 Therefore, Teng’s argument that the logic of dependent
citizenship extended to racial classification does not apply to white wives ofJapanese immigrants. The census enumeration on “color and race” wasdone on an individual basis.
Children in Interracial Families
As noted above, many Japanese men married interracially with white
women, some of whom were US born and others who were foreign born.
Among forty-seven such interracial couples, twenty-seven had children.
Some of these children were more than twenty years old at the time of thesurvey, demonstrating the steady development of family histories ofJapanese immigrants. In this section, I examine the recording of the “color

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Miya Shichinohe-Sugaor race” columns of these interracial families and consider how the racial
categories of parents may have affected those of their children.
Concerning the “mixed race” populations, the 1890 census included“quadroon” and “octoroon” as racial categories. However, this categorization
attempt was considered a failure, and these categories disappeared in the1900 census. In fact, there was no official census category for “mixed races”
other than those involving black parents between the late nineteenth century
and the early twentieth century, and no instruction was given for recordingof such individuals. Given such conditions, the “color or race” columns ofinterracial families in New York in 1900 were most commonly recordedwith the mother and children in the same category (thirteen out of twentyfive). In twelve cases, the mother and children were recorded “white,” while
the fathers were marked otherwise. Six such fathers were first recorded“white” or “black” and were later corrected to “Japanese.” These corrections
made to the racial categories of the fathers did not trigger changes to therecording of the “color or race” columns of their children. There were also
five cases in which the father and children were both recorded as “Japanese.”Among these cases, two fathers had their racial categories corrected from
“white” to “Japanese,” and one mother was initially marked “Japanese” andthen later re-marked as “white.” In the cases with such corrections, thechildren’s racial categories appear to have followed their father’s (corrected)“Japanese” categorization and not their mother’s “white” categorization.
There were four cases in which all family members, including the Japaneseborn fathers, were recorded as “white.”As seen in the examples above, recording of the racial categories of thechildren of interracial families tended to follow the mother’s racial category,rather than that of the father who was the head of the family. It can beinferred that the idea that mothers’ racial backgrounds were handed down totheir children was reflected in the ways in which the racial categories ofJapanese interracial families were recorded. Indeed, racial classification
was based on individuals, and if the mother was “white,” most of thechildren were “white” as well. In New York, where interracial marriages
were certainly not uncommon, the enumerators’ act of counting residents
was entangled with their worldviews on race, notwithstanding the official
instructions on census racial taxonomy. Therefore, when it came tointerracial families involving Japanese, their Federal categorization as a“colored” population according to the official racial dichotomy of “whiteand colored” did not seem to matter to local enumerators.70

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Conclusion
In this article I have discussed Japanese who chose to form international,
interracial, and sometimes multicultural families in the United States fromthe late nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century, based mainlyon population schedules as historical resources. Each of the families foundin the records from 1870 and 1880 were examined in detail. The overallcharacteristics of spouses were explored within interracial marriages
involving Japanese in New York in 1900, when the numbers of such unions
had increased considerably. New York had a particularly large number ofsuch interracial families, reflecting its cosmopolitan social landscape, which
had already led to numerous marriages among its Chinese and white
residents.
According to Hodes, the census’s “macro- and micro-level undertakings
converged in the act of census taking, when government officials visitedcommunities and stepped inside people’s homes.”71 This microlevel
undertaking was reflected in population schedules, echoing “local
knowledge and assessments.” Enumerators’ local perspectives influenced
how these categories were recorded, often in different ways from what theofficial instructions called for. Therefore, the reporting on the “color orrace” and naturalization columns in California and New York differedsignificantly, partly as a result of the existence of a large Asian populationand strong anti-Asian sentiment in California at the time.
While the census as a public policy was deeply embedded in the public
discourse of “family,” gender, and “race,” local census enumerators recorded
residents as they saw them in their homes. The families recorded in thecensus reflect de facto social realities of the era, often quite different fromwhat the dominant public discourse would have imagined or claimed as“normal” or “natural.” Indeed, what is reflected in the population schedules
are the heretofore-unknown realities of ordinary families. As I havedemonstrated, they not only reveal that Japanese interracial families were
not exceptions in New York but also that Japanese interracial families
existed in California, in spite of that state’s antimiscegenation law. In
addition, contrary to Teng’s argument that “the logic of dependent citizenshipextended to racial classification,” the racial categories of interracial couples
involving Japanese were recorded individually, not according to the race ofthe male heads of the families. Furthermore, among interracial families in
New York, it was the mother’s racial category that generally affected how
the race of her children was recorded.

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Children born between Asian and white parents in the United States
during the period discussed in this article are precursors to today’s “hapa”
persons. However, the history of interracial families extends far into thepast. The census records shed light on personal histories as well as on
multiracial relations in the communities where Japanese lived in the latenineteenth to the early twentieth century. Population schedules by themselves
are nonetheless limited in their effectiveness in narrating personal histories,
or in following a small population chronologically. Exploring additional
primary sources, such as marriage registrations and birth and deathcertificates, would further reveal the histories of ordinary families in the
United States. Through such methods, more details concerning interracial
families can be determined, including those of the previously unexamined
unions of Japanese men and white women in California in 1900 that I
discovered through the examination of census records. Comprehensive
research on the histories of “ordinary people” and families based on
population schedules, combined with other types of resources, will offer
virtually unlimited possibilities.

Notes
This article is the result of research supported by the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research number
26370852.
Steven Ruggles and Russell R. Menard, “The Minnesota Historical Census Projects,”
Historical Methods 28, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 7.
2 Population schedules become open to the public seventy-two years after they arecompleted (Title 44, US Code). With the exception of population schedules of the 1890
census, which were destroyed in a fire at the Department of Commerce in 1921, today
we can access them all the way back from the very first census in 1790 to 1940. Because
the research for this article required surveying a vast number of population schedules, I
relied largely on a paid search engine—ancestry.com. All the data were accessed July 1,
2014.
3 Interview with Dr. David Pemberton, history staff, US Census Bureau, August 11,
2008.
4 From the first census to 1870, population schedules were collected by assistants tomarshals who visited each household. From 1880, enumerators working under
supervisors who were appointed by the House of Representatives took over the job.
5 US Census Bureau, Measuring America: The Decennial Censuses from 1790 to1

Japanese Interracial Families in the United States, 1879–1900

93

2000 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2002), 5.
6 Ibid., 47.
7 John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping ofAmerican Culture, 1776–1882 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 71–
86. On Asian Americans and antimiscegenation laws, see, e.g., Leti Volpp, “American
Mestizo: Filipinos and Antimiscegenation Laws in California,” UC Davis Law Review
33 (2000): 795–835. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making ofRace in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) by Peggy Pascoe is thedefinitive work as of today on the historical transformations of antimiscegenation laws
and racial classifications in the United States that includes discussions on Asian
immigrants.
8 Emma Jinhua Teng, Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, andHong Kong, 1842–1943 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 8.
9 Exceptions are Pascoe’s account of the marriage between Helen Emery and Gunjirō
Aoki in 1909. Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 87–90, and Yi Lui’s mention of Japaneseinterracial couples who were mistaken by the New York Police Department as Chinese.
Mary Ting Yi Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other
Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2005).
10 See, e.g., Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese
Immigrants, 1885–1924 (New York: Free Press, 1988), 3, 7–8. Teruko Kumei, Gaikokujin
o Meguru Shakai-shi: Kindai Amerika to Nihonjin Imin [Social history of foreign
workers: Modern America and Japanese immigrants] (Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1995), 55–60.
John E. Van Sant narrates Japanese migration history through pioneering figures such as
Joseph Hico and Jo Niijima in one of the most comprehensive monographs on the period
from 1850 to 1880, Pacific Pioneers: Japanese Journeys to America and Hawaii, 1850–
1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), chaps. 1 and 3.
11 Mitziko Sawada, Tokyo Life, New York Dreams: Urban Japanese Visions of America,
1890–1924 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 36.
12 Teng, Eurasian, 63–64.
13 On the history of the census racial categorization, see, e.g., Claudette Bennett,“Racial Categories Used in the Decennial Censuses: 1790 to the Present,” Government
Information Quarterly 17, no. 2, (2000): 161–80; Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship:
Race and the Census in the Modern Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2000); Naomi Mezey, “Erasure and Recognition: The Census, Race, and the National
Imagination,” Northwestern University Law Review 97 (Summer 2003): 1761–68;
Jennifer Hochschild and Brenna Marea Powell, “Racial Reorganization and the United
Sates: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race,”
Studies in American Political Development 22 (Spring 2008): 59–96; and Kenneth

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Prewitt, What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
14 Hochschild and Powell, “Racial Reorganization,” 74.
15 Mezey, “Erasure and Recognition,” 1722–34.
16 Francis A. Walker (the superintendent of census), Ninth Census, vol. 1, The Statisticsof the Population of the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, 1872), 8.
17 Miya Shichinohe-Suga, “55 Japanese: 1870 Nen Popyureishon Sukejūru eno
Sekkin” [Identifying 55 “Japanese” in the US census of 1870: A look at manuscript
population schedules], Bulletin of Tokyo Gakugei University, Humanities and Social
Sciences 60 (2009): 137–51.
18 1870 US census, population schedule of Coloma, El Dorado County, California,
8/24.
19 Hiroshi Gomyo, Maboroshi no Kaliforunia Wakamatsuryō: Hatsu Imin Okei no
Monogatari [The dream of Wakamatsu domain: A narrative of the first immigrant Okei](Tokyo: Seishinsha, 1997), 31–32, 41.
20 Van Sant, Pacific Pioneers, 123–25. Gomyo, Maboroshi no Kaliforunia
Wakamatsuryō, 76–94.
21 1870 US census, population schedule of Coloma, El Dorado County, California,
8/24.
22 Ibid.
23 Van Sant, Pacific Pioneers, 128–29.
24 US Census Office, Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth
Census (June 1, 1890) (Washington, DC: GPO, 1883), 38–39.
25 Enumeration district (hereafter, E.D.) numbers started to appear in this census. 1880
US census, population schedule of E.D. 33, Eureka, Humboldt County, California, 23/25.
26 Ibid., E.D. 52, Gold Hill, El Dorado County, California, 3/3.
27 Ibid., E.D. 83, New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut, 2/44.
28 Ibid., E.D. 642, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 33/45.
29 Ibid., E.D. 212, New York City, New York County, New York, 21/54.
30 Ibid., E.D. 114, New York City, New York County, New York, 2/27.
31 Ibid., E.D. 367, New York City, New York County, New York, 4/36.
32 Ibid., E.D. 79, Mount Holly Springs, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 25/26.
33 Van Sant, Pacific Pioneers, 128.
34 Hitoshi Tomita, ed., Umi o Koeta Nihonjinmei Jiten [Biographical dictionary ofJapanese travelers to the Occident (Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2005), 267–68, 860.
35 Kuchikike Shozō Shiryō Kenkyūkai [Research Group on Kuchiki Family Records],ed., Tangokoku Fukuchiyama Han Kuchikike Mokuroku [Catalogue of archival recordsof the Kuchiki Family of Fukuchiyama Han, Tango Province], March 2014, 182–83.
36 Ibid. (Kuchiki records). Takao Tokuoka, Dorothy, Kuchinashi no Nazo: “Shinjuwan”

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95

o Shitteita Onna [Dorothy, a mystery of Cape Jasmine: A woman who knew “Pearl
Harbor”] (Tokyo: Bungeishunjū, 1993), 154–60.
37 Interview with Dr. David Pemberton, history staff, US Census Bureau, August 13,
2013. Interview with Claudette E. Bennett, former branch chief of Racial Statistics
Branch, Population Division, US Census Bureau, August 16, 2013.
38 Martha Hodes, “Fractions and Fictions in the United States Census of 1890,” inHaunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. Ann Laura
Stoler (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 257.
39 Ibid., 254.
40 In the family of “Sam Houssabuso,” all three family members were recorded as“white.”41 1880 US census, population schedule, E.D. 642, Boston, Suffolk County,
Massachusetts, 33/45.
42 US Census Bureau, Measuring America, 28, 32.
43 Ibid., 42.
44 Ibid., 37.
45 US Census Office, Twelfth Census of the United States—Census Reports, vol. 1,
Population Part 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1902), 487.
46 Ibid.
47 An Act to Amend Sections Sixty-Nine . . . , chap. 41, 1880 Cal. Civ. Code Amend.,
sec. 1, 3.
48 1900 US census, population schedule, E.D. 247, San Francisco, San Francisco
County, California, 13/22.
49 Ibid., E.D. 279, San Francisco, San Francisco County, California, 18/18.
50 Ibid., E.D. 152, San Francisco, San Francisco County, California, 23/24.
51 Ibid., E.D. 339, Oakland Ward 1, Alameda County, California, 2/39.
52 Erika Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era,
1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 48. Lee’s argumentthat “the public policy is best understood by how it is implemented in the crowded
offices and daily encounters of street level workers” is applicable to the census as well.
Unlike immigration officials in San Francisco, who “had the power to decide how to
implement laws and to establish specific regulations and procedures,” the census
enumerators’ authority was temporary and the control over respondents was minimal.
Nevertheless, the impact of their local recordings to the Census Office in the District ofColumbia was far from negligible.
53 Shichinohe-Suga, “55 Japanese,” 140–13.
54 Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 89.
55 1900 US census, population schedule, E.D.18, Brooklyn Ward 2, Kings County,
New York, 1/39.

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An Act to Amend the Naturalization Laws and to Punish Crimes against the same,and for other Purposes (July 14, 1870), US Statutes at Large 254 (1870): 254–56.
57 Tomomi Iino, “Imin Senkusha Toshite no Sen’in–20 Seiki Tenkanki Nyū Yōku no
Nihonjin Rōdōsha” [Seamen as pioneer immigrants: Japanese laborers in New York at
the turn of the twentieth century]. Paper presented at Immigration Research Group study
meeting, Tsuda Hall, Tokyo, May 24, 2014. According to Iino, interracial marriages wererather taken for granted among Japanese immigrants. She notes that more than half of the249 Japanese immigrants (90% male) in New York in 1947 had white spouses, citing
New York Benran [New York Japanese American directory], ed. Hokubei Shimpō [North
American Daily News(New York: Hokubei Shimpō, 1948).
58 Iino, “Imin Senkusha.”
59 As for residential distribution within New York City, thirty-two of the sixty-one
families concerned lived in Manhattan, and twenty-one lived in Brooklyn.
60 US Census Bureau, Measuring America, 36.
61 “N. Kunimoto,” 1900 US census, population schedule, E.D. 45, Brooklyn Ward 5,
Kings County, New York, 18/32.
62 “Sadakichi,” Ibid., E.D. 198, Manhattan, New York, 1/41.
63 “Thomas Yenoski,” Ibid., E.D. 615, Manhattan, New York, 15/30.
64 Isaac Bernstein, a census enumerator in charge of E.D. 34 (encompassing
Chinatown), was consistent in reporting Chinese and white interracial couples on an
individual basis and assigning children’s race through the maternal line, as was seenamong Japanese interracial couples. E.D. 34, Manhattan, New York, 56/57, 99.
65 “N. Kunimoto,” Ibid., E.D. 45, Brooklyn Ward 5, Kings County, New York, 18/32.
66 “Yasu Murakami,” Ibid., 17/32.
67 “M Shirahi,” Ibid., 18/32.
68 This is similar to the composition among Chinese and non-Chinese couples in 1900.
According to Yi Lui, out of eighty-two Chinese men married to non-Chinese women in
New York in 1900, forty-three married native-born Americans, twelve women of Irish
descent (ancestry), nine of English descent, and nine of German descent. Lui seems touse “native born” as American born for two generations (both women married to Chinese
and their parents) and uses “descent” or “ancestry” for European immigrants or theAmerican born wives of European immigrant parents. It can be inferred from thispassage: “Most of the wives of either Irish or English ancestry but John Lee’s wife,
Mammie, was born in New York of German parents.” (Yi Lui, Chinatown Trunk Mystery,
154–56, quote at 154). It is also intriguing to note that there were few Japanese andChinese married to African Americans, which requires exploration elsewhere.
69 My preliminary research on intermarriage involving Japanese in New York suggests
1910 did not change the pattern. An assessment of the relationship between Japanese or
Chinese intermarriage and the 1907 Marital Expatriation Act is beyond the scope of this56

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article. Teng suggests a linkage, but exploring the impact of the law to the field of census
enumeration is more complicated and will need vast numbers of census manuscript
examples. Teng, Eurasian, 63.
70 See, e.g., table 10 of the 1890 census report, entitled, “Colored Population Classified
as Negroe, Mulattoes, Quadroons, Octoroons, Chinese, Japanese and Civilized Indians,
by States and Territories: 1890,” US Census Office, Report on the Population of theUnited States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1895), 397.
71 Hodes, “Fractions and Fictions,” 257.