Orientalizing the Pacific Rim: - History, Department of

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could speak Chinese and Japanese and the sociologists could not, the researchers had to rely upon the church network for translation and interpretation. The need for ‘native’ translators and informants was acute. The social scientists quickly turned to ‘Oriental’ students in their classes, and by the end of the survey a spate of student theses and papers concerning the ‘Oriental problem’ had been written in every major university on the West Coast. 40 The Survey of Race Relations was the first major intersection between American missionary efforts among 'Orientals' and American sociology’s research interests with ‘Oriental’ immigrants. The fascination of the Protestant ministers in ‘Orientals’ such as Flora Belle Jan--American-born, ‘enlightened,’ and modern--was to overlap with the sociologists’ interest in the Americanization and cultural assimilation of ‘Orientals.' In a modern world of movement and migration, the missionaries believed that they served as expert travellers whose knowledge of 'Orientals' abroad provided them with expertise about 'Orientals' at home. In a related way, the sociologists believed that their knowledge of 'Orientals' in America told them something about 'Orientals' in Asia. This effectively cut off for decades already). Because the Philipines were under the control of the United States, Filipinos could move much more freely between the Philipines, Hawaii, and the mainland United States than foreign nationals, and they became a major labor source to replace the supplies of other Asian workers cut off by exclusionary acts. East Indian migrants tended to stay in dominions of the British Empire such as Hong Kong, Australia, and Canada. 40 For the impact of Orientalist theories on the self-identities of Chinese and Japanese American intellectuals, see “The ‘Oriental Problem’ in America: Linking the Identities of Chinese and Japanese American Intellectuals," in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities During the Exclusion Era, edited by K. Scott Wong (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, forthcoming). 28
premise of a traveller's expertise and knowledge had some practical consequences. In 1924, J. Merle Davis began shifting his energies away from the Survey of Race Relations towards organizing a new project for the YMCA International--a gathering of experts in North American and Asian countries in order to talk about Pacific relations. The Institute of Pacific Relations is often remembered by historians for bearing the brunt of McCarthyism in the 1950's--anti-communists searching for scapegoats blamed the organization for being one of the prime reasons that the United State "lost" China. The IPR, however, began its life within the same social networks as the Survey of Race Relations, and at virtually the same time. The Institute of Pacific Relations, which would be based in Honolulu, Hawaii (a location which the missionaries very selfconsciously saw as the crossroads of the Pacific, in particular for their own missionary movements back and forth across the ocean) represented yet another collaboration between Protestant missionaries and American social scientists in their efforts to link the events within the United States to those in Asia. Reiterating the language of "objective" knowledge and frank discussion free of prejudice, the IPR tapped the same leading academics who had supported the Survey. Ray Lyman Wilbur, President of Stanford University, was a major supporter of both the Survey and the IPR, and three of the head research scientists from the Survey--Robert Park, Elliot Mears, and Roderick McKenzie--went as American delegates to the first conference in Hawaii. 41 The IPR's first meeting was held in June and July of 1925 on the campus of Oahu College. The college had been founded by early New England missionaries to Hawaii, who had given it the Hawaiian name of Punahou, or "new spring," and the first meeting of the Institute reflected the same ebullient sense of possibility. Much like the Survey of Race Relations, the missionaries envisioned a flowering of mutual goodwill 41 Statement of Institute of Pacific Relations Held at Honolulu, Hawaii, June 30th to July 15th, 1925, Papers of the Survey, Box 17. 29
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