“My Thoughts: For Which I Stand Indicted”: ��Koji Ariyoshi �and Nostalgia for FDR �in the Age of McCarthy

Chris Suh

(Associate Professor, History)

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Alice M. Beechert and Edward D. Beechert,

From Kona to Yenan:

The Political Memoirs of

Koji Ariyoshi

(University of Hawaii Press, 2000)

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Published for the

Biographical Research Center by the University of Hawai'i Press

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Koji Ariyoshi (right) speaking with Mao Zedong (left), Yan’an, China, 1944

Members of the Dixie Mission, Yan’an, China, 1944.

Ariyoshi is sitting fourth from the left.

• born and raised in Hawai’i

• attended the University of Georgia

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• worked as a stevedore in San Francisco

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• incarcerated in Manzanar (on the eastern slope of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains)

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• trained to be a military translator in Minnesota before being deployed to the China-Burma-India Theatre of World War II.

• In Burma, he prepared propaganda leaflets and interrogated POWs in China

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• In China, he was sent by members of the FDR administration to live in Yan’an, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as a member of the “Dixie Mission,” or the United States Army Observer Group in Yan’an.

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• He met the CCP leaders including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Zhu De

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The first of fifty-nine editorials titled, “My Thoughts: For Which I Stand Indicted,” Honolulu Record, September 13, 1951, 1.

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In August 1951, Ariyoshi was arrested by FBI agents as one of the “Hawai'i Seven” charged with advocating for the overthrow of the US government.

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Although the FBI would later claim that Ariyoshi’s columns predominantly focused on China,

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of the 59 columns, just over half (32) dealt with China

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What’s in the First Half?

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Japanese American

“internment”

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(he calls it “concentration camp”)

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What’s Not Really in the First Half?

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Stories of his immediate family

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Met his wife at camp

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Left his pregnant wife behind when he joined the military

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His daughter was born and raised in the camp until 1944

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What’s Not in the Second Half?

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Short biographies he wrote of the CCP leaders

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(submitted to an editor but never published)

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What’s in the Second Half?

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Short biographies/criticism of US officials, especially US Ambassador to China

Patrick Hurley

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What’s in the Second Half?

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Nostalgia for FDR’s foreign policy/

criticism of Truman’s foreign policy

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According to Philip J. Jaffe

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According to Philip J. Jaffe

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Multiple Biographies of Ariyoshi?

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• Beechert & Beechert (Biographical Research Center, Hawaii)

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• The Honolulu Record editorials (autobiographical pieces written by Ariyoshi)

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• FBI surveillance records

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• Philip J. Jaffe’s short biography of Ariyoshi

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• My own take