By 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, approximately one hundred Nikkei Christian congregations had already been established. Much of this was due to the zealous efforts of churches and mission agencies.
A small number of Japanese were already Christian when they arrived in the United States, but most immigrants encountered the religion through the work of Christian aid societies and home mission programs on the Pacific Coast. Christian missions provided families with child care, employment services, financial aid, and English lessons. . . . They functioned as support systems for Japanese immigrants, particularly women, who had lost the tight-knit social groups of their hometowns and extended families.[1]
Spady Koyama recalled how American churches began reaching out to Nikkei women and children:
After we finished our regular schooling, we would all go to what we call a Japanese mission, located right next door to the Central Methodist Church. . . . They, in turn, took upon themselves the fact that they noticed all these coming, incoming women from Japan, don’t know the language, nor do they know how to use knives, forks, and spoons, nor know when and how to get shots for their school kids. So they took upon themselves to create a Japanese mission right next door and they would come over and [it was] run by the ladies of the Central Methodist Church and that explains why today most of Spokane young people, second as well as third generation, are members of the Highland Park Methodist Church.[2]
The Nikkei Christian society grew slowly at first.[3] Yet despite regular opposition,[4] religious life eventually became the center of Japanese American society. According to sociologist David Yoo,
From the early days of migration, religious institutions helped those who arrived in the United States and provided invaluable social services, community networks, and places of meaning. By 1924, when migration from Japan to the United States had effectively ceased, Buddhist and Christian groups had established a major presence within Japanese American communities in California.[5]
Bill Hosokawa surmises that the Japanese were first attracted by the social benefits of Christianity even before the spiritual ones.
The significance of this social welfare work launched by the Christian churches, lies in the fact that by this work they were playing directly upon the most deeply laid collectivistic sentiments of the Japanese people, and it is little wonder that these sentiments of the Japanese people, and it is little wonder that these sentiments formed a favorable attitude toward Christianity. Nothing in Japan is more sacred than the helpfulness of one member of society toward another, and the Christian missionaries with their practice of benevolence to the young immigrants arriving on these shores must have endeared themselves to these people.[6]
Most converts to Christianity were found among the Nisei who were more willing to explore American culture than their parents. Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa noted the difference in reception to Christianity between the Issei and Nisei generations:
In 1939 there were many Japanese Christian congregations in the three states on the Pacific Coast and elsewhere. In spite of the number of organized congregations, the total number of Christians among the Issei was disappointingly small. By and large the Issei had no violent feeling against Christianity as a religion, but most of them felt inasmuch as they were going to end their life as Japanese, they had better hang onto their ancestral religion. However, since their children were going to be Americans, they might as well adopt the religion of the land and become Christians if they wished. Consequently, in many a family the parents remained Buddhists, while the children were enrolled in Christian Sunday schools and were not infrequently baptized with the parents’ consent and approval. . . . In terms of the moral concept, outlook on life, and view on human relations, the Nisei generally were more Christian than Buddhist. . . . Thus, the Japanese American community was also divided religiously.[7]
The Japanese in America were still predominately Buddhist at the outset of World War II (almost twice that of Protestant Christianity).[8] The Issei, however, viewed the Protestant church as a cultural opportunity for their children to assimilate: “Japanese parents frequently sent their children to Sunday school and encouraged them to join Christian churches while they themselves retained Buddhist customs.”[9] Even Issei Christians in the church struggled to balance the constant tug-of-war between religion and culture. They needed to start ministries which directly reached the younger generation.
In laboring to build Japanese American churches, Issei leaders ministered to the needs of two generations. Nisei were the future of the churches, and immigrants encouraged their children to take part in the life of the congregation. . . . Toward that end, American-born Japanese from three San Francisco churches—First Reformed, Pine Methodist, and Japanese Church of Christ—gathered on the evening of 14 May 1933 to hold an English-language service run entirely by Nisei. . . . The Young People’s Union Church (YPUC) . . . emphasized ministry to and by the second generation.[10]
Assimilation
Assimilation soon became a major question: Would Japanese American Christians find more effectiveness in maintaining ethnically segregated churches or by coming under the authority of the established denominational leaders? Rev. Herbert B. Johnson, who had served as a Methodist missionary in Japan for twenty years, was the superintendent of the Japanese Methodist churches from 1904-1925. Johnson established a commission to study the so-called “Japanese problem” and his report found that the Nikkei were readily willing to assimilate:
Unlike the Chinaman, the Japanese adopt our clothing and, so far as possible, our methods of living. They do not herd together nearly so much as do the great mass of immigrants that come to us from Europe. . . . The Japanese . . . dress in American style, live in American homes, use American furniture, and very largely adopt our food and methods of serving it.[11]
As a result, “both Methodist and, later, Presbyterian Issei created new institutions patterned after those of the white churches to help the assimilation process.”[12]
After the death of Herbert Johnson in 1925, the new superintendent, Frank Herron Smith (1879-1965), continued to advocate assimilation. Smith had been a Sunday school superintendent missionary among the Japanese immigrants in Seoul, Korea, and had also worked with the Japanese in Japan and Manchuria. “In every place,” Smith advised the Japanese Methodists, “we must use every opportunity for closer association with our American brethren.”[13]
Such assimilation, however, was slow to take place as political events created roadblocks:
After the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, Japanese Methodists realized that it was unwise to rely on white Methodist leaders like Smith to defend Japanese Americans against further racial discrimination. . . . With the sense of being excluded and a closing in with the Japanese community, the Japanese Methodists began working toward financial independence from the main church.[14]
Although the Nikkei church had initially accepted help, they quickly realized the danger of becoming too reliant on American Protestant organizations:
The ties to missionaries gave Issei access to a cultural capital that Buddhist counterparts did not enjoy but also entailed operating within a paternalistic institutional setting that dated to the very founding of the immigrant community. . . . Issei, denied naturalization rights and marginalized in other ways, relied on a missionary “defense” to represent their concerns. Unfortunately, immigrants discovered that, beyond issues of immigration and exclusion, most Protestant patrons did little to critique the exploitation of Japanese labor or to challenge seriously the daily realities of racial discrimination. Moreover, many missionaries continued to defend the United States as a Christian nation whose manifest destiny included global supremacy. . . . Missionaries often took on the role of devoted “parents” who cared for their “children.”[15]
To achieve autonomy, many of the Japanese missions sought to establish financial independence as quickly as possible. For example, by 1930, the Los Angeles Japanese Methodist Church declared itself independent from the denomination which had helped them purchase land and construct their church building. They did not realize how much they would need denominational help during the coming war.
Methodists
Before World War II, the Methodists were the most active in evangelizing the Japanese. “In 1874, three Japanese young men, Toyosaku Nishimaki, Keiso Oyano, and Yasuji Ninomiya, met for the first time at the Powell Congregational Church in San Francisco. . . . They studied English during the weekday evenings, and held prayer meetings on Sunday evenings.”[16] Then in 1877, “The first immigrant Japanese to be baptized was Kanichi Miyama, who became a minister and firmly established Methodism among San Francisco’s Japanese American community.”[17]
Soon after he arrived in San Francisco in 1875, Miyama happened to read a religious tract that impressed him, particularly the exposition of the biblical commandment, “And ye shall be holy; for I am holy,” and aroused his interest in Christianity. . . . He met Rev. Thomas Guard, pastor of the Howard Street Methodist Episcopal Church, who, in turn, introduced him to Rev. Otis Gibson. Miyama admired Gibson’s strong personality, his fearlessness, his deep love of America, and his great respect for Japan; he saw Gibson as an example of what he should be in Japan. Miyama converted to the Methodist faith and was baptized by Rev. Gibson on February 22, 1877.[18]
“To the question, ‘will you give your whole life to Christ?’ [Miyama] answered with all his strength of soul, ‘Yes, I will give my whole life to Him.’ It is said, hot tears flowed down from his eyes like strings of pearl.”[19] Then on October 6, 1877, Miyama and thirty-four others officially formed the Japanese Gospel Society (Fukuin-Kai). They met every Saturday for Bible study with Rev. Gibson to provide
an environment to study Christianity and helping to spread the word about Christ—and about Christian morality—among Japanese immigrants. The society was nondenominational, being made up of both Methodists and Congregationalists—the former led by Kanichi Miyami and Kumataro Nonaka and the latter by Keizo Koyano and Toyosaku Nishimaki.[20]
The Gospel Society also
established an English-language night school in 1882 to help Japanese students prepare for entrance into American high schools and colleges. . . . Gospel Society members received a heavy dose of American evangelical Protestantism at their lecture meetings and worship services on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. On Sunday afternoons and Saturday evenings they heard Bible lectures and sang hymns popular in American Christian circles, such as “Sweet By and By” and “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Students gave testimonies of their religious experiences. As a group, they held each other accountable to living up to the highest American evangelical moral standards.[21]
The Gospel Society later branched off into various churches and organizations which remained actively engaged in evangelism and church planting. “In 1890, . . . the Japanese Mission Home opened in Los Angeles on Fourth Street. . . . Its establishment marked the first Japanese Christian gatherings in the area. In June 1986, the Los Angeles Japanese Methodist Church became the first Japanese Christian church in Los Angeles.”[22]
Japanese Methodist churches were founded in Oakland (1889), Sacramento (1892), Fresno (1893), and Vacaville (1896). In the next few years Japanese Christian missions were set up in Alameda, Riverside, Spokane, Seattle, Selma and Oxnard. . . . Many of these churches had their beginnings as a night school to teach English to the young immigrants, or to provide them a place for gathering socially.[23]
Presbyterians
Presbyterian missionaries also sought to reach Japanese immigrants who had come to America. Around the late 1860’s, a Sunday school for Japanese was established at the Howard Presbyterian Church in San Francisco using a Chinese translation of the New Testament (which was all they had available).[24] This led to the Rev. John Carrington establishing a school and the Japanese Presbyterian Gospel Society in 1878. According to Hayashi,
The Japanese Presbyterians in 1905 reorganized themselves into the Japanese Presbyterian Conference. They set up branch churches in other parts of California to win the newer Japanese immigrants who were settling there—in Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Salinas, Monterey, Hanford, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Orange County. They also began publishing a magazine to carry their gospel message to the Japanese in labor camps scattered throughout California, Mexico, and Hawaii. In addition, they maintained their mission day schools in San Francisco.[25]
One of the leading missionaries to the Nikkei was Dr. Ernest A. Sturge. He was both a Presbyterian minister and medical doctor who was much beloved among Issei Christians in the San Francisco Bay Area. “In July of 1886, he was officially appointed to work with the Japanese in San Francisco by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church. He eventually became the superintendent of the Japanese Presbyterian Churches on the Pacific coast, a post he held until 1922.”[26] Sturge encouraged Kenichi Inazawa, later called the St. Paul of California among the Japanese, to plant churches up and down the state.[27] Then in 1920, Sturge helped to organize the first YPCC “to promote leadership [and] inspire a return to religion and fellowship.”[28] Although some criticized his paternalistic methods, Sturge served faithfully for many years out of his love for the Japanese people. When the Los Angeles Union Church was not given enough financial support from the Board of Foreign Missions,
Sturge silently contributed $60 to $70 dollars a month out of his own pocket—about half his own salary—and he also privately funded other Japanese Presbyterian Conference projects. For example, when the Japanese Presbyterians needed $3,500 to pay off a mortgage on their church in 1928, he himself quietly paid the bill. . . . In 1920, Sturge approved plans for an interdenominational Japanese American Church to oversee all Japanese Protestant churches on the West Coast.[29]
Other Groups
Over half of the Japanese American Christians at the time of World War II were either Methodists or Presbyterians, but many other denominations reached out to the Nikkei as well:
In the 1890’s, the Northern Baptists, the Methodist Episcopal Church (South), and the Episcopal Church established their own immigrant Japanese churches. In the following two decades, the Congregational Church, the Christian Church, the Reformed Church, the Disciples of Christ, and the Friends of Jesus (Quakers) joined the missionary scramble for the Japanese in the continental United States.[30]
The Baptists made many advances in evangelizing the Nikkei and became one of the stronger denominational influences among the Japanese. In 1899, Rev. Fukumatsu Okazaki started the Japanese Baptist Church of Seattle.[31] Other American Baptist churches were also started in Gardena (1914), Terminal Island (1917), Sacramento (1923 and 1927), Boyle Heights (1925), Pomona and Garden Grove (1928), Downey (1935).[32]
Other denominations also brought the gospel to the Nikkei. The Fresno Japanese Congregational Church began “in 1907, under the leadership of Rev. J. Kumazo Fukushima.”[33] In 1908, The Oakland Congregational Church, founded on April 13, 1904 under the guidance of Rev. Shinjiro Okubo, became a self-supporting, independent church. “Other [Congregational] churches were established in San Diego, Montebello, and Santa Barbara, California, and Seattle, Washington.”[34] In 1918, the Union Church became the largest Japanese American church in Los Angeles with the merger of the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Bethlehem churches of Los Angeles.[35] The Presbyterian and Congregation Churches of the Pacific Coast also worked together to launch the Japanese Church of Christ in Salt Lake City. In addition, according to Yoo,
By 1919, the United Church of Christ claimed twelve congregations located in Japanese American communities ranging from the Bay Area to San Diego. The northern branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church had fifteen Japanese churches by the time of exclusion in 1924 and, by 1940, added another eight churches to reach a total of twenty-three. Thirteen Presbyterian and eight American Baptist congregations had been established throughout the state at the time of Pearl Harbor. Donald Fujiyoshi’s study of Los Angeles in 1942 listed forty-six churches in ten southern California counties. Protestant groups such as the YM/WCA and the Salvation Army also worked among the Japanese.[36]
The Quakers started ministries among the Nikkei as well:
Around 1908, the Whittier Friends Church [the largest Friends Church nationwide] began to have a heart for sharing the Gospel with the Japanese [and] to support the Japanese Americans who were struggling in their time of weakness and incessant persecution. The Whittier Friends Church even invited a pastor from Japan to help in their evangelistic ministry. In 1907, Bunji Kida, who moved to the U.S. as a Quaker representative from Japan was urged, “Won’t you evangelize the Japanese Americans in California?” The following year he was appointed as a Friends itinerant pastor. Matsutaro Takada and Ugo Nakada were his successors who shouldered the subsequent ministry. Nakada’s Bible studies burned in the hearts of the Japanese youth. His Bible teachings were from the holiness faith, and these teachings impassioned the hearts of the students.[37]
Then in 1921, the Trinity Missionary Church in South Hollywood birthed the OMS Holiness Church of North America to evangelize Japanese Americans.[38] Ugo Nakada described those early days:
Each Sunday, after the worship service, several young people stayed at the church and ate together. . . . We prayed, discussed the faith, sang together, and studied the Bible. Throughout these activities, they were full of fire and courage. It was a small revival during which some repented of their sins and some experienced the grace of holiness. They all committed their lives unto the Lord through their revival experiences: Goichi Okamoto was saved, Henry Sakuma decided to become a minister, and George Yahiro experienced the grace of God. Lying on the floor, they prayed and shed copious tears. They were transformed in the same way as were the disciples who experienced Pentecost two thousand years ago.[39]
The Holiness Church, led by Sadaichi Kuzuhara, grew quickly between 1921 and 1941. He frequently visited the various churches and discipled his apprentices like Jesus by living with them, eating together, and going out to share the gospel.[40]
All these Nikkei churches from varying denominations had been established prior to World War II for the shepherding of God’s people. As Jesus himself claimed, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18b).
Pre-War Pastoral Ministry
Pastoral ministry before World War II prepared Japanese American Christians for the sudden uprooting to come. According to Yoo, “Social service, ethnic solidarity, and religious faith had of course been part of the Buddhist and Christian witness within Nikkei communities long before the war had begun. The experiences and testing that the churches had endured in the decades prior to Pearl Harbor served them well during the trauma of the war years.”[41] For example, on November 1, 1930, the Holiness Church Bishop, Sadaichi Kuzuhara, emphasized the Christian’s ability to overcome unexpected problems: “The abundant life is the secret of our strength. . . . If we have an overflowing life our soul can win and endure and progress step by step to victory even if there are a hundred difficulties and a thousand pains.”[42] That same day, Yoshiro Fukuda warned the church against a mere intellectual assent to Christianity:
Christianity is not simply a thought system or a philosophy; it is a clear experience. It is an experience based on an intimate relationship between Christ the Savior and an individual. All too often, we find the situation where a person is . . . going to church and is contemplatively thinking about the faith but still hasn’t grasped the experience of salvation.[43]
Then as public opinion began to turn against the Nikkei, Los Angeles Holiness Nisei pastor, Eiji “James” Suehiro,
told Nisei who were troubled to take heart, because adversities strengthened one’s faith. When faced with “troubles and difficulties,” Suehiro counseled them, “deem them not as your misfortunes, for they are [the] very means by which God exercises your faith to make it bigger and nobler.” The way was simple: “Every new day with all its cares, troubles and problems is the field where we are to exercise our faith. . . . If we are faithful in small things and exercise our faith in every thing, day by day, minute by minute, the time will come when God will let us do great things.”[44]
As the Nisei church matured, many young leaders also received training and ministry experience in the years leading up to the war. In 1937, Koji Murata would become
the first ordained elder at the Church of Christ, and his colleagues Tad Fujita and Dave Tatsuno played active roles in the YPCC [and] served as key leaders in the morning Sunday school programs at their respective churches. . . . To the south, in Los Angeles, the Centenary Methodist Church [formerly the Japanese Methodist Episcopal Mission of Los Angeles] sponsored programs and activities geared to the second generation and in 1937 had the resources to hire the Reverend Lester Suzuki and his wife, Seda. . . . In addition to the work of local churches, a national religious organization called the Japanese Student Christian Association in North America (JSCA) had also begun to address the needs of the second generation.[45]
Grace Kaneya, who served with the YPCC, stated that “faith is a necessity in our everyday Christian living. For with faith, we, as Christians, are able to face the huge obstacles of our chaotic life with an optimistic attitude. It gives us the strength, the power, and the hope in the face of un-Christian forces at work in the world today.”[46] The Lord would use difficult circumstances to prepare these young leaders for the tribulations ahead.
Women were likewise given opportunities to serve in the Nikkei church:
Issei women, though they held few positions of authority in the three local churches, nevertheless exerted a good deal of influence through the fujinkai or women’s societies. . . . They cooked meals, organized entertainment, and, to some extent, took part in American-style charitable work, previously unknown among Japanese immigrants.[47]
These women’s societies encouraged women in the faith through Bible study and prayer meetings, although the spiritual atmosphere was not what initially drew most women.
What seems mostly to have appealed to the Christian women who joined the fujinkai was the evangelical call for creating a “warm fellowship,” which to them meant, in most instances, preparing and serving refreshments and meals. They went to considerable effort preparing food for their own parties, general church meetings, special gatherings for new members or those departing, and youth meetings—and only rarely for visiting fellow believers from white churches.[48]
The Japanese American church matured quickly in the years prior to the war. Young people and women were often thrust into positions of leadership and ministry out of necessity. This training, however, would prepare them well for ministry during the internment
[1] Blankenship, Social Justice, 6-7. For example, “in 1905, twenty Japanese students started to gather at various churches in Berkeley, California to learn English and understand American customs. The churches opened their doors to this kind of ministry” (Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 39).
[2] Spady Koyama, Densho interview, cited in Stephen S. Fugita and Marilyn Fernandez, Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II Incarceration (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2004), 22. Churches often built their own gymnasiums so that children and youth would have opportunities to play.
[3] “In 1910, there were thirty-five churches with thirty ministers and a total membership of 2,618. In 1915, there were seventy-one churches, seventy-eight ministers, 2,165 church school children, and a membership of 4,391—this membership represented approximately five percent of the Japanese population in California” (Horikoshi, “History of the Japanese Christian Mission” (1977), 37, in Sugimura, Holiness Church, 7). “The Japanese Church Federation was founded in both Northern and Southern California in 1910” to help broader social needs to large for any one church to handle (Sugimura, Holiness Church, 7).
[4] For example, Mrs. B. G. Miller, who lived across the street from the Japanese Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, hung a porch-length banner from her eave: “JAPS KEEP MOVING. THIS IS A WHITE MAN’S NEIGHBORHOOD.”
[5] Yoo, Growing Up Nisei, 38. “Both Buddhists and Christians felt each other’s presence as they organized similar kinds of groups and activities, even if largely operating independently of one another. On occasion, bazaars and celebrations brought the two religions together” (ibid., 39).
[6] Bill Hosokawa, cited in Ren Kimura, “A Historical and Comparative Study of the Development of Christian Mission in Japan and Among the Japanese in America” (Ph.D. dissertation, California Graduate School of Theology, 1973), 134.
[7] Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei, 38.
[8] Based on a twenty-five percent sample survey of ten WRA camps, “religious affiliation . . . stated 55.3 percent Buddhist, 28.8 percent Protestant, 2.0 percent Roman Catholic, 13.4 percent no affiliation or no answer and 0.5 percent other” (U.S. Department of the Interior, WRA, Community Analysis Section, Report No. 9, “Buddhism in the United States” [Washington, D.C., 15 May 1944], 8).
[9] Blankenship, Social Justice, 7.
[10] Yoo, Growing Up Nisei, 57-58.
[11] Herbert B. Johnson, Discrimination Against the Japanese in California: A Review of the Real Situation (Berkeley, CA: Courier Publishing Co., 1907; reprint, San Francisco: R&E Associates, 1971), 27. One of the strongest of the Issei Protestant supporters of assimilation in the pre-World War I period was Kohachiro Miyazaki, a member of the Japanese Interdenominational Board of Missions and one of the founders of the Japanese Presbyterian Church in the United States. Miyazaki, in 1912, argued against Nisei retention of Japanese citizenship and instead stressed “the necessity of assimilating into American society. . . . The American spirit is freedom, justice . . . and the Melting Pot” (Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 [New York: The Free Press, 1988], 189).
[12] Hayashi, Japanese Brethren, 34.
[13] Ibid., 56.
[14] Ibid., 57.
[15] Yoo, Nisei, 55.
[16] Otani, Japanese American Episcopal Churches, 7.
[17] Taylor, Jewel, 5-6. Other early converts included Manjiro “John” Nakahama who came to the U.S. in 1841 (Ryukichi Kihara, Hawaii Nippon-shi: A History of Japanese in Hawaii [Tokyo: Bunseisha, 1935], 389-90), a geisha girl, Kosome, who was rescued while drifting and brought to Hawaii in 1859 (Otani, Japanese American Episcopal Churches, 1), and Joseph Hardy Neesima, who was ordained in 1874 as the first Japanese Evangelical minister (See Clifford Alika and Miya Okiwara, Sho-Chiku-Bai: Japanese-American Congregationalists, United Church of Christ history, accessed at https://www.ucc.org/about-us_hidden-histories_sho-chiku-bai).
[18] Hayashi, Japanese Brethren, 36.
[19] Lester E. Suzuki, “History of the Japanese United Methodist Church in America,” in Koga, A Centennial Legacy, 70.
[20] Niiya, Encyclopedia, 177. “In 1882-1883, two Congregationalist groups split from the Gospel Society because of Gibson’s paternalistic attitude. . . . and denominational conflicts with the Methodists. Many members of both groups switched denominations, forming close ties with the Howard Presbyterian Church. The two groups merged in 1884 and later established the First Japanese Presbyterian Church of San Francisco on May 16, 1885. The group later established the Japanese YMCA on August 27, 1886 under the guidance of E. A. Sturge. After the split, the Gospel Society officially became a Methodist Mission at the 1886 California Conference and gradually expanded its activities. Later, members were involved in forming the Japanese Methodist Episcopal Mission on the Pacific Coast.”
[21] Hayashi, Japanese Brethren, 27-28.
[22] Sugimura, Holiness Church, 11.
[23] Hosokawa, The Quiet Americans, 127. Our Christian Testimony (1967) edited by Rev. Taro Goto recorded the oral histories of many Christian Issei who worshipped with the First Methodist Church in Loomis, California.
[24] Ryo Yoshida, “A Socio-Historical Study of Racial/Ethnic Identity in the Inculcated Religious Expression of Japanese Christianity in San Francisco, 1877-1924” (Ph.D. dissertation, GTU, 1989), 160.
[25] Hayashi, Japanese Brethren, 35. Some Presbyterians had transferred over from the Methodist church after a dispute in June 1881.
[26] Niiya, Encyclopedia, 374.
[27] Sumio Koga, “Japanese Presbyterian Churches,” in Koga, A Centennial Legacy, 90.
[28] “The Beginning of the Young People’s Movement,” in Koga, A Centennial Legacy,108.
[29] Hayashi, Japanese Brethren, 61.
[30] Ibid., 31. See Sacon, “Religious Organizations,” 29-37. For example, “At least a quarter of Seattle’s Nikkei population identified as Christian and attended one of seven ethnic churches: the Japanese Baptist Church (founded in 1899), the Japanese Methodist Church (1904), St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (1906), Japanese Presbyterian (1907), Japanese Congregational (1907), the Catholic Maryknoll Mission—Our Lady Queen of Martyrs (1925), and a Japanese Holiness Church (1935)” (Blankenship, Social Justice, 7).
[31] Paul Nagano, “American Baptist Denomination,” in Koga, A Centennial Legacy, 46. The first Japanese Christians in this church had been converted and baptized in May 1892.
[32] Ibid. The First Japanese Baptist Church (1923) and the Mayhew Community Baptist Church (1927) were both started in Sacramento. The Boyle Heights Japanese Baptist Church later became known as the Evergreen Baptist Church. The church in Downey was called the Clearwater Baptist Church.
[33] Suzuki, Ministry, 15.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Sugimura, Holiness Church, 12.
[36] Yoo, Nisei, 55.
[37] Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 39.
[38] Ibid., 39-40. It is believed that the original name was the Oriental Missionary Church. The Holiness church focused on sanctification or a “second blessing” as taught by John Wesley who felt his heart strangely warmed at a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate.
[39] Ugo Nakada, “Year 1920,” Reisei, ed. by Tsukasa Sugimura (Los Angeles: APA Printing, 1963), 329, cited in Sugimura, Holiness Church, 18.
[40] Sugimura, Holiness Church, 181-82.
[41] Yoo, Nisei, 122.
[42] Hayashi, Japanese Brethren, 79. Kuzuhara had become a Christian in Japan and translated E. M. Bounds’ book, Power Through Prayer, which became a best-seller among Japanese Christians. In 1919, he traveled to the U.S. to learn about “the Four-Fold Gospel” from Christian & Missionary Alliance founder, A. B. Simpson.
[43] Ibid., 75.
[44] Ibid., 115.
[45] Yoo, Nisei, 58-59. The JSCA had three major goals: “(1) to unite all Japanese, especially Christian, students and to cultivate an organized effort; (2) to promote growth of Christian character and fellowship among its members and to spread the Christian way of life among Japanese students in America; (3) to stimulate capacity for service and render needed services for the general welfare of Japanese students in America” (ibid., 60).
[46] Grace Kaneya, “Grow in Living Faith,” Northern California Young People’s Christian Conference, 1938 (San Francisco: Pine United Methodist Church Archives).
[47] Ibid., 95.
[48] Ibid., 98.
