AHC: Milwaukee has largest Japanese minority in US

Milwaukee is too far away from the west coast to have a Japanese minority on the level of, say, Honolulu or Los Angeles. Itis simply too far away and is not as cosmopolitan (perhaps not the correct word) as those cities - it is California, not Wisconsin, that is idolized in foreign media.
 
Maybe a slight change in Japanese language that makes "Milwaukee" sounds a lot like "Land of gold and pleasure"?
 
First of all, you've got to prevent Milwaukee from falling victim to the Rust Belt syndrome. There was once something of a thriving community of Chinese/Taiwanese-American middle class professionals up there in the '80s (there was a bit of an overlap with the Chicagoan Chinese-American community, but it was its own thing for a while). However a good chunk of them bolted and ran for the Sunbelt after the economic crisis of the mid 2000s, especially as property values in the area tumbled.
 
As Prohibition looms on the horizon, the Milwaukee city council realises that their beer industry, the biggest in town, is about to go belly up. So they invest in ... hmmm... engineering?
A senior Japanese engineer comes to Milwaukee, building, say high performance car or maybe Aero engines.
maybe he's got a grandparent who was korean or untouchable, and he KNOWS he wont rise far in Japan. He succeeds, and convinces a bunch of his former coworkers to come join him.
Word gets out around japan, that if you are untouchable, or ofkorean ancestry, you can go to milwakee, and get a good job.

Meanwhile, california has a spate of anti oriental violence and prejudice. The Japanese community there, being smaller and more spread out than the Chinese, suffer diproportionately. They, too, hear of opportunities for hard working japanese in milwaukee. Interestingly, this leads to an inversion of the usual japanese social structure, as it is people with untouchable and korean relatives who get the best jobs, while the 'pure' japanese are often manual labourers.

Come wwii, the japanese community in milwaukee is the biggest single such community outside hawaii, and is desperately and visibly proAmerican. Moreover, they are now deeply integrated into one of the major defense industries.

When japanese in hawaii and the west coast are herded into detention camps, the japanese in milwaukee move into defense industry compounds, with company supplied housing. Yes, its a step down from what they had had, but they are valued, even if carefully watched, workers.

The disparity in fates means that any exHawaiian or exCalifornian japanese with decent jobs try to move heaven and earth to get their relatives out of the camps and to milwaukee.

The politicians from milwaukee push washington for this, as the want a good supply of cheap, motivated labour for their booming war industry. Politicians from the pacific states are happy with this, as it gets rid of a bunch of detainees from their hands.

By the end of the war, there are more japanese in milwaukee than even in honolulu.


How is that?
 
Come wwii, the japanese community in milwaukee is the biggest single such community outside hawaii, and is desperately and visibly proAmerican. Moreover, they are now deeply integrated into one of the major defense industries.

When japanese in hawaii and the west coast are herded into detention camps, the japanese in milwaukee move into defense industry compounds, with company supplied housing. Yes, its a step down from what they had had, but they are valued, even if carefully watched, workers.

Uh, OTL, the evacuation of ethnic Japanese-Americans only occurred to those living in Military Area No. 1, which consisted of the western seaboard and parts of Arizona. No internments occurred on individuals living in the central or eastern US. In fact, the government encouraged ethnic Japanese to move to areas in the east voluntarily, and later on permitted internment camp residents to leave if they had employment or schooling opportunities outside the exclusion zone - almost a third did historically. Considering this, it would be quite unlikely that any sort of detention in "industrial compounds" would occur to the Japanese population in Wisconsin.
 

Kosta

Banned
Uh, OTL, the evacuation of ethnic Japanese-Americans only occurred to those living in Military Area No. 1, which consisted of the western seaboard and parts of Arizona. No internments occurred on individuals living in the central or eastern US. In fact, the government encouraged ethnic Japanese to move to areas in the east voluntarily, and later on permitted internment camp residents to leave if they had employment or schooling opportunities outside the exclusion zone - almost a third did historically. Considering this, it would be quite unlikely that any sort of detention in "industrial compounds" would occur to the Japanese population in Wisconsin.

Okay, but if that bit is removed, that still doesn't change the idea of Japanese moving to Milwaukee and your point only bolsters the possibility of a more Japanese Milwaukee.
 
Looking at some statistics, otl honolulu is 400K or so, milwaukee is about 600k. Otoh, the Metropolitan statistical areas are about 2* and 3+* the size of the city proper.

It might be easier to get 150k japanese in a population of 2M+, than to get 90k in a population of 600k.

OR we could lower the number in Honolulu, which would be difficult.
 
Another way to increase Milwaukee's Asian-American (and by extension Japanese-American) community might be to make it a high tech electronics manufacturing hub. Jack Kilby, who led the effort to design the first integrated circuit (and won a Nobel Prize in the process), had done his graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and he was employed at Centralabs in Milwaukee for a number of years.

Of course, IOTL, he got recruited by Texas Instruments soon after getting his masters, but maybe if he'd stayed on to do research at UWM, he might've still come up with the integrated circuit and capitalized on the discovery by establishing his own tech start-up located in the Milwaukee area (at the time, Milwaukee was still very prosperous as an industrial hub on the shores of Lake Michigan, and there was a highly skilled labor force populating the area, something that Texas lacked). Anyway, from there, Kilby's corporation's early successes might attract other high tech firms to Wisconsin, all of which will be heavily recruiting from the post-war crop of East Asian engineers studying in the US on student visas.

From there, a large self sustaining Asian/Japanese American community might be established in the Milwaukee area.
 
I think the relocation is a definate, but unsightly necessity to create a point where Milwaukee has the largest minority of this kind in the US. There would also need to be at least one majore sabotage attack directly and visibly linked to Japanese Americans on the West Coast to create a climate so hostile to their return that this type of exodus fits.

I would think that, at least for Milwaukee, it may also require the merger of a highly recognized icon with a Japanese brand (Harley-Davidson with either Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, or Honda rather than AMF in the 70's)

Put those together, a hostile to immigrants West Coast and Japanese investment in rust belt industries and then a building of infrastructure to support those industries, and you might by 2013 have a city like Milwaukee have the largest Japanese ethinc population in the US.
 
The thing with Japanese corporate investments in the US is that oftentimes, the engineers and high level managers they fly in from Japan to run the newly acquired plants often don't integrate into the local community. I grew up near a Fujitsu manufacturing plant, and the Japanese engineers there hardly ever left their gated corporate dormitories, and on the rare occasions they did venture out into the Asian dominated commercial districts for meals or leisure, they remained highly insular. Their plan is to work overseas, but they never plan on staying to make the US their new home.

I think a lot of it has to do with the negative stigma that modern-day Japanese associate with those who go abroad to the US and Europe for work or study, as if too much exposure to foreign cultural elements dilutes their Japanese nationality. I hate to bring up more anecdotal stuff, but I've a pair of Japanese cousins who, despite only receiving their higher education in the US, feel discriminated against by other Japanese on account of their time spent in the US.
 
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