The Asahi English website has a very interesting article entitled “Family planted Japan roots over a century ago“, on the history of the Apcar family, who first came to Yokohama around a century ago.
The family business, A.M. Apcar & Co., was established by Michael Apcar’s grandfather and run by his grandmother, Diana Agabeg Apcar after her husband’s sudden death in 1906. A.M. Apcar was born in what was then Persia and moved to India, then under British rule, and married Diana Agabeg. They were both from well-off Armenian families and decided to settle in Yokohama after spending part of their honeymoon here.
The entire history presented in the article is quite fascinating, but the following section is the one that really jumped out at me.
Life took a terrible turn as Japan moved toward a war footing.
In hindsight, it is curious the Apcars did not join other Westerners who left Japan before fighting broke out with the United States.
Leonard M. Apcar, Michael’s son, recalls a passage from memoirs written by Michael’s mother, Araxe, about an exchange with her husband about leaving Japan. Araxe asked her husband if Japan would ever go to war with the United States.
Michael Apcar Sr.’s reply was: “No, it would be suicide for the Japanese to go to war with the United States. It’s crazy and wouldn’t happen.”
On Dec. 8, 1941, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, military police surrounded the Apcar home and hauled Michael Apcar Sr. off to prison.
Among the reasons for the detainment was the fact that the elder Apcar was the highest-ranking member of his Masonic lodge in Yokohama.
He was imprisoned for 14 months, during which time he was often tortured for information about his fellow Masons, according to his son.
During his father’s imprisonment, Michael’s sister, Dorothy, died. Her tombstone was made in the United States and he had never seen it in the cemetery until Tuesday.
Life did not get any better after his father’s release. The Apcars were given the choice of moving to either Hakone in western Kanagawa Prefecture or Karuizawa in Nagano Prefecture. They chose Karuizawa because it was thought there was a better chance of bartering for food with local farmers.
“My father knew the war was on and there was no business to be conducted, so he sold everything in the house,” Apcar said, noting that the family moved to a much smaller cottage in Karuizawa.
“(My father) knew he had to get enough money to live on during the war and he didn’t know how long the war was going to last,” Apcar said.
The Apcars lived in Karuizawa for about two years, raising goats and chickens and growing potatoes after clearing land filled with tree stumps.
“The winters would get terribly cold,” Apcar recalls. “If we spilled water anywhere in the house, it would immediately freeze.”
What turned out to be a lifesaver for the Apcars was a makeshift oven for heating and cooking that was put together from sheet metal saved by Apcar’s father from crates he received as an importer of horse liniment.
As the war situation facing Japan worsened, conditions in Karuizawa grew harsher.
“It got so bad in Karuizawa that my father and I had to keep watch because people were so hungry they would come and dig up the potatoes,” Apcar said.
One of the few advantages to living in Karuizawa was the fact it was not a target for Allied bombing raids.
The same could not be said for Yokohama. After Japan surrendered, Apcar found work as a guide and interpreter for Swiss officials who were seeking permission from the U.S. Army to move the Swiss Embassy from Karuizawa back to Tokyo.
He went to his place of birth.
“Yokohama was flat,” Apcar said. “I couldn’t find my way in Yokohama because the house where I was born was gone. All I saw was a bathtub. Everything was burned up, gone.”
Apcar eventually sailed with one of his sisters in September 1946 to San Francisco, where they had relatives.
This particular episode is in stark contrast to another long term expat family who remained in Yokohama during World War 2, which some readers here may remember. Almost two years ago I made a long post on William R. Gorham, an American engineer who moved to Japan for business, helped to found the predecessor to the Nissan Motor Corporation, and eventually became, along with his wife, a Japanese citizen in May of 1941-about 5 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Gorham children returned to the US around this time, having been raised and educated in Japan but never naturalizing there. William R. Gorham survived the war with no particular hardship, was treated well by the occupation authorities-who he worked for as an advisor-and had a successful consulting firm in the postwar period, which helped such companies as Canon. His son Don Cyril Gorham, who was perhaps the first (or at least among the first) Westerner to receive an undergraduate degree from Tokyo University, served as a translator for the US both during and after the war, and visited Japan as recently as last October, at the age of 90.
The question looms of why one Western family, who as Americans were citizens of the very country Japan was going to war with and had been in Japan only for a couple of decades, was given the royal treatment, while the other, who had lived in Japan far longer and had no ties to the US (although they did move there postwar) were imprisoned like POWs. It seems likely that family connections were key.
While the Apcar family presumably had strong connections to the Yokohama business community, the many overseas contacts needed to run a successful trading company may have alarmed security officials. And as the article points out, membership in the Masons was also a key factor. Foreign-based quasi-mystical secret brotherhoods would not have been well regarded by the militaristic government of 1941 Japan.
By contrast, William R. Gorham’s business interests were pretty much Japan based. He was an inventor and engineer more than a businessman, and seems to have been little involved in any sort of international dealings. The Gorhams moved in high society. His wife studied traditional arts such as ceramics and ikebana with masters of the crafts, and even tutored a princess in English. Mr. Gorham’s close friend and business partner was Yoshisuke Ayukawa, famous for expanding Nissan (which Gorham himself contributed greatly to) into a zaibatsu, and helping develop Japanese industry in Manchuria. In fact, Don Cyril-his son-speculated in an email to me (actually transcribed by his daughter) that Ayukawa used his personal influence to fast-track the Gorham’s unusual eve-of-war application for citizenship.
Citizenship might also have a lot to do with it. The article on the Apcars doesn’t say whether they naturalized in Japan, but I suspect that they were just resident aliens. It’s pretty clear from the article that Ms. Apcar was a diplomatic representative of Armenia before the Soviets took it over, so they were apparently Armenian citizens at one point. I assume they would have become Soviet citizens by the time the war broke out (simple rules of succession).
It’s entirely possible that the Japanese government was much less racist than the American government at the time, and was more concerned with national allegiance than with national origin.
It’s also very likely that Gorham lost his US citizenship along the way to becoming a Japanese citizen. This was back in the “bad old days” when it was easy to lose US citizenship by showing allegiance to a foreign country; the US didn’t ease the rules about that until the 1980s. Assuming that was the case, the Japanese authorities probably had very little reason to suspect lingering connections with the enemy.
I think it’s simpler than that. The Apcar family’s interests across Asia were intertwined with the British Empire: the main branch of the family was in India. Even though they had sold on some of these assets, they were still associated with shipping and collieries which were two industries Japan wished to control in the region. In today’s argot, when Japanese authorities looked at the Apcars, they saw something like a combination of Halliburton and the CIA. When looking at Gorham, he would have seemed like a Nokia branch manager with a large collection of ukiyoe and J-pop.
`In hindsight, it is curious the Apcars did not join other Westerners who left Japan before fighting broke out with the United States.`
So are Germany and Italy not part of `the West` now?
I think, considering how they were treated, it’s safe to assume the Apcars were never naturalized. In fact, Gorham may be the only case of non-marriage related Japanese naturalization I have heard of in the pre-war period. Does anyone know if a formal system even existed before the postwar citizenship code was passed?
As for the Apcars, I can’t figure out what their status might have been. I mean, Armenians, one born in British Burma and the other in Persia, married in British India, then moved to Japan and had children there. Would those children born in Japan have ever been registered with a foreign government at all? And even if they had been, once Armenia was annexed by the USSR, would they have actually gotten Soviet documents willingly?
There’s no reason to think that William and Hazel Gorham lost his US citizenship until he naturalized as Japanese. For one thing, they apparently discussed returning to the US, and second he was never employed by the Japanese government-only private industry-so the foreign allegiance clause issue isn’t very relevant. Interestingly, the two sons also seem to have served the US government during the war without their allegiance being openly questioned, even though one might consider someone who had grown up in Japan and whose parents were still there to be higher risk than the Nikkei who were detained.
I do think that Mulboyne is probably correct, but I would love to have some more info on similar cases beyond these two families.
Hooray! Japan’s 1899 nationality law is available online here. My bungo is not so hot, but the naturalization requirements look pretty similar to the current law (i.e. 5 years residence and good moral character), except that you could acquire citizenship just by marrying a Japanese person (if I’m reading article 5 correctly).
“There’s no reason to think that William and Hazel Gorham lost his US citizenship until he naturalized as Japanese. For one thing, they apparently discussed returning to the US, and second he was never employed by the Japanese government-only private industry-so the foreign allegiance clause issue isn’t very relevant.”
In those days, under US law, naturalizing elsewhere was sufficient grounds for losing your citizenship (just like Japan’s nationality law today). In fact, some people lost their US citizenship just for becoming permanent residents overseas. That’s what I meant by “allegiance” — not necessarily working for the government.
“Interestingly, the two sons also seem to have served the US government during the war without their allegiance being openly questioned, even though one might consider someone who had grown up in Japan and whose parents were still there to be higher risk than the Nikkei who were detained.”
It’s a bit counterintuitive to us now, but Westerners were openly racist back then. I suspect that blood was simply thicker than water in the Americans’ calculus.
Luckily I’ve been learning bungo over the past couple of months, so this isn’t THAT much harder to read than current laws, although a bit slower. You do seem to be reading article 5 correctly- either marry a Japanese, be recognized as the child of a Japanese, or be adopted by one, or naturalize. The interesting thing is that apparently only naturalization required the approval of the government, and the others are entirely automatic.
Some interesting things in this law: Article 7 is the general rules for naturalization,
Article 8 states that a wife naturalizes with her husband- does this imply that a woman could not naturalize without her husband, or merely that only he needs to fulfill the requirements?
Article 9 is a second set of rules for naturalization for those who don’t fulfill Article 7, but have Japanese blood or were born in Japan.
Article 16, naturalized citizens can assume political office normally.
Article 18, Japanese woman who marry foreigners lose Japanese citizenship, but article 25 lets her get it back if she moves back to Japan and applies to the Minister of State.
“In those days, under US law, naturalizing elsewhere was sufficient grounds for losing your citizenship (just like Japan’s nationality law today).”
Yes, but the Gorhams only became Japanese in 1941, because they knew war was coming and all the Americans were being evacuated. They just wanted to stay in Japan, but the fact that they were given permission to naturalize clearly shows that they were a special case due to their incredible personal connections.
I don’t know what extent of “personal connections” you needed back then. Cabinet minister approval is still necessary to naturalize, but it’s not like you have to petition the minister personally: you just have to go through whatever bureaucratic process has been established.
By the way, I think Article 16 says exactly the opposite–權利ヲ有セス. *No* right to become a Diet member, state minister, judge or military officer. This has obviously changed since then.
And you left out an important part of Article 25: 婚姻解消ノ後 (after annulment of the marriage).
Hmm, I’m actually not sure- is “セス” the modern せず or is it the modern している? I guess if I think about it, legal code style doesn’t use continuous tense so it probably is the negative after all.
Is there such a thing as an annulment in Japan? I’ve always thought of it as a concept uniquely rooted in Christian/Islam concepts of marriage, that wouldn’t really be relevant.
OK, “expiration” is probably a better way to translate 解消 which seems to refer to all the ways in which a marriage may end (e.g. death, divorce).
權利ヲ有セス is “has no right.” Back in the day they didn’t bother with those pesky dakuon things.
I am the subject of the article by the Asahi Shimbun.
I remember clearly the conditions of arrest since in Japan it was December 8th a Monday and a Japanese holiday. My father was home and we the kids had no school. In Japan the laws are that you are guilty until proven innocent. We were living in Japan as Stateless citizens since Armenia was a Republic for only two years( during which time my Grandmother- Diana Agabeg Apcar- was appointed the first woman consul). Armenia was then taken over by Turkey and eventually by Soviet Russia. We had French passports at the time since France granted a French Protectorate to any Armenians requesting such protection. The humanitarian gesture was granted after the genocide of 1 1/2 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915. This only provided us with a passport for travel.
The reasons given for my father’s arrest were several. The primary reason given was that he was the only 33deg. Mason left in Japan. He had many American and British friends and in 1941 I was asked to participate in a play put on by an amature dramatic club in Yokohama. the chairman of this club was the American Consul. We held rehersals at the Consulate building. The consul drove us home from rehersal and often socialized with my parents. the fact that the American consular car was at our home every Friday night was reported to the Kempetai (secret police) by the neighbor’s servants. My father spent six months in solitary for this “heinous crime”. He had nobody to represent him in prison. He was released one day and we found him at the intersection of a street in the business district of Yokohama.
Having my family with me on this recent trip was the only way I could endure the memories of the past.
Some of you have raised the issue of citizenship. My mother was born in Waltham , Mass and she lost her citizenship by marrying my father. Strangely, when we can to the US she had to be re-naturalized. San Francisco had never had a case like this and went to Wash.DC to ask for guidance. She was granted a three year period rather than the usual five year wait period for US citizenship.