Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890–1950

313 Pages·2022·8.067 MB·English

by  Jeannie N. Shinozuka

Biotic Borders

Biotic Borders:
Transpacifi c Plant and Insect
Migration and the Rise of
Anti- Asian Racism in America,
1890– 1950
jeannie n. shinozuka
The University of Chicago Press CHICAGO AND LONDON
PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK HAS BEEN AIDED BY
A GRANT FROM THE BEVINGTON FUND
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2022 by The University of Chicago
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Published 2022
Printed in the United States of America
31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 81729- 3 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 81733- 0 (paper)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 81730- 9 (e- book)
DOI: https://d oi. org/1 0. 7208/c hicago/9 780226817309. 001. 0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shinozuka, Jeannie Natsuko, author.
Title: Biotic borders : transpacifi c plant and insect migration and
the rise of anti-Asian racism in America, 1890–1950 / Jeannie N.
Shinozuka.
Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2021038781 | ISBN 9780226817293 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780226817330 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226817309 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Introduced organisms—Social aspects—
United States. | Racism against Asians—United States.
Classifi cation: LCC QH353 .S543 2022 | DDC 577/.18—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038781
This paper meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Contents
Introduction: Plant and Insect Immigrants 1
1 San José Scale: Contested Origins at the Turn of the Century 15
2 Early Yellow Peril vs. Western Menace: 49
Chestnut Blight, Citrus Canker, and PQN 37
3 Liable Insects at the US- Mexico Border 83
4 Contagious Yellow Peril: Diseased Bodies and 100
the Threat of Little Brown Men
5 Pestilence in Paradise: Invasives in Hawai‘i 114
6 Japanese Beetle Menace: Discovery of the Beetle 139
7 Infi ltrating Perils: A Race against Ownership, 163
Contamination, and Miscegenation
8 Yellow Peril No More? National and Naturalized 180
Enemies during World War II
Conclusion: Toward a Multi(horti)cultural Global Society 209
Acknowledgments 225
Notes 231
Bibliography 277
Index 291

Introduction:
Plant and Insect Immigrants
In a letter dated January 19, 1910, Charles Marlatt, then the Assistant Chief
in the United States Department of Agriculture Division of Entomology,
wrote a report to the Secretary of Agriculture on the injurious insect pests
that he found on the cherry trees sent by the Japanese government. Marlatt
claimed that during his week- long investigation he had discovered, among
other injurious insects and deadly diseases, Chinese diaspis (Diaspis pen-
tagona), San José scale, root gall worm, and the Lepidopterous larva. More
dangerous than the common peach borer, he declared the wood- boring
Lepidopterous larva to be the “most dangerous insect pest”:
Twenty percent of the trees are visibly infested with this insect, but it is im-
possible to tell how many of the others are also infested, since discovery is
only possible in the latter stages when the insect has burrowed to the sur-
face. . . . The presence of the borer referred to, together with the six other
insects, without other consideration warrants the recommendation which
Doctor [Leland] Howard makes and in which I concur, that the entire ship-
ment should be destroyed by burning as soon as possible. . . .1
Marlatt’s alarm about the danger of the wood- boring Lepidopterous larva
to fruit trees alludes to the possible danger hidden within the beautiful ex-
terior of the Japanese cherry trees. Even as a spectacular exotic, the cherry
tree embodied a yellow peril hidden within alluring packaging.2
J. G. Sanders, one of the inspectors of the cherry trees shipped in 1910,
urged a complete embargo on foreign plants because they posed “un-
known dangers” that could easily be unleashed when released outside of
their original environment. Sanders believed that such unknown dangers
“lurk in every shipment of plants to America.”3 Focusing on insect, plant,
2 INTRODUCTION
and human migrants from Japan indicates the central role of an emerging
enemy alien in shaping America’s ecological and medical borders. Deadly
disease outbreaks, such as chestnut bark disease and citrus canker, only
added to the evidence that a federal quarantine against East Asian ship-
ments was necessary.
Based upon the recommendation of President William Howard Taft’s
experts, and especially that of Marlatt, the fi rst batch of Japanese cherry
trees were burned on January 28, 1910, on the Washington Monument
grounds. Despite Marlatt’s characterization of this incident as an “apoliti-
cal scientifi c necessity,” the New York Times pointed out, “we have been im-
porting ornamental plants from Japan for years, and by the shipload, and
it is remarkable that this particular invoice should have contained any new
infections.”4 The editorialist also thought it unnecessary that the public
should be notifi ed of the destruction of these trees, and that an “accident
of the obviously unavoidable sort” could have easily and more tactfully
been arranged. In a diplomatic move, the Japanese government responded
by sending a second shipment of cherry trees carefully selected by special-
ists at the Imperial University, raised on grounds free of insects and nem-
atodes, and sprayed with insecticides and fungicides before being fumi-
gated upon packing. In 1912 these trees were planted around the Tidal Basin
area and along the Potomac River, as well as on the White House gardens,
becoming a “living symbol of friendship between Japanese and American
peoples.”5 As nonhuman but biological actors, the assimilation of Japanese
cherry trees on the one hand, and the demonization of (Asian) San José
scale on the other, redefi ned what it meant to be an alien and assimilated
immigrant both in the natural and the human sense. US government of-
fi cers eyed the foreign Japanese cherry trees with suspicion, initially view-
ing them as foreign, just as they policed Japanese immigrants working in
agriculture. Nurseries and plant explorers such as David Fairchild helped
facilitate acceptance of the trees as an integral part of the American land-
scape. Yet along with these desirable imports came injurious and highly
fecund insects such as San José scale and the Japanese beetle.
Biotic Borders spans over half a century in order to understand how race
and species jointly constituted one another in both the human and the
more- than- human worlds.6 In intervening in anthropocentric narratives,
this book places Japanese plant, insect, and human immigration as cen-
tral to the establishment of empire and government agencies, including
the United States Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Plant Indus-
try, the Bureau of Entomology, land-g rant universities that led to studies
of agriculture, and the creation of the nation’s most prominent botanical
Plant and Insect Immigrants 3
gardens. These entomologists and other scientists who worked at these in-
stitutions targeted introductions from Japan in order to consolidate their
authority over the environment.
Today, scholars continue to debate the larger implications of biodiver-
sity in a time of great environmental upheaval. For example, the ecologist
Daniel Simberloff contends that most conservationists and invasion biolo-
gists attempt to bring attention to introduced species’ tangible economic
and ecological impact. Asian chestnut blight, according to Simberloff,
wiped out “entire communities” in the eastern half of North America.
Within fi fty years of its discovery, chestnut blight has killed almost every
single mature chestnut. While the species is not yet extinct, the bark dis-
ease has prevented American chestnuts from reaching maturity, making
the majority of these trees “functionally extinct” and incapable of repro-
duction.7 Introductions such as chestnut trees from China or Japan may
very well have devastated the ecology and economies that relied on chest-
nut trees. Yet concerns over maintaining biological nativism, alongside
the very real economic and ecological effects, also served as a key motiva-
tion for government offi cials.8
Indeed, perceptions of Japanese immigrants as economically exploit-
ative and as monopoly capitalists were part and parcel of debates about the
costly effects of chestnut blight and the “alien takeover” of various agricul-
tural sectors. The devastation of such an emblematic tree not only almost
completely destroyed an important natural resource and radically altered
the environment; it also blighted a national identity just when American
consciousness of the end of the frontier and the implications of limited
resources heightened.9 Today, such anxieties can also resurface in an era
of intensifying globalization, global pandemics, concerns of conserva-
tion and preservation, xenophobia, climate change, and fears of biological
terrorism.
The Roots of Biological Nativism
The mass migration of Japanese plant and insect immigrants by the late
nineteenth century coincided with the formation of new racial categories
and landscapes, the hardening of biotic borders, and dramatic changes in
agricultural practices, ushering in a new era of biotic exchanges that al-
tered not only the lives of Japanese people in America, but American so-
ciety at large. Moreover, these biotic exchanges affected the daily lives of
Japanese Americans in ways previous scholars overlook. They entered vari-
ous sectors of agriculture in large numbers precisely because they faced