A Yellow Uncle Tom vs. A National Hero: How Acting President S. I. Hayakawa Split Support in the Japanese Community of San Francisco during the San Francisco State Strike

Abstract

November 6, 1968 was the beginning of what was to be the longest student strike in United States’ history. Through 5 months of struggle, confrontations with police, and battling an emergency-installed President, who was just as unwavering as the student protesters, a resolution came on March 14, 1969. The resolution created the first and only School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State College. The role of Asian Americans, and in particular, Japanese Americans in the strike and the support from the communities behind them has been greatly overlooked by most scholars writing about this strike, except for a few prominent authors. This paper will examine further the roles Asian Americans played in the Strike. It will also analyze how the Asian American and Japanese American student protesters at San Francisco State perceived emergency-installed Acting President S.I. Hayakawa. Finally, it will argue that the support by the Japanese American community in the Bay area divided due to generational variances and divergent political beliefs brought to the forefront by the conflict between the Japanese American students and Acting President Hayakawa during the Strike.