We the People: Tsuyoshi Matsumoto
Documents from the American Missionary Association archives tell a different wartime story
The December 1941 attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii had immediate repercussions for Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants living throughout the United States. Amid the nationwide confusion and anger that resulted from the bombing, individuals of Japanese descent were targeted for hostility. harassment and faced official discrimination.
Particularly targeted were the Issei, or Japanese immigrants. Barred by law from naturalization, the Issei received no legal protections of citizenship. Even before Congress voted for a Declaration of War on December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a series of Presidential Proclamations which transformed the entire Issei population at a stroke of a pen into enemy aliens who were subjected to curfew, limitations on travel and freezing of financial accounts.
In the days that followed, hundreds of community leaders whose names appeared on custodial detention lists as potentially dangerous were arrested and held by the Justice Department. Other individual Issei were detained or held for questioning by the FBI. Perhaps the most curious was that of Tsuyoshi Matsumoto, whose wartime experience lay at the center of his many-sided life.
Born in 1908 in Hokkaido, Japan, Matsumoto Tsuyoshi and his siblings grew up in the church. After attending a missionary college in Tokyo, he arrived in the United States in 1930.
There he studied at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. In 1933, he received a bachelor's degree in divinity and was licensed as a Presbyterian minister. He then moved to New York and enrolled at Union Theological Seminary as a theology and music major. While there, he met Jay T. Wright, another student, and the two became good friends. Upon graduation, he returned to Japan where he married his wife, Emiko, a ballet dancer.
Tsuyoshi soon returned to the U.S. to avoid conscription and the growing militarism of the Japanese government. By 1941, he was engaged as a music teacher at the Trinity School in Athens, Alabama, a school for African Americans run by the American Missionary Association (AMA). The job came at the invitation of Jay Wright, who had become the school's director.
He had only been there for a short time when the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor occurred. The following day, Matsumoto was arrested and held at the county courthouse by local officials, allegedly so that people could see “what a real ‘Jap’ looked like.” He was taken to the county jail and then transferred into custody at Fort McClellan, where he remained for two months.
A clipping from an Athens, Alabama newspaper reports of Matsumoto's arrest. The resulting public response led to pressure on Jay Wright. Ruth Morton, AMA’s Director of Community Schools, wrote to Wright stating that Matsumoto’s continued presence represented “a delicate situation” for the school and requesting an immediate report on his immigration status.
Telegram from G.R. Bridgeforth to Ruth Morton (December 13, 1941) by G. R. BridgeforthAmistad Research Center
Trinity School alumnus G.R. Bridgeforth wrote to Ruth Morton to warn of “wild rumors” about Matsumoto’s arrest that could imperil the status of Trinity in the local community.
Many years later, Wright recounts what happened on that day: "They took him down to the courthouse where they handcuffed him to a chair in the police chief's large office. He was detained there under guard for several hours. A steady stream of visitors came to stare at him derisively and shout imprecations. Evidently he was on display, or else the officials could not make their minds what to do with him. Late in the afternoon, still without food, he was taken to the county jail."
In the months between Matsumoto's arrival in Athens and his arrest, he enjoyed exploring the town and drawing the sights. He sketched gardens and their flowers; one of his favorite sketching spots was a local cotton gin. He loved the red clay and would take handfuls home to experiment, using it to make decorations. But to the local police, convinced they had caught a spy, they interpreted his curious explorations as acts of espionage.
Wright recalls: "Out of nowhere an elaborate story developed that the Japanese and the Germans, but especially the Japanese, were going to land in Alabama by parachute and organize the Blacks into open rebellion. We were apt to have a race war right on our home ground with all the colored races - yellow, brown, red, what-have-you - all united against the white. 'That Jap' had been roaming our streets making maps of our town as espionage for the Jap army."
Jay Wright traveled to Memphis to consult Fred Brownlee, general secretary for the AMA and acting president of LeMoyne College. Brownlee, in turn, wrote to Matsumoto to express concern over his care and inquire about his needs. This sparked a friendly correspondence between the two men, as evidenced by this letter from Matsumoto to Brownlee.
In a letter from Matsumoto, he talks about his hobby of drawing and the treatment he received from the soldiers, some of whom would visit his cell to have their portraits done. He also mentions another prisoner, a elderly German artist (whose name was redacted by the military censor) that paints with crayons.
After undergoing a loyalty hearing by the Alien Enemy Control Board in February 1942, Matsumoto was released from confinement and returned to Athens, where locals continued to express hostility toward his presence. Following a sensational editorial in the weekly Alabama Courier newspaper, the town's mayor, R.H. Richardson, protested to Brownlee: “I understand that you have been informed about the Jap that is out at Trinity. That should never be, in times of war or peace."
The threat to Matsumoto's safety forced the school to find alternative employment and have him leave the town as quickly as possible. Wright drove him to Nashville to take a train to Chicago, where a colleague met him and drove the rest of the way to a new appointment in Madison, Wisconsin. In this letter from Wright to the AMA, he talks about the difficulty of finding teachers following the "Matsumoto incident." The music teacher position remained unfilled.
The "incident" scarred Matsumoto. He left the ministry and never returned to the South. During the war years, he served as a Japanese language instructor for military intelligence. Matsumoto’s wife, Emiko, had returned to Japan to renew her passport prior to his move to Alabama and could not return due to the war; the couple were separated for eight years, finally reuniting in 1950.
Matsumoto returned to his love of drawing and art. He opened and operated an art gallery in New York City for a number of years. After his retirement, he settled outside of San Diego, California.
Wright remembers one letter he sent to Matsumoto: "Several times during the passage of all these years I wrote to him, once addressing the letter to 'The Rev. Tsuyoshi Matsumoto,' which was his proper title when we knew him. I received an angry reply: 'Do not call me Reverend. Do not call me Tommy. I know nothing of this past. My name is MAT. I am an artist."
Matsumoto devoted many hours admiring and drawing trees at Torrey Pines, a nature reserve in La Jolla, California. He bequeathed his artworks to the Pines, and following his death in 1982, Emiko donated all proceeds from the sale of his artwork to support the reserve.
Digital exhibition curated by Phillip Cunningham. Based on a physical exhibition, "I Know Them as People, Not as Figures: Narratives and Images of American Immigration," curated by Christopher Harter that ran from September 23, 2019 through February 29, 2020 at the Amistad Research Center. Images come from the American Missionary Association archives addenda and the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. The photograph of Matsumoto was provided courtesy of his daughter, Helen Kagan.
Special acknowledgment to Dr. Greg Robinson, professor of history at l'Université du Québec à Montréal, whose online article, “Tsuyoshi Matsumoto—A Different Wartime Story,” was adapted, in part, for use as text for this exhibition case. To learn more, please visit http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2017/10/12/tsuyoshi-matsumoto/.
