Japanese Peruvians

Ethnic group in Peru

Japanese Peruvians (lang es or nipo peruano; 日系ペルー人, Nikkei Perūjin) are Peruvian citizens of Japanese origin or ancestry. Peru has the second largest ethnic Japanese population in South America after Brazil. This community has made a significant cultural impact on the country, and as of the 2017 Census in Peru, 22,534 people or 0.2% of the Peruvian population self reported themselves as having Nikkei or Japanese ancestry. Though the Japanese government estimates that at least 100,000 Peruvians have some degree of Japanese ancestry. The Peruvian Congress indicated that the emigration of Peruvian Nikkeis to Japan began in the 1980s, and the Japanese government estimates that around 300,000 Peruvians of the Peruvian Japanese community, 40,000 Nikkeis went to work in Japan. Peru was the first Latin American country to establish diplomatic relations with Japan, in June 1873. Peru was also the first Latin American country to accept Japanese immigration. This group of 790 Japanese became the first of several waves of emigrants who made new lives for themselves in Peru, some nine years before emigration to Brazil began. In the period before World WarII, the Japanese community in Peru was largely run by issei immigrants born in Japan. "Those of the second generation [the nisei] were almost inevitably excluded from community decision making."

Peru's current Japanese international school is Asociación Academia de Cultura Japonesa in Surco, Lima.

Although there had been ongoing tensions between non Japanese and Japanese Peruvians, the situation was drastically exacerbated by the war. Rising tensions ultimately led to a series of discriminatory laws being passed in 1936, the results of which included stigmatization of Japanese immigrants as "bestial," "untrustworthy," "militaristic," and "unfairly" competing with Peruvians for wages. After the Japanese air raids on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, the U. S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), formed during World WarII to coordinate secret espionage activities against the Axis Powers for the branches of the United States Armed Forces and the United States State Department, were alarmed at the large Japanese Peruvian community living in Peru and were also wary of the increasing new arrivals of Japanese nationals to Peru. Fearing the Empire of Japan could sooner or later decide to invade the Republic of Peru and use the Southern American country as a landing base for its troops and its nationals living there as foreign agents against the US, in order to open another military front in the American Pacific, the U. S. government quickly negotiated with Lima a political–military alliance agreement in 1942. This alliance provided Peru with new military technology such as military aircraft, tanks, modern infantry equipment, and new boats for the Peruvian Navy, as well as new American bank loans and new investments in the Peruvian economy. In return, the Americans ordered the Peruvians to track, identify and create ID files for all the Japanese Peruvians living in Peru. Later, at the end of 1942 and during all of 1943 and 1944, the Peruvian government on behalf of the U. S. Government and the OSS organized and started the massive arrests, without warrants and without judicial proceedings or hearings and the deportation of many of the Japanese Peruvian community to several American internment camps run by the U. S. Justice Department in the states of Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Georgia and Virginia. Racism and economic self interest were major motivating factors in Peru's eager compliance with American deportation requests. As noted in a 1943 memorandum, Raymond Ickes of the Central and South American division of the Alien Enemy Control Unit had observed that many ethnic Japanese had been sent to the United States " merely because the Peruvians wanted their businesses and not because there was any adverse evidence against them." The enormous groups of Japanese Peruvian forced exiles were initially placed among the Japanese Americans who had been excluded from the US west coast; later they were interned in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) facilities in Crystal City, Texas; Kenedy, Texas; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Japanese Peruvians were kept in these "alien detention camps" for more than two years before, through the efforts of civil rights attorney Wayne M. Collins, being offered "parole" relocation to the labor starved farming community in Seabrook, New Jersey. The interned Japanese Peruvian nisei in the United States were further separated from the issei, in part because of distance between the internment camps and in part because the interned nisei knew almost nothing about their parents' homeland and language. The deportation of Japanese Peruvians to the United States also involved expropriation without compensation of their property and other assets in Peru. At war's end, only 790 Japanese Peruvian citizens returned to Peru, and about 400 remained in the United States as "stateless" refugees. The interned Peruvian nisei who became naturalized American citizens would consider their children sansei, meaning three generations from the grandparents who had left Japan for Peru.

Alberto Fujimori was born in Peru on 28 July 1938 to Japanese parents who immigrated to Peru from Japan and was the 54th President of Peru from 1990 until his downfall in 2000.

In 1998, with new strict laws from the Japanese immigration, many fake nikkei were deported or went back to Peru. The requirements to bring Japanese descendants were more strict, including documents as "zairyūshikaku ninteishōmeisho" or Certificate of Eligibility for Resident, which probes the Japanese bloodline of the applicant. With the onset of the global recession in 2008, among the expatriate communities in Japan, Peruvians accounted for the smallest share of those who returned to their homelands. People returning from Japan also made up the smallest share of those applying for assistance under the new law. As of the end of November 2013, only three Peruvians who had returned from Japan had received reintegration assistance. The law provides some attractive benefits, but most Peruvians (as of 2015, there were 60,000 Peruvians in Japan) were not interested in returning to Peru. Peruvians in Japan came together to offer support for Japanese victims of the devastating March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In the wake of the disaster, the town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi Prefecture lost all but two of its fishing vessels. Peruvians raised money to buy the town new boats as a service to Japan and to express their gratitude for the hospitality received in Japan.

In June 1921, Nippi Shimpo (Japanese Peruvian News) was published.

The cuisine of Peru is a heterogeneous mixture of the diverse cultural influences that enriched the South American country. Nikkei cuisine, which fuses Peruvian and Japanese cuisine, has become a gastronomic sensation in many countries. The origins of Nikkei cuisine relied on the wide variety of fresh ingredients in Peru, the prosperous fishing industry of Peru, the Japanese know how using fresh seafood, and adopting ceviche, which is the Peruvian flag dish, and Chifa dishes as well (fusion cuisine that came from the Chinese community in Peru). Japanese fusion dishes like Acevichado maki sushi rolls were created by incorporating the recipes and flavors from the indigenous Peruvians. Some examples of chefs who use Nikkei cuisine include Nobu Matsuhisa, Ferran Adrià and Kurt Zdesar.

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