Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

American police were rounding up Japanese leftists and shipping them back as undesirable aliens to face imperial justice. Domestic antifascists were, of course, enemies of the state, and thousands were held in Japanese jails, according to the fiery rhetoric of San Mateo comrade Hoko Hideo Ikeda. WE MUST EVACUATE, he telegraphed to the funeral of San Francisco labor legend Tom Mooney in 1942 after racist restrictions prohibited his attendance, BUT WHEREVER WE GO WE WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT THE FASCISTS.30 The LAPD Red Squads targeted Japanese antiwar protesters as they staged a sympathy demonstration outside the Chinese consulate. When a Japanese training ship docked in Los Angeles in 1929, communists distributed anti-militarist flyers to cadets; the Red Squads seized them back. American elites had more in common with their friends in the Japanese elite than with Japanese labor organizers, and they never forgot that.