When Japan Was "Champion of the Darker Races" :
Satokata Takahashi and the'
Flowering of Black
Messianic Nationalism*
m
F by Ernest Ailen, Jr.
n late September 1942, in a series of highly
publicized raids, federal agents in Chicago
arrested eighty-five African Americans. Three
women and nine men were charged with sedi-
tion ; the remainder were accused of draft eva-
sion . Indicted on the former charge were
hlijah Muhammad,' Linn Karriem, and Paul-
ine Bahar of the Allah Temple of Islam
[ATOI] ; Mittie Maud Lena Gordon, Seon
Jones, William Gordon, and DavidJ. Logan of
the Peace Movement of Ethiopia [PME] ;
Charles Newby (aka Father Divine Haasan) of
the Colored American National Organization
[CANO] ; Stokely Delmar Hart, James Graves,
and Annabelle Moore of the Brotherhood of
Liberty for the Black People of America
[BLBPA] , and Frederick H. Hammurabi Robb
of the Century Service Exchange.l
Several days earlier, five members of the
Ethiopian Pacific Movement [EPM] - Robert
O. Jordan (aka Leonard Robert Jordan),
James Thornhill, Lester Holness, the Rev .
Ralph Green Best, and Joseph Hartrey, an
Irishman - were indicted in New York City
on the more serious charges.' Less raucously,
back in May, ministers David X (aka David
Jones and David Duvon) and Sultan Muham-
mad of the ATOI's Washington and Mil-
waukee temples, respectively, were detained
on charges of sedition as well.} In October the
head of the International Reassemble of the
Church of Freedom League, Inc. [IRCFL],
the Rev. Ethelbert A. Broaster, was arrested in
New Orleans.' The following January, a second
round of indictments occurred in East St .
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
Louis, where Bishop David D. Erwin and Gen-
eral Lee Butler, two leaders of the Pacific
Movement of the Eastern World [PMEW],
were also charged with crimes against the
State." In Newark, seven members of the
House of Israel [HOI] - Brother Rueben Is-
rael (aka Askew Thomas), Alfred Woods, Is-
aiah Cald, Robert Moses, Oscar Rumlin,
Dawsey Johnson, and Jeremiah Ardis - were
seized as draft evaders.'
There had been earlier as well as subse-
quent arrests for draft evasion, too, including
the roundup of 12 members of the Kansas
City branch of the Moorish Science Temple of
America [MSTA] in July 1942 .fl These accusa-
tions against outspoken African American op-
ponents of World War II involved violations of
the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Selective
Training and Service Act of 1940 .y More to the
point: in the eyes of government, the pro-
Japanese loyalties of the defendants in the
above cases constituted a threat to national
security. Indeed, the reported remarks of an
ATOI member appeared to give substance to
such concerns:
the white devils desire the colored people to die
with them in the Army and Navy ; we don't want to
be with him in the Army or out . . . the time has
come when the white devils will be destroyed by
dark mankind . . . the eagles seen on United States
money and the uniforms of service men is the
mark of the beast and if you have that mark the
Japanese are going to shoot at it when they come
here."'
The best known today of all the above
groups, the Allah Temple of Islam was an off
PAGE 23
 ABSTRACT

When Japan Was "Champion of the Darker Races":

Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of
Black Messianic Nationalism
During World War II, some 125 African Americans were arrestedfor
resisting the deaf~` orfor exercising seditious behavior. The twenty or so _
persons held on the more serious charges included Elijah Muhammad of
the Allah Temple ofIslam, a religious association; Mittie Maud Lens
Gordon 'the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, an African repatriation
movement in the Garvey tradition; the Rev. EthelbertA. Broaster of the
International Reassemble of the Church of Freedom League, Inc., a black
Hebrew organization ; and Bishop David D. Erwin and General Lee
Butler, leaders of the Pacific Movement 'the Eastern World, an emigra-
tionistgroup. The arrests brought to light the existence of strong, pro-
Japanese sentiments amongAfrican Americans that the authorities, not
to mention black middle-class spokespersons, quickly dismissed as the
uttering ofa small number offanatics
The reality, however, was that pro-Japanfeelings among black
workers as well as the black middle class had been building since the
turn ofthe centccry, followingJapan's celebrated victory over the Russian
fleet. This mood wrrs given greater impetus during the worstyears ofthe
Great Depression by the appearance in Detroit of aJapanese ndtional
known as Major Satokata Takahashi, who took command of an associa-
tion known as The Development of Our Own.
Mr. Takahashi's initial organizing activities in Detroit, Chicagq and
St. Louis, and the "ripple ofj"ects" therefrom, led to the messianic expecta-
tion on the part ~tens of thousands ofAfrican Americans throughout
the midwest, the upper and lower Mississippi Delta, east~entral Okla-
homa and the New YorkNezuJersey region thatJapan's imperial army
wouldfree themfrom the ravages ofAmerican racism. Through the em-
ploy of newspaper articles, FBI documents, military intelligence reports,
and court records the author has reconstructed a history which, up until
thepresent; had been almost completely forgotten.

PAGE 24 THE BIACKSCHOLAR VGLUME 24, NO.1

shoot of the Nation of Islam [NOI], founded
in Detroit in 1930 by the legendary W. D. Fard
[pronounced Far-ad" ] . After Mr . Fard de-
parted the midwest in 1934, the NOI became
wracked by factional disputes bearing on 1)
the propriety of human sacrifice; 2) NOI "dis-
loyalty" to the United States; and 3) whether
W. D. Fard should be considered a prophet of
God, as he himself maintained, or God incar-
nate. In the resulting turmoil, one of Fard's
lieutenants, Elijah Muhammad, was forced to
flee Detroit for Chicago, where a NOI branch
- one ostensibly loyal to Mr . Muhammad -
had been in operation since 1932 . Mr .
Muhammad christened his new association
the Allah Temple of Islam; his followers be-
came known as the Temple People. The De-
troit NOI was eventually folded into the ATOI,
but it was not until the late 1950s that the
unified and greatly expanded organization re-
established itself as the Nation of Islam."
he NOI worldview was dominated by an
apocalyptic and prophetic vision which
held that the African American, the . "origi-
nal" or "Asiatic" black man, fell into a state of
social domination that began with slavery.'1
This situation was a direct result of the ma-
chinations of an evil black scientist, Yakub,
who grafted white people, also known as
"devils," from original black people a little
more than 6,000 years ago . God had granted
to whites the rule of the planet for six millen-
nia, after which time a fiery battle was to take
place in the sky where they would suffer per-
manent defeat, and the original sense of or-
der restored to earth. The "devil's" rule was
actually up in 1914, with an additional grace
period granted by Allah in order to allow the
Nation of Islam to save and convert as many
African Americans as possible to their origi=
nal religion .'4 Within NOI eschatology there
arrived a fusion of millenarian and African
American nationalist traditions, with Japan's
acknowledged leadership role couched in
messianic terms. But the NOI's now familiar
story of the Mother Ship, or Ezekiel's Wheel,'°
was cast in a somewhat different light in the
early 1940s. The Mother Ship, it seems, was in
the possession of Japan, the blueprints for
which had been drawn up "in the Holy City of
THEBIACKSCHOLAR YOLUME24,N0.1
Mecca and sent to the Japanese government
for development" :''
Japan has had for many years a monster airplane,
known to the Moslems as a "mother airplane" .
The "mother airplane" is said to carry 1,000 small
airplanes, each of which carries bombs, which will
be used against the white man . Each bomb is said
to be such size to penetrate the earth's surface for
a distance of of one mile, and to destroy an area of
fifty square miles when it explodes. The Moslems
have also told their people that the Japanese have
superior equipment of every kind and
description.'"
A Chicago-based organization begun in
late 1932, the Peace Movement of Ethiopia
essentially advocated "Garveyism without Gar-
vey" - that is, embraced in its totality the
doctrine of the Universal Negro Improvement
Association [UNIA] but with neither desire
nor need for Marcus Garvey's personal leader-
ship. Ideologically speaking, the PME came to
rely more upon the support of white racists
for implementing its "Back-to-Africa" pro-
gram than had the UNIA, but in truth, that
was the very direction in which Mr. Garvey
himself had been heading after 1921 ." PME
head and former UNIA-member Mittie Maud
Lena Gordon sought support for African
American repatriation to Africa from Presi-
dent Roosevelt in 1933, and, towards the latter
part of the decade received initial legislative
backing for such from the notoriously anti-
black Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo.'"
Intertwined with the PME's repatriation pro-
gram was a commitment to Japanese war aims.
Among numerous other charges, President
Gordon was accused of having declared that
"on December 7th, 1941, one billion black
people struck for freedom," a rather unam-
biguous reference to Japan's attack on Pearl
Harbor.'9
Much less is known of the Colored Ameri-
can National Organization, reportedly foun-
ded in Chicago by Charles Newby and Stokely
Delmar Hart in 1939 ." Newby, who once ma-
triculated at Leavenworth following a convic-
tion for auto theft, was credited with being
the originator of the slogan, "Talk Black, See
Black, Walk Black and Mind Your Own Black
Business ." z' It was said that at CANO gather-
ings Japanese General Hideki Tojo "was
praised as a coming saviour of the Negro from
the American white," and that "virtually all
Negro leaders, including Joe Louis, his wife
PAGE 25
and mother, were loudly condemned. The
group went so far as to advocate violence
against all white people seen on the South-
side ." zz Newby was deposed as president fol-
lowing a split in August 1942, immediately
after which he and Hart formed the Brother-
hood of Liberty for the Black People of Amer-
ica. CANO and BLBPA ,were also said to be
synonymous with the Washington Park Forum
(thus called because of its regular meetings
held at the park) .2~
In the late 1920s Mr. Hammurabi (as F. H.
Hammurabi Robb eventually came to be
known on Chicago's South Side) had edited a
small volume entitled The Negro in Chicago.
From the 1930s onward he directed the World
Wide Friends of Africa (known also as the
I-#ouse of Knowledge), which some three de-
cades later continued to sponsor weekly activ
ities encouraging African Americans "to
know themselves, their nation and the world."
In 1956 Mr . Hammurabi screened films on
Africa at ATOI's very first national convention ;
in 1942 he was charged with "speaking in be-
half of aJapanese victory and showing motion
pictures of the Pearl Harbor attack, obtained
secretly from Jap sources, at meetings of the
Brotherhood of Liberty." 2'
ounded in New Orleans in 1936, with an
additional chapter located at Chicago, the
International Reassemble of the Church of
Freedom League, Inc . professed belief in
"One God, One King, One Race," an appar-
ent take on Marcus Garvey's slogan, "One
God, One Aim, One Destiny" (both probably
drawn from the Christian theme of "One
Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism"). Appeal-
ing to Old Testament "proof-texts" - princi-
pally Deuteronomy 28 and Jeremiah 12 - the
IRCFL held that African Americans were Jews,
that the progeny of enslaved Africans carried
to the western hemisphere were the direct de-
scendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The
group's leader, the Rev. E. A. Broaster, had
emigrated to the U.S. from Belize, British
Honduras in the early 1920s when he was bet-
ter known as pugilist Frankie Anslem . During
his 13 years in the ring, Anslem reportedly
earned "a fair livelihood trading punches
with the best boxers the nation had to offer at
his weight." 2' Arrested on charges of advising
PAGE 26
members of his group to refuse induction
into the army, Rev. Broaster does not appear
to have harbored particularly strong pro-Japa-
nese tendencies . Yet he was close to the
PMEW in East St . Louis as well as the Chicago-
based Washington Park Forum, having ad-
dressed both groups during 1941 .
Perhaps the most important of all the pro-
Japan groups due to its wide geographic influ-
ence, the Pacific Movement of the Eastern
World was founded in Chicago in 1932 and
transported to St . Louis in that same year.
From there the PMEW extended its network
to Kansas City, the southeastern Missouri
Boot Heel region, southern Illinois, the
Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, and east-central Okla-
homa . More so than any of the other associa-
tions, the Pacific Movement expressed a
fundamental dualism in its ideological per-
spective . Torn between the demand for full
citizenship rights in the U.S. and the desire
for political self-determination through em-
igration, the PMEW's line alternately vacil-
lated between support for a Japanese military
invasion of the U.S. with the aim of securing
black equality at home, and emigration to Af-
rica, Japan, or Brazil with the pxesumed help
of the Japanese government . From 1934 to
1940 the group was headed by Rev. David D.
Erwin, who simultaneously occupied a posi-
tion of leadership in Triumph the Church of
the New Age, a Holiness denomination . By
1939 PMEW membership in East St. Louis was
said to be virtually indistinguishable from that
of the Triumph Church .~~
The House of Israel taught that African
Americans were the real Hebrews, that Adam
was black, and that the black race was once
supreme on earth, having lost its exalted posi-
tion out of disobedience to God. The group
operated schools in which the Hebrew lan-
guage was taught, and claimed that they were
"enslaved by the white race because that lan-
guage is excluded from the public schools."z'
Like the IRCFL, the HOI appears to have
been less pro-Japan than anti-American.
O fall the African American organizations
charged with seditious activities during
the war, the Moorish Science Temple of
America was the only one to have been in
existence prior to the Great Depression, hav
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
ing been started by prophet Noble Drew Ali in
Newark, New Jersey, in 1913 .28 Although its
early activities remain shrouded in mystery,
the Chicago temple was established in 1925 .
And Chicago remained the organization's
center of gravity throughout the depression,
despite the occurrence of serious organiza-
tional splits in the wake of Ali's death from
tuberculosis in July 1929 .2y From 16 active tem-
ples in 1928, based in cities such as Detroit,
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Richmond, the
MSTA (or, more precisely, the MSTA faction
led bY Charles Kirkman-Bey from mid-1929
onwards) had grown to some fifty branches by
the early 1940s. 8° Suspected of harboring
strong, proJapanese sentiments during World
War II, the organization became the target of
extensive efforts on the part of the FBI to un-
earth criminal evidence to that effect. But it
was only in Kansas City that MSTA members
were actually arrested, and then solely on
charges of draft-evasion.
And, finally, in 1935 the Ethiopian Pacific
Movement was founded in New York City by
Robert O. Jordan and Ashima Takis. A Fili-
pino national who represented himself as a
Japanese, Takis earlier had played a leading
role in the PMEW in St . Louis; he subse-
quently left the EPM as well . Born in King-
ston,Jamaica around the turn of the century,
Robert O. Jordan had earned quite a reputa-
tion as a street-corner agitator in Harlem dur-
ing the thirties and early forties. Visitors to
EPM Sunday gatherings held at a meeting hall
at Lenox and 113th could hear the "Harlem
Hitler," as he was called, regularly expound
on his refusal to be drafted, give prayers for an
Axis victory, declare his intention to fight on
the side of Japan, and express the wish that
after the defeat of the Allies, he would have
President Roosevelt pick his cotton! 4'
NATIONALISM AND MILLENNIALISM
More than anything else, the flowering of
pro-Japan tendencies among American blacks
in the era of the Great Depression repre-
sented a confluence and crystallization of two
long-standing trends in African American
thought : nationalism and millennialism. As
an unassimilated national minority, African
Americans from the late 18th century onward
had manifested general tendencies towards
VOLUME 24, NO.1
THE BLACK SCHOLAR
full inclusion into American society, on the
one side, and an equal penchant towards
group autonomy, on the other.` 2 At times this
latter sentiment has blossomed into desires
for an autonomous, black nation-state . But
due to the demonstrated futility of securing
black self-determination within the United
States, African American nationalist move-
ments have often tended to exhibit a strong
emigrationist character. In the 20th century,
of course, the most significant organization of
this type was Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro
Improvement Association .
An admixture of apocalyptic vision, messi-
anic anticipation, and prophecy belief, millen-
nialism derives from Jewish-Christian religious
traditions. Strictly speaking, of course, the
Millennium refers to that future time when
Christ, having returned to earth and smitten
Satan and his minions, shall reign for a thou-
sand years; and after which time Satan shall be
released from the bottomless pit into which
he had been cast, and defeated once again,
forever.88 In more generalized terms, historian
Eric Hobsbawm has characterized the princi-
pal characteristics of millenarian social move-
ments in the following way: "a profound and
total rejection of the present, evil world, .and a
passionate longing for another and better
one" ; second, an ideology of the type embod-
ied in Jewish and Christian messianic forms,
where it is foretold that the coming of the
Messiah shall bring all suffering to an end,
and peace and justice reign forever ; and
third, "a fundamental vagueness about the ac-
tual way in which the new society will be
brought about." 84
P erhaps one of the earliest recorded mani-
festations of millenarian sentiment among
African Americans can be found in Gabriel's
insurrection which took place in Virginia in
1800, and where the enslaved insurrectionists
identified themselves with the Israelites of the
Old Testament.' Along with the huge social
displacements occasioned by the industrializ-
ing of American society during the last quar-
ter of the 19th century and into the next,
came the flourishing of prophecy belief
marked, in African American communities,
by the spread of Pentecostal and Holiness
churches . During the Great Depres-
PAGE 27
sion, millenarian sentiments underwent a sec-
ond grand awakening among African Ameri-
cans as well, as attested by the proliferation of
prophetic religious denominations such as
Daddy Grace's United House of Prayer for All
People, ProphetJones' Church of the Univer-
sal Triumph, Father Divine's Peace Mission,
and Prophet F. S. Cherry's Church of God.~~
But the Depression Decade also witnessed
the rise of what has been aptly characterized
as messianic nationalism, a uniquely African
American expression marked by the conflu-
ence, of secular nationalist and religious mille-
narian traditions ."' To be sure, such forms had
been witnessed earlier with the appearance of
Black Hebrew denominations around the
turn of the century, as well as within the Gar-
vey movement, where Marcus Garvey himself
was sometimes likened to a Negro Moses ."
Moreover, apocalyptic references not infre-
quently colored Garvey's vision of a redeemed
Africa ." 9 A millennial streak was seen to run
through MSTA doctrine as well . Equating
Marcus Garvey's relation to Noble Drew Ali as
that of forerunner John the Baptist to Christ,
the MSTA's Holy Koran held Ali to be "the last
Prophet in these days . . . who was prepared
divinely in due time by Allah to redeem men
from their sinful ways ; and to warn them of
the great wrath which is sure to come upon
the earth.""'
Messianic nationalism emerged full-blown,
however, only during the period of sharp so-
cial deterioration marked by the Great De-
pression . It arrived in the form of Black
Hebrew associations such as the International
Reassemble of the Church of Freedom
League and the House of Israel, and proto-
Islamic organizations such as the Nation of
Islam/Allah Temple of Islam. Amore secular
version could be seen in groups such as the
Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, the
Peace Movement of Ethiopia, and the Ethio-
pian Pacific Movement . And out of this mille-
narian envelope, in a fascinating sort of way,
Japan arose as the impersonal messiah - and
General Tojo as a more intimate one - of
tens of thousands of black Americans. The key
to this last puzzle may be found by briefly trac-
ing the origins of the pro-Japan movement
among African Americans back'to the turn of
the century.
PAGE 28
THE DAWN OF
PRO-JAPANESE SENTIMENT
ProJapanese sentiment among African
Americans dates back to the RussoJapanese
war of 19041905, when the Russian navy suf-
fered a disastrous defeat at the hands ofJapa-
nese warships ." Throughout the Asian
continentJapan's victory produced first aston-
ishment, then euphoria . Sun Yatsen probably
put it best :
Since the rise of theJapanese, the Caucasians dare
not look down upon other Asiatic peoples. Thus
the power ofJapan not only enables theJapanese
to enjoy the privileges of a first class nation, but
enhances the international position of other Asia-
tic peoples. It used to be the general belief that
the Asiatics could not do what the Europeans
could do . Because the Japanese have learned so
well from Europe, and because we know we Chi-
nese can do as well as the Japanese, we see the
possibility of doing as well as the Europeans.''`
Japan had "vindicated the honor of Asia
and proved to the world that, given equal op-
portunities, the Asiatics are inferior to none
- in any sphere of life, military or civil," pro-
claimed the Indian nationalist Lajpat Rai."
Moreover, Japan's new-found prestige gave in-
spiration to people of African descent as well.
The arch-racist Lothrop Stoddard noted that
the Russo-Japanese war "produced all over
the Dark Continent intensely exciting ef-
fects."'° From the columns of the New York Age,
Archibald Grimke heaped praise upon the
"little brown iconoclasts" in grand Biblical
style:
Go . . . ye little brown men, conquering and to
conquer. Sheath not your terrible sword, lay not
aside yet your bloody scourge. Ye shall overthrow
. . . Ye have thrown Russia down, ye are destined to
throw down others than Russia in their pride, in
their lust for power, to bring to the dust the
mighty of the earth."
It was not without cause that the "defeat of
Russia by Japan," as Du Bois later noted,
would give "rise to a fear of colored revolt
against white exploitation" on the part of the
western powers.°''
lmost from the very beginning, Japan's
attraction to African Americans was two-
fold : as a model for political and economic
development, and as a potential military ally
THEBLACKSCHOLAR i~LUME 24, NO.1
against U.S. racism . An early example of the
former came from Booker T. Washington in
1906 : "The Japanese race is a convincing ex-
ample of the respect which the world gives to
a race that can put brains and commercial
activity into the development of the resources
of a country," proclaimed the Sage of Tus-
kegee.°' Musings ofJapanese military interven-
tion could be found in an uncompleted short
story begun by black journalist John Edward
Bruce in 1912, where the President's earnest
call for volunteers to repel an invasion of the
U.S. by Japan resulted in a temporary drop-
ping of the color bar.' But here the erasure of
the color line emerged as an indirect result of
Japanese militarism ; by the 1930s numerous
African Americans were prepared to welcome
a more direct route.
Remarkably, the African American em-
brace of Japan, generally speaking, had devel-
oped independent of any direct efforts on the
part of the Japanese themselves .'9 If,
perchance, black folk had been apprised of
the contempt with which many Japanese re-
garded other-people of color, their response
might have been more equivocal. In any case,
African Americans were duly impressed when
Baron Makino, Japan's principal delegate to
the 1919 Peace Conference, submitted an
amendment (ultimately rejected) to the
League of Nations Covenant supporting the
principal of racial equality." Conversely, cir-
cles close to the Japanese government were
becoming favorably aware of African Ameri-
can interest in Japan. At a meeting called in
early December 1918 for the purpose of elect-
ing delegate-0bservers to the peace conven-
tion at Versailles, Marcus Garvey, an advocate
of "Asia for the Asiatics" as well as "Africa for
the Africans," warned that "The next war will
be between the [N]egroes and the whites un-
less our demands for justice are recognized .
. . . With Japan to fight with us, we can win
such a war."'' Coming from the interna-
tionally recognized head of the Universal Ne-
gro Improvement Association, the message
was apparently well received in Japan. In his
work of fiction, Nichi-Bei senso yume monogatari
(fapanese-America War Fantasy] published in
1921, retired Japanese Army General Kojiro
Sato gleefully portrayedJapan's destruction of
the U. S. Pacific Fleet, the seizure of Hawaii,
and the invasion of the United States main-
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
land . Playing a prominent role in the novel
was none other than Marcus Garvey, who led a
rebellion of ten million blacks in support of
Japan's mission. AIso evening up the score
were numerous Jews and German-Americans
seeking justice from Anglo-Americans.' In
1925 Mr. Garvey himself was contacted by the
Indian revolutionary Rash Behari Bose,' 4 then
residing in Japan . Bose had forwarded to Gar-
vey a copy of a book, 1'he Negro Problem, au-
thored by Kametaro Mitsukawa, in which the
UNIA was prominently featured . Mitsukawa
was a founder of Gyochisa (Society to Realize
the Way of Heaven on Earth), a short-lived,
ultra-nationalist group modeled along the
lines of another, more prominent association
known as Kokuryukai, which also advocated
the emancipation of all colored races.''
ne of the more important of a number of
Oright-wing patriotic associations in Japan,
the Kokuryukai, or so-called Black Dragon
Society, was founded in February 1901 by
Uchida Ryohei to promote "the mission of im-
perial Japan" and to "check the expansion of
the western powers ." ;5 In 1901 this twin goal
assumed the form of agitation for war with
Russia . Imperialistic in nature, the society took
its name from the Amur River that separated
Chinese Manchuria from Russian Siberia.
(Called the Amur by the Manchus, the Chi-
nese named the waterway Heilung-chiang, or
Black Dragon River. Sharing the same ideo-
graphs as the Chinese, but pronouncing them
differently, the river was known to the Japa-
nese as Kokuryu, or Black Dragon, and it was
by the latter designation that the society be-
came ominously known in the West. ) However,
the "implication of the title was always clear to
every Japanese : Japan's frontier was to ~be ad-
vanced to the Amur ."'~ Known for its political
assassinations within and withoutJapanese ter-
ritory, the society assumed as its mission the
emancipation of the "colored races" from
white, western domination - even if that also
meant their subjugation by a "colored" Japan.
Carried to the United States by Japanese immi-
grants, there the Black Dragon Society played
a role that remains clouded as much by World
War II media sensationalism as by the racist
paranoia of U.S. intelligence operations. If the
society enjoyed a special relationship with Afri-
PAGE 29
can Americans, conclusive evidence has yet to
surface on that score:5' But it is nonetheless
difficult to believe that the state-side organiza-
tion, or a branch of one of the many other
ultra-nationalist societies based in Japan, did
not contribute in some way to Japan's pre-war
intelligence and espionage operations in the
U.S. Whatever the case, one will be content,
for the moment, with the knowledge that
In America, the Black Dragon Society was a patrio-
tic, ultra-right wing extremist group. Their love for
Japan created an ethnocentric frame of thought
that Americans found radical and repulsive . Coun-
terintelligence agents noted that the name of the
Black Dragon often appeared under names of
Japanese patriotic societies and good will institu-
tions raising funds for theJapanese Army. Distinc-
tive robes were part of their ceremonies : the FBI
believed that members met covertly, elaborately
adorned with black hakamas, or dress kimonos, ac-
centuated with a circular white crest on the back.'"
Save for a number of significant exceptions,
the techniques utilized by Japan to positively
influence African Americans were those
which it used in Formosa, Korea, and Man-
churia . The following description of their ac-
tivities in the Philippines is representative :
Delegations of Filipinos are entertained in Japan
with the delightful hospitality of that country.
Newspapermen, legislators, teachers, business men
have fraternized with the members of their respec-
tive professions in Tokyo, Yokahama, and Kyoto.
Corresponding groups ofJapanese have visited the
Philippines. Prominent Filipino business men are
associated with Japanese business ventures in the
Philippines, or retained as lawyers by Japanese in-
terests in the Islands. There has developed in the
Islands a small but active "pro-Japanese" group
the members of which are aggressively campaign-
ing to hasten the day when aJapanese orientation
shall supplant the present connections with the
United States. Numerous young Filipinos are
learning Japanese and at least one of them has
attended the Imperial Military Academy. . . .'"
Lacking a genuine national bourgeoisie
with substantive capital or industrial holdings,
African Americans never engaged in eco-
nomic ventures with Japanese businessmen at
the level implied above. Nor is there any re-
cord of African Americans' having learned
Japanese in any similar capacity . But by the
late 1930s a small but significant number of
black American intellectuals and educators
such as T. Thomas Fortune, James Weldon
Johnson, Robert Russa Moton, and George
Schuyler had visited Japan and formed posi-
tive impressions. Following his own trip to
PAGE 30
Japan and Manchuria in early 1937, W. E. B.
Du Bois waxed ebullient over the social
achievements of Japanese fascists in Man-
chukuo : ". . . the amount already accom-
plished in four years is nothing less than
marvelous. The people appear happy, and
there is no unemployment . There is public
peace and order."~' Unimpressed by such co-
ercive efficiency, however, was Langston
Hughes, who was deported from Japan in
1933 as a result of his contact with Tokyo Left-
ists, as well as open criticisms of that country's
anti-democratic policies!ti' On the other hand,
the proposed marriage in 1934 of Prince Lij
Araya Abebe of Ethiopia and Masako Kuroda,
daughter of aJapanese viscount, was viewed by
some African Americans as heralding the day
of an Asian-African global unity.fil Nor was Af-
rican American identification with Japan as
"liberator of the darker peoples" harmed by
the adoption of a fictive, "Asiatic" identity by
members of small, mass-based, black organiza-
tions such as the MSTA and the NOI/ATOI .
umors of war between the United States
and Japan had flourished intermittently
from the period just prior to World War I
through the 1920s .~~ When they reemerged
following the tatter's invasion of Manchuria in
1931, the Japanese government embarked
upon greater efforts to ascertain as well as to
influence African American opinion. Such ef-
forts, according to blackjournalist Roi Ottley,
came to something of a blossom after the Depres-
sion, when for the first time they made some in-
roads with the rank-and-file. They sought out
discouraged elements among the teeming thou-
sands of the urban areas. Through the Ministry of
Propaganda, they found a few radical nationalists,
fiercely anti-white, who would lend an ear to talk of
an all-colored utopia . Besides, a number of
Japanese of attractive manners and sound knowl-
edge of American affairs came to the United States
and posed as menials, seeking social ties with Negro
domestics and professing inviolable racial kinship
. . . By assiduously cultivating contacts, these people
insinuated themselves into the Negro community,
and, in time, some Negroes came to look upon the
Japanese as belonging to a messianic race, which
would lead black men out of bondage."'
One of the most effective of these propa-
gandists was a man known as "Major" Satok-
ata Takahashi. (Although Takahashi's name
suffered a number of variations in spelling by
government agencies and the press, the above
THE BLACKSCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
is how it appeared on his marriage certifi-
cate .) 65 Another was the scholarly Yasuichi
Hikida, who arrived in the U.S. in 1920,
worked long and effectively among New York
City blacks, and was deported following Pearl
Harbor.` Of the leading pro-Japanese organi-
zations among African Americans in the
1930s, Mr. Takahashi, at one time or another,
had assumed the direct control of one, foun-
ded two others, and maintained close ties with
at least several more - including the NOI
and the MSTA . When his "disciples" -direct
or otherwise - were indicted on charges of
sedition in late 1942 and early 1943, Takahashi
had already served three years of what was to
become a six-year-plus prison sentence .
Born Naka Nakane in Japan in 1875, Taka-
hashiemigrated to Victoria, British Columbia
around the turn of the century, where he
married Annie Craddock, an Englishwoman .
In 1921 the Nakane family moved from Can-
ada to Tacoma, Washington, but after experi-
encing severe, financial difficulties five years
later, Mr . Nakane suddenly disappeared, ap-
parently abandoning his wife and four chil-
dren to their own resources. His activities
from 1926 through 1931 remain obscure.fi '
Adopting the name Satokata Takahashi and
spuriously claiming to be a retired Japanese
Army major, he resurfaced in the spring of
1932 at a Chicago meeting of the Universal
Negro Improvement Association. By thefall
the 5 ft:5 in . "Little Major," or "Little God of
the East," as he was variously known to his
followers, had settled in Detroit. According to
Detroit Police detective Lawrence Johnson,
who testified before a hearing called by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service in
September 1933, Takahashi had resided in
Detroit for about a year . His activities came to
the attention of the INS in early 1933, and
complaints from African Americans regard-
ing the content of his speeches were report-
edly made at FBI offices from the following
October onward .`
Later questioned by the FBI, Takahashi
claimed that his occupation was "special doc-
toring, a kind of religion in which he acted as
a preacher," and that after having received
instruction in that field at an institution simi-
lar to a seminary in Japan, he had become a
Shinto priest. FBI analysts surmised that his
"special doctoring" activities had something
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
to do with one of the Shinto faith-healing
sects of Japan. However, there was "no indica-
tion that he was spreading the Shinto faith or
was interested in the establishment of a
Shinto shrine or temple ."~ But although
Takahashi's real mission may have been the
stimulating of pro-Japanese loyalties among
the African American population, such a task
was hardly antithetical to the teachings of
Shinto.'° It was assumed by many that Japan
and the United States would eventually go to
war over the question of Pacific territories. In
that context, Takahashi's attempts to organize
African Americans along pro-Japanese lines
appear to have stemmed from a desire to facil-
itate the disruption of economic production
and military conscription within the U.S.
O ne of Takahashi's early associates aver-
red that the former represented himself
as a Japanese official who "had been sent to
the United States by the Japanese government
to organize the colored people ." Japanese
Baron Tanaka, it was said, had prepared a me-
morial outlining the policy of the Black
Dragon Society in Japan. Among other meas-
ures, the Tanaka memorial proposed the uni-
fication of all the darker peoples of the world
by pursuing a policy of "Asia for Asiatics ."
Japan would assist such people "to organize
themselves and form their own government."
The associate, whose testimony was frequently
unreliable, said that Takahashi "claimed to be
affiliated not only with the Black Dragon Soci-
ety but the Japanese Consulate at San Fran-
cisco, California ." Japanese "situated in
various communities in the United States"
were presently working among black Ameri-
cans, Takahashi affirmed . The moment for or-
ganizing was ripe, for "the people of the
United States were unsuspecting and would
laugh at such propaganda but, in fact, the
time was not far off when Japan would take
action .""
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR OWN
One of the "most publicized movements
attempted in 1933," The Development of Our
Own was initiated "by George Grimes, a city
worker, as a legitimate political organization ."
"Through Organization, Education and Co-
PAGE 31
operation and otherwise," TDOO's official
aim was "to advance the interest of its mem-
bers along the lines of Cultural, Intellectual,
Social, Industrial and Commercial activities
and otherwise as deemed necessary by the or-
ganization."'2 Takahashi, it was said, "became
identified with the group and later succeeded
in supplanting Grimes, and used the organi-
zation to urge Negroes to join with all other
colored people -yellow, brown, and black -
against all white people ."'" He collected fol-
lowers from existing organizations as well. Af-
ter Nation of Islam members participated in
what was reported as a human sacrifice, NOI
founder W. D. Fard was instructed by Detroit
detectives to leave the city in December 1932 .
After clandestinely returning to his former
residence at the Hotel Traymore, located at
the intersection of Jefferson and Woodward
near the waterfront, Fard was arrested once
again in late May 1933 . Given a final warning,
he left the Motor City for good. It was around
this time, presumably, that a handful of NOI
members followed Takahashi into The Devel-
opment of Our Own." Although Elijah
Muhammad's principal loyalties lay with the
NOI until his own abrupt departure from De-
troit in 1934, he, too, seems to have had noth-
ing but kind words for Takahashi.
nternal changes seem to have preoccupied
TDOO during its first several months of
existence. Having filed as a non-profit organi-
zation in October 1933, TDOO voted out its
initial group of officers the following month.'S
Despite the apparent turmoil, the organiza-
tion quickly established "branches in Mt.
Clemens, Roseville, River Rouge, Ecorse, in
the 8-Mile road area and elsewhere." The ap-
parent core of the movement was the Bird-
hurst Center at Eight Mile Road, where
membership ranks quickly swelled to 500.
One of the largest Detroit units met at the
Arion Hall, located at 2131 Chene Street . An-
other convened regularly at 3404 St . Antoine."'
Although the principal organizing took
place in the Detroit area, there were also re-
ports of a chapter in Indianapolis built on the
organizational ruins of the Moorish Science
Temple . By late 1933 TDOO was said to have
14 chapters and some 10,000 members."
Apart from acknowledging its working-class
PAGE 32
base, one can say little else about the organiza-
tion's constituency at present - including the
number of female members.'" Whether, as in
the case of the Nation of Islam, TDOO mem-
bership drew mainly from the most recently
arrived, and the most impoverished, of De-
troit's black southern migrants, or, like the
PMEW in St. Louis and East St . Louis, from
those who had established urban residency at
a time more proximate to World War I, re-
mains to be discovered.'"
Under Takahashi's stewardship, "Five
Guiding Principles" bound TDOO adherents
to an overarching code of conduct:
1. To act in accordance with God's will.
Thus, there is nothing to fear but God.
2. To be true to ourselves.
Those who are not true to themselves can
not be true to others .
3. To help ourselves instead of relying on others.
God will only help those who help
themselves.
4. To be part of our community and our country. ,
Less talk, more act and self-sacrifice are nec-
essary if a group is to act together . By giving in
we gain, by surrender we win.
5. To beautify this world is our final goal .
Hence we must first have the beauty of
heart within ourselves.""
Whether or not these principles were origi-
nated by Mr. Takahashi is uncertain, but prece-
dents for such guidelines certainly existed in
the first Five Principles of Buddha, also known
as the Pansil, the Five Relationships and, suppl-
ementary Five Norms of Confucian thought, as
well as the Five Teachings of the Kurozumi Kyo
faith-healing sect of Shinto."' In the hands of
one of its black minister-leaders, the organi-
zation's millenarian appeal could also be readily
observed:
The Development of Our Own is a friendly or-
ganization for the darker peoples of America. Let
us organize ourselves for one aim and one destiny
under this organization . We must do this, because
we are living in a critical time - a time for dark
peoples to organize themselves for one common
cause.
Why can't we as a people see the signs of the
times? The Bible says, "You shall see the sign in
the East, then you will know that the time of the
Son of Man is near at hand ." He will gather up his
elect.
By organizing ourselves under the "five guid-
ing principles," we shall be able and ready to meet
Him.""
In contrast to the less-tempered public
speeches for which he was often known, Mr.
THEBLACKSCHOLAR i~LUME 24, NO.1
Takahashi's initial column in Detroit's pre-
mier black newspaper, the Tribune-Indepen-
dent, fit will within existing, African Ameri-
can, middle-class, "mainstream" thought.
Calling for African American unity, Takahashi
immodestly attributed a newfound advocacy
among Detroit blacks for the "unification of
the colored race," to his own organizing ef-
forts over the previous eight months :
I am pleased to announce to you ladies and
gentlemen, that my earnest [effort] in coopera-
tion with you loyal members, has given some effect
to our principles, in such a way as to create a new
tendency among your people toward racial unity.
The greatest obstacles to our desire for unity of
race are not so much external barriers, but inter-
nal quarrels and discord, due to selfish ambitions,
petty jealousies, narrow vision, and what not. "A
house divided against itself cannot stand." We see
many organizations wrecked by internal strife, and
many nations weakened and held down, by inter-
nal divisions and factionalism .""
entral to the question of internal, race
unity was the need for harmonious rela-
tions between men and women. But gender
unity could be achieved only on the basis of
full political rights for women within the gen-
eral movement for African American justice:
Men and women should respect each other, and
strive to develop harmony with one another, al-
though there [seem] to be peculiar ideas prevail-
ing among a certain group of men, that the
women should not hold any office in an organiza-
tion, nor have voice at the meetings.
Permit me to say to you men, that our interna-
tional supervisor is a woman, if you please, with
whom some of the members of the board of con-
trol have already had an interview. She is now in
Chicago doing wonderful work among the white
people, though different from my work."'
This "work among the white people," for
which the international supervisor had "dem-
onstrated herself capable" of carrying out, was
"to create a new' tendency among the white
race for racial equality, that is, to convince
them of the fact that they have been creating
many enemies for many years, not in the for-
eign land, but right here [with]in this coun-
try's national boundary." The population of
the "suppressed colored race" was increasing
rapidly: "Let colored citizens have their due
place, before it is too late . This is our advice to
the white race, in the solution of the racial
problem.""' But Takahashi himself refused to
address gatherings where whites were present.
THEBLACKS(~IOZAR POLiIME24,N0.1
For the most part, Takahashi's speeches be-
fore meetings of organizations such as the
Bethel A.M .E . Church, or his writings in the
Detroit Tribune-Independent, remained cau-
tionary. But a number of the "Little Major's"
preferred lectures possessed a more flavorful
character: for example, "The Sinking Ship
and the Lifeboat," and "White Supremacy
and the White Tyrant" - most likely deliv-
ered before black, working-class audiences . In
his "white supremacy" speech, Takahashi as-
serted that, by following "Japan's five guiding
principles," African Americans would suc-
ceed in overthrowing white domination :
I come here to promote international unity
between the dark people of Japan and the dark
people of America to lead them to a better and
fuller life .
What Japan has done in the past 70 years, the
Negroes, too, can do by accepting Japan's five
guiding principles . The white man will give you
little . If you obtain anything it will be done
through conquest . You must fight.
Japan has succeeded because ~eryone worked
as a unit. You must work as a unit. Follow Japan's
guiding principles. Japan is a world power equal to
Great Britain and the United States and fearing
nothing but God.
And what of Japan's stake in this outpour-
ing of Asian solidarity for Black Americans? :
Three-fourths of the world are black people
and one-fourth is white, and it is not in accord-
ance with God's will for one-fourth of the world to
rule the three-fourths, which are black . Now that
Japan has gained rightful recognition in the
world, she is willing to help other dark races. We
know that the black people of the United States
are citizens thereof, and can not help Japan di-
rectly in case of war, but there are other things
that can be done . If the white man knew that you
sympathized with Japan, he would not allow you to
shoulder arms or go near an ammunition plant in
case of war. In some parts of this country you have
been shot to death or lynched [while] wearing the
uniform. . . .
Japan is making overtures to you. If she fails
you fail . This is the last chance of the dark races of
America to overcome white supremacy and to
throw the white tyrants off your backs.'"'
In his lecture invoking western civilization
as a "sinking ship," Takahashi assured his lis-
teners that Japan was the "lifeboat," the hope
of Black America:
You are clinging to an era of Caucasian civiliza-
tion and psychology because you are afraid to
leave the sinking ship. I say the sinking ship be-
cause western prestige is doomed. It is pursuing its
inevitable course to the graveyard of obscure
history .
PAGE 33
 Here is the Negro's chance to freedom in life.
Leave the sinking ship. Civilization's march west-
ward has reached its farthest western shore on the
Pacific Coast of America.
West of America is what? Hawaii, the Philip-
pines and your friend Japan, the lifeboat of racial
love made radiant by the star of the East, Japan."'
On one occasion, probably around early
1934 when he was out on bail, Takahashi
spoke at the Golden Leaf Baptist Church in
Flint, Michigan. Describing the talk, Reverend
Wilkerson Vaughn later recalled that Taka-
hashi expressed a desire to organize African
Americans so that if they needed Japan "they
would come to our rescue . He didn't expect
us to fight with them in case they went to war
with the United States, but he did [want] it so
that they could talk with us in an organization,
said they had the second largest navy in the
world . . . He asked how many people (col-
ored) were in Flint, he wanted at least 4,000
colored people in this organization, he
wanted all of them, but at least 4,000."'~ On
yet another occasion, from a speech entitled
"Japan's Divine Mission," Takahashi outlined
three steps by which this mission "was to be
fulfilled: namely to liberate Manchuria, then
already accomplished; to unite Japan, Man-
chukuo and China into one bloc ; and to beau-
tify the world by emancipating all the colored
races from oppression ."
lso extending a Pan-Asiatic lifeline to
black Detroiters was Muhammad A.
Kahn, an East Indian who warned TDOO au-
diences that "the white man has been lying to
you ever since Lincoln saved you," and that
"you dark races had better wake up and orga-
nize." At another meeting Kahn affirmed, in
part, "that the dark races are tired of being
fooled by the white race," and that for any-
thing to be accomplished they must organize
against the latter. India was now ready to join
Japan in order to secure its independence
from England.`"'
Not surprisingly, the proselytizing efforts of
Takahashi and his lieutenants in Detroit and
surrounding communities quickly fell under
the surveillance of the Detroit Police Depart-
ment, the Wayne County Sheriff's Office, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and military
PAGE 34
intelligence services as well . According to one
observer, "The assignment to uncover Taka-
hashi's local seditious activities was given to
two colored members of the Detroit Police
Department, Officers Laurence [or Law-
rence] Johnson and Alfred Perry. They
worked on the case secretly for six months,
and attended meetings of the Development of
Our Own." 9' The FBI, for its part, unveiled
plans to prosecute Takahashi for having im-
personated a foreign government official.
In early September 1933 the "Little Major"
was taken into custody by the INS, which
promptly scheduled a hearing to determine
his eligibility for deportation.92 Three months
later he was arrested with several other men at
the home of a supporter, Pearl Sherrod. "Sus-
pected of Aiming at Overthrow of White
Race," rang the caption of a news story de-
voted to the affair, but government prosecu-
tors eventually narrowed their focus to
Takahashi's immigration violations : entering
the United States without inspection, failure
to possess a valid visa, and being an alien inel-
igible to citizenship. The others - Emerson
Sherrod, 20 ; William Johnson, 49, and Cho-
suke Okhi, 45, also known as George - were
released without charge the following day.
One of Takahashi's close associates, Muham-
mad A. Kahn, 35, a native of India, was subse-
quently interrogated and set free, after being
warned that he could no longer wear his mili-
tary uniform in public ." And Takahashi him-
self was freed on bond shortly thereafter.
From a political perspective, the marriage
of Pearl Sherrod and Satokata Takahashi the
following February provided The Develop-
ment of Our Own with a sense of organiza-
tional continuity as well as an event that could
be used to mask news of the ,subsequent de-
portation of the latter. Mr . Takahashi was
forced out of the U.S. on April 20, 1934, but
an announcement of the couple's marriage,
which had actually taken place two months
earlier in Toledo, Ohio, appeared the follow-
ing day in the Detroit Tribune-Independent :
"Mrs . Pearl B. Sherrod, a graduate of Tusk-
egee Institute, Ala., and a member of a promi-
nent colored family of Clarksburg, West
Virginia," had become "the bride of Major
Satokato [!] Takahashi, an influential citizen
of Tokio, Japan .""' The article went on to note
that "Major Takahashi, who is highly edu-
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
 Japan
aathe
funds
matter
BLACKSCHOLAR
next
1934
the
Development
Takahashi,
organization
curious
months
steamer
test
and
explained
to
minds
column
Naka
external
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and
mental
weekly
Mr
Takahashi,
organization's
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of
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through
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according
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Takahashi's
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THE VOLUME .1 PAGE35

ahashi at Toronto. The principal charge, it
seems, was that Mrs. Takahashi had been liv-
ing somewhat ostentatiously in her capacity as
acting chief executive, and not properly for-
warding to her husband funds earmarked by
the organization for his support. A subse-
quent communication from Mr. Takahashi to
his wife indicates mutual accusations of mari-
tal infidelity as well . Dismissing her from of-
fice, Mr. Takahashi then addressed a letter to
organization members requesting that they
choose between he, the founder, and his pre-
sumably errant wife ; the subsequent vote went
overwhelmingly in his favor. The game was not
yet over, however, for Mrs. Takahashi quickly
filed suits against the newly designated execu-
tive officer, Cash C. Bates, and others for rea-
sons of slander and fraud. Although her legal
actions were eventually dropped, the effective
result of challenges on both sides was the dis-
integration of The Development of Our
Own.'°"
Presumably "because of the strife occur-
ring within the organization," reported the
FBI, Satokata Takahashi "illegally reentered
the United States at Buffalo on January 11,
1939, using the identification of another Ca-
nadian Japanese, Hisazi Kubo . . ." Those who
remained loyal to Takahashi were reorganized
by him into another, similar association
known as the Onward Movement of America.
The new group was, in fact, identical to
TDOO except for the exclusion of Pearl Taka-
hashi. Incorporated as a non-profit organiza-
tion several weeks later, the Onward
Movement - dubbed the "Downward Move-
ment" by Mrs. Takahashi - quickly estab-
lished an economic cooperative
organization ."'' Incorporated the following
~1~Iay, the profit-oriented Producers and Con-
sumers Market was located at 20546-50 Cher-
rylawn in Detroit, its precise, stated purpose
being
To buy, sell, trade, and operate markets for the
sale of both at wholesale and and retail merchan-
dise incidental to general grocery and mercantile
business . To sell meats, poultry, Fish, fruits, vege-
tables, canned and bottled goods, cigars, cigarettes
& tobaccos, provisions, drinks & drugs, dairy prod-
ucts & notions; and also to purchase, lease or oth-
erwise acquire real estate and interest in land for
the purposes herein set forth.""'
Pearl Sherrod Takahashi was to have the
last word, however . Having returned to Detroit
PAGE 36
in January,, and fearing only God, Mr . Taka-
hashi set up house with 26 year-old Cheaber
(or Cheaver) McIntyre, then separated from
her husband, and who recently had become
secretary of the Onward Movement . Appar-
ently in retaliation, Mrs. Takahashi notified
the Immigration and Naturalization Service of
her husband's illegal presence in April, but
the INS was unable to determine his where-
abouts . From further information supplied by
his wife, Mr . Takahashi was finally appre-
hended by twb immigration inspectors in late
June.'°' After reportedly offering to bribe the
inspectors in order to allow his escape, he was
arrested on two counts : illegal entry into the
United States as well as attempted bribery.
Convicted in late September, Takahashi was
sentenced to a maximum term of three years
imprisonment and a $4,500 fine .
Subsequently "transferred from the Fed-
eral Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, to
the medical center for Federal Prisoners [at
Springfield, Missouri] as a mental case," he
was initially released in late February 1942 .
Immediately apprehended as a "dangerous
enemy alien" during a period of wartime hos-
tilities, Takahashi was re-interned shortly
thereafter . While incarcerated, he had the
distinction of being cited as one of the princi-
pal causes of the 1943 Detroit "race riot." In
late 1946, at the age of 71, he was once again
released from confinement and allowed to re-
join his wife in Detroit."'" But as to whether
Mr . Takahashi ever became aware of the cir-
cumstances surrounding his 1939 arrest and
imprisonment, the historical record offers
not a "clew."
IN THE BALANCE
A ll evidence pointing to Takahashi's gov-
ernment ties -at least that available until
now-remains circumstantial . Questioned by
authorities, Takahashi himself fully admitted
to membership in the Black Dragon Society,
but claimed that neither he nor the organiza-
tion possessed connections to the Japanese
government .""' At one point a dentist, Dr. Isa-
mu Tashiro, was said to have been sent by the
Japanese Consul General of Chicago to ad-
dress the Onward Movement of America
group in Detroit, implying close links but not
necessarily official ties to "Little God of the
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
East .""" However, a most provocative sugges-
tion of the latter came when Japanese Major
Itizi Sugitsa paid a visit to the U.S. in early
1941 . Former Assistant Military Attache to the
U.S. and then current Chief of the American
Section of the Japanese General Staff
("charged with the management ofJapanese
Military Intelligence in the United States"),
Major Sugitsa was said to have made inquiries
concerning the condition of the incarcerated
Mr . Takahashi."'
Evidence linking Satokata Takahashi to the
flowering of pro-Japanese activities among a
number of African American organizations
during the 1930s is, mercifully, somewhat
clearer. Following his later arrest by U.S. au-
thorities, Mr . Takahashi claimed that while
visiting Tacoma, Washington in 1930 he
learned of one Abdul Muhammad, who had
written a black minister of that city "request-
ing that a Japanese work among the Negroes
in Detroit.""1 Whatever the merits of when
and how Takahashi came into contact with
Muhammad, knowledge of their subsequent
relationship remains equally problematic.
One source claimed that "Takahashi resided
with Muhammad but left because he consid-
ered him a fraud." Another held Takahashi to
be the fraudulent party."~ Whatever the case,
the initial friendship with Abdul Muhammad
appears to have given Takahashi access to
NOI members. While Elijah Muhammad does
not appear to have followed Takahashi into
TDOO, Takahashi assuredly left his mark on
him as well . For example, in a speech report-
edly given in 1933, Mr. Muhammad stated that
"the Japanese had sent a teacher to the black
people and that the Japanese were brothers.
and friends of the American Negroes" - a
reference, no doubt, to Takahashi."' Whether
or not the "Little God of the East" ever con-
sulted with W. D. Fard, Nation of Islam foun-
der of equally diminutive physical stature
(and affectionately known to his followers as
the "Little God of Egypt"), is unknown. Mr.
Fard, as noted earlier, once claimed to be the
originator of TDOO.
By 1942 The Onward Movement of America
had become affiliated with the Moorish Sci-
ence Temple, casting a pro-Japan imprint on
the latter . Takahashi's earlier rooming to-
gether with Cash C. Bates and Herschel Wash-
ington, two men who later became prominent
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
in the MSTA, is what is believed by the FBI to
have sparked the pro-Japan ideological ten-
dencies that then flourished within the major-
ity of MSTA branches .''5
In the early 1940s the practices of the
Gary, Indiana chapter of The Development of
Our Own had evolved in such a way as to em-
brace NOI symbolism. Led by Central Pope
(aka Joseph Gibson), the group awaited the
day that the "Five Guiding Principles," recast
here as Freedom, Justice, Liberty, Equality,
and Honor, would be theirs under Japanese
rule . The organizational banner - bearing a
red background with a white star and crescent
positioned near the lower left-hand corner,
and the letters F, J, L, and E (denoting the
first four principles) inscribed at each of the
corners beginning counter-clockwise at the
upper right - was said to have been sent
from Tokyo! "e
By the late 1930s both the MSTA and the
NOI were considered important institutional
sources of pro-Japan sentiment in many Afri-
can American communities. But although
proJapan sentiment was apparently rife
within the MSTA, no substantial case was able
to be made by authorities - a situation no
doubt aided by the organization's highly de-
centralized character.
n early 1932 Madame M. L. T. De Mena of
the Universal Negro Improvement Associa-
tion enlisted the speaking services of a Fili-
pino by the name of Policarpio Manansala.
Posing as aJapanese-and employing the name
Ashima Takis, Manansala began speaking un-
der UNIA auspices throughout the midwest.
That spring, following a UNIAsponsored
meeting in Chicago, Mr . Takis and his part-
ner, a Chinese by the name of Moy Liang,
were approached by Takahashi, who indicated
his intentions to found a pro-Japan organiza-
tion to be known as the Pacific Movement of
the Eastern World."' Promptly signing on, the
organizing activities of the three took them to
Indiana Harbor and then back to Chicago's
south side ."" Some three months later they
traveled to St . Louis, where the most signifi-
cant, early center of PMEW activity was
established . ""
The affairs of the PMEW also became in-
tertwined with those of Mittie Maud Lena
PAGE 37
Gordon, a staunch, former Garveyite who had
become disillusioned with the policies of the
UNIA. After having worked with the PMEW in
Indiana Harbor, Gordon had a falling out
with Takis. Withdrawing her supporters from
the organization in late 1932, she formed the
Peace Movement of Ethiopia, a pro-Japan, Af-
rican repatriation movement . Finally, in 1935
Takis came into contact with West Indian-
born Robert Jordan . Prior to parting com-
pany, the two formed the Ethiopian Pacific
Movement in New York City.' z"
It was thus that Satokata Takahashi begat a
handful of proJapan organizations among Af-
rican Americans: The Development of Our
Own, Pacific Movement of the Eastern World,
and the Onward Movement of America. The
PMEW in turn begat other proJapan associa-
tions such as the Original Independent Benev
olent Afro-Pacific Movement of the World, the
Peace Movement of Ethiopia, and the Ethio-
pian Pacific Movement . TDOO and its spinoff,
OMA, also greatly influenced the Nation of
Islam, its direct successor the Allah Temple of
Islam, as well as the Moorish Science Temple
of America . Together these organizations in-
fluenced, at the very least, tens of thousands of
working-class blacks from the early 1930s
through World War II, those South as well as
North, rural as well as urban . They divided and
multiplied until things came to a head in the
fall of 1942, after which time most of the prin-
cipal organizers of these groups were hustled
off to prison . In 1942 five TDOO chapters,
with no more than 170 members total, were
said to be still in operation, including groups
in Detroit and Gary, Indiana, and one headed
by Harry Ito in Chicago.' z'
The actions of U.S. blacks favoring national
liberation found echoes in the short-lived and
poorly conceived 1935 Sakdalista uprising in
the Philippines, where adherents were told,
and apparently believed, that their struggle
against U.S. neo-colonialism would be joined
by a Japanese invasion of the islands. One
might cite as well the efforts in India of
Subhas Chandra Bose and his supporters to
assemble a liberation army against the British
with the material assistance of Japan.'` It is
thus important to understand that black iden-
tification with a more powerful Japan none-
theless contained a rational kernel - however
politically misguided the overall vision .
PAGE 38
U ntil the bombing of Pearl Harbor in late
1941, most black Americans, it seems,
continued to view Japan as a positive model
for political and economic development, with
a smaller number favoring that country's di-
rect military intervention in the racial affairs
of the United States. Following the attack on
Hawaii,Japan's military campaigns against the
West continued to be viewed by many African
Americans - even staunch "patriots" - as
"payback" for white underestimation of the
capabilities of peoples of color. And as the
U.S. plunged into the war, leading spokesper-
sons for the black middle class sought to uti-
lize the Japanese threat as a wedge to exact
greater concessions in the realms of political
and civil rights for African Americans, argu-
ing persuasively that the full fighting potential
of the black population could not be attained
until African Americans were made to feel
like full-fledged citizens. (Shades of John Ed-
ward Bruce!) Most African Americans were
either "indifferent to or reacted negatively to-
ward the outbreak of World War II in Septem-
ber, 1939 ." Some were bitter because neither
the governments of the United States nor
Great Britain had made any effort to forestall
the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Others did
not wish to see the United States become in-
volved in an imperialist war. Still others
"viewed the fighting in Europe as a divine act
of retribution" visited upon the un-
righteous.' 1' And there were many who sup-
ported Japan - at least until the bombing of
Pearl Harbor.
ProJapanese thoughts among African
Americans during the war, then, were hardly
confined to a mere handful of "crackpots," as
the popular press, black as well as white, strove
hard to maintain . In early 1942 the Office of
War Information commissioned a private sur-
vey among African American residents of New
York City in order to gauge their attitudes to-
wards Japan . The results indicated that eigh-
teen percent of the respondents expressed
the belief that, in the event of a successful
invasion of the United States by Japan, the
conditions of African Americans would im-
prove; another 31 percent that things would
remain the same ; and a significant 26 percent
were noncommittal .' =' Whether an indication
of anti-American or proJapanese sentiment,
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
 these results could not have been reassuring
to the Roosevelt administration .
Within the African American community,
only the black Left fully and consistently per-
ceived from the early 1930s onward the grow-
ing danger of Japanese fascism, and the
consequent folly of African American identi-
fication with those who portrayed themselves
as "liberators of the darker races." Although
an unquestioning supporter of Japan's cause
during the earlier days of the African Blood
Brotherhood, Cyril V. Briggs was among the
first to raise the alarm in 1932 in the pages
of the Negro Worker: In the late 1930s Briggs
and Harry Haywood collaborated in the writ-
ing of a small pamphlet, IsJapan the Champion
of the Colored Races? a work which, as a matter
of policy, was assigned a collective authorship
that included other black CPUSA luminaries.
While the pamphlet's main purpose was to
undermine the proJapanese influence
among blacks fostered by the Pacific Move-
ment of the Eastern World and other, like
organizations in the U.S., its authors deliber-
ately limited their scope to the discrediting of
Japanese foreign policy in Asia.' 15
It is time to revise the viewpoint long held
by many activists and scholars (the author in-
cluded) that the Depression Decade wit-
nessed a strengthening of class consciousness
within the African American national com-
munity virtually at the full expense of group
consciousness and nationalist sentiment -
notwithstanding the existence of "Don't Buy
Where You Can't Work" movements that
sprung up in a number of cities . The older
view recognizes the Great Depression primar-
ily for the sharpening of class tendencies as
well as the growth of millennial religious
movements within black communities. Exam-
ples of the first can be found in the founding
of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Ar-
kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma ; the organiz-
ing of the Sharecropper's Union in Alabama;
struggles of the CIO in the auto, steel, min-
ing, and packing-house industries ; the Scot-
tsboro and Angelo Herndon campaigns; the
campaigns of local unemployed councils, and
the like . But as time goes by, and evidence
percolates upward from heretofore buried or
obscure sources, a growing number of re-
searchers are begining to view the decade as
one where African American nationalism
THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
flourished perhaps as much as in the Twenties
- a perspective to which a recent study of
black American movements for the defense of
Ethiopia eloquently contributes.'z`'
A lthough a rather dismissive and superfi-
cial account of the wartime arrests ap-
pearing in Time magazine was misleading in
many respects, its title, "Takahashi's Blacks,"
contained at least a semblance of truth.'z' To
African Americans coming into direct contact
with him in the 1930s, or who learned of his
existence through others, Satokata Takahashi
represented a personification of the notion,
prevalent throughout Asian countries (with-
out the first-hand experience of a Japanese
occupation) as well as black America at the
time, that Japan, as "champion of the darker
races," would liberate them from the yoke of
world-wide white supremacy. As it turned out,
of course, and all for the better, our erstwhile
sepia samurai prepared in vain for a mainland
invasion of the U.S. which never arrived . But
despite the messianic aura created around his
person, those organizations which followed
Mr. Takahashi or his ideas were, for the most
part, founded or run by African Americans
themselves, fulfilling needs present in their
own communities.
If there is a political lesson to be learned
from pro-Japan movements among blacks dur-
ing the Great Depression, it is perhaps that
the waters of self-determination continue to
run deep within the African American na-
tional community even during times of signifi-
cant class conflict, and that progressive
strategies for social change which ignore the
existence of the former, remain as doomed as
those mired in extreme myth-making and ulti-
mate mystification.
PAGE 39
 Acknowledgements
*It wasfrom Harry Haywood some tzuercty-five years
ago that Ifirst learned of the existence of pro-Japa-
nese organizations amongAfrican Americans in the
I930s and early 40s, and hence it is to him that the
present essay owes its greatest debt. I am especially
grateful for assistance provided by the following in-
dividuals and institutions : firstly, the library staff
at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst -
Edla Holm and her indefatigable Interlibrary Loan
crew, and librarians Paula Mark and Barbara
Morgan in particular; archives technician Scott M.
Forsythe of the National Archives - Great Lakes
Region ;John E. Taylor, archivist, National Archives
- Washington DC; and Linda Kloss of the FBI's
FOIA/PA section, also in Washington . Robert
NOTES
1 . By the 1950s the preferred English spelling of the
surname Mohammed changed to Muhammad (and
that of Moslem to Muslim). For the sake of consis-
tency, the latter spelling has been adopted for rele-
vant individuals mentioned in this study. For the
same reason one will find here the traditional West-
ern order of given name/surname imposed upon
Japanese individual names, since that is the form
ordinarily present in cited newspaper reports and
government documents.
2. ; "Sedition: Race Hate Used by Tokio to Lure 85
Nabbed by FBI," Chicago Defender (September 26,
1942) : 1, 4; "U.S. Indicts 38 Cult Members," Chicago
Defender (October 3, 1942) : 1; "Federal Jury Indicts
Cult Leaders Here," Chicago Defender (October 31,
1942): 1; 1 "12 Negro Chiefs Seized by FBI in Sedi-
tion Raids," Chicago Tribune (September 22, 1942) :
9; "Another Negro Fanatic Seized as Plot Leader,"
Chicago %'ribune (September 23, 1942) : 8.
3. "Five Who Urged Revolt in Harlem and Aid to Japa-
nese Are Indicted," Neru York Times (September 15,
1942): 1.
4. "Survey of Racial Conditions in the United States"
(Washington, DC : Federal Bureau of Investigation,
1943) [NHyF], 209, 578 . A 714-page report pre-
sented by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the fall of 1943, the
survey contains an indispensable summary of the
black press, race relations programs, independent
black organizations, as well as Socialist, Communist,
and pro-Japanese tendencies among African Ameri-
cans. Based upon raw FBI field reports, but unlike
similar materials obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act, the (indexed) copy located in the
Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park is free of redaction .
5. "FBI Arrests Cleric for Conspiracy to Sabotage Draft
and Hinder War," Chicago Defender (October 31,
1942): 3.
6. "Pro-Japanese Unit Scrutinized," St . Louis Globe-Dem-
ocrat (September 23, 1942) : 7; "Indictment Names
`Black Dragon' Ilk," Neru York Limes (January 28,
PAGE 40
Chrisman, John E. Higginson, and Joy AnnJames
graciously suggested improvements to the original
draft.
In addition to all of the foregoing, John H.
Bracey, Jr. kindly recommended a number of addi-
tional sources as well. David Wills provided a criti-
cal reference to African American religious history.
A modest grant from the Five College Black Studies
Executive Committee enabled me to obtain materials
that otherwise would have been beyond my reach.
Sara Lennox of the University's STPEC Program
also provided invaluable support. And, finally, a
special thanks to the Freedom of Information Act,
without which this essay would have been infinitely
more speculative.
1943) : 12 ; "3 Indicted On Sedition Charges," St.
Louis Globe-Democrat Qanuary 28, 1943) : 4; "Charges
Church Formed to Keep Its `Ministers' Out of the
Army," St. Louis PostDispatch Qanuary 28,1943) : 1, 3;
"Bishop Erwin Stands Trial for Sedition," St. Louis
Argus (May 14, 1943) : 1 .
7. "Seven in Gult Seized as Draft Evaders," New York
limes (January 14, 1943) : 23 .
8. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 361, 574. Florence
Murray, "The Negro and Civil Liberties During
World War II," Social Forces, 24: 2 (December 1945):
211-12, reported that some 125 African Americans
were convicted u1 such cases. See also American
Civil Liberties Union, Freedom fn Wartime (New York:
ACLU, 1943), 32-33; and American Civil Liberties
Union, In Defense of Our Liberties (New York: ACLU,
1944), 32.
9. 50 U.S.C .A. §§ 33, 34 and 50 U.S.C.A . Appendix §§
301, 302, 311. The first set of amended codes was
based on the Espionage Act of 1917 (40 Stat 217),
which, under conditions of wartime, applied to the
issuing of false statements with intent to interfere
with the operation or success of the armed forces,
willful obstruction of recruitment into the same, as
well as conspiracy to commit such violations . The
second, on the Selective Training and Service Act of
1940 (54 Staf. 885) which, among other measures,
provided for the punishment of those who evaded
draft registration or military service, or who coun-
seled or aided others along such lines.
10. Report of (agent name deleted], Washington, DC,
June 19, 1942, FBI file 100-6582-(37?] . Save for the
document, "Survey of Racial Conditions in the
United States," all Federal Bureau of Investigation
records used in this study were obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act.
11 . Erdmann Doane Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult
Among Negro Migrants in Detroit," American Jour-
nal of Sociology, XhIIl:6 (May 1938) : 903, 904,
906-907; Hans J . Massaquoi, "Elijah Muhammad :
Prophet and Architect of the Separate Nation of
Islam," F.lwny (August 1970): 88 ; Linda Jones, "Na-
tions Apart," Mirhigan magazine, Detroit Ncrus (July
THE BLACKSCHOLAR YOLUI4IE 24, NO.1
 17, 1988): 8; "Intended Voodoo Victims' Number
Still Mounting," Detroit Free Press (November 27,
1932): 1, 4; "Cultists Riot in court; One Death, 41
Hurt," Chicago Tribune (March 6, 1935) : 1; Ted Wat-
son, "The Rise of Muhammad Temple of Islam,"
Pittsburgh Courier (April 7, 1956): 3 (magazine sec-
Lion) and "Beginning of Muhammad?," Pittsburgh
Courier (February 22, 1958) : 8. Arna Bontemps and
Jack Conroy, Anyplace But Here (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1966), 222, give the date of inception of the
Chicago branch as "1933 or early 1934," which may
have been true with regard to the ATOI, but not the
NOI, which Detroit police reported to be in exis-
tepce in Chicago as early as 1932 . Essien-Udom,
Black Nationalism, 64, notes that the Allah Temple of
Islam was organized in Chicago in latter 1934, but
also fails to note the early formation . The question
as to whether or not Mr. Muhammad converted the
early Chicago branch NOI to the ATOI seems imma-
terial, since Essien-Udom reports that the latter was
so small at its inception that it met at members'
homes.
12. This vision remains unchanged for Minister Louis
Farrakhan's NOI, founded around 1978 .
13. For studies of NOI eschatology, see E. U. Essien-
Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in
America (Chicago : University of Chicago Press,
1962) ; and C. Eric Lincoln, %he Black Muslims in
America (Boston: Beacon, 1973, second ed .) .
14 . Elijah Muhammad, "Battle in the Sky Is Near," in
Message to the Blackman in America (Chicago : Muham-
mad's Temple No . 2, 1965), 290-91 ; "The Great De-
cisive Battle in the Sky," Pittsburgh Courier
(December 28, 1957): 10, rpt. in Message to the Rlack-
man, 292-93 ; "The Battle in the Sky," Pittsburgh Cou-
rier (December 14, 1957): 10, rpt. in Message to the
Blackrnan, 293-94 .
15 . Report of [agent name deleted], Washington, DC,
June 19, 1942, FBI file 100-6582-[37?] .
I6 . Report of [agent name deleted], (:hicago, October
8, 1943, FBI file 100-6582-139 .
17 . See Ernest Allen, Jr., "The New Negro: Explorations
in Identity and Social Consciousness, 1910-1922," in
Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick, eds., 1915: 7he Cul
tural Moment (New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University
Press, 1991), 48-68.
18 . Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro
Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper &,
Row, 1944), 813; Senator Theodore G. Bilbo, "An
African Home for Our Negroes;' % he Living Age
358:4485 (June 1940) : 328, 330; Ethel Wolfskill He-
dlin, "Earnest C:ox and Colonization : A White Rac-
ist's Response to Black Repatriation, 1923-1966,"
unpublished Ph .D. dissertation (Duke University,
1974), 112-70 .
19 . United States v. (cordon et al ., 7 cir., 138 F.2d 174.
20 . "Survey of Racial Conditions," 575.
21 . "Five Face U.S Sedition Charges in court Monday,"
Chicago Defender (November 28, 1942): 1.
22 . "Grand Jury Probes Cultists," The (Kansas City) Call
(October 2, 1942) : 3.
23. "Prison Looms as U.S. Tightens Grip on Cult," Chi-
cago Defender (October 17, 1942) : 1; "Survey of Racial
Conditions," 575.
24. Frederick H. H . Robb, ed ., The Negro in Chicago:
1779-1927 (Chicago : The Washington Intercollegi-
ate Club, 1927), cited in Christopher Reed, "The
Manifestations of Nationalism in the Black Belt of
Chicago, 1920-1929," unpublished M.A . thesis
THE BLACKSCHOLAR f~7LUME 24, NO.1
(Roosevelt University, 1968), 21 [I am indebted to
John H. Bracey, Jr. for calling my attention to the
latter document]; E. U. Essien-Udom, BlackNational-
ism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago : Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1962), 50, 162; "Grand Jury
Probes Cultists," ?he (Kansas City] Call (October 2,
1942) : 3.
25. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 173; Vernon B. Will-
iams,Jr. to NAA(.'.P, December 17, 1942, NAACP Pa-
pers, Section II, Box 12 [DLC] [I am indebted to
John H. Bracey, Jr. for providing me with a copy of
this docurtlent] ; "`Negro AJew' Leader to Seek New
Converts Here," Chicago Defender (March 14, 1942):
3; Chicago Defender (October 31, 1942): 3.
26. Triumph the Church of the New Age was an off
shoot of Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God
in Ghrist, tbunded in Georgia by Elder E. D. Smith
in the year variously given as 1897, 1902, or 1906.
According to Gayraud Wilmore, "Smith led the de-
nomination until 1920 when he moved to Addis
Ababa and never returned." Around 1921 or 1922
the church underwent an ecclesiastical schism, and
a branch known as Triumph the Church of the New
Age came into being at Pittsburgh under the leader-
ship of W. D. Barbour. Leadership passed to Bishop
A. A. Shelton of Detroit following Barbour's death.
The parent organization remained small until the
mid-1930s, after which time a sizeable membership
began to accrue. In 1938 a Birmingham native, the
Rev. James Francis Marion Jones, was sent to Detroit
by Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God in
Christ with instructions to form a new branch. In-
stead he founded a new denomination, church of
Universal Triumph, the Dominion of God, and be-
came known to the world as ProphetJones. Gayraud
Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism : An In-
terpretation of the Religious History ofAfro-American Peo-
ple (Maryknoll, NY Orbis, 1991, 2nd ed.), 154; Miles
Mark Fisher, "Organized Religion and the Cults," in
Milton Sernett, ed ., Afro-American Religious History : A
Documentary Witness (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1985), 391; Hans A. Baer, The Black Spiritual
Movement : A Religious Response to Radsm (Knoxville :
University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 83, 147n ;
Charles Edwin Jones, Black Holiness: A Guide to the
Study ofBlack Participation in Wesleyan Perfectionist and
Glossolalic Pentecostal Movements (Metuchen, NJ : The
American Theological Association and the Scare-
crow Press, 1987), 1812, 193-94 ; Vial Testimony;
pp. 703-706, United States v. Pacific Movement of
the Eastern World, Inc ., No. 15840 (E.D. Ill.June 15,
1943) [National Archives - Great Lakes Region] .
27 . Elmer T. Ciark, "t'he Small Sects in America (New York
and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1949), 164, confused
HOI dbctrine with that of the MSTA, the ideals of
which he believed were identical. Furthermore, it
was not the "Abyssinian" language, as he claimed,
but the use of the Hebrew tongue which the group
championed . See also report of [agent name de-
leted], St. Paul, March 2, 1943, FBI file 65-40879-286 ;
and "Survey of Racial Conditions," 559.
28 . For general but somewhat flawed information on
the MSTA, see Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy,
Anyplace But Here (1945; rvsd . New York : Hill and
Wang, 1966), 205-208. In their highly informative
Mission to America: hive Islamic Sectarian Communities
in North America (Gainesville, FL: University Press of
Florida, 1993), historians Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad
and Jane Idleman Smith tend to treat the MSTA
primarily as an Islamic organization. Peter Lamborn
PAGE 41
 Wilson's "Shoot-Out at the Circle Seven Koran: No-
ble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple,"
Gnosis, 12 (Summer 1989) : 44-49, on the other
hand, more convincingly traces the MSTA's Islamic
roots to Masonic influences. See also an amplified
version of Lamborris argument in his recently pub-
lished Sacred Drift: F,ssays on the Margins ofIslam (San
Francisco: City Lights Books, 1993), 15-50. Att in-
sightful, c. 1940 sociological study of the MSTA Phil-
adelphia temple appears in Arthur Huff Fauset,
Black Gods of the Metropolis : Negro Religious Cults in the
Urban North (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 1944), 41-51 . See also Ernest Allen, Jr.,
"Making the Strong Survive: The Contours and
Contradictions of `Message Rap'," in William Eric
Perkins, ed ., Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap
Music and HipHop Culture (forthcoming, Temple
University Press, 1994).
29 . Ali's official cause of death was "Tuberculosis Bron-
Cho-Pneumonia." Standard Certificate of Death No.
22054, Timothy Drew, issued July 25, 1929, Cook
County, Illinois (Office of Cook County Clerk) .
30 . Report of [agent name deleted], Chicago, Decem-
ber 15, 1943, FSI file 62-25889-228 .
31 . John Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI to the Attorney
General, February 19, 1942, FBI file 100-56894-44 .
32 . In certain fundamental respects, the historical situ-
ation of African Americans has been little different
from that of other minority populations in the era
of the nation-state . See, for example, Gerard
Chaliand, ed ., Minoridy Peoples in the Age of Nation-
Stales (London : Pluto Press, 1989) . For the most
comprehensive documentation of African Ameri-
can nationalism, see John H. Bracey, Jr ., August
Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, eds., Black Nationalism in
America (Indianapolis: Boobs-Merrill, 1970).
33. See, especially, the Book of Revelation, but also
those of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Mark ; also Paul Boyer,
When lame Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belaef in Modern
American Culture (Cambridge, MA : Belknap/Hares
and University Press, 1992), 42 .
34. E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic
Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuraes
(1959; rpt., New York : W. W. Norton, 1965), 57-58. As
Shepperson has noted, the messiah need not be a
personal one. George Shepperson, "The Compara-
tive Study of Millenarian Movements," in Sylvia L.
Thrupp, ed . Millennnial Dreams in Action (New York:
Schocken Books, 1970), 47 .
35. See especially the confessions of Ben (aka Ben Wool-
folk) in Willie Lee Rose, ed ., A Documentary History of
Slavery in North America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1976),114; T. W. Higginson, "Gabriel's Defeat,"
Atlantic Monthly, 10 :59 (September 1862), 338.
36. See, for example, Arthur Huff Fauset, Blade Gods of the
Metropolis : Negro Religious Cults in the UrbanNorth (Phila-
delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944); Ro-
bert Wesibrot, hatherDirrine (1983; rpt., Boston : Beacon
Press; 1984); and Jill Watts, (~orl, Harlem U.SA. : The
Father Divine Story (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992).
37 . See Hans A. Baer and Merrill Singer, African-Amerl-
can Religion in the-7iuentiedh (:entury: I~arieties of Protest
and Accommodation (Knoxville: University of Tennes-
see Press, 1992), esp. chaps. 4.
38. Elias Fanayaye Jones, "Black Hebrews: The Quest for
Authentic Identity,",Journal ofReligious Thought, 44:2
(Winter-Spring 1988) : 351!9; Truman Hughes Tal-
ley, "Marcus Garvey -The Negro Moses?," World's
Work, 41 :2 (December 1920) : 153-66.
PAGE 42
39. Randall K. Burkett, Garveyism as a Religious Mane-
meat: %Ire Institutionalization of a Black Civil Religion
(Metuchen, NJ : The Scarecrow Press and The
American Theological Library Association, 1978),
62-65.
40. The Hdy Koran of the Moorish Science l errrple of America
(Chicago: 1927), Chapter XLVIII :1 .
41 . The best overall analysis of pro-Japan sentiment
amongAfrican Americans can be found in Reginald
Kearney, "Afro-American Views of Japanese,
1900 .1945," unpublished Ph .D . dissertation (Kent
State University,1992) . But aside from the New York-
based Ethiopian Pacific Movement, Kearney paid
little attention to the pro-Japan activities of organized
groups of the 1930s and early 1940s, an omis-
sion partly attributable to exorbitant processing
costs for FOI/PA materials - charges subsequently
rescinded - at the time he was pursuing his initial
research . For brief examinations of such organiza-
tions, see Ottley, Nero World A-Coming i Inside Black
America (1943; rpt., New York: Arno Press, 1968),
327-42 ; Neil A. Wynn, "Black Attitudes Towards Par-
ticipation in the American War Effort, 1941-45,"
Afro-American Studies, 3:1 (June1972): 17-18; and Neil
A. Wynn, %'he Afro-American and the Second Wm-ld War
(New York: Holmes and Meier,1975),103-105 . In the
otherwise excellent, latter work Wynn errs in assum-
ing that no contact had occurred betweenJapanese
agents and black defendants charged with sedition .
42. Sun Yat-Sen : His Pdilical and Social Ideals, compiled
and translated by Leonard Shihlien Hsit (Los An-
geles : University of Southern California Press,
1933), 170.
43. Lajpat Rai, "An Asiatic View of the Japanese Ques-
tion," Uutlaok, 114 (18 October 1916): 386; see also
D. Mackenzie Brown, The Nationalist Mooement: In-.
than Pditacal Thoughtfrom Ranade to Bhave (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1961), 8-10.
44. Lothrop Stoddard, ?he Rising lade of Color Against
White World-Supremacy (New York : Scribners, 1920),
97 . In an oftcited essay, Lord Hailey contrasted the
role played by the Russo-Japanese War in the devel-
opment ofAsian nationalism, with the parallel effect
upon African nationalism of Italy's invasion of Ethio-
pia in 1935. While the contrast is an apt one, it may
also understate the impact of the 1904-1905 war on
Africa itself. See Lord Hailey, "Nationalism in Af-
rica," fournal of theRoyalAfrican Society, 36:143 (April
1937) : 13437.
45 . Cited in Kearney, "Afro-American Views of Japa-
nese," 38 .
46 . W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Darvn: An H;ssay ?bmard an
Autobiography of a Racz Concept (1940; rpt., Schocken,
1968}, 232.
47 . Booker T. Washington, Pulling the Most info Life (New
York: Thomas Y Crowell, 1906), 33 .
48 . "The Call of a Nation," in %'he Se(Prted Writings ofJohn
F,'dzuard Bruce: Militant Blackfournalisl, comp. and ed.
by Peter Gilbert (New York: Arno Press and The
New York Times, 1971), 99-100 .
49. The relationship of American blacks to Japanese im-
migrants in the U.S. was an intertwined but autono-
mous issue. See, for example, DavidJ . Hellwig, "Afro-
American Reactions to the Japanese and the Anti-
Japanese Movement, 1906-1924," I'hylon, 38 :1
(March 1977): 93-104.
50. See Ray Standard Baker, Woodrorv Wilson and WorGl
Seltlmrenl (GardenCity, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co.,
1922), 234; and "Survey of Racial Conditions," 535.
THEBLACKSC2YOIAR iR)LUME 24, NO.1
51 . "Negro Editor Preaches War for Equality," New York
Tribune (December 2, 1918): 4. See also Kearney,
`Afro-American Views of Japanese," 100-102. Imme-
diately following its successful 1894-1895 military
campaign against China, Japan's slogan of "Asia for
the Asiatics" burstforth with abounding vitality. Per-
haps notuncoincidentally, the first recorded usage
of the phrase, `Africa for the African," occurred in
the title of a book written between 1895 and 1896 by
a sympathetic Baptist missionary of European de-
scent,Joseph Booth . Henry Dumolard, LeJaponpoli-
tique, economique et social (Paris : Armand C:olin, 1905,
4th ed .), 278-79 ; Colin Leagm, Pan-Africanism : A
Short Political Guide (New York: Praeger, 1962), 22.
52. With an intent to reclaim territory seized by the U.S.
in the early 19th century, Mexico promptly invaded
Texas. Then following a final attack on New York
City, Washington sued for peace, with Lothrop Stod-
dard, author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White
World Supremacy, joining the surrender negotiations!
See John J. Stephan, Haruaii Under the Rising Sun:
Japan's Plans for Conquest After Peart Harbor (Hon-
olulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), 60 .
53 . Rash Behari a Bose was an Indian government clerk
who became a prominent, anti-British revolutionary
in the period just prior to World War I. A member
of the Chandernagore group of revolutionists, Bose
went underground for several years after being im-
plicated in several bombing incidents which took
place in 1912 and 1913 . Eventually he fled to Japan,
where he married a Japanese woman. Bose later
became a member of the C'.ongress Socialist Party,
formed in 1934 . In 1942 he was elected chair of the
newly formed Indian Independence League, an
organization of Indians residing outside India in
pro-Japanese Asia . R. C. Majumdar, History oftheFree-
dom Movement in India (Calcutta: Firma K. L.
Mukhopadhyay, 1963), II :306, 45459, 490; III:704,
707-709; D. C. Gupta, Indian National Movement and
Constitutional Development (Delhi : Vikas Publishing
House, second ed., 1973), 174.
54 . Robert A, Hill, ed ., %'he Marcus Garvey and Universal
Negro Improvement Association Papers, (Berkeley, Uni-
versity of California Press, 1989), VI :297 ; Amy Jac-
ques Garvey, Garvey and Gameyism (Kingston: 1963),
159; rpt. (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 168; Richard
Storey, %heDouble Patriots : A Study ofJapanese Nation-
alism (1957; rpt., Westport, CT : Greenwood Press,
1973), 40-42; Robert A. Scalapino, Demorrary and the
Party Movement in Pre-Warlapan (Berkeley: University
of California .Press, 1967), 358-59 .
55 . W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism 1894-1945
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 78 ; Masao Maru-
yama, %'bought and Behavior in ModernJapanese Politics
(London: Oxford, 1963), 350-51 ; Storry, T'he Double
Patriots, 13-14; Scalapino, Democrary and the Party
Movement in Pre-WarJapan, 350 .51 ; Hugh Byas, Gov-
ernment by Assassination (New York : Alfred ICnopf ;
1942), 173-212; B. Nicolaevsky, "Russia, Japan, and
the Pan-Asiatic Movement to 1925," The far !.'astern
Quarterly, 8:3 (May 1949) : 272-73 ; O. Tanin and E.
Yohan, Militarism and fascism in Japan (New York :
International Publishers, 1934), asp. 4448, 117-I8,
and 252.
56 . Byas, Government try Assassination 195.
57 . Historian Reginald Kearney, "Afro-American Views
ofJapanesr," 118n, seems to doubt any such connec-
tion . On the other hand, as noted earlier, a similar
ultra-patriotic society, Gyochisa, made indirect con-
tact with Marcus Garvey in 1925.
THEBLACKSCFIOLAR . VOLUME 24, NO.1
58. Bob Kumamoto, "The Search for Spies: American
Counterintelligence and the Japanese American
Community, 1931-1942," Amerasia Journal, 6:2 (Fall
1979): 65416.
59. Joseph Ralston Hoyden, The Philippines : A Study in
National Development (New York : The Macmillan Co.,
1942), 722-23.
60. Herbert Aptheker, ed ., %he Correspondence of W f.'. B.
Du Bois (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts,
1976), II : 184; W E. B. Du Bois, "Forum of Fact and
Opinion," Pittsburgh Courier (February 13,1937) ; rpt.
i n Herbert Aptheker, comp. and ed ., Neuupaper Col-
umns by W. E. B. Du Bois (White Plains, NY Kraus
Thompson, 1986), 167; "Survey of Racial Condi-
tions," 148.
61 . Emma Lou Thornbrough, 7: Thomas fortune: Mili-
tantJournalist (Chicago : University of Chicago Press,
1972), 236-37 ; James Weldon Johnson, Along This
Way: %'he Autobiography oflames Weldon Johnson (1933;
rpt., New York: Penguin, 1990}, 393-405; Langston
Hughes, I Wonder As I Wander (New York : Rinehart,
1956), 259-76; "Protest Mistreatment of Langston
Hughes," The (Kansas Cityl Call (September 22,
1933) : 2B . I have not yet confirmed the visits of
Messrs. Moton and Schuyler, reported in "Survey of
Racial Conditions," 148.
62 . However, the future bride was also quoted as saying
that ` Japan is over populated and I would like to
lead a move for colonization of our race in Africa ."
The marriage was later called off. "Daughter of
Japanese Peer to Wed Negro," St . Louis A~gus (]anu-
ary 26, 1934) : 1; "Prince Advertises for Bride in
Japan," N~m York 7zmes (February 18, 1934): IV, 8;
"Duce Forces African Prince to Jilt Jap Mail Order
Bride," Detroit Free Press (April 3,1934): 3; "Surveyof
Racial Conditions," 150-51 . Intermarriages between
upper-class Ethiopians andJapanese had been pro-
posed in the early 1930s by a fraction of the Ethio-
pian ruling strata known as the ' Japan-izers," who
sought to modernize Ethiopia along the lines taken
by Japan since the Meiji Restoration . [I am grateful
to John E. Higginson, who provided me with this
historical context.] A nephew of Hailie Selassie, Ab-
ebe attended a New York City meeting of the Ethio-
pian World Federation [EWF] in 1943, and
thereafter became involved in its internal politics;
"Survey of Racial Conditions," 146. For general in-
formation on the EWF see William R. Scott, The Sons
of Sheba's Race: African-Americans and the Italo-Flhio-
pian War, 1935-1941 (Bloomington : Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1993), 176-77 .
63 . See, for example, Barbara W. Tuchman, The 7
.immer-
man %'elegram (1958; rpt. New York : Macmillan,
1967), chapter 2.
64 . Roi Ottley, `tVetu World A-Coming: Inside Black America
(1943; rpt., New York: Arno Press, 1968), 328-29.
65 . Takahashi's newspaper articles carried the byline,
S. K. Takahashi, and a PMEW membership card
signed by him c . 1932 reportedly bore the given
name Sato Kata. Report of (agent name deleted],
Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 15 ; "Survey of Racial
Conditions," 55354. Among the phonetic variations
assigned Takahashi's given name were Satonata, Sat-
okato, Satakata, Satohata, Satohato, and Satochasi.
Karl Evanzz, TheJudas Factor. %he Plot to Kill Malcolm
X (New York: Thunder's Mouth,1992), uniquely em-
braces the spelling "Satahota."
66 . Kea'rney, "Afro-American Views of Japanese,"
12325; Ottley, 'Nato World A-Coming', 329-30, 336;
PAGE 43
 David Levering hewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue
(New York : Alfred A. Krtopf, 1981), 137, 302; "Survey
of Racial (:onditions," 1451I6, 536-37 .
67 . Takahashi was reported to have worked as an agent
for the New York life Insurance Gompany at Tac-
oma, 1h'ashington from January 1923 through De
cember 1927, "having disappeared some months
prior to this discontinuance ." It was charged that he
had misappropriated loan and cash vendor checks
prior to his departure from the company. Report of
[agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp.
22, 33, FBI file 65-562-43.
68 . Interrogated by the FBI, Takahashi claimed to have
settled in Detroit in 1930 . But in an article putt
lished in Qpril 1934, he stated that his arrival in
Detroit was 8 months previous, which would have
placed the date as August 1933 - still a year later
than that claimed by Detroit police . Report of
(agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp.
3, 12, 1$, FBI file 65-562-43; report of [agent name
deleted], St . Louis, April 3, 1942, FBI file
65-40879-66; S. K.'Takahashi, "Development of Our
Own," Detroit Tribune-Independent (April 21, 1934) : 1.
69 . "Survey of Racial Conditions," 542.
70 . See Robert O. Ballou, Shinto : %'he Unconquered h.'nemy
(New York: Viking Press, 1945), 19-25; D. C. Holtom,
Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism (Chicago : Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1943), 28-66; and John W.
Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pa-
afic War (New York : Pantheon, 1986), 262-90 .
71 . "Survey of Racial Conditions," 546-47 ; `~apanese
Plotter Here Was Chosen by Black Dragons," St.
Louis Posl-Dispatch (August 1, 1942): 3; "Indictment
Names `Black Drago~i Ilk," New York %imes (January
28, 1943): 12 . Takis, moreover, misstated the content
of the Tanaka Memorial, itself considered a fraudtt-
lent document today by many historians . See Carl
Crow, ed ., fapan.'s Dream of World F,'mpire: T'he Tanaka
MemoriaL(New York : Harper & Brothers, 1942) and
John J. Stephari, "The Tanaka Memorial (1927) : Au-
thentic or Spurious?," Modern Asian Studies, 7:4
(1973) : 733-45 .
72 . Ulysses W. Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro
(Detroit: The Minority Study Associates, 1943), 46 [I
am indebted to Tyrone Tillery for calling my atten-
tion to this publication] ; Articles of Incorporation
of The Development of Our Own, October 5, 1933,
Michigan Department of Commerce.
73. Boykin, A Handbook on the Delroil Ngrq 46 . The
name of George Grimes, however, is nowhere to be
in
found any TDOO corporate papers filed in Mich-
igan . Although it is possible for Grimes to have been
eased out of the leadership prior to TDOO's having
been incorporated, it is perhaps worth noting that a
Samuel W. Grimes became vice-president in 1934,
fbllowring Takahashi's deportation .
74 . "Leader of Cult Admits Slaying at Home `Altar',"
Delroil Free Press (November 2l, 1932) : 1, 2; "Altar
Scene of Hurnan Sacrifice," Detroit 7hmes (November
21, 1932): l; "Voodoo's Reign Here Is Broken," De-
troit Free Press (December 7, 1932) : 7; "Banished
Leader Of Cult Arrested ;' Detroit Free Press (May 26,
1933) :10; "Voodoo ChiefBack In C:ell," Detroit Times
(May 26,1933) : S; Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 904.
75 . TDOO's initial directors were George R. Wilson,
WilliamJ. Fitzpatrick, Walker Williams, E. S. Stetvart,
Sam Williams, and Walter Warren . The following
mach, George C.Jones was elected president; Will-
iam Pharr, secretary; Issiah TaBoard, trustee chair-
rnan ; Emanuell Pharr, advisory chairman ; John
PAGE 44
Cooke, treasury chairman ; Ava M. Vance, recording
secretary; and A. N. Scott, sergeant-at-arms. Articles
of Incorporation of The Development of Our Own,
October 5, 1933 ; Certificate of Amendment to the
Articles of Incorporation, January 30, 1934, Michi-
gan Department of Commerce ; "survey o£ Racial
Conditions," 542.
76. Boykin, A Handbook vin the Detroit NNgrq 47; report of
L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933, FBI file
65-562-15; report of [agent name deleted], Detroit,
March 20, 1940, p. 15, FBI file 65-562-43.
77 . "Survey of Racial Conditions;' 100; report of [agent
name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 18, FBI
file 65-562-43; "MysteriousJapanese Held; No Mys-
tery About Disposal," Detroit Nears (December 3,
1933) : 5. In 1936 an organizational branch, with
headquarters located at Springfield, was incorpo-
rated in Illinois. The Board of Directors included
William Thompson, Ernest Fulton, Ethel Fulton,
Goldie Merriweather, and Helen L. Miles. The chap-
ter lasted a few years at most, and was legally dis-
solved in 1939 . Report of [agent name deleted],
Springfield, IL, April 3, 1940, FBI file 65-562-49.
78. With the economyon a war footing in 1941, TDOO's
direct successor, the Onward Movement of America,
reportedly had a large number of its memberswork-
ing at Ford's River Rouge plant. P. E. Foxworth toJ.
Edgar Hoover, December 2, 1941, FBI file 65-562-62.
79 . A follow-up investigation that might have revealed
such information was abruptly cancelled in April
1940 by the FBI Director, with indications that the
order had come down from the Office of Secretary
of State. A request by the Detroit Bureaus SAG (Spe-
cial Agent in Charge) to reopen the investigation in
December of that same year was subsequently de-
nied . John Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI to SAC, De-
troit, April 6, 1940, FBI file 65-562-43; John Edgar
Hoover, Director, FBI to AdolfA. Berle, Jr., Assistant
Secretary of State, April 6, 1940, FBI file 65-562-43;
John Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI to SAC, Detroit,
March I, 1941, FBI file 65-562-58.
80 . Report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933,
FBI file 65-562-15; enclosure in memorandum, F. G.
Tillman to F. L. Welch, September 16, 1943, FBI file
65-562-[?] ; Detroit Ness (December 3, 1933): 5.
81 . See G. H. Jansen, Nonalignment and the Afro-Asian
States (New York : Praeger, 1966), 128 ; Masaharu An-
esaki, History ofJapanese Religion (London: Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., 1930), 261n ; and D.
C. Holtom, The National Faith of Japan: A Study in
Modern Shinto (London : Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner, and Co ., 1938), 255.
82. Willie Jenkins, "Development of Our Own," Detroit
!'ribune-Independent (May 19, 1934) : 1. "Do you know
why Japan quit the League of Nations?," inquired
this same official on another occasion . "It eras be-
cause the League failed to measure up to racial jus-
tice and racial equality, because God told them to
do so artd establish a league of nations among the
dark peoples of the earth . Don't you know that
_Japan is acting in accordance with God's will?" Ue-
troid %'ribune-Independent (June 2, 1934) : 2.
83 . S K. Takahashi, "Development of Our Own," Uehnil
%'ribune-Independent (April 21, 1934) : 2.
84 . Ibid.
85 . Ibid. The "international supervisor" may have been
Fay Watanabe, mentioned in several FBI intelligence
reports_ See report of [agent name deleted], De-
troit, March 20, 1940, p. 81, FBI file 65-562113.
86. The speech is reconstructed from the following
THEBLACKSCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1
 sources: `~apanese `Fifth Column' Work in Detroit
Also," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 7, 1942): 5; and
report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933,
FBI file 65-562-15.
87 . St. Louis PostDispatch (March 7, 1942) : 1, 5.
88 . Statement of Reverend Wilkerson Vaughu, Flint,
Michigan, November 23, 1942; in Enclosure to FBI
file 62-25889-136. It is unclear from the context
whether African Americans' fighting "with them"
meant fighting against or on the side of Japan.
89 . "Resume of Japanese Influence on the Negroes in
the United States," Office of the Chief of Naval Op-
erations (1942), RG 38, ONI Security Classified Ad-
ministrative Correspondence, 1942-1946, A8-5/
EF37/EG [DNA] ; report of [agent name deleted],
Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 9, FBI file 65-562-43.
90. Report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933,
FBI file 65-562-15.
91 . Boykin, A Handbook on the Detroit Negro, 46 .
92. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 2U,
1940, p. 17, FBI file 65-562-43. Takahashi's INS re-
cords, which fall under the purview of the Freedom
of Information Act, have been reported missing
From the agency; C:ora L. Smith, FOI/PA Officer,
INS to Ernest Allen, Jr., December 21, 1993 .
93. Report of L. D. Socey, Detroit, December 19, 1933,
FBI fle 65-562-15; report of [agent name deleted],
Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 3-4, FBI file 65-562-43;
`~ap Arrested in Raid on Club," Detroit News (De-
cember 2, 1933): 2 ; Detroit Nems (December 3, 1933) :
5; Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen, "The Washing-
ton Merry-C:o-Round," Wichita H,agle (December 14,
1933), enclosure in RG 165, MID 10218-261/91
(DNA
94. "Local Woman Weds,]apanese Officer," I)ehoil Tri-
Irune-Independent (April 21, 1934): 1 ; .St . Loteis Posl-
Dispalch (March 7, 1942) : 1. Mrs. Takahashi, whose
maiden name wag,Barnett, had three children from
a previous marriage. Her brother was a Professor
Barnett of Tuskegee Institute .
95 . "Local Woman Weds Japanese Officer," Detroit Tri-
bune-Independent (April 21, 1934): 5; Boykin, A Hand-
book on the Detroit Negro, 46 .
96 . Report of [agent natiie deleted], St . Louis, April 3,
1942, FBI file 65-40879-66 ; "Survey of Racial Condi-
tions," 543.
97 . Boykin, A Handbook nn the Detroit Negro, 46 .
98 . Mrs. P. T. Takahashi, "Development of Our Own,"
Detroit 7i'ibune-Independent (June 16, 1934) : 2.
99 . Mrs. P. T. Takahashi, "Development of Our Own,"
Detroit %i-ibune-Independent Qune 9, 1934) :, 2. Inter-
estingly, a U.S. Fifth Army report noted that the
head of the NOI, "W. ll. Feraud" [W. D. Fard],
claimed to be "the originator of the Development
of Our Own and the Moslem Temple of Islam cult
and cited as proof a twok, which had been copy-
righted by him, in the US Library of Congress, en-
titled `Five Guiding Principles' ." Cited in
(:orrrlation Summary of Wallace Don (Dodd] Ford,
January 15, 1958, p.17, FBI file 105-63642-15 . No date
is cited for this remark ; however, since Fard left De-
troit involuntarily on May 26, 1933, it was presuma-
bly made prior to that time.
100. Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 904.
101 . The Development of Our Own v. Pearl T. Takahashi,
No . 23023 civ. (Wayne County Circuit Court (:han-
cery, filed July 3, 1934), cited in report of [agent
name deleted], lletroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 49-50,
FBI file 65-562-43; Articles of Incorporation of The
Development of Our Own, October 5, 1933 ; Certili-
THEBLACKSCHOLAR i~OLUME 24, NO.1
cafe of Amendment to the Articles of Incorpora-
tion, June 8, 1934, Michigan Department of Com-
merce; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 542. The FBI
report listed the name of "William J. Fitzgerald,"
but this appears to be in error. Charles C. Zampty
may have been the same person as the Detroit-based
Garveyite, John Charles Zampty. For an interview of
the latter, see Jeanette Smith Irvin, hbotsolrliers of tlae
UNIA ("Iheir Oum Words) (Trenton, NJ : Africa World
Press, 1989), 36-52.
102. Correlation Summary of Wallace Don [Dodd] Ford,
,January 15, 1958, p. 17, FBI file IOfr63642-15 ; SAC,
Detroit to Director, FBI, January 31, 1958, FBI file
105-63642-20.
103. Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 903; SAC, Chicago,
to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI file
105-63642-6 .
104. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20,
1940, pp. 40, 42, 43, 52-57, FBI file 65-562-43.
105. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 543. Officers of The
Onward Movement of America included Cash C.
Bates, Alexander Long, Arthur Merritt, Rosa Wal
den, and Leila Fisher. Articles of Incorporation of
The Onward Movement of America, January 30,
1939, Michigan Department of Commerce .
106. Its officers were Alexander Long, Bartie Alsobrooks,
and Gladys long ; Articles of Incorporation of Pro-
ducers and Consumers Market Co ., Inc., May 15,
1939, Michigan Department of Commerce. By 1942
the organization had relocated to a nearby spot in
the vicinity of Eight Mile Road at Majestic Avenue in
Ferndale; Report of (agent name deleted], Detroit,
November l2, 1942, FBI file 62-25889-30.
107. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, March 20,
1940, pp. 4-5, FBI file 65-562-43.
108. United States v. Naka Nakaue, No . 25350 (E .D . Mich.
September 28, 1939) [National Archives - Great
Lakes Region] ; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 544;
"Klan, 5th Column Links Probed in Detroit Riot-
ing," Wicshington Times-HeraGl (June 23, 1943), copy
in FBI file 65-562-136. A newspaper report described
Mrs. Takahashi as "a faithful visitor at Springfield
during his, imprisonment ." St . Louis Post-Uispatrh
(March 5, 1942) : 8; St . Louis Post-Dispatch (March
7, 1942) : 1 ; SAC, Chicago to Director, FBI, October
30, 1957, FBI file 105-63642-6 ; SAC, Detroit to Direc-
tor, FBI, October 10, 1946, FBI file 6.5-40879-341 . In
1942 Takahashi was said to be "70 years of age,
almost blind, and . . . hospitalized during the
past three years because of stomach ulcers." SAC,
(:hicago, to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI
file 105-63642-8.
109. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 544; report of [agent
name deleted], Detroit, March 20, 1940, pp. 60-61,
FBI file 65-562-43. -
110. A contribution of $100 was also reportedly made by
OMA to the families ofJapanese soldiers . SAC, San
Francisco to SAC, Chicago, August 7, 1940, FBI file
65-562-53; "Survey of Racial (:onditions," 543.
111 . "Resume of Japanese lofluence on the Negroes in
the United States," 3, 10.
112. SA(: (:hicago to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI
file 105-63642-6 ; report of [agent name deleted],
Detroit, March 20, 1940, p. 58, FBI file 65-562-43.
113. Ahdul Muhammad's wife reportedly confided in
Ousha Appacanis, a member of The Development
of Our Own, that "Muhammad had taken one Sa-
takata Takahashi into his home when Takahashi was
ill at which time Takahashi learned the principles of
Muhammad's organization and when he was well,
PAGE 45
 approached Muhammad, with the thqught in mind
that the two of them could utilise the organization
to make a great deal of money. Muhammad's wife
related that Muhammad refused this approach ."
Presumably the break between Takahashi and
Muhammad occurred prior to the formation of
TDOO, and if that is so, Muhanunad's organization
at the time was most likely the NOI. SAC Chicago
to Director, FBI, October 30, 1957, FBI File
105-63642-6; report of [agent name deleted], De-
troit, March 20, 1940, p. 58, FBI file 65-562-43.
114. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 578. In his recent
book, %'he Judas Fhrtor, journalist Karl Evanzz ad-
vances a number of claims regarding the relation
ship between Takahashi and Elijah Muhammad .
While most of his specific assertions ring true, due
to the fact that Evanzz's work, overall, is plagued by
sloppiness, abysmal documentation, and, in at least
one instance, the creative presentation of evidence
at variance with extant documentation, one cannot
cite it with confidence .
115. Report of [agent name deleted], Detroit, November
12, 1942, FBI file 62-25889-30, pp. 12, 24 . Associated
with Takahashi in the early 1930s, Herschel Wash
ington (-El) later became Grand Sheik of the Mt.
Clemens, Michigan MSTA. Cash C. Bates (-Bey), a
"national liaison man" of the MSTA in the 1940s,
was incorporator-director of the Onward Movement
of America in 1939 and became its Acting Chief
Director when Takahashi was incarcerated that
same year. United States Naval Intelligence Service,
Ninth Naval Digtrict, B-7-0, "Topical Study Mem-
orandum on Moorish Science Temple of America,"
May 28, 1943, in FBI Indianapolis file 100-409458.
116. Report of [agent name deleted], Indianapolis, June
1, 1942, FBI file 65-562-105; report of [agent name
deleted], Indianapolis, September 9, 1943, FRI file
65-562-139 . Those familiar with the c. 1960s NOI flag
will note the similarities: red background, white star
and crescent in the center, and the corresponding
letters F, J, E, and I [Islam].
117. Statement of Mimo De Guzman [Policarpio Manan-
sala], August 3, 1942, in report of [agent name de-
leted], New York City, August 12, 1942, FBI file
65-40879-165; "Survey of Racial Conditions," 546-47.
See also Transcript of Testimony and Proceedings
Before the Grand Jury (E .D. 111 . completed Sept. 29,
1942), p. 777, copy fried with National Archives'
holdings of United States v. Pacific Movement of the
Eastern World, Inc.
118. Statement of Mimo De Guzman [Policarpio Manan-
sala], August 3, 1942 .
119. Transcript of Testimony and Proceedings Before
the Grand Jury, pp. 789-90 .
120. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 562.
121. "Survey of Racial Conditions," 545; Lt. C:ol. George
W. Hinman, Jr ., G.SC., Headquarters, Second Ser-
vice Command, Governors Island, New York to Di
rector, Intelligence Division, August 21, 1942, copy
in FBI file 65-40879-241 .
122. Hayden, %'he Philippines, 382-400 - especially 391-92;
Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Rewilu-
tion, 1939-1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1968), 345-46.
123. Gerald Robert Gill, "Afro-American Opposition to
the United States' Wars of the Twentieth Century:
Dissent, Discontent and Disinterest," unpublished
Ph .D . dissertation (Howard University, 198,5), 258.
124. Office of Facts and Figures, ?he Negro Locks at the
War.- Attitudes of New York Negroes 7bruaril Diserimina-
PAGE 46
lion Against Negroes and a Comparison of Negro and Poor
lNhite Altitudes %bward War-Related Issues, 1942; and
Office of Facts and Figures, Survey of Intelligence
Materials No. 25, "Negroes in a Democracy at War,"
1942, RCG 205, Records of the Office of Facts and
Figures, Alphabetical Subject File, 1939-1942 [Wash-
ington National RecprdsCenter-5rritland] . Myrdal,
An American Dilemma, 1400n, distorted the findings,
claiming in a curiously constructed sentence that
the "highest proportion of Negroes, of all Negroes
interviewed, who have admitted proJaparrese incli-
nations, in a confidential poll conducted by Negro
interviewers, is 18 per cent ."
125. Cyril Briggs, "Negro Workers, Fight Against Inter-
vention;" The Negro Worker [Hamburg], 2 :5 (May
1932) : fi-8; rpt. as "War in the East in Herbert
Aptheker, ed ., Uocummtary History of the Negro People
in the United States, 1910-1932 (Secaucus, NJ : Citadel,
1973), 718-20 ; Is Japan the Champion of the Colored
Races? (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1938)
[I am indebted to archivist Edward C. ~feber, La-
badie Collection, University of Michigan, for provid-
ing me with a copy of this publication .] Excerpts
from the pamphlet were reprinted as "Japanese Law
and Order in Manchuria," in Herbert Aptheker,
Documentary History of the Negro People in the United
States, 1933-1945 (Secaucus, NJ : Citadel, 1 .974),
311-14 . See also R. Doonping, "IsJapan the Protec-
tor of the Coloured Races%," Y'he Negro Worker [Ham-
burg], 3:1 (January 1933) : 1418 ; the latter rpt. in the
Harlem Liberator as ` Japanese Imperialism - `Protec-
tor' of the Oppressed Darker Peoples," part 1 (July
1, 1933): 4 and part 2 Quly 8, 1933) : 4; Harry Hay-
wood, NegroLiberation (New York : International Pub-
lishers, 1948), 203; and Haywood, Black Bolsherrik,
428. The "so called Pacific (proJapanese) move-
ment" was denounced by CPUSA national secretary
Earl Browdrr at the Party's 8th national convention
in 1934; Daily Worker (April 14, 1934) : 7, rpt. i n Philip
S. Foner and Herbert 5hapiro, eds., American Com-
munism and Rlack Americans: A Documentary History,
1930-1934 (Philadelphia : Temple University Press,
1991), 121.
126. Scott, The Sons of Sheba's Rare. See also Claude
McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New York: E. P. but-
ton, 1940); and Bontemps and Cgnroy, Anyplace But
Here.
127. %ame (October 5, 1942): 25-26.
THE BIACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 24, NO.1