Let us now consider the third question:—“Is intermarriage necessary for the assimilation of the Japanese?” The people, who argue that the Japanese should be discriminated against because they are biologically unamalgable, thereby commit themselves to maintaining that intermarriage is the only way by which Japanese may become true Americans. Governor Stephens states that California’s effort at Japanese exclusion is “based entirely on the principle of race self-preservation and the ethnological impossibility of successfully assimilating this constantly increasing flow of Oriental blood.”[48] Without questioning whence he derived the authority for the assertion that the Japanese are ethnologically impossible of assimilation, we wish to refute the contention that the Japanese are unassimilable because they are racially impossible of amalgamation. We believe that racial amalgamation is not a prerequisite of assimilation. We have already shown that the customs and traditions, as well as the supreme law of the United States, do not demand that all Americans be of one and the same race. This fact alone is sufficient condemnation of those baseless utterances which seek an excuse for failure and negligence in successfully fulfilling the duty of Americanizing aliens by the camouflage of race difference.
But there are other powerful reasons to support our view that race intermixture is not the only way to Americanize the Japanese. And this we find in the strong influence of environment on the physical and mental make-up of man. Perhaps the most significant anthropological contribution of recent times is the establishment of the truth that race is not a fixed thing, but that it is a changeable thing; changeable according to the conditions of environment. Professor Boas, a recognized authority on anthropology, found, in a strictly scientific investigation concerning the changes in bodily form of immigrants and their descents in America, that aliens change considerably in physical form after they come to America. His conclusions are:
The investigation has shown much more than was anticipated, and the results, so far as worked out, may be summarized as follows:
The head form, which has always been considered as one of the most stable and permanent characteristics of human races, undergoes far-reaching changes due to the transfer of races of Europe to American soil.
The influence of American environment upon the descendants of immigrants increases with the time that the immigrants have lived in this country before the birth of their children.
The differences in type between the American-born descendant of the immigrant and the European-born immigrant develop in early childhood and persist throughout life.
Among the East European Hebrews the American environment, even in the congested parts of the city, has brought about a general more favorable development of the race, which is expressed in the increased height of body (stature) and the weight of the children.
There are not only decided changes in the rate of development of immigrants, but there is also a far-reaching change in the type—a change which cannot be ascribed to selection or mixture, but which can only be explained as due directly to the influence of environment. We are, therefore, compelled to draw the conclusion that if these traits change under the influence of environment, presumably none of the characteristics of the human types that come to America remain stable.[49]
A very similar result has been reached by Dr. Fishberg in his study[50] of the Jews in America, in which he found that the physical features of the Jews in the United States are changing considerably as the result of change in social elements.
Because of lack of scientifically established data pertaining to the physical change of Japanese descendants in America, we forbear from making any bold assertion on that topic. Yet, even to the casual observer, it seems almost undeniable that American-born Japanese children are fast departing from the type which their parents represent, thus corroborating the truth discovered by scientists. The Japanese Educational Association of San Francisco once conducted an extensive physical examination of Japanese children in twenty different grammar schools in California, and found (1) that they are generally superior in physical development to children of corresponding ages in Japan; (2) that in height they are from one to two inches taller than children in Nippon; (3) that in weight they are from three to seven pounds heavier; (4) that they have fairer skin when compared with that of their parents born in Japan; (5) that their hair is dark brown and not jet black, as is that of their parents; and (6) that their general posture is much better than that commonly seen among the children of Japan.[51]