Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity

The surprising alliance between Japan and pro-Tokyo African Americans during World War II.

In November 1942 in East St. Louis, Illinois a group of African Americans engaged in military drills were eagerly awaiting a Japanese invasion of the U. S.— an invasion that they planned to join. Since the rise of Japan as a superpower less than a century earlier, African Americans across class and ideological lines had saluted the Asian nation, not least because they thought its very existence undermi...